Information Flow and Expected Inflation: An Empirical Analysis

This paper begins by ranking the absolute value of changes in the 10-year break- even inflation (BEI) calculated using 10-year Treasury notes and 10-year TIPS. Next, a news search is conducted to determine what inflation related information was released on days when the change in the BEI was greatest. The goal of the analysis is not only to see what information is associated with large changes in the BEI, but also to gain insight into the extent to which market participants accept the three competing theories of price determination: the classic monetary theory, the fiscal theory, and a “Keynesian” model that combines central bank setting of interest rates with the Philips curve. I find that there was no mention of the money supply, the demand for money, or the rate of monetary growth on any of the days on which there was a large change in the BEI. Further, I find that there was only one mention of the impact of government debt on a day where the BEI changed substantially. In comparison, there were 53 news items on large change days that either explicitly discussed Federal Reserve policy regarding interest rates or focused on the interaction between Fed policy, economic activity and expected inflation. This suggests that market participants accept the “Keynesian” model of price determination

Collateral Damage and Securities Litigation

Because environmental crimes can be committed by businesses, regulating and enforcement entities such as the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) may have a particular interest in indicting a corporation as a means of protecting the public at large. Although major environmental statutes such as the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act provide for civil penalties, some environmental violations are such that criminal charges may be appropriate both as a means of punishing wrongdoing and also to deter future violations. Additionally, the U.S. Attorneys’ Manual states prosecution of corporate crime is a high priority for the DOJ

Why have asset price properties changed so little in 200 years

We first review empirical evidence that asset prices have had episodes of large fluctuations and been inefficient for at least 200 years. We briefly review recent theoretical results as well as the neurological basis of trend following and finally argue that these asset price properties can be attributed to two fundamental mechanisms that have not changed for many centuries: an innate preference for trend following and the collective tendency to exploit as much as possible detectable price arbitrage, which leads to destabilizing feedback loops.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figure

Demonstration of surface electron rejection with interleaved germanium detectors for dark matter searches

The following article appeared in Applied Physics Letters 103.16 (2013): 164105 and may be found at http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apl/100/26/10.1063/1.4729825The SuperCDMS experiment in the Soudan Underground Laboratory searches for dark matter with a 9-kg array of cryogenic germanium detectors. Symmetric sensors on opposite sides measure both charge and phonons from each particle interaction, providing excellent discrimination between electron and nuclear recoils, and between surface and interior events. Surface event rejection capabilities were tested with two 210 Pb sources producing ∼130 beta decays/hr. In ∼800 live hours, no events leaked into the 8–115 keV signal region, giving upper limit leakage fraction 1.7 × 10−5 at 90% C.L., corresponding to < 0.6 surface event background in the future 200-kg SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment.This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation (Grant Nos. AST-9978911, NSF-0847342, PHY-1102795,NSF-1151869, PHY-0542066, PHY-0503729, PHY-0503629, PHY-0503641, PHY-0504224, PHY-0705052,PHY-0801708, PHY-0801712, PHY-0802575, PHY-0847342, PHY-0855299, PHY-0855525, and PHY-1205898), by the Department of Energy (Contract Nos. DE-AC03-76SF00098, DE-FG02-92ER40701, DE-FG02-94ER40823,DE-FG03-90ER40569, DE-FG03-91ER40618, and DESC0004022),by NSERC Canada (Grant Nos. SAPIN 341314 and SAPPJ 386399), and by MULTIDARK CSD2009-00064 and FPA2012-34694. Fermilab is operated by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC under Contract No. De-AC02-07CH11359, while SLAC is operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-76SF00515 with the United States Department of Energy