International Interest-Rate and Price-Level Linkages Under Flexible Exchange Rates: A Review of Recent Evidence

In an open economy, the scope for activist stabilization policy depends on the nature of the lincages between domestic and international markets for goods and assets. Tgo

Aggregate agricultural supply response in developing countries : a survey of selected issues

The authors review several studies of the aggregate agricultural supply response. Using both economic and econometric reasons, they argue that time series estimation typically generates a downward-biased estimate of the response to a credible reform. Even though time series estimates can provide an accurate picture of past behavoiral relations, they do not provide an adequate basis for forecasting the impact of policy reform. This is especially true in developing countries, where policy reforms involve large changes and have included agricultural price reform, industrial trade liberalization, financial sector reform, and macroeconomic stabilization. Under those circumstances, parameters values obtained under the former policy regime have little relevance in the new regime. The authors also argue that investment in public goods should be viewed as complementary to, not competitive with, price policy. They claim that to select the policy with the biggest impact on output makes no sense. They provide what they consider to be better criteria for choosing the best from alternative policies.Environmental Economics&Policies,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Markets and Market Access,Labor Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access,Inequality

High Grading Standards Improve Student Performance

Allgemeinbildende Schule, Schulpolitik, Qualifikation, Vereinigte Staaten, General schooling, School policy, Occupational qualification, United States

Growth and Equity Effects of Agricultural Marketing Efficiency Gains in India

Agriculture is the largest source of employment in India, and food accounts for about half of consumer expenditures. Moving agricultural products from the farm to consumers more efficiently could result in large gains to producers, consumers, and India’s overall economy. This analysis uses a computable general equilibrium model with agricultural commodity detail and households disaggregated by rural, urban, and income class to study the potential impacts of reforms that achieve efficiency gains in agricultural marketing and reduce agricultural input subsidies and import tariffs. More efficient agricultural marketing generates economywide gains in output and wages, raises agricultural producer prices, reduces consumer food prices, and increases private consumption, particularly by low-income households. These gains could help to offset some of the medium-term adjustment costs for some commodity markets and households associated with reducing agricultural subsidies and tariffs.India, agriculture, policy reform, marketing efficiency, tariffs, subsidies, households, computable general equilibrium model., Agricultural and Food Policy, Agricultural Finance, Crop Production/Industries, International Relations/Trade, Marketing,

The Magellanic Bridge: The Nearest Purely Tidal Stellar Population

We report on observations of the stellar populations in twelve fields spanning the region between the Magellanic Clouds, made with the Mosaic-II camera on the 4-meter telescope at the Cerro-Tololo Inter-American Observatory. The two main goals of the observations are to characterize the young stellar population (which presumably formed in situ in the Bridge and therefore represents the nearest stellar population formed from tidal debris), and to search for an older stellar component (which would have been stripped from either Cloud as stars, by the same tidal forces which formed the gaseous Bridge). We determine the star-formation history of the young inter-Cloud population, which provides a constraint on the timing of the gravitational interaction which formed the Bridge. We do not detect an older stellar population belonging to the Bridge in any of our fields, implying that the material that was stripped from the Clouds to form the Magellanic Bridge was very nearly a pure gas.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures. Accepted to Ap

Study of CPV in b and charm systems at LHCb

The LHCb experiment is a single-arm spectrometer designed to pursue an extensive study of CP violation in b and charm systems. In this contribution, three recent measurements are presented. First, the difference between CP asymmetries of D0 → K−K+ and D0 → π−π+ decays using 0.6 pb−1 of 2011 data is detailled. Then an important milestones towards the measurement of the γ angle is presented with the study of B ± → DK ± decays using 1 fb−1. Third, the measurement of the CP-violating phase φs in B0s → J/ψφ and B0s → J/ψf0 is reported