Intangible inventions: the Kalbeliya gypsy dance form, from its creation to UNESCO recognition

Despite the creation of the Kālbeliyā dance form in the 1980s, it was recognized as a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage in 2010. Rajasthani “Gypsy” performances,featuring a dance designed by the nomadic Kālbeliyā community, have quickly become popular among tourists in India as well as on Western world music stages. The state of Rajasthan, where the Kālbeliyās hail from, is celebrated as “India’s heritage state” by the Indian government as it seeks to promote tourism and the international dissemination of Indian culture through performances and festivals. In this paper, I sketch the history of the Kālbeliyā dance form from its origins in the 1980s through to the UNESCO nomination in 2010. Moreover, I discuss the effects of its recognition as a world heritage dance tradition. The official approval of the Kalbeliya dance form as a heritage activity further highlights the challenges to UNESCO’s candidate selection process. This paper aims to explain the reasons for the nomination of the Kālbeliyā dance form (how and why UNESCO was persuaded to recognize it as a suitable candidate) by connecting this to the continued processes of nationalism and romanticism, the economic strategies adopted by the cultural tourism industry and the commodification and commercialization of Indian folk arts

Counting rational points near planar curves

We find an asymptotic formula for the number of rational points near planar curves. More precisely, if $f:\mathbb{R}\rightarrow\mathbb{R}$ is a sufficiently smooth function defined on the interval $[\eta,\xi]$, then the number of rational points with denominator no larger than $Q$ that lie within a $\delta$-neighborhood of the graph of $f$ is shown to be asymptotically equivalent to $(\xi-\eta)\delta Q^2$

Pricing of S&P 100 Index Options Based On Garch Volatility Estimates

This paper is a contribution to the vast literature on the inefficiency in the index options markets. Previous research has found that trading based on implied volatility forecasts do not generate positive profits for the S&P 500 index options but GARCH volatility forecasts do. Trading based on implied volatility forecasts for the S&P 100 index options also fail to generate profits in excess of transaction costs. This paper shows that trading based on GARCH volatility forecast generates profits in excess of transaction costs for the S&P 100 index options hence there is systematic mispricing in the S&P index options markets. GARCH models fair well due to their flexibility to incorporate asymmetric and nonlinear volatility effects. Improved pricing models should work as well or better.GARCH, S&P100, index options

Determinants of Well-Being: Applying the Easterlin Paradox, Life Expectancy, Carbon Emissions, and Education across Countries

This study estimates well-being as a function of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, life expectancy, primary education completion rates, and carbon dioxide emissions per capita using panel data from 78 countries from 2006 and 2009. We find that well-being increases at a decreasing rate as GDP per capita increases, which is consistent with the Easterlin Paradox. We also find a statistically significant, positive relationship between well-being and life expectancy and a negative relationship between well-being and carbon dioxide emissions

PRICING OF S&P 100 INDEX OPTIONS BASED ON GARCH VOLATILITY ESTIMATES

This paper is a contribution to the vast literature on the inefficiency in the index options markets. Previous research has found that trading based on implied volatility forecasts do not generate positive profits for the S&P 500 index options but GARCH volatility forecasts do. Trading based on implied volatility forecasts for the S&P 100 index options also fail to generate profits in excess of transaction costs. This paper shows that trading based on GARCH volatility forecast generates profits in excess of transaction costs for the S&P 100 index options hence there is systematic mispricing in the S&P index options markets. GARCH models fair well due to their flexibility to incorporate asymmetric and nonlinear volatility effects. Improved pricing models should work as well or better.GARCH, S&P100, index options

Multilingual term extraction from comparable corpora : informativeness of monolingual term extraction features

Most research on bilingual automatic term extraction (ATE) from comparable corpora focuses on both components of the task separately, i.e. monolingual automatic term extraction and finding equivalent pairs cross-lingually. The latter usually relies on context vectors and is notoriously inaccurate for infrequent terms. The aim of this pilot study is to investigate whether using information gathered for the former might be beneficial for the cross-lingual linking as well, thereby illustrating the potential of a more holistic approach to ATE from comparable corpora with re-use of information across the components. To test this hypothesis, an existing dataset was expanded, which covers three languages and four domains. A supervised binary classifier is shown to achieve robust performance, with stable results across languages and domains