Insights into business confidence from firm-level panel data

Business confidence announcements attract widespread attention, yet relatively little is known about the series itself. What, for example, does an improvement or deterioration in business confidence mean? We consider this question using a panel of firm-level responses to a business opinion survey that includes a question on business confidence. We relate the confidence responses of the firms to microeconomic and macroeconomic variables that have a direct interpretation and, as a result, determine the variables that firms associate with business confidence. Our analysis of firm-level data reveals that what firms associate with business confidence changes over time and means different things to different firms. Consequently, it is not immediately apparent what a change in business confidence actually means

Analysis of Energy-Based Blended Quasicontinuum Approximations

The development of patch test consistent quasicontinuum energies for multi-dimensional crystalline solids modeled by many-body potentials remains a challenge. The original quasicontinuum energy (QCE) has been implemented for many-body potentials in two and three space dimensions, but it is not patch test consistent. We propose that by blending the atomistic and corresponding Cauchy-Born continuum models of QCE in an interfacial region with thickness of a small number $k$ of blended atoms, a general quasicontinuum energy (BQCE) can be developed with the potential to significantly improve the accuracy of QCE near lattice instabilities such as dislocation formation and motion. In this paper, we give an error analysis of the blended quasicontinuum energy (BQCE) for a periodic one-dimensional chain of atoms with next-nearest neighbor interactions. Our analysis includes the optimization of the blending function for an improved convergence rate. We show that the $\ell^2$ strain error for the non-blended QCE energy (QCE), which has low order $\text{O}(\epsilon^{1/2})$ where $\epsilon$ is the atomistic length scale, can be reduced by a factor of $k^{3/2}$ for an optimized blending function where $k$ is the number of atoms in the blending region. The QCE energy has been further shown to suffer from a O$(1)$ error in the critical strain at which the lattice loses stability. We prove that the error in the critical strain of BQCE can be reduced by a factor of $k^2$ for an optimized blending function, thus demonstrating that the BQCE energy for an optimized blending function has the potential to give an accurate approximation of the deformation near lattice instabilities such as crack growth.Comment: 26 pages, 1 figur

The Segal--Bargmann transform for odd-dimensional hyperbolic spaces

We develop isometry and inversion formulas for the Segal--Bargmann transform on odd-dimensional hyperbolic spaces that are as parallel as possible to the dual case of odd-dimensional spheres.Comment: To appear in Mathematic

Coherent states for a 2-sphere with a magnetic field

We consider a particle moving on a 2-sphere in the presence of a constant magnetic field. Building on earlier work in the nonmagnetic case, we construct coherent states for this system. The coherent states are labeled by points in the associated phase space, the (co)tangent bundle of S^2. They are constructed as eigenvectors for certain annihilation operators and expressed in terms of a certain heat kernel. These coherent states are not of Perelomov type, but rather are constructed according to the "complexifier" approach of T. Thiemann. We describe the Segal--Bargmann representation associated to the coherent states, which is equivalent to a resolution of the identity.Comment: 23 pages. To appear in Journal of Physics A, Special Issue on Coherent State

The Segal-Bargmann transform for noncompact symmetric spaces of the complex type

We consider the generalized Segal-Bargmann transform, defined in terms of the heat operator, for a noncompact symmetric space of the complex type. For radial functions, we show that the Segal-Bargmann transform is a unitary map onto a certain L^2 space of meromorphic functions. For general functions, we give an inversion formula for the Segal-Bargmann transform, involving integration against an "unwrapped" version of the heat kernel for the dual compact symmetric space. Both results involve delicate cancellations of singularities.Comment: 28 pages. Minor corrections made. To appear in J. Functional Analysi

Programmatic and Direct Manipulation, Together at Last

Direct manipulation interfaces and programmatic systems have distinct and complementary strengths. The former provide intuitive, immediate visual feedback and enable rapid prototyping, whereas the latter enable complex, reusable abstractions. Unfortunately, existing systems typically force users into just one of these two interaction modes. We present a system called Sketch-n-Sketch that integrates programmatic and direct manipulation for the particular domain of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). In Sketch-n-Sketch, the user writes a program to generate an output SVG canvas. Then the user may directly manipulate the canvas while the system immediately infers a program update in order to match the changes to the output, a workflow we call live synchronization. To achieve this, we propose (i) a technique called trace-based program synthesis that takes program execution history into account in order to constrain the search space and (ii) heuristics for dealing with ambiguities. Based on our experience with examples spanning 2,000 lines of code and from the results of a preliminary user study, we believe that Sketch-n-Sketch provides a novel workflow that can augment traditional programming systems. Our approach may serve as the basis for live synchronization in other application domains, as well as a starting point for yet more ambitious ways of combining programmatic and direct manipulation.Comment: PLDI 2016 Paper + Supplementary Appendice