Regional inflation dynamics using space-time models

This paper provides empirical evidence of the role of spatial factors on the determination of inflation dynamics for a representative set of tradable commodities in Chile. We present a simple model that explains inflation divergence across regions in a monetary union with similar preferences as a consequence of the geographical allocation of producers in the different regions. Our results indicate that spatial allocation together with transport costs are important determinants of regional inflation while macroeconomic common factors do not play an important role in this process. Existing literature had obtained the opposite result for Europe and the reasons for that difference warrant further investigation. Moreover, we find that geographical distance seems to be a more appropriate measure of neighbourhood than the adjacency of regions.regional inflation dynamics, space-time models, Chile

Forecasting Spanish inflation using information from different sectors and geographical areas

This paper evaluates different strategies to forecast Spanish inflation using information of price series for 57 products and 18 regions in Spain. We consider vector equilibrium correction (VeqC) models that include cointegration relationships between Spanish prices and prices in the regions of Valencia, Andalusia, Madrid, Catalonia and the Basque Country. This approach is consistent with economic intuition and is shown to be of tangible importance after suitable econometric evaluation. It is found that inflation forecasts can always be improved by aggregating projections from differente sectors and geographical areas. Moreover, cointegration relationships between regional and national prices must be considered in order to obtain a significantly better inflation forecast.Vector equilibrium correction models, Relative prices, Cointegration, Disaggregation

Exploring Quantum Annealing Architectures: A Spin Glass Perspective

We study the spin-glass transition in several Ising models of relevance for quantum annealers. We extract the spin-glass critical temperature by extrapolating the pseudo-critical properties obtained with Replica-Exchange Monte-Carlo for finite-size systems. We find a spin-glass phase for some random lattices (random-regular and small-world graphs) in good agreement with previous results. However, our results for the quasi-two-dimensional graphs implemented in the D-Wave annealers (Chimera, Zephyr, and Pegasus) indicate only a zero-temperature spin-glass state, as their pseudo-critical temperature drifts towards smaller values. This implies that the asymptotic runtime to find the low-energy configuration of those graphs is likely to be polynomial in system size, nevertheless, this scaling may only be reached for very large system sizes -- much larger than existing annealers -- as we observe an abrupt increase in the computational cost of the simulations around the pseudo-critical temperatures. Thus, two-dimensional systems with local crossings can display enough complexity to make unfeasible the search with classical methods of low-energy configurations.Comment: 13 page

Do happiness indexes truly reveal happiness? : measurin happiness using revealed preferences from migration flows

In this paper we attempt to establish a nexus between migration decisions and selfassessed happiness, where migration is taken as a mechanism for revealing preferences. The happiness literature has proposed both economic and non-economic determinants of happiness which are very similar to the factors that may be thought of as determinants of migration: absolute income, relative income, demographic and social characteristics, social development, relationship with others and characteristics of the place where we live. To these we add bilateral gravity variables, migration policies, and two survey-based happiness indexes. First, these two indexes are negatively correlated to net migration flows. Second, almost all the other explanatory variables are significant and as such survey-based happiness indexes fail to account for them. Third, we show how an international happiness ranking changes by taking into account those omitted factors. Finally, our migration-based ranking shows that, although many countries "truthfully" reveal happiness levels, in fact 19 countries are net migration senders even though they are self-proclaimed happy in surveys, whereas 23 countries are net migration recipients, even though in surveys they are self-proclaimed unhappy. We identify the sources of this mismatch and suggest where action could be taken to bring people’s self-assessment of happiness in line with revealed preference

Forecasting disaggregates by sectors and regions : the case of inflation in the euro area and Spain

We study the performance of different modelling strategies for 969 and 600 monthly price indexes disaggregated by sectors and geographical areas in Spain, regions, and in the EA12, countries, in order to obtain a detailed picture of inflation and relative sectoral prices through geographical areas for each economy, using the forecasts from those models. The study also provides a description of the spatial cointegration restrictions which could be useful for understanding price setting within an economy. We use spatial bi-dimensional vector equilibrium correction models, where the price indexes for each sector are allowed to be cointegrated with prices in neighbouring areas using different definitions of neighbourhood. We find that geographical disaggregation forecasts are very reliable on a regional level in Spain as they improve the forecasting accuracy of headline inflation relative to alternative methods. Geographical disaggregation forecasts are also reliable for the EA12 but only because derived headline inflation forecasting is not significantly worse than alternative forecasts. These results show that regional analysis within countries is appropriate in the euro area. These highly disaggregated forecasts can be used for competitive and other type of macro and regional analysisAntoni Espasa and Juan de Dios Tena acknowledge financial support from Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, ECO2009-08100 and ECO2012-3240

Assessing the effect of topic interest on two measures of incidental vocabulary learning : can dictionary look-up behavior be a factor?

Tesis (Profesor de Inglés para la Enseñanza Básica y Media y al grado académico de Licenciado en Educación)Throughout the years, several studies have been conducted in order to analyze the effect of topic interest on incidental vocabulary learning. It has been stated that being interested in a topic is a mental resource that enhances learning, which then leads to better performance and achievement (Hidi, 1990). This type of interest has been classified as individual, situational and topic interest (Renninger, Hidi and Krapp, 1992; Schiefele, 1999; Hidi, 1990; Ainley, Hidi and Berndorff, 2002). In order to provide more insights regarding topic interest and incidental vocabulary learning, the purpose of the present study is to explore the effect of topic interest on incidental vocabulary learning in two topic interest conditions, high and low, as well as the effect of topic interest on dictionary look-up behavior. For this purpose, a quantitative study was conducted. The study was divided into two main sessions, and the participants were 23 intermediate level students at a private university in Santiago. These participants were asked to read two texts with topics previously identified by them as having high and low topic interest. Twenty target words in the texts were selected in order to assess vocabulary depth and quantitative gains in both conditions, by means of a vocabulary knowledge scale (Paribakht & Wesche, 1993, 1996) and a passive recognition (Laufer & Goldstein, 2004) respectively. Results suggest that topic interest had a significant effect on the incidental vocabulary learning achieved by the participants in terms of vocabulary depth, and also in terms of quantitative gains. In addition, when dictionary look-up behavior was taken into account, vocabulary gains were kept. Discussion of the results, conclusions and implications for pedagogy are presented in the corresponding chapters.A través de los años, se han realizado diferentes estudios con el fin de analizar el efecto de interés de tópico en el aprendizaje incidental de vocabulario. Se ha dicho que estar interesado en un tema realza el aprendizaje, lo cual conduce a un mejor desempeño académico (Hidi, 1990). Este tipo de interés ha sido clasificado como interés de tópico, situacional e individual (Renninger, Hidi and Krapp, 1992; Schiefele, 1999; Hidi, 1990; Ainley, Hidi and Berndorff, 2002). A fin de proporcionar más información con respecto al interés de tópico y al comportamiento de búsqueda en un diccionario, el propósito de este estudio es explorar el efecto del interés de tópico en el aprendizaje incidental de vocabulario en dos condiciones (Alta y Baja), así como también el efecto del interés de tópico en el comportamiento de búsqueda en un diccionario. Para conseguir dicho propósito, se realizó un estudio cuantitativo. El estudio se dividió principalmente en dos sesiones, y los participantes fueron 23 estudiantes de una Universidad privada de Santiago con un nivel de Inglés intermedio. Dichos participantes tuvieron que leer dos textos que habían sido identificados por ellos previamente como el más y menos interesante. Veinte palabras fueron seleccionadas de los textos con el fin de evaluar el progreso en la profundidad del vocabulario y ganancias cuantitativas de vocabulario en las dos condiciones, por medio de una escala de conocimiento de vocabulario (Paribakht & Wesche, 1993, 1996), y una prueba de reconocimiento pasivo (Laufer & Goldstein, 2004) respectivamente. Los resultados indican que el interés de tópico tuvo un efecto significativo en el aprendizaje incidental de vocabulario logrado por los participantes en relación al progreso en la profundidad del vocabulario, y en relación a las ganancias cuantitativas de vocabulario. Además, cuando el comportamiento de búsqueda en el diccionario es tomado en cuenta, las ganancias cuantitativas de vocabulario se mantienen. La discusión de los resultados, conclusiones e implicancias para la pedagogía están presentadas en sus capítulos correspondiente

Estudio fisicoquímico de la solubilidad de Piroxicam en mezclas etanol + agua

En este trabajo se presenta la información fisicoquímica del proceso de solución del piroxicam (PIR) en mezclas cosolventes etanol + agua de gran uso e interés farmacéutico a cinco temperaturas diferentes. A partir de los datos experimentales de solubilidad determinados a diferentes temperaturas, mediante el uso de las ecuaciones de Van't Hoff y Gibbs, se calcularon las funciones termodinámicas estándar de solución: energía de Gibbs, entalpía y entropía de solución. La mayor solubilidad fue obtenida en etanol puro. Se encontró que la solubilidad aumenta a medida que se incrementa la proporción de etanol en la mezcla cosolvente, mostrándose un efecto positivo de aumento de solubilidad para este fármaco no electrolito. Se observa una relación no-linear al graficar la energía de Gibbs vs la entalpía. En consecuencia el mecanismo conductor para la solubilidad de piroxicam en mezclas ricas en agua es la entropía, lo que probablemente se deba a desestructuración del agua por el etanol alrededor de las zonas no polares del fármaco, mientras que, en las mezclas ricas en etanol el mecanismo conductor es la entalpía, probablemente debido a una mejor solvatación de PIR por las moléculas del cosolvente. / Abstract. This work presents information about the physicochemical process of solution of piroxicam (PIR) at five temperatures in some ethanol + water cosolvent mixtures of great interest and use in the pharmaceutical sciences. From experimental solubility data determined at different temperatures by using the equations of van’t Hoff and Gibbs, we calculated apparent standard thermodynamic functions of solution: the Gibbs energy, enthalpy and entropy of solution. It was found that the highest solubility was obtained in pure ethanol. It was found that the solubility increases with the proportion of ethanol in the cosolvent mixture, finding a positive cosolvent effect for this non-electrolyte drug. A non-linear relationship by plotting the Gibbs free energy vs enthalpy was observed. Consequently the driving-mechanism for the solubility of piroxicam in rich-water mixtures is the entropy, which is probably due to loss of structured-water around non-polar fragments of the drug by ethanol, while, in ethanol-rich mixtures the driving-mechanism is the enthalpy, probably due to better solvation of the PIR molecules by cosolvents.Maestrí