Globalization and labor market integration in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Asia

This chapter uses new data sets to analyze labor market integration between 1882 and 1936 in an area of Asia stretching from South India to Southeastern China and encompassing the three Southeast Asian countries of Burma, Malaya, and Thailand. We find that by the late nineteenth century, globalization, of which a principal feature was the mass migration of Indians and Chinese to Southeast Asia, gave rise to both an integrated Asian labor market and a period of real wage convergence. Integration did not, however, extend beyond Asia to include core industrial countries. Asian and core areas, in contrast to globally integrated commodity markets, showed divergent trends in unskilled real wages

Long Memory and Non-Linearities in International Inflation

This paper investigates inflation dynamics in a panel of 20 OECD economies using an approach based on the sample autocorrelation function (ACF). We find that inflation is characterized by long-lasting fluctuations, which are similar across countries and that eventually revert to a potentially time-varying mean. The cyclical and persistent behavior of inflation does not belong to the class of linear autoregressive processes but rather to a more general class of nonlinear and long memory models. Recent theoretical contributions on heterogeneity in price setting and aggregation offer a rationale to our results. Finally, we draw the monetary policy implications of our findings.AutoCorrelation Function, long-memory, inflation persistence, inflation targeting, heavy tails.

Migration and Elastic Labour in Economic Development: Southeast Asia before World War II

Between 1880 and 1939, Burma, Malaya and Thailand received inflows of migrants from India and China comparable in size to European immigration in the New World. This article examines the forces that lay behind this migration to Southeast Asia and asks if experience there bears out Lewis' unlimited labor supply hypothesis. We find that it does and, furthermore, that immigration created a highly integrated labor market stretching from South India to Southeastern China. Emigration from India and China and elastic labor supply are identified as important components of Asian globalization before the Second World War.

A note on the empirics of the neoclassical growth model

This paper shows that the widely used log-linearization of the neoclassical model of growth implies a relevant loss in terms of the ability of the model in replicating the patterns of convergence of an economy to its equilibrium level.

A neural model for the visual tuning properties of action-selective neurons

SUMMARY: The recognition of actions of conspecifics is crucial for survival and social interaction. Most current models on the recognition of transitive (goal-directed) actions rely on the hypothesized role of internal motor simulations for action recognition. However, these models do not specify how visual information can be processed by cortical mechanisms in order to be compared with such motor representations. This raises the question how such visual processing might be accomplished, and in how far motor processing is critical in order to account for the visual properties of action-selective neurons.
We present a neural model for the visual processing of transient actions that is consistent with physiological data and that accomplishes recognition of grasping actions from real video stimuli. Shape recognition is accomplished by a view-dependent hierarchical neural architecture that retains some coarse position information on the highest level that can be exploited by subsequent stages. Additionally, simple recurrent neural circuits integrate effector information over time and realize selectivity for temporal sequences. A novel mechanism combines information about the shape and position of object and effector in an object-centered frame of reference. Action-selective model neurons defined in such a relative reference frame are tuned to learned associations between object and effector shapes, as well as their relative position and motion. 
We demonstrate that this model reproduces a variety of electrophysiological findings on the visual properties of action-selective neurons in the superior temporal sulcus, and of mirror neurons in area F5. Specifically, the model accounts for the fact that a majority of mirror neurons in area F5 show view dependence. The model predicts a number of electrophysiological results, which partially could be confirmed in recent experiments.
We conclude that the tuning of action-selective neurons given visual stimuli can be accounted for by well-established, predominantly visual neural processes rather than internal motor simulations.

METHODS: The shape recognition relies on a hierarchy of feature detectors of increasing complexity and invariance [1]. The mid-level features are learned from sequences of gray-level images depicting segmented views of hand and object shapes. The highest hierarchy level consists of detector populations for complete shapes with a coarse spatial resolution of approximately 3.7°. Additionally, effector shapes are integrated over time by asymmetric lateral connections between shape detectors using a neural field approach [2]. These model neurons thus encode actions such as hand opening or closing for particular grip types. 
We exploit gain field mechanism in order to implement the central coordinate transformation of the shape representations to an object-centered reference frame [3]. Typical effector-object-interactions correspond to activity regions in such a relative reference frame and are learned from training examples. Similarly, simple motion-energy detectors are applied in the object-centered reference frame and encode relative motion. The properties of transitive action neurons are modeled as a multiplicative combination of relative shape and motion detectors.

RESULTS: The model performance was tested on a set of 160 unsegmented sequences of hand grasping or placing actions performed on objects of different sizes, using different grip types and views. Hand actions and objects could be reliably recognized despite their mutual occlusions. Detectors on the highest level showed correct action tuning in more than 95% of the examples and generalized to untrained views. 
Furthermore, the model replicates a number of electrophysiological as well as imaging experiments on action-selective neurons, such as their particular selectivity for transitive actions compared to mimicked actions, the invariance to stimulus position, and their view-dependence. In particular, using the same stimulus set the model nicely fits neural data from a recent electrophysiological experiment that confirmed sequence selectivity in mirror neurons in area F5, as was predicted before by the model.

References
[1] Serre, T. et al. (2007): IEEE Pattern Anal. Mach. Int. 29, 411-426.
[2] Giese, A.M. and Poggio, T. (2003): Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 4, 179-192.
[3] Deneve, S. and Pouget, A. (2003). Neuron 37: 347-359.
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Estimating Fiscal Multipliers: News From A Non-linear World

open4siCaggiano acknowledges the financial support received by the Visiting Research Scholar programme offered by the University of MelbourneWe estimate non-linear VARs to assess to what extent fiscal spending multipliers are countercyclical in the US. We deal with the issue of non-fundamentalness due to fiscal foresight by appealing to sums of revisions of expectations of fiscal expenditures. This measure of anticipated fiscal shocks is shown to carry valuable information about future dynamics of public spending. Results based on generalised impulse responses suggest that fiscal spending multipliers in recessions are greater than one, but not statistically larger than those in expansions. However, non-linearities arise when focusing on 'extreme' events, that is, deep recessions versus strong expansionary periods.openCaggiano, Giovanni; Castelnuovo, Efrem; Colombo, Valentina; Nodari, GabrielaCaggiano, Giovanni; Castelnuovo, Efrem; Colombo, Valentina; Nodari, Gabriel

Nelson-Plosser Revisited: the ACF Approach

We detect a new stylized fact about the common dynamics of macroeconomic and financial aggregates. The rate of decay of the memory (or persistence) of these series is depicted by their autocorrelation functions (ACFs), and they all fit very closely a parsimonious four-parameter functional form that we present. Not only does our formula fit the data better than the ones that arise from autoregressive models, but it also yields the correct shape of the ACF. This can help policymakers understand the lags with which an economy evolves, and its turning points.

Are more data always better for factor analysis? Results for the euro area, the six largest euro area countries and the UK

Factor based forecasting has been at the forefront of developments in the macroeconometric forecasting literature in the recent past. Despite the flurry of activity in the area, a number of specification issues such as the choice of the number of factors in the forecasting regression, the benefits of combining factor-based forecasts and the choice of the dataset from which to extract the factors remain partly unaddressed. This paper provides a comprehensive empirical investigation of these issues using data for the euro area, the six largest euro area countries, and the UK. JEL Classification: C100, C150, C530Factors, Forecast Combinations, Large Datasets

Conservar el vacío: Imágenes de la desaparición de los negros en el Archivo General de la Nación

El Departamento de Documentos Fotográficos del Archivo General de la Nación contiene uno de los fondos visuales más importantes de Argentina y, como fuente de imágenes históricas, juega un papel clave en la imaginación del pasado nacional. En este trabajo exploro el sector correspondiente a la presencia negra en Argentina, interrogando qué fotografías son conservadas en el archivo y qué dimensiones de clasificación y división social las ordenan: ¿qué juegos de sentido se configuran entre las imágenes y los sistemas y categorías de clasificación? ¿Persiste visualmente el mito fundante de la nación argentina moderna blanca europea y, como uno de sus componentes, la invisibilización de los negros?, ¿pueden advertirse quiebres respecto de esta narrativa maestra? Analizo dos aspectos que caracterizan el modo en que el Departamento preserva las imágenes de negros en Argentina, e intento llamar la atención precisamente sobre la coexistencia de ambos, en la medida en que aparentemente divergen en su orientación. De un lado, una renovación en el modo de nombrar a este sector de la población, abandonando la categoría "negros" para dar lugar a "afroamericanos", más acorde a los usos extendidos internacionalmente en las últimas décadas. Del otro, una operación sutil que insiste en la invisibilización de los negros en Argentina, y que consiste en la mostración de su desaparición y de su ausencia.Fil: Caggiano, Sergio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Centro de Investigaciones Sociales. Instituto de Desarrollo Económico y Social. Centro de Investigaciones Sociales; Argentin