The commodity-consumer price connection: fact or fable?

The recent surge in commodity prices has rekindled interest in their power to predict consumer price inflation. But is this interest warranted? In examining the empirical relationship between commodity prices and consumer price inflation, this article finds that commodities' reputation as useful leading indicators of inflation is actually based more on fable than fact. Testing eight commonly used indexes, the authors conclude that although commodities had some predictive power in the past, the commodity-consumer price connection has broken down in the more recent period. They argue that this shift primarily reflects the diminished role of traditional commodities in U.S. production and the "sterilization" of some inflation signals by offsetting monetary policy actions.Prices ; Consumer price indexes ; Inflation (Finance)

Is the political business cycle for real?

This paper's macroeconomic model combines features from both real and political business cycle models. It augments a standard real business cycle tax model by allowing for varying levels of government partisanship and competence in order to replicate two important empirical regularities: First, that on average the economy expands early under Democratic presidents and contracts early under Republican presidents. Second, that presidents whose parties successfully retain the presidency have stronger-than-average growth in the second half of their terms. The model generates both of these features in conformity with U.S. post-World War II data.Business cycles

Optimal phosphorus loading for a potentially eutrophic lake

dynamic programming;sustainable development;ecology

A Conceptual Framework for Studying the Sources of Variation in Program Effects

Evaluations of public programs in many fields reveal that (1) different types of programs (or different versions of the same program) vary in their effectiveness, (2) a program that is effective for one group of people might not be effective for other groups of people, and (3) a program that is effective in one set of circumstances may not be effective in other circumstances. This paper presents a conceptual framework for research on such variation in program effects and the sources of this variation. The framework is intended to help researchers -- both those who focus mainly on studying program implementation and those who focus mainly on estimating program effects -- see how their respective pieces fit together in a way that helps to identify factors that explain variation in program effects and thereby support more systematic data collection on these factors. The ultimate goal of the framework is to enable researchers to offer better guidance to policymakers and program operators on the conditions and practices that are associated with larger and more positive effects

Is the Political Business Cycle for Real?

This paper constructs and examines a macroeconomic model which combines features from both real and political business cycle models. We augment a standard real business cycle tax model by allowing for varying levels of government partisanship and competence in order to replicate two important empirical regularities: First, that on average the economy expands early under Democratic Presidents and contracts early under Republican Presidents. Second, that Presidents whose parties successfully retain the presidency have stronger than average growth in the second half of their terms. The model generates both of these features that conform to U.S. Post World War II data.Political business cycle

A bodner-partom visco-plastic dynamic sphere benchmark problem

Developing benchmark analytic solutions for problems in solid and fluid mechanics is very important for the purpose of testing and verifying computational physics codes. Our primary objective in this research is to obtain a benchmark analytic solution to the equation of motion in radially symmetric spherical coordinates. An analytic solution for the dynamic response of a sphere composed of an isotropic visco-plastic material and subjected to spherically symmetric boundary conditions is developed and implemented. The radial displacement u is computed by solving the equation of motion, a linear second-order hyperbolic PDE. The plastic strains εp and εp are computed by solving two non-linear first-order ODEs in time. We obtain a solution for u in terms of the plastic strain components and boundary conditions in the form of an infinite series. Computationally, at each time step, we set up an iteration scheme to solve the PDE-ODE system. The linear momentum equation is solved using the plastic strains from the previous iteration, then the plastic strain equations are solved numerically using the new displacement. We demonstrate the accuracy and convergence of our benchmark solution under spatial mesh, time step, and eigenmode refinement

The (After) Life-Cycle Theory of Religious Contributions

We construct and estimate an economic model of religious giving. We employ a dynamic consumer optimization model with mortality in which intra-temporal utility stems from both consumption and religious contributions. Individuals also decide how to allocate resources between religious contributions (which have both a this-life consumption value and an after-life investment value) and other consumption expenditures. If religious contributions do not have an after-life investment value, the ratio of contributions to consumption expenditures should be unrelated to the probability of death. However, if there is an investment value from religious giving, individuals should allocate a greater share of their income to religious contributions as their probability of death increases. We estimate the model using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey on the consumption and religious contribution patterns of a repeated cross-section of households and of a synthetic cohort panel. We find strong evidence that individuals behave as if religious contributions have a value in the after-life, in a manner consistent with the after life-cycle model. The estimates of the structural parameters of the model also imply that while after-life investment considerations (i.e. impending death) are an important determinant of the life-cycle profile of religious contributions, within-life (i.e. religious consumption) factors pin down a household’s average level of religious contributions over a lifetime.god, life-cycle, consumption, religion, tithing

Terrorism From Within: An Economic Model of Terrorism

In this paper, we develop and explore the implications of an economic model that links the incidence of terrorism in a country to the economic circumstances facing that country. We briefly sketch out a theory, in the spirit of Tornell (1998), that describes terrorist activities as being initiated by groups that are unhappy with the current economic status quo, yet unable to bring about drastic political and institutional changes that can improve their situation. Such groups with limited access to opportunity may find it rational to engage in terrorist activities. The result is then a pattern of reduced economic activity and increased terrorism. In contrast, an alternative environment can emerge where access to economic resources is more abundant and terrorism is reduced. Our empirical results are consistent with the theory. We find that for democratic, high income countries, economic contractions (i.e. recessions) can provide the spark for increased probabilities of terrorist activities.Growth; Terrorism; Political Economy

The Macroeconomic Consequences of Terrorism

We perform an empirical investigation of the macroeconomic consequences of international terrorism and interactions with alternative forms of collective violence. Our analysis is based on a rich unbalanced panel data set with annual observations on 177 countries from 1968 to 2000, which brings together information from the Penn World Table dataset, the ITERATE dataset for terrorist events, and datasets of external and internal conflict. We explore these data with cross-sectional and panel growth regression analysis and a structural VAR model. We find that, on average, the incidence of terrorism may have an economically significant negative effect on growth, albeit one that is considerably smaller and less persistent than that associated with either external wars or internal conflict. As well, terrorism is associated with a redirection of economic activity away from investment spending and towards government spending. However, our investigation also suggests important differences both regarding the incidence and the economic consequences of terrorism among different sets of countries. In OECD economies, in particular, terrorist incidents are considerably more frequent than in other nations, but the negative influence of these incidents on growth is smaller.growth, conflict, terrorism

The Signed Linguistic Input of Hearing Mothers to Children who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

This study investigated the distribution of ten facilitative language techniques (FLTs) in the linguistic input of hearing, signing mothers to their children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH). Four hearing mothers and their DHH children under the age of three participated in six, ten-minute caregiver-child interaction sessions via Zoom. The recorded sessions were coded for mother FLTs and child utterances. Results indicated that the mothers tended to use more initiative than responsive types of FLTs, consistent with findings of previous studies that examined the input of mothers who were using spoken-only language with their children who are DHH. Additionally, the mothers tended to use combined signed and spoken input more frequently than signed language alone. These findings point to the need for focused intervention to increase hearing, signing caregivers’ use of responsive and linguistically stimulating FLTs. Findings also suggest that hearing caregivers may need more ongoing support to learn to use American Sign Language (ASL) effectively with their children