PRIORITIZING ECONOMIC GROWTH: ENHANCING MACROECONOMIC POLICY CHOICE

This paper spells out a logic for increasing macroeconomic policy space in order to prioritize the goals of growth, employment creation and poverty reduction. First, there is the need to create additional policy instruments so that a greater number of policy goals can be addressed. Frequently, real economy goals get partly crowded out by financial objectives because there are too few instruments for too many goals. Second, the calibrated use of policy tools by degrees of commitment, deployment and assignment can create space for different policy-mixes. Selective capital controls, intermediate exchange rate regimes, and some monetary policy autonomy create the policy space within which a variety of policy combinations and mixes are possible and a greater number of instruments are available. Prioritization of real economy goals becomes both more feasible and more likely with a broader range of policy alternatives. Third, along with selective use of capital controls, fiscal policy-based stabilization instead of exchange rate-based stabilization delinks the exchange rate from the goal of internal financial stability to which it is yoked in a regime of fixed exchange rates. This delinkage enables the use of intermediate exchange rate regimes (soft pegs and managed floating). The use of these regimes in “the missing middle” between fixed and flexible exchange rates creates policy space where different mixes are possible generating a greater range of policy alternatives. Fourth, prioritizing real economy goals is also facilitated by the design of a larger strategic framework for accelerated development including institutions, norms, behaviours and governance. The larger strategic framework mobilizes more assets and power toward a dynamic growth trajectory that creates a more favourable context for macroeconomic policy. The impact of macroeconomic policies on growth, employment creation and poverty reduction is likely to be stronger when they are part of a wider effort to marshal resources for accelerated development. The examples of the East Asian success stories provide the evidence for this conclusion. These four steps in the logic for increased macroeconomic policy choice – new policy tools, selective and pragmatic use of capital controls and exchange rate intervention, fiscal policy-based stabilization, and strategic frameworks – reinforce each other in their capacity to create more policy space.

Modeling Shock Waves Using Exponential Interpolation Functions with the Least-Squares Finite Element Method

The hypothesis of this research is that exponential interpolation functions will approximate fluid properties at shock waves with less error than polynomial interpolation functions. Exponential interpolation functions are derived for the purpose of modeling sharp gradients. General equations for conservation of mass, momentum, and energy for an inviscid flow of a perfect gas are converted to finite element equations using the least-squares method. Boundary conditions and a mesh adaptation scheme are also presented. An oblique shock reflection problem is used as a benchmark to determine whether or not exponential interpolation provides any advantages over Lagrange polynomial interpolation. Using exponential interpolation in elements downstream of a shock and having edges coincident with the shock showed a slight reduction in the solution error. However there was very little qualitative difference between solutions using polynomial and exponential interpolation. Regardless of the type of interpolation used, the shocks were smeared and oscillations were present both upstream and downstream of the shock waves. When a mesh adaptation scheme was implemented, exponential elements adjacent to the shock waves became much smaller and the numerical solution diverged. Changing the exponential elements to polynomial elements yielded a convergent solution. There appears to be no significant advantage to using exponential interpolation in comparison to Lagrange polynomial interpolation

The adhesion of nickel using an ion bombardment and heating cleaning technique

Adhesion of nickel using ion bombardment and heating-cleaning techniqu

Two Myths About the Alien Tort Statute

In Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., the Supreme Court applied the presumption against extraterritorial application of U.S. law to hold that the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) did not encompass a claim between aliens for misconduct that occurred in another nation. Without much elaboration, the Court stated that the ATS only encompasses claims that “touch and concern the territory of the United States . . . with sufficient force to displace the presumption.” As it did in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, the Kiobel Court purported to rest its decision on the original public meaning of the ATS when enacted in 1789. The Court, however, misperceived the original meaning of the statute by accepting two mistaken historical claims about the ATS advanced by academics and lower courts. First, the Court accepted the notion that incidents involving the rights of ambassadors prompted the First Congress to enact the ATS. Second, the Court endorsed the idea that the ATS was originally meant to cover only three “torts” that corresponded to the three criminal offenses against the law of nations emphasized by Blackstone in his Commentaries—namely, torts against ambassadors, violations of safe conducts, and claims relating to piracy. Both propositions lack substantial support in the historical record and oversimplify the political context in which the statute was enacted. To address incidents involving ambassadors, the First Congress enacted distinct jurisdictional and criminal provisions, including vesting original jurisdiction over claims by ambassadors in the Supreme Court. Indeed, the First Congress enacted specific jurisdictional and criminal provisions to address all three of the “Blackstone crimes.” The ATS served a different purpose. Congress enacted the statute to cover a distinct category of claims by foreign citizens against U.S. citizens for acts of violence that none of these other provisions adequately addressed. The Court’s reliance on these two myths in Sosa and Kiobel led it to misconstrue the ATS and, in certain respects, to unduly narrow the statute’s application. In future cases, the Court should abandon these myths and recognize that the ATS was originally meant to apply (1) to a broader range of tort claims by aliens, and (2) only to claims against U.S. citizens—a jurisdictional limitation that the Court has yet to address