Book reviews

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45611/1/11199_2005_Article_BF01433110.pd

Gravitational collapse in an expanding background and the role of substructure II: Excess power at small scales and its effect of collapse of structures at larger scales

We study the interplay of clumping at small scales with the collapse and relaxation of perturbations at larger scales using N-Body simulations. We quantify the effect of collapsed haloes on perturbations at larger scales using two point correlation function, moments of counts in cells and mass function. The purpose of the study is twofold and the primary aim is to quantify the role played by collapsed low mass haloes in the evolution of perturbations at large scales, this is in view of the strong effect seen when the large scale perturbation is highly symmetric. Another reason for this study is to ask whether features or a cutoff in the initial power spectrum can be detected using measures of clustering at scales that are already non-linear. The final aim is to understand the effect of ignoring perturbations at scales smaller than the resolution of N-Body simulations. We find that these effects are ignorable if the scale of non-linearity is larger than the average inter-particle separation in simulations. Features in in the initial power spectrum can be detected easily if the scale of these features is in the linear regime, detecting such features becomes difficult as the relevant scales become non-linear. We find no effect of features in initial power spectra at small scales on the evolved power spectra at large scales. We may conclude that in general, the effect on evolution of perturbations at large scales of clumping on small scales is very small and may be ignored in most situations.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

A computer program for linear nonparametric and parametric identification of biological data

A computer program package for parametric and nonparametric linear system identification of both static and dynamic biological data, written for an LSI-11 minicomputer with 28 K of memory, is described. The program has 11 possible commands including an instructional help command. A user can perform nonparametric spectral analysis and estimation of autocorrelation and partial autocorrelation functions of univariate data and estimate nonparametrically the transfer function and possibly an associated noise series of bivariate data. In addition, the commands provide the user the means to derive a parametric autoregressive moving average model for univariate data, to derive a parametric transfer function and noise model for bivariate data, and to perform several model evaluation tests such as pole-zero cancellation, examination of residual whiteness and uncorrelatedness with the input. The program, consisting of a main program and driver subroutine as well as six overlay segments, may be run interactively or automatically.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/24917/1/0000344.pd

International demands for austerity: examining the impact of the IMF on the public sector

What effects do International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans have on borrow-ing countries? Even after decades of research, no consensus exists. We offer a straight-forward explanation for the seemingly mixed effects of IMF loans. We argue thatdifferent loans have different effects because of the varied conditions attached to IMFfinancing. To demonstrate this point, we investigate IMF loans with and withoutconditions that require public sector reforms in exchange for financing. We find thatthe addition of a public sector reform condition to a country’s IMF program signifi-cantly reduces government spending on the public sector wage bill. This evidencesuggest that conditions are a key mechanism linking IMF lending to policy outcomes.Although IMF loans with public sector conditions prompt cuts to the wage bill in theshort-term, these cuts do not persist in the longer-term. Borrowers backslide oninternationally mandated spending cuts in response to domestic political pressures