Financial Instability - a Result of Excess Liquidity or Credit Cycles?

This paper compares the financial destabilizing effects of excess liquidity versus credit growth, in relation to house price bubbles and real economic booms. The analysis uses a cointegrated VAR model based on US data from 1987 to 2010, with a particulary focus on the period preceding the global financial crisis. Consistent with monetarist theory, the results suggest a stable money supply-demand relation in the period in question. However, the implied excess liquidity only resulted in financial destabilizing effect after year 2000. Meanwhile, the results also point to persistent cycles of real house prices and leverage, which appear to have been driven by real credit shocks, in accordance with post-Keynesian theories on financial instability. Importantly, however, these mechanisms of credit growth and excess liquidity are found to be closely related. In regards to the global financial crisis, a prolonged credit cycle starting in the mid-1990s - and possibly initiated subprime mortgage innovations - appears to have created a long-run housing bubble. Further fuelled by expansionary monetary policy and excess liquidity, the bubble accelerated in period following the dot-com crash, until it finally burst in 2007.financial instability; housing bubbles; credit view; money view; cointegrated VAR model; impulse response analysis

Arguments for and against the Idea of Universal Grammar

For many, language is viewed as something that is actively learned through sensory stimulus and training. However, the idea of Universal Grammar (UG) challenges this notion by pointing at the inconsistencies in the behaviorist model of language learning. Proponents of Universal Grammar argue that language is acquired rather than learned, meaning that linguistic structures are a biologically innate part of the human mind. This paper explores arguments on both sides of the issue, beginning with the classical behaviorist model and then turning to two selected arguments for UG before finally discussing the theory in light of more recent criticisms. In the end, I conclude that while Universal Grammar is still controversial in the field of linguistics, it at the very least succeeds in showing that there are still unanswered questions regarding the way the human mind acquires language

Hearing with an atympanic ear: good vibration and poor sound-pressure detection in the royal python, Python regius

SUMMARYSnakes lack both an outer ear and a tympanic middle ear, which in most tetrapods provide impedance matching between the air and inner ear fluids and hence improve pressure hearing in air. Snakes would therefore be expected to have very poor pressure hearing and generally be insensitive to airborne sound, whereas the connection of the middle ear bone to the jaw bones in snakes should confer acute sensitivity to substrate vibrations. Some studies have nevertheless claimed that snakes are quite sensitive to both vibration and sound pressure. Here we test the two hypotheses that: (1) snakes are sensitive to sound pressure and (2) snakes are sensitive to vibrations, but cannot hear the sound pressure per se. Vibration and sound-pressure sensitivities were quantified by measuring brainstem evoked potentials in 11 royal pythons, Python regius. Vibrograms and audiograms showed greatest sensitivity at low frequencies of 80–160 Hz, with sensitivities of –54 dB re. 1 m s–2 and 78 dB re. 20 μPa, respectively. To investigate whether pythons detect sound pressure or sound-induced head vibrations, we measured the sound-induced head vibrations in three dimensions when snakes were exposed to sound pressure at threshold levels. In general, head vibrations induced by threshold-level sound pressure were equal to or greater than those induced by threshold-level vibrations, and therefore sound-pressure sensitivity can be explained by sound-induced head vibration. From this we conclude that pythons, and possibly all snakes, lost effective pressure hearing with the complete reduction of a functional outer and middle ear, but have an acute vibration sensitivity that may be used for communication and detection of predators and prey.</jats:p

Redox active cyclophanes and donor-acceptor systems from new

The saddle-shaped electron donor 9,10-his(l,3-dithiol-2-ylidene)-9,10-dihydroanthracene (TTFAQ) 49, which oxidises in a single, quasi-reversible, two-electron wave, accompanied by a dramatic conformational change, has been incorporated into donor-acceptor system 130. However, no significant charge-transfer interaction was observed. Pyrrolo-annelated TTFAQ derivatives 173 and 174 were synthesised, and donor-acceptor dyads, which showed intramolecular charge-transfer interactions, derived. TTFAQ cyclophanes 206 and 207 were synthesised in good yields, paving the way for the incorporation of more elaborate functionalities into TTFAQ cyclophanes, as exemplified by the synthesis of a TTFAQ- phenanthroline cyclophane with potential use as an electroactive sensor. A new methodology for the synthesis of TTFAQ derivatives has been developed, allowing the synthesis of cyanoethyl protected TTFAQ thiolate derivatives. These derivatives afforded several TTFAQ cyclophanes, of which the most interesting were the double-bridged cyclophanes 291 and 292. Due to the rigidity imposed by the two bridges, little conformational change is possible upon oxidation, which for the first time allowed us to study the elusive TTFAQ cation radical using cyclic voltammetry and spectroelectrochemistry, since 291 and 292 are oxidised in two, reversible, one-electron waves. The X-ray crystal structures of numerous new TTFAQ derivatives are also presented