Using privileged information to manipulate markets: insiders, gurus, and credibility

Access to private information is shown to generate both the incentives and the ability to manipulate asset markets through strategically distorted announcements. The fact that privileged information is noisy interferes with the public's attempts to learn whether such announcements are honest; it allows opportunistic individuals to manipulate prices repeatedly, without ever being fully found out. This leads us to extend Sobel's [1985] model of strategic communication to the case of noisy private signals. Our results show that when truthfulness is not easily verifiable, restrictions on trading by insiders may be needed to preserve the integrity of information embodied in prices

On the redistributive power of pensions

We study the tradeoff between efficiency and redistribution in a model with overlapping generations, extensive labor supply, and perfect financial markets. The government instruments are a pension scheme and a age-independent nonlinear income tax schedule. At the second-best optimum, the pension system constrains the agents’ labor supply behavior, forcing them to work to achieve a required lifetime performance. Income taxes affect labor supply directly, but also indirectly through pension incentives. The indirect effect of taxes counteracts the usual forces in the efficiency-redistribution tradeoff: through the interplay with the pension system, decreasing taxes induces redistribution and reduces productive efficiency

Fast-Neutron Activation of Long-Lived Isotopes in Enriched Ge

We measured the production of \nuc{57}{Co}, \nuc{54}{Mn}, \nuc{68}{Ge}, \nuc{65}{Zn}, and \nuc{60}{Co} in a sample of Ge enriched in isotope 76 due to high-energy neutron interactions. These isotopes, especially \nuc{68}{Ge}, are critical in understanding background in Ge detectors used for double-beta decay experiments. They are produced by cosmogenic-neutron interactions in the detectors while they reside on the Earth's surface. These production rates were measured at neutron energies of a few hundred MeV. We compared the measured production to that predicted by cross-section calculations based on CEM03.02. The cross section calculations over-predict our measurements by approximately a factor of three depending on isotope. We then use the measured cosmic-ray neutron flux, our measurements, and the CEM03.02 cross sections to predict the cosmogenic production rate of these isotopes. The uncertainty in extrapolating the cross section model to higher energies dominates the total uncertainty in the cosmogenic production rate.Comment: Revised after feedback and further work on extrapolating cross sections to higher energies in order to estimate cosmic production rates. Also a numerical error was found and fixed in the estimate of the Co-57 production rat

Determination of the Cosmic Distance Scale from Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect and Chandra X-ray Measurements of High Redshift Galaxy Clusters

We determine the distance to 38 clusters of galaxies in the redshift range 0.14 < z < 0.89 using X-ray data from Chandra and Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect data from the Owens Valley Radio Observatory and the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association interferometric arrays. The cluster plasma and dark matter distributions are analyzed using a hydrostatic equilibrium model that accounts for radial variations in density, temperature and abundance, and the statistical and systematic errors of this method are quantified. The analysis is performed via a Markov chain Monte Carlo technique that provides simultaneous estimation of all model parameters. We measure a Hubble constant of 76.9 +3.9-3.4 +10.0-8.0 km/s/Mpc (statistical followed by systematic uncertainty at 68% confidence) for an Omega_M=0.3, Omega_Lambda=0.7 cosmology. We also analyze the data using an isothermal beta model that does not invoke the hydrostatic equilibrium assumption, and find H_0=73.7 +4.6-3.8 +9.5-7.6 km/s/Mpc; to avoid effects from cool cores in clusters, we repeated this analysis excluding the central 100 kpc from the X-ray data, and find H_0=77.6 +4.8-4.3 +10.1-8.2 km/s/Mpc. The consistency between the models illustrates the relative insensitivity of SZE/X-ray determinations of H_0 to the details of the cluster model. Our determination of the Hubble parameter in the distant universe agrees with the recent measurement from the Hubble Space Telescope key project that probes the nearby universe.Comment: ApJ submitted (revised version

ADMX-Orpheus First Search for 70 μ\mueV Dark Photon Dark Matter: Detailed Design, Operations, and Analysis

Dark matter makes up 85% of the matter in the universe and 27% of its energy density, but we don't know what comprises dark matter. It is possible that dark matter may be composed of either axions or dark photons, both of which can be detected using an ultra-sensitive microwave cavity known as a haloscope. The haloscope employed by ADMX consists of a cylindrical cavity operating at the TM$_{010}$ mode and is sensitive to the QCD axion with masses of few $\mu$eV. However, this haloscope design becomes challenging to implement for higher masses. This is because higher masses require smaller-diameter cavities, consequently reducing the detection volume which diminishes the detected signal power. ADMX-Orpheus mitigates this issue by operating a tunable, dielectrically-loaded cavity at a higher-order mode, allowing the detection volume to remain large. This paper describes the design, operation, analysis, and results of the inaugural ADMX-Orpheus dark photon search between 65.5 $\mu$eV (15.8 GHz) and 69.3 $\mu$eV (16.8 GHz), as well as future directions for axion searches and for exploring more parameter space.Comment: 21 pages, 29 figures. To be submitted to Physical Review D. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2112.0454

Search for 70 \mu eV Dark Photon Dark Matter with a Dielectrically-Loaded Multi-Wavelength Microwave Cavity

Microwave cavities have been deployed to search for bosonic dark matter candidates with masses of a few $\mu$eV. However, the sensitivity of these cavity detectors is limited by their volume, and the traditionally-employed half-wavelength cavities suffer from a significant volume reduction at higher masses. ADMX-Orpheus mitigates this issue by operating a tunable, dielectrically-loaded cavity at a higher-order mode, which allows the detection volume to remain large. The ADMX-Orpheus inaugural run excludes dark photon dark matter with kinetic mixing angle $\chi > 10^{-13}$ between 65.5 $\mu$eV (15.8 GHz) and 69.3 $\mu$eV (16.8GHz), marking the highest-frequency tunable microwave cavity dark matter search to date.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure, to be submitted to PR