The Same Person

How can we conceptualize curriculum and school knowledge to better address important questions of social change, contingency of knowledge, life in mediated worlds, and inequalities? This question was given to me by Dr. Brent Talbot for my final presentation in Music 149, Social Foundations of Music Education. The purpose of this assignment was to synthesize the knowledge of various philosophies and models of music education covered in this course while utilizing the course material given to us throughout the semester. After Dr. Talbot’s emphasis on creativity and having already written too many papers to count, I decided to write and perform a short play. I drew upon the fact that many considered Dr. Talbot and I to be doppelgängers. In this scene, I play both myself and Dr. Talbot, who is the voice in my head. I often considered what Dr. Talbot would say in regards to my projects for the class, so his voice in my head was all too familiar. This format made the most sense as a summation of my experiences and research in Social Foundations of Music Education

Co-evolution vs. Neural Networks; An Evaluation of UK Risky Money

The performance of a "capital certain" Divisia index constructed using the same components included in the Bank of England"s MSI plus national savings; a "risky" Divisia index constructed by adding bonds, shares and unit trusts to the list of assets included in the first index; and a capital certain simple sum index for comparison is compared. nce suggests that co-evolutionary strategies are superior to neural networks in the majority of cases. The risky money index performs at least as well as the Bank of England Divisia index when combined with interest rate information. Notably, the provision of long term interest rates improves the out-of-sample forecasting performance of the Bank of England Divisia index in all cases examinedEvolutionary Strategies, Risk Adjusted Divisia, Inflation, Neural Networks

Spatial processes in environmental economics: empirics and theory

Economic activities are fundamentally influenced by their location in space, which determines the physical and natural environment in which they take place. Likewise, location defines the social context of economic activity prescribing the particular laws, regulations and social norms to which it should conform. Moreover, spatial location defines proximity, which shapes the costs of accessing factor inputs, product markets and other economic and social institutions. In fact, spatial location mediates most forms of interaction, intended and unintended, that may arise from communication and connections between economic agents. These spatial processes have important implications for estimation, policy evaluation and prediction in models of economic activity. This thesis is comprised of two parts. Part I presents a broad range of issues that arise in estimation due to space and frames these as general spatial omitted variables. I explore the use of semi-parametric estimators to identify the parameters of interest in this general model and derive identification conditions for fixed and local adaptive spatial smoothing estimators. The properties of these estimators are contrasted to OLS and spatial econometric estimators. Part II addresses issues in policy evaluation and prediction. I derive an equilibrium sorting model with endogenous tenure choice that can be used to evaluate the general equilibrium welfare effects of policies that affect local environmental quality. Using a series of simulations, motivated by a real world policy application, I contrast the welfare changes derived under this model to a conventional static approach. By allowing for rental and purchase markets the model I develop provides a far richer characterisation of the complex adjustments that propagate through the property market following policy changes and the contrary impact such policies can have upon renters and owners. The usefulness of the model for applied policy analysis is demonstrated through two applications: The Polegate Bypass and Mortgage Interest Deduction reform

Scotland as an Optimal Currency Area

Since the Scottish independence movement has reached the point that there will be a referendum on Scottish independence this September, the issue of whether the Scotland is optimal currency areas is very topical.In this paper we review the microeconomic foundations of an optimal currency area. We test these microeconomic foundations. We find that the UK, Scotland and the UK without Scotland meet the microeconomic criteria for a common currency area. While adopting a common currency is ultimately a political decision, these results imply that the broadest of these areas, the UK, is the optimal currency area in the sense of minimizing transactions costs.We do find differences in the UK less Scotland and Scotland economies in loan data. We further find that neither the euro bloc nor the euro bloc including Scotland meet the microeconomic criteria for a common currency area. In the event of a “yes” vote for Scottish independence, the immediate problem facing the Scottish government is to decide on an exchange rate regime that is seen as credible by the financial markets to avoid a flight of capital. How policymakers chooses between alternative exchange rate regimes is currently a topic for hot debate in central banking circles and the process of a monetary union breaking up is a fascinating area worthy of future research

Combinatorial methods for integer partitions

Integer partitions, while simply defined, are associated with some of the most celebrated results in mathematics. Despite their simple definition, many results on integer partitions can be shockingly difficult to obtain. In this thesis, we use elementary and combinatorial methods to make progress on some fundamental problems related to linear Diophantine equations and integer partitions. We find an efficient method for finding the number of nonnegative integer solutions (x,y,z) of the equation ax+by+cz=n for given positive integers a, b, c, and n. Our formula involves summations of floor functions of fractions. To quickly evaluate these sums, we find a reciprocity relation that generalizes a well-known reciprocity relation of Gauss related to the law of quadratic reciprocity. Furthermore, we use our result for the number of solutions to a particular equation to prove that the above result of Gauss is equivalent to a well-known result of Sylvester related to the Frobenius Coin Problem. Moreover, using this equivalence and our generalization of the reciprocity relation of Gauss, we obtain a nice generalization of Sylvester\u27s result. In a different problem, we prove four conjectures of Berkovich and Uncu regarding some inequalities about relative sizes of two closely related sets consisting of integer partitions whose parts lie in the interval {s,...,L+s}. Further restrictions are placed on the sets by specifying impermissible parts as well as a minimum part. Our methods consist of constructing injective maps between the relevant sets of partitions. We obtain a very natural combinatorial proof of Euler\u27s recurrence for integer partitions using the principle of inclusion and exclusion. Using our approach, we are able to generalize Euler\u27s recurrence in the sense that for sufficiently large n, we can express p(n) explicitly as an integer linear combination of p(n-k), p(n-k-1),... etc. Using such recurrences, we obtain results related to Ramanujan\u27s congruences. For example, if p_m(n) denotes the number of partitions of n that have largest part at most m, we show that for m > 5, the numbers p_m(5n+4) are not divisible by 5 for infinitely many values of n

Stock Market Volatility, Risk Attitude and the Demand for Money in the UK

Is stock market volatility an important determinant of money demand in the UK? If yes, what is the driving force behind that effect? In a cointegration framework, we find that volatility in share prices is an important positive determinant of money demand, alongside standard variables and the stock price level. By studying different stock market indexes effects, we find that the risk aversion of investors is an important force behind the effect, implying that the effect is due to investors’ flight to safer assets in times of volatile stock prices

Measuring sigma(e^+e^- \to hadrons) using tagged photon

We propose to use events with radiated photons in e^+e^- collisions to measure the total cross section of e^+ e^- \to hadrons as a function of the center of mass energy. The Monte Carlo simulation for the collider DAPHNE shows that a competitive accuracy can be achieved with this method.Comment: revtex, 13 page