Exchange rate behavior and exchange rate puzzles: why the 18th century might help

Este artículo analiza el comportamiento de los tipos de cambio entre España y Gran Bretaña durante el siglo XVIII; en concreto, de los tipos de cambio en el mercado de Londres sobre tres ciudades españolas, entre los años 1699 y 1826. Tras una breve exposición del funcionamiento del sistema monetario español y de la determinación de los tipos de cambio, estudiamos hasta qué punto el tipo de cambio respondía a variables fundamentales, utilizando dos modelos teóricos generalmente aceptados. Los resultados sugieren que la paridad de poder adquisitivo se cumplió durante el siglo XVIII, y que el tipo de cambio se movía de forma paralela a los diferenciales de inflación. Al final del siglo aparecen desviaciones de la paridad de poder adquisitivo, que atribuimos a alteraciones en el tipo de cambio real causadas por fluctuaciones en el comercio bilateral entre España y Gran Bretaña y, quizá, a diferenciales de productividad.This article explores the behavior of exchange rates in Spain during the 18th century. We analyze the exchange rates quoted in London on three Spanish cities between 1699 and 1826. After a brief review of how the Spanish monetary system worked and how exchange rates were determined, we assess to which extent the exchange rate responded to market fundamentals by testing two theoretical models of exchange rate determination. The results suggest that purchasing power parity held during the 18th century, with the exchange rate tracking quite closely the behavior of inflation differentials. Deviations from PPP appeared at the end of the century, due mostly to changes in the real exchange rate caused by the bilateral trade between Spain and Great Britain and, maybe, due to productivity differentials

Exchange Rate Behavior and Exchange Rate Puzzles: Why the XVIII Century Might Help

This article explores the behavior of exchange rates in Spain during the XVIII century. We posit that exchange rates were the result of both government intervention over nominal values of currencies and the estimate that the market –of bills of exchange- gave to the value of the currency. We analyze the exchange rates quoted in London on three Spanish cities between 1699 and 1826. After a brief overview of the functioning of the Spanish monetary system and of exchange rate determination, we assess the extent to which the exchange rate responded to market fundamentals by testing some theoretical models of exchange rate determination. The results suggest that purchasing power parity held during the XVIII century, with the exchange rate tracking quite closely the behavior of inflation differentials. Deviations from PPP appeared at the end of the century, due mostly to changes in the real exchange rate caused by the bilateral trade balance between Spain and Great Britain and, maybe, to productivity differentials.

La mujer en la segunda mitad del siglo xix. una sombra presente

La idea central del presente escrito es la de explorar la visión que tenían tanto liberales como conservadores sobre la mujer en el siglo XIX. Delimitando aún más la temática, es menester aclarar que en este escrito, solamente serán objeto de análisis las constituciones de 1863 (Rionegro, de clara tendencia federalista y liberal que dio el nombre de Estados Unidos de Colombia) y 1886 (Regeneración, de carácter conservador y centralista, que dio el nombre de República de Colombia); por ser estas dos cartas constitucionales las más sobresalientes y de mayor duración en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. Junto con lo anterior tenemos que estas dos constituciones fueron las que mejor representaron la visión liberal y conservadora de la política y el ordenamiento de la sociedad fundamentado en la plataforma ideológica que cada partido político defendía

Naturaleza jurídica de las resoluciones expedidas dentro del procedimiento coactivo y sus mecanismos de impugnación

Esta investigación está dirigida a despejar las dudas que actualmente existen en la cultura jurídica respecto a la verdadera naturaleza de la potestad coactiva, es decir si ésta es de naturaleza administrativa o por el contrario tiene algunos rasgos de ser jurisdiccional. Asimismo, la investigación se enfoca en precisar cuáles son los medios adecuados de impugnación para recurrir las resoluciones que se expiden dentro de los procedimientos coactivos en caso de que dichas resoluciones llegaren a vulnerar derechos de los particulares. En este contexto, se aborda la problemática descrita con sustento en tres elementos fundamentales que son el normativo, el doctrinario y el jurisprudencial. Cada uno de los elementos serán analizados a fin de establecer las posturas existentes respecto a la naturaleza jurídica de la jurisdicción coactiva, para con fundamento en dichas posturas encontrar un punto de quiebre que nos permita adoptar una posición concreta y establecer la verdadera naturaleza de la coactiva y los medios idóneos para su impugnación. La investigación está estructurada de tres capítulos, en el primer capítulo se analiza el tema concerniente a la naturaleza jurídica de la jurisdicción coactiva para lo cual se analiza la doctrina existente respecto al tema, en este sentido, se estudian cada una de las razones para considerar si la coactiva es de naturaleza administrativa o jurisdiccional; en el segundo capítulo, se establecen cuáles serían los medios adecuados de impugnación para recurrir las decisiones de la coactiva y se abordan las dos dimensiones en las que las resoluciones de la coactiva pueden ser impugnadas tanto en la esfera de legalidad y en la de constitucionalidad; y, en el tercer capítulo, se realiza un análisis eminentemente jurisprudencial en el cual se analizan en conjunto la naturaleza jurídica de la jurisdicción coactiva y en función de ésta se delimitan cuáles son los medios adecuados para su impugnación. En definitiva, el objeto de la investigación es proporcionar criterios jurídicos tendientes a esclarecer la naturaleza jurídica de la coactiva y en función de dicha conclusión, determinar cuáles son los medios adecuados para su impugnación tanto en el ámbito de legalidad, así como también en la esfera de la constitucionalidad

Downscaling of global solar irradiation in R

A methodology for downscaling solar irradiation from satellite-derived databases is described using R software. Different packages such as raster, parallel, solaR, gstat, sp and rasterVis are considered in this study for improving solar resource estimation in areas with complex topography, in which downscaling is a very useful tool for reducing inherent deviations in satellite-derived irradiation databases, which lack of high global spatial resolution. A topographical analysis of horizon blocking and sky-view is developed with a digital elevation model to determine what fraction of hourly solar irradiation reaches the Earth's surface. Eventually, kriging with external drift is applied for a better estimation of solar irradiation throughout the region analyzed. This methodology has been implemented as an example within the region of La Rioja in northern Spain, and the mean absolute error found is a striking 25.5% lower than with the original database

Direct Visual Servoing Framework based on Optimal Control for Redundant Joint Structures

This paper presents a new framework based on optimal control to define new dynamic visual controllers to carry out the guidance of any serial link structure. The proposed general method employs optimal control to obtain the desired behaviour in the joint space based on an indicated cost function which determines how the control effort is distributed over the joints. The proposed approach allows the development of new direct visual controllers for any mechanical joint system with redundancy. Finally, authors show experimental results and verifications on a real robotic system for some derived controllers obtained from the control framework.This work was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, the European FEDER funds and the Valencia Regional Government, through the research projects DPI2012-32390 and PROMETEO/2013/085

Interpretable global-local dynamics for the prediction of eye fixations in autonomous driving scenarios

Human eye movements while driving reveal that visual attention largely depends on the context in which it occurs. Furthermore, an autonomous vehicle which performs this function would be more reliable if its outputs were understandable. Capsule Networks have been presented as a great opportunity to explore new horizons in the Computer Vision field, due to their capability to structure and relate latent information. In this article, we present a hierarchical approach for the prediction of eye fixations in autonomous driving scenarios. Context-driven visual attention can be modeled by considering different conditions which, in turn, are represented as combinations of several spatio-temporal features. With the aim of learning these conditions, we have built an encoder-decoder network which merges visual features' information using a global-local definition of capsules. Two types of capsules are distinguished: representational capsules for features and discriminative capsules for conditions. The latter and the use of eye fixations recorded with wearable eye tracking glasses allow the model to learn both to predict contextual conditions and to estimate visual attention, by means of a multi-task loss function. Experiments show how our approach is able to express either frame-level (global) or pixel-wise (local) relationships between features and contextual conditions, allowing for interpretability while maintaining or improving the performance of black-box related systems in the literature. Indeed, our proposal offers an improvement of 29% in terms of information gain with respect to the best performance reported in the literature.The authors would like to thank the authors from DR(eye)VE Project [49] for the support provided during this work, as well as the Multimedia Processing Group from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid for their entire personal and academic implication

The perception of tooth whitening practices during and after orthodontic treatment : a survey of orthodontists

At present, there are limited studies on how tooth whitening procedures are applied in orthodontic patients. Therefore, the objective of this study was to assess the perception of tooth whitening practices during and after orthodontic treatment. A surv

Infección puerperal en función del número de tactos vaginales realizados en mujeres en labor de parto en el hospital Gíneco-Obstétrico Isidro Ayora desde julio hasta diciembre del 2012.

El puerperio es el período que comprende desde el final del parto hasta la 6ta semana post parto. En este tiempo se desarrollan cambios fisiológicos con la finalidad de retornar gradualmente al estado pregravídico y establecer la lactancia..

Evaluation and improvement of empirical models of global solar irradiation: Case study northern Spain

This paper presents a new methodology to build parametric models to estimate global solar irradiation adjusted to specific on-site characteristics based on the evaluation of variable im- portance. Thus, those variables higly correlated to solar irradiation on a site are implemented in the model and therefore, different models might be proposed under different climates. This methodology is applied in a study case in La Rioja region (northern Spain). A new model is proposed and evaluated on stability and accuracy against a review of twenty-two already exist- ing parametric models based on temperatures and rainfall in seventeen meteorological stations in La Rioja. The methodology of model evaluation is based on bootstrapping, which leads to achieve a high level of confidence in model calibration and validation from short time series (in this case five years, from 2007 to 2011). The model proposed improves the estimates of the other twenty-two models with average mean absolute error (MAE) of 2.195 MJ/m2 day and average confidence interval width (95% C.I., n=100) of 0.261 MJ/m2 day. 41.65% of the daily residuals in the case of SIAR and 20.12% in that of SOS Rioja fall within the uncertainty tolerance of the pyranometers of the two networks (10% and 5%, respectively). Relative differences between measured and estimated irradiation on an annual cumulative basis are below 4.82%. Thus, the proposed model might be useful to estimate annual sums of global solar irradiation, reaching insignificant differences between measurements from pyranometers