Central Bank Reform, Liberalization and Inflation in Transition Economies:An International Perspective

This paper develops extensive new data on the legal independence of new central banks in 26 former socialist economies (FSE).This data is constructed using the codification system for measuring legal independence developed in Cukierman, Webb and Neyapti (1992) and in chapter 19 of Cukierman (1992).This makes it comparable with earlier data on central bank independence (CBI) in the industrial democracies and in, non FSE, developing countries and permits experimentation with alternative indices of CBI like those reviewed in Eijffinger and van Keulen (1995).The new indices of independence indicate that central bank (CB) reform in the FSE during the nineties has been quite ambitious.In spite of the large price shocks induced by the transformation from plan to market, reformers in those countries chose to create central banks with levels of legal independence that are substantially higher, on average, than those of developed economies during the eighties.Based on data from 1989 through 1998 the evidence in the paper suggests that CBI is unrelated to inflation during the early stages of liberalization.But for sufficiently high and sustained levels of liberalization, and controlling for variables like price decontrols and wars, legal CBI and inflation are significantly and negatively related.These findings are consistent with the view that legal CBI, no matter how high, cannot contain the powerful inflationary impact of wide scale liberalization of formerly controlled prices.But once the process of liberalization has gathered sufficient momentum legal independence becomes effective in slowing inflation down and the cumulative liberalization index developed by de Melo et. al.(1996) becomes relatively less important.The paper also presents evidence on factors that affect the level of CBI and examines the relation between inflation and CBI within a broader sample composed of the transition and of the developed economies.

Irreducible Multiplets of Three-Quark Operators on the Lattice: Controlling Mixing under Renormalization

High luminosity accelerators have greatly increased the interest in semi-exclusive and exclusive reactions involving nucleons. The relevant theoretical information is contained in the nucleon wavefunction and can be parametrized by moments of the nucleon distribution amplitudes, which in turn are linked to matrix elements of three-quark operators. These can be calculated from first principles in lattice QCD. However, on the lattice the problems of operator mixing under renormalization are rather involved. In a systematic approach we investigate this issue in depth. Using the spinorial symmetry group of the hypercubic lattice we derive irreducibly transforming three-quark operators, which allow us to control the mixing pattern.Comment: 13 page

Improved process for welding studs

A 4-40 UMC-2A, 321 stainless steel welded stud (4.77 +- 0.38 mm or 0.188 +- 0.015 in.) could not be adapted to production because of its short length. A longer stud with a necked area was developed for the production process. After percussive arc welding the stud, the material above the necked ared was removed by applying torque leaving a welded stud which meets the original design requirements. The torque applied to remove excess material provides quality acceptance of the welded part

An Empirical Study Linking Additive Manufacturing Design Process to Success in Manufacturability

This paper characterizes engineering designers’ abilities to re-design a component for additive manufacturing, employing screen capture methods. Additive Manufacturing has garnered significant interest from a wide range of industries, academia and government stakeholders due to its potential to reform and disrupt traditional manufacturing processes. The technology offers unprecedented design freedom and customization along with its ability to process novel and high strength alloys in promising lead times. To harness the maximum potential of this technology, designers are often tasked with creating new products or re-design existing portfolios of traditionally manufactured parts to achieve lightweight designs with better performance. To date, few studies explore the correspondence between design behaviors and manufacturability of final product within an Additive Manufacturing context. This paper presents empirical data from the design processes of six graduate student engineering designers as they re-design a traditionally designed part for additive manufacturing. Behaviors through the design task are compared between the study participants with a quantitative measure of the manufacturability and quality of each design. Results indicate opportunities for further research and best practices in design for Additive manufacturing and engineering education practitioners across multiple disciplines.Mechanical Engineerin

Verifying the Safety of a Flight-Critical System

This paper describes our work on demonstrating verification technologies on a flight-critical system of realistic functionality, size, and complexity. Our work targeted a commercial aircraft control system named Transport Class Model (TCM), and involved several stages: formalizing and disambiguating requirements in collaboration with do- main experts; processing models for their use by formal verification tools; applying compositional techniques at the architectural and component level to scale verification. Performed in the context of a major NASA milestone, this study of formal verification in practice is one of the most challenging that our group has performed, and it took several person months to complete it. This paper describes the methodology that we followed and the lessons that we learned.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure

Der Handel von Kreditrisiken: eine neue Dimension des Kapitalmarktes

This paper makes an attempt to present the economics of credit securitization in a non-technical way, starting from the description and the analysis of a typical securitization transaction. The paper sketches a theoretical explanation for why tranching, or nonproportional risk sharing, which is at the heart of securitization transactions, may allow commercial banks to maximize their shareholder value. However, the analysis makes also clear that the conditions under which credit securitization enhances welfare, are fairly restrictive, and require not only an active role of the banking supervisiory authorities, but also a price tag on the implicit insurance currently provided by the lender of last resort. Klassifikation: D82, G21, D74. February 16, 2005

Gauge invariant reduction to the light-front

The problem of constructing gauge invariant currents in terms of light-cone bound-state wave functions is solved by utilising the gauging of equations method. In particular, it is shown how to construct perturbative expansions of the electromagnetic current in the light-cone formalism, such that current conservation is satisfied at each order of the perturbation theory.Comment: 12 pages, revtex

Intrinsic decoherence and classical-quantum correspondence in two coupled delta-kicked rotors

We show that classical-quantum correspondence of center of mass motion in two coupled delta-kicked rotors can be obtained from intrinsic decoherence of the system itself which occurs due to the entanglement of the center of mass motion to the internal degree of freedom without coupling to external environment

Nucleon Axial Form Factor from Lattice QCD

Results for the isovector axial form factors of the proton from a lattice QCD calculation are presented for both point-split and local currents. They are obtained on a quenched $16^{3} \times 24$ lattice at $\beta= 6.0$ with Wilson fermions for a range of quark masses from strange to charm. We determine the finite lattice renormalization for both the local and point-split currents of heavy quarks. Results extrapolated to the chiral limit show that the $q^2$ dependence of the axial form factor agrees reasonably well with experiment. The axial coupling constant $g_A$ calculated for the local and the point-split currents is about 6\% and 12\% smaller than the experimental value respectively.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures (included in part 2), UK/93-0