Act one, act first – the law on fiscal responsibility

The Law on Fiscal Responsibility adopted late 2008 is a new element in Hungarian fiscal policy, although not without precedent. Under the law, the Parliament and the Government limit themselves to prevent high fiscal deficits and a further increase in public indebtedness, experienced in recent years. Budget planning turns into a three-year process, hardening over time. As a first step, the targeted primary (non-interest) budget balance is subject to the requirement that the stock of government debt cannot rise in real terms. However, ex post, the law allows for deviations in fiscal performance-including those reflecting the effect of so-called automatic stabilizers-attributable to factors beyond the control of the authorities. This means that the actual deficit is not necessarily equal to the deficit path consistent with the real debt limit, but it may fluctuate around this trend over the medium term. In addition, the law prescribes observance of the pay-go principle. Finally, it provides for the establishment of an independent Fiscal Council entrusted with monitoring compliance with the rules and with transparency standards. We evaluated the law according to the Kopits–Symansky criteria applied in the international literature. In most aspects, the law exhibits favourable properties, consistent with the criteria, although inevitably at the expense of simplicity. The assessment suggests that the law would benefit from extending coverage of the rules to local governments. Moreover, enforceability of the rules would be strengthened if the law were adopted by a qualified legislative majority.fiscal rules, budget planning, Fiscal Council.

A Burgess-like subconvex bound for twisted L-functions

Let g be a cuspidal newform (holomorphic or Maass) of arbitrary level and nebentypus, X a primitive character of conductor q, and s a point on the critical line Rs = 1/2. It is proved that L(g circle times chi, s) 0 is arbitrary and theta = 7/64 is the current known approximation towards the RamannJan-Petersson conjecture (which would allow theta = 0); moreover, the dependence on s and all the parameters of g is polynomial. This result is an analog of Burgess' classical subconvex bound for Dirichlet L-functions. In Appendix 2 the above result is combined with a theorem of Waldspurger and the adelic calculations of Baruch-Mao to yield an improved uniform upper bound for the Fourier coefficients of holomorphic half-integral weight cusp forms

Gravitational radiation reaction in compact binary systems: Contribution of the quadrupole-monopole interaction

The radiation reaction in compact spinning binaries on eccentric orbits due to the quadrupole-monopole interaction is studied. This contribution is of second post-Newtonian order. As result of the precession of spins the magnitude $L$ of the orbital angular momentum is not conserved. Therefore a proper characterization of the perturbed radial motion is provided by the energy $E$ and angular average $\bar{L}$. As powerful computing tools, the generalized true and eccentric anomaly parametrizations are introduced. Then the secular losses in energy and magnitude of orbital angular momentum together with the secular evolution of the relative orientations of the orbital angular momentum and spins are found for eccentric orbits by use of the residue theorem. The circular orbit limit of the energy loss agrees with Poisson's earlier result.Comment: accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

On the validity of the 5-dimensional Birkhoff theorem: The tale of an exceptional case

The 5-dimensional (5d) Birkhoff theorem gives the class of 5d vacuum space-times containing spatial hypersurfaces with cosmological symmetries. This theorem is violated by the 5d vacuum Gergely-Maartens (GM) space-time, which is not a representant of the above class, but contains the static Einstein brane as embedded hypersurface. We prove that the 5d Birkhoff theorem is still satisfied in a weaker sense: the GM space-time is related to the degenerated horizon metric of certain black-hole space-times of the allowed class. This result resembles the connection between the Bertotti-Robinson space-time and the horizon region of the extremal Reissner-Nordstrom space-time in general relativity.Comment: 13 pages; v2: title amended, to be published in Classical and Quantum Gravit

Asymmetric Swiss-cheese brane-worlds

We study a brane-world cosmological scenario with local inhomogeneities represented by black holes. The brane is asymmetrically embedded into the bulk. The black strings/cigars penetrating the Friedmann brane generate a Swiss-cheese type structure. This universe forever expands and decelerates, as its general relativistic analogue. The evolution of the cosmological fluid however can proceed along four branches, two allowed to have positive energy density, one of them having the symmetric embedding limit. On this branch a future pressure singularity can arise for either (a) a difference in the cosmological constants of the cosmological and black hole brane regions (b) a difference in the left and right bulk cosmological constants. While the behaviour (a) can be avoided by a redefinition of the fluid variables, (b) establishes a critical value of the asymmetry over which the pressure singularity occurs. We introduce the pressure singularity censorship which bounds the degree of asymmetry in the bulk cosmological constant. We also show as a model independent generic feature that the asymmetry source term due to the bulk cosmological constant increases in the early universe. In order to obey the nucleosynthesis constraints, the brane tension should be constrained therefore both from below and from above. With the maximal degree of asymmetry obeying the pressure singularity censorship, the higher limit is 10 times the lower limit. The degree of asymmetry allowed by present cosmological observations is however much less, pushing the upper limit to infinity.Comment: v2: considerably expanded, 19 pages, 8 figures, many new references. Pressure singularity censorship introduced, strict limits on the possible degree of asymmetry derived. v3: model independent analysis shows that the asymmetry bounds the brane tension from above. Limits on the maximal tension set. Version published in JCA

Spectrum of stochastic evolution operators: Local matrix representation approach

A matrix representation of the evolution operator associated with a nonlinear stochastic flow with additive noise is used to compute its spectrum. In the weak noise limit a perturbative expansion for the spectrum is formulated in terms of local matrix representations of the evolution operator centered on classical periodic orbits. The evaluation of perturbative corrections is easier to implement in this framework than in the standard Feynman diagram perturbation theory. The result are perturbative corrections to a stochastic analog of the Gutzwiller semiclassical spectral determinant computed to several orders beyond what has so far been attainable in stochastic and quantum-mechanical applications.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, Third approach to a problem we considered in chao-dyn/9807034 and chao-dyn/981100