Customary International Law: An Instrument Choice Perspective

Contemporary international lawmaking is characterized by a rapid growth of “soft law” instruments. Interdisciplinary studies have followed suit, purporting to frame the key question states face as a choice between soft and “hard” law. But this literature focuses on only one form of hard law—treaties—and cooperation through formal institutions. Customary international law (CIL) is barely mentioned. Other scholars dismiss CIL as increasingly irrelevant or even obsolete. Entirely missing from these debates is any consideration of whether and when states might prefer custom over treaties or soft law

Money, Real Interest Rates, and Output: A Reinterpretation of Postwar U.S. Data

This paper reexamines both monthly and quarterly U.S. postwar data to investigate if the observed comovements between money, real interestrates, prices and output are compatible with the money-real interest-output link suggested by existing monetary theories of output, which include both Keynesian and equilibrium models.The major empirical findings are these;1) In both monthly and quarterly data, we cannot reject the hypothesis that the ex ante real rate is exogenous, or Granger-causally prior in the context of a four-variable system which contains money, prices, nominal interest rates and industrial production.2) In quarterly data, there is significantly more information con-tained in either the levels of expected inflation or the innovationof this variable for predicting future output, given current and lagged output, than in any other variable examined (money, actualinflation, nominal interest rates, or ex ante real rates). The effect of an inflation innovation on future output is unambiguously negative. The first result casts strong doubt on the empirical importance of existing monetary theories of output, which imply that money should have a causal role on the ex ante real rates. The second result would appear incompatible with most demand driven models of output.In light of these results, we propose an alternative structural model which can account for the major dynamic interactions among the variables.This model has two central features: i) output is unaffected by money supply;and ii) the money supply process is motivated by short-run price stability.

Symplectic structures on right-angled Artin groups: between the mapping class group and the symplectic group

We define a family of groups that include the mapping class group of a genus g surface with one boundary component and the integral symplectic group Sp(2g,Z). We then prove that these groups are finitely generated. These groups, which we call mapping class groups over graphs, are indexed over labeled simplicial graphs with 2g vertices. The mapping class group over the graph Gamma is defined to be a subgroup of the automorphism group of the right-angled Artin group A_Gamma of Gamma. We also prove that the kernel of the map Aut A_Gamma to Aut H_1(A_Gamma) is finitely generated, generalizing a theorem of Magnus.Comment: 45 page

Does the Consumption of Different Age Groups Move Together? A New Nonparametric Test of Intergenerational Altruism

In recent years Robert Barro's (1974) ingenious model of inter- generational altruism has taken its place among the major theories of consumption and saving. Despite its policy importance, there have been few direct tests of the Barro model. This paper presents a new direct test that is based on a property of the Barro model that, to our knowledge, has not previously been exploited. This property is that the Euler errors (i.e., disturbances in the Euler equations) of altruistically linked members of Barro extended families (clans) are identical. Under time-separable, homothetic utility, this equality of Euler errors means that, controlling for clan preferences about the age distribution of consumption, the percentage changes over time in consumption of all Barro clan members are equal. With some weak additional assumptions, this proposition implies that the average percentage change in household consumption within an age cohort should be the same for all age cohorts. Testing the Barro model by comparing average percentage changes in consumption across age cohorts is particularly advantageous because it is nonparametric; in determining whether the average consumptions of different age cohorts move together we place no restrictions on preferences beyond the assumptions of homotheticity and time separability. In particular, each Barro clan can have quite different preference parameters. The new quarterly Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CES) covering 1980 through the first quarter of 1985 are an excellent data set for determining whether the consumption of different age groups moves together. The CES records the consumption of each sample household for up to four quarters, and thus can be used to determine the average quarterly percentage change in consumption of households in a given age group. The null hypothesis of our test is that cohort differences in the average percentage change in consumption are due simply to sampling and measurement error. Alternative hypotheses, suggested by the Life Cycle Model, are that (1) the percentage changes in the average consumptions of any two cohorts are more highly correlated the closer in age are the two cohorts, and (2) the variance in the percentage change in consumption is a monotone function of the age of the cohort. The data fail to reject the null hypothesis of equal Euler errors. Indeed, the results provide fairly strong support for the intergenerational altruism model as opposed to the Life Cycle Model.

Performance of blasting caps

Common blasting caps are made from an aluminum shell in the form of a tube which is closed at both ends. One end, which is called the output end, terminates in a principal side or face, and contains a detonating agent which communicates with a means for igniting the detonating agent. The improvement of the present invention is a flat, steel foil bonded to the face in a position which is aligned perpendicularly to the longitudinal axis of the tube

The Impact of Annuity Insurance on Savings and Inequality

This is the first paper to document the effect of health on the migration propensities of African Americans in the American past. Using both IPUMS and the Colored Troops Sample of the Civil War Union Army Data, I estimate the effects of literacy and health on the migration propensities of African Americans from 1870 to 1910. I find that literacy and health shocks were strong predictors of migration and the stock of health was not. There were differential selection propensities based on slave status—former slaves were less likely to migrate given a specific health shock than free blacks. Counterfactuals suggest that as much as 35% of the difference in the mobility patterns of former slaves and free blacks is explained by differences in their human capital, and more than 20% of that difference is due to health alone. Overall, the selection effect of literacy on migration is reduced by one-tenth to one-third once health is controlled for. The low levels of human capital accumulation and rates of mobility for African Americans after the Civil War are partly explained by the poor health status of slaves and their immediate descendants.

The Financial Valuation of the Return to Capital

macroeconomics, financial valuation