Moral hazard in a voluntary deposit insurance system: Revisited

This paper extends Wheelock and Kumbhakar’s (1995) test for moral hazard in the Kansas deposit insurance system (1910-1920). This paper tests and finds evidence of omitted bank-specific effects. Estimates in Wheelock and Kumbhakar (1995), as a result, are biased. This paper introduces unobserved individual heterogeneity to the test for moral hazard, corrects their estimates, and finds more evidence of moral hazard in the Kansas deposit insurance system

Does society show differential attention to researchers based on gender and field?

While not all researchers prioritize social impact, it is undeniably a crucial aspect that adds significance to their work. The objective of this paper is to explore potential gender differences in the social attention paid to researchers and to examine their association with specific fields of study. To achieve this goal, the paper analyzes four dimensions of social influence and examines three measures of social attention to researchers. The dimensions are media influence (mentions in mainstream news), political influence (mentions in public policy reports), social media influence (mentions in Twitter), and educational influence (mentions in Wikipedia). The measures of social attention to researchers are: proportion of publications with social mentions (social attention orientation), mentions per publication (level of social attention), and mentions per mentioned publication (intensity of social attention). By analyzing the rankings of authors -- for the four dimensions with the three measures in the 22 research fields of the Web of Science database -- and by using Spearman correlation coefficients, we conclude that: 1) significant differences are observed between fields; 2) the dimensions capture different and independent aspects of the social impact. Finally, we use non-parametric means comparison tests to detect gender bias in social attention. We conclude that for most fields and dimensions with enough non-zero altmetrics data, gender differences in social attention are not predominant, but are still present and vary across fields.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures, 7 table

How cyclical do cyclically-adjusted balances remain? An EU study

Observed budget balances are an imperfect indicator of the fiscal policy stance, because fluctuations in economic activity induce automatic changes in the balance, hence the use of cyclically-adjusted balances (CAB). However, this paper shows that CABs (as measured through one of the two methods currently used by the Commission) tend to be systematically overestimated during downturns and underestimated during expansions. The dominant source of this distortion arises from the filtering of revenues deemed to be cyclical, possibly signalling a problem with the computation of elasticities. The effect of the items which are assumed not to move with the cycle is non significant, but this overall result conceals offseting effects: public investment turns to be significantly procyclical and interest payments and transfers to firms are countercyclical. Classification-JEL : H6, E6.. cyclically adjusted balances, fiscal policy, EU.

How cyclical do cyclically-adjusted balances remain? An EU study

Observed budget balances are an imperfect indicator of the fiscal policy stance, because fluctuations in economic activity induce automatic changes in the balance, hence the use of cyclically-adjusted balances (CAB). However, this paper shows that CABs (as measured through one of the two methods currently used by the Commission) tend to be systematically overestimated during downturns and underestimated during expansions. The dominant source of this distortion arises from the filtering of revenues deemed to be cyclical, possibly signalling a problem with the computation of elasticities. The effect of the items which are assumed not to move with the cycle is non significant, but this overall result conceals offseting effects: public investment turns to be significantly procyclical and interest payments and transfers to firms are countercyclical.Structural balances, output gap

Approximation by polynomials with constant coefficients and the Thresholding Greedy Algorithm

Greedy bases are those bases where the Thresholding Greedy Algorithm (introduced by S. V. Konyagin and V. N. Temlyakov) produces the best possible approximation up to a constant. In 2017, Bern\'a and Blasco gave a characterization of these bases using polynomials with constant coefficients. In this paper, we continue this study improving some optimization problems and extending some results to the context of quasi-Banach spaces.Comment: corrected some typo

Automatic plankton quantification using deep features

The study of marine plankton data is vital to monitor the health of the world’s oceans. In recent decades, automatic plankton recognition systems have proved useful to address the vast amount of data collected by specially engineered in situ digital imaging systems. At the beginning, these systems were developed and put into operation using traditional automatic classification techniques, which were fed with handdesigned local image descriptors (such as Fourier features), obtaining quite successful results. In the past few years, there have been many advances in the computer vision community with the rebirth of neural networks. In this paper, we leverage how descriptors computed using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) trained with out-of-domain data are useful to replace hand-designed descriptors in the task of estimating the prevalence of each plankton class in a water sample. To achieve this goal, we have designed a broad set of experiments that show how effective these deep features are when working in combination with state-of-the-art quantification algorithms

The disruption of mitochondrial axonal transport is an early event in neuroinflammation

Background: in brain inflammatory diseases, axonal damage is one of the most critical steps in the cascade that leads to permanent disability. Thus, identifying the initial events triggered by inflammation or oxidative stress that provoke axonal damage is critical for the development of neuroprotective therapies. Energy depletion due to mitochondrial dysfunction has been postulated as an important step in the damage of axons. This prompted us to study the effects of acute inflammation and oxidative stress on the morphology, transport, and function of mitochondria in axons. Methods: mouse cerebellar slice cultures were challenged with either lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) ex vivo for 24 h. Axonal mitochondrial morphology was evaluated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and mitochondrial transportation by time-lapse imaging. In addition, mitochondrial function in the cerebellar slice cultures was analyzed through high-resolution respirometry assays and quantification of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production. Results: both conditions promoted an increase in the size and complexity of axonal itochondria evident in electron microscopy images, suggesting a compensatory response. Such compensation was reflected at the tissue level as increased respiratory activity of complexes I and IV and as a transient increase in ATP production in response to acute inflammation. Notably, time-lapse microscopy indicated that mitochondrial transport (mean velocity) was severely impaired in axons, increasing the proportion of stationary mitochondria in axons after LPS challenge. Indeed, the two challenges used produced different effects: inflammation mostly reducing retrograde transport and oxidative stress slightly enhancing retrograde transportation. Conclusions: neuroinflammation acutely impairs axonal mitochondrial transportation, which would promote an inappropriate delivery of energy throughout axons and, by this way, contribute to axonal damage. Thus, preserving axonal mitochondrial transport might represent a promising avenue to exploit as a therapeutic target for neuroprotection in brain inflammatory diseases like multiple sclerosis