8,733 research outputs found

    Mean reversion of inflation rates in 19 OECD countries: Evidence from panel Lm unit root tests with structural breaks

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    The paper applies the recently developed panel LM unit root tests with heterogeneous structural breaks by Im et al., [The Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2005] in order to re-examine the validity of mean reversion in the inflation rates of 19 OECD countries for the time period 1960-2004. Our empirical findings are favorable to the stationarity of the inflation ratesand therefore point to the absence of hyperinflation in the majority of the countries. The results indicate that most shocks to inflation rates are temporary and soon converge when we control for breaks, with the inflation rates showing mean reversion. Overall, some policy implications are obtained in this paper.Inflation

    Are Fruit and Vegetable Prices Non-linear Stationary? Evidence from Smooth Transition Autoregressive Models

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    Over the last decade, there has been a growing interest in investigating agricultural commodity prices. We apply two more powerful smooth transition autoregressive models of the non-linear unit-root test - namely, the ESTAR model of Kapetanios et al. [Journal of Econometrics (2003)] and the LSTAR model of Leybourne, et a . [Journal of Time Series Analysis (1998)] - with a view to investigating non-linear stationarity for the retail prices of 8 major kinds of fruit and 18 major kinds of vegetable in Taiwan. The empirical evidence clearly finds that the Kapetanios et al. model provides solid, substantive evidence in favor of a non-linear mean-reverting adjustment for the individual price of 4 kinds of fruit and 5 kinds of vegetable. However, when we employ the Leybourne et al. model, we find that any such similar evidence of non-linear stationarity is considerably weaker. Finally, compared with the traditional linear unit root tests, it is important to note here that, all in all, the non-linear unit root tests do indeed provide much more evidence of the stationarity, albeit to varying degrees. This paper offers some policy implications.Smooth transition autoregressive model; Non-linear stationary; Fruit price; Vegetable price; Taiwan

    Hafnium oxide-based ferroelectric thin-film transistor with a-InGaZnO channel fabricated at temperatures \u3c= 350°C

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    HfO2-based ferroelectric materials integrated with oxide-based thin-film transistors have been considered as potential candidates for back-end-of-line compatible ferroelectric field-effect transistors, which can be vertically stacked on silicon CMOS circuits to realize high-density neural network applications. However, the formation of ferroelectric orthorhombic phase in HfO2-based materials usually requires an annealing temperature of 400°C or higher. In this work, ferroelectric thin-film transistors (Fe-TFTs) were developed by monolithically integrating HfZrO2 (HZO) ferroelectric capacitors with amorphous indium-gallium-zinc oxide (a-IGZO) TFTs at a maximum processing temperature of 350°C on a glass substrate. A butterfly-shaped C-V curve was clearly observed in the low-temperature annealed metal-HZO-metal capacitor, indicating the formation of ferroelectricity in the HZO layer, as shown in Fig. 1. The positive and negative coercive voltages were 3 V and -2.4 V, respectively. The dielectric constant was 20.65. The field-effect mobility, threshold voltage, subthreshold swing and on/off current ratio of the a-IGZO TFT extracted from the transfer characteristics shown in Fig. 2 were 6.15 cm2V-1s-1, 1.5 V, 0.1 V/dec and 4.3´107, respectively. Fig. 3 shows the transfer hysteresis curves of the low-temperature Fe-TFTs in a metal-ferroelectric-metal-insulator-semiconductor configuration. The Fe-TFTs exhibited large hysteresis memory windows of 2.8 V and 3.8 V when the area ratios between ferroelectric capacitors and gate insulators (AFE / ADE) were 1/8 and 1/12, respectively. The result shows a great potential for back-end-of-line compatible memory applications. Please click Download on the upper right corner to see the full abstract

    An Operator Assisted Call Routing System

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    The Potential Economic Impact of Avian Flu Pandemic on Taiwan

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    This study analyzes the potential consequences of an outbreak of avian influenza (H5N1) on Taiwan¡¦s macro economy and individual industries. Both the Input-Output (IO) Analysis Model and Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Model are used to simulate the possible damage brought by lowering domestic consumption, export, and labor supply. The simulation results indicates that if the disease is confined within the poultry sector, then the impact on real GDP is around -0.1%~-0.4%. Once it becomes a human-to-human pandemic, the IO analysis suggests that the potential impacts on real GDP would be as much as -4.2%~-5.9% while labor demand would decrease 4.9%~6.4%. In the CGE analysis, which allows for resource mobility and substitutions through price adjustments, the real GDP and labor demand would contract 2.0%~2.4% and 2.2%~2.4%, respectively, and bringing down consumer prices by 3%. As for the individual sector, the outbreak will not only damage the poultry sector and its upstream and downstream industries, but also affect the service sectors including wholesale, retail, trade, air transportation, restaurants, as well as healthcare services. These results can be used to support public investment in animal disease control measures.Avian Flu Pandemic, Input-output Model, Computable General Equilibrium Model, Livestock Production/Industries,
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