The Role of Central Bank Operating Procedures in an Economy with Productive Government Spending

The choice of either the rate of monetary growth or the nominal interest rate as the instrument controlled by monetary authorities has both positive and normative implications for economic performance. We reexamine some of the issues related to the choice of the monetary policy instrument in a dynamic general equilibrium model exhibiting endogenous growth in which a fraction of productive government spending is financed by means of issuing currency. When we evaluate the performance of the two monetary instruments attending to the fluctuations of endogenous variables, we find that the inflation rate is less volatile under nominal interest rate targeting. Concerning the fluctuations of consumption and of the growth rate, both monetary policy instruments lead to statistically equivalent volatilities. Finally, we show that none of these two targeting procedures displays unambiguously higher welfare levels.monetary policy targets, productive government spending.

Speculating against an overconfident market

We distinguish two components of self-confidence in a financial market: private confidence measures the self-confidence level of speculators, while public confidence measures the confidence level they attribute to their competitors. We then study how independent changes in these components affect the equilibrium trading strategies. We conduct the analysis in a financial market with imperfect competition where investors submit limit orders. We calculate the unique linear symmetric equilibrium as well as the major indicators of the market. In addition to providing a partial explanation for the excess volatility of asset prices as well as for trading volume unexplained by the arrival of new information, our model highlights the differences between the effects of public versus private confidence.overconfidence, financial markets, imperfect competition

Stochastic Dominance and Absolute Risk Aversion

In this paper we propose the infimum of the Arrow-Pratt index of absolute risk aversion as a measure of global risk aversion of a utility function. We then show that, for any given arbitrary pair of distributions, there exists a threshold level of global risk aversion such that all increasing concave utility functions with at least as much global risk aversion would rank the two distributions in the same way. Furthermore, this threshold level is sharp in the sense that, for any lower level of global risk aversion, we can find two utility functions in this class yielding opposite preference relations for the two distributions.Risk aversion, Stochastic Dominance, Thriftiness

Consumption Externalities, Habit Formation, and Equilibrium Efficiency

We analyze the welfare properties of the competitive equilibrium in a capital accumulation model where individual preferences are subjected to both habit formation and consumption spillovers. We also discuss how consumption externalities and habits interact to generate an inefficient dynamic equilibrium. Finally, we characterize optimal tax policies aimed to restore efficient decentralized paths.Habit Formation, Consumption Externalities, Equilibrium Efficiency

Imperfectly Competitive Financial Markets

The first part of this dissertation, titled Strategic Behavior and Asymmetric Information in Financial Markets , studies the effects of changes in the precision of both public and private information in financial markets in which traders are not price-takers but act strategically. Two different mechanisms of price formation are considered. The first one is a mechanism with market orders and competitive market makers. The second one is based on limit orders and market clearing. Under both regimes, the disclosure of more public information increases the expected profits of liquidity traders at the expense of privately informed agents. These results are potentially changed in two cases: when the acquisition of private information is costly and when the disclosure requirements are not uniform across firms and we allow for discretionary liquidity traders. The implications for price volatility, trading volume, incentives to produce private information, efficiency of associations of investors and mechanism design are explored. In the second part (a joint work with Murugappa Krishnan) titled Insider Trading and Asset Pricing in an Imperfectly Competitive Multi-Security Market , we study a multi-security financial market in a correlated environment with asymmetric information and imperfect competition, in which market makers learn about each return from every order flow, even as an informed trader manipulates what they can learn. Our model is a generalization of a single-security model by Kyle. In contrast to a previous analysis by Admati under perfect competition, where the effect of a correlated environment is only to generate various ambiguities, strategic behavior restores various theoretical regularities, and can neutralize all of the correlatedness arising from the structure of returns and liquidity noise. Even with imperfect private information, strategic behavior helps generate an equilibrium with simpler structure, which is valuable for applications, especially for justifying traditional event study procedures even when there is private information

Testing for equal correlation matrices with application to paired gene expression data

We present a novel method for testing the hypothesis of equality of two correlation matrices using paired high-dimensional datasets. We consider test statistics based on the average of squares, maximum and sum of exceedances of Fisher transform sample correlations and we derive approximate null distributions using asymptotic and non-parametric distributions. Theoretical results on the power of the tests are presented and backed up by a range of simulation experiments. We apply the methodology to a case study of colorectal tumour gene expression data with the aim of discovering biological pathway lists of genes that present significantly different correlation matrices on healthy and tumour samples. We find strong evidence for a large part of the pathway lists correlation matrices to change among the two medical conditions.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figure

Sistema d’estabilització de líquids per a pacients de Parkinson

Treballs Finals de Grau de Disseny. Facultat de Belles Arts. Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2021-2022, Tutor: Coll Campmany, Núria. IV Premi a la qualitat lingüística dels Treballs finals de Grau de la Facultat de Belles Arts[cat] Anary neix originalment com a resposta a una problemàtica especifica de la malaltia del Parkinson. Es treballa per donar al pacient la possibilitat de donar el biberó tot i les tremolors pròpies de la malaltia creant un sistema d’estabilització per a biberons. De forma progressiva, el projecte evoluciona i analitzant les necessitats dels pacients i especialistes en la malaltia a partir de la metodologia del Design Thinking es redirigeix el projecte per a desenvolupar un sistema d’estabilització de líquids. Aquest nou camí porta a desenvolupar tota una investigació que queda compresa en aquesta memòria.[eng] Anary was born as a response to a specific problem of Parkinson’s disease, working to give the patient the possibility of giving the bottle despite the tremors of the disease by creating a stabilisation system for bottles. Progressively, the project evolves and, analysing the needs of patients and specialists in the disease using the Design Thinking methodology, the project is redirected to develop a liquid stabilisation system. This new path led to the development of a whole research project that is included in this first book