Judging the Book by Its Cover: Phantom Asian America in Monique Truong’s Bitter in the Mouth

[[issue]]2

Nash Implementable Liability Rules for Judgement-Proof Injurers

I provide a complete characterization of Nash implementable allocations of spending in prevention by judgement-proof injurers. This characterization is used to identify the optimal rule that allows for the maximum total spending in prevention. The optimal rule amounts to apply the negligence rule to the "deep-pocket" (or the "victim"), that is the injurer who responds the most to monetary incentives under the strict liability rule, and the strict liability rule to everybody else.Negligence rule, limited liability, multiple injurers, Nash implementation

Investment and Screening under Asymmetric Endogenous Information

This paper provides an analysis of screening contracts in a complete but imperfect information environment as opposed to the usual incomplete information (Bayesian) environment. An agent faces a hold-up situation while making a cost-reducing specific investment that is not observed by the principal. To prevent the hold-up, the agent randomizes his investment strategy and the principal offers a screening contract. The informational rents provided by the equilibrium contract finance the investment. Because uncertainty is endogenous, the equilibrium contract depends only on tastes, technology and on the strategic opportunities of both players.Investment, Hold-up, Asymmetric information

Specific Investment, Absence of Commitment and Observability

I consider the problem of the design of an optimal self-selecting contract scheme for a principal who is buying a good from an agent which has the opportunity of making a cost-reducing unobservable investment prior to the contracting stage. Because of a hold-up problem, the agent will randomizes on his investment level. This forces the principal to spend informational "rents" to achieve screening. In equilibrium, these "rents" match the investment costs and the resulting contract yields a price schedule such that the marginal revenue of the agent equals his long run marginal cost curve. Since the agent's "type" is an endogenously determined characteristic, I argue that informational "rents" should be interpreted as quasi-rents that stand as a payment factor for investment.Specific Investment, Hold-up, Observability, Mechanism Design, Renegotiation, investissement spécifique, observabilité, design de mécanisme, renégociation

Optimal Assignment of Liabilities

I characterize a generalization of the negligence rule to assign compensating damages in an accident involving multiple tortfeasors. These tortfeasors have the opportunity to undertake spending in prevention and the rule is designed to provide them with the best incentives to do so. I study the case where liability is constraint in the sense that the optimal amount of effort (not constrained by liability) cannot be implemented. The optimal multi-player rule is to apply the negligence rule to the most liable player (the "deep-pocket" or the "victim", defined as the player who is the most responsive to monetary incentives under the strict liability rule) and the strict liability rule to everybody else.Negligence rule, limited liability, multiple tortfeasors

The Great Moderation in the euro area: What role have macroeconomic policies played ?

Most OECD countries have experienced a sharp reduction in the volatility of output and inflation over the past three decades. Although this Great Moderation process has stirred considerable interest in economic and policy circles, research on its causes has so far tended to focus on the US economy and has produced relatively little empirical evidence on the euro area or other non-US OECD countries. This paper contributes to fill in the gap by providing a euro-area view of the Great Moderation process and by assessing the euro-area experience against developments in other OECD countries. Its main focus is on the possible role of macroeconomic policies. After reviewing a set of key stylised facts of the fall in output growth volatility in the euro area, the paper discusses the possible channels through which economic policies may have contributed to the Great Moderation and resents the results of an econometric panel analysis of the determinants of output growth volatility. Its main conclusion is that the Great Moderation is not just the result of a long period of luck in the form of milder shocks but can also partly be ascribed to changes in economic policies, in particular improvements in the conduct of monetary policy and, to a lesser extent, more powerful automatic fiscal stabilisers.macroeconomic volatility, great moderation, euro area, Gonzalez Cabanillas, Ruscher

Sequential Screening with Renegotiation

In this paper, I consider the problem of designing an optimal screening contract for a principal facing an agent whose type comes as a sequence that unfolds through time. Formally, the agent has a private ex ante type that stands for the expected value of his private ex post type. Under full commitment, the principal will first try to separate agents with respect to their ex ante type and will subsequently try to separate them with respect to their realized ex post type. While at the last period a traditional instruments is used to separate optimally the agent types, it is shown that such separation is achieved by resorting to a more or less efficient ex ante contracting scheme in the first period. Under no commitment, pooling always occurs with respect to ex ante types while in the case of commitment with renegotiation, the introduction of an ex ante adverse selection problem is shown to have a non trivial effect on the possibility of interim renegotiation in the second period.Adverse selection, Screening, Mechanism design, Renegotiation

Water tunnel studies of dynamic wing flap effects

The flow features developing over a two-element NACA 0012 airfoil, with the rear portion serving as a trailing edge flap, were investigated using dye flow visualization in the NPS water tunnel. The original motivation for the work arose from a need to identify any potential to enhance maneuverability of aircraft to enable smoother landing under adverse flight situations. The flap portion was maneuvered in two different unsteady motion histories by a drive mechanism: a constant pitch rate motion and a sinusoidal oscillatory motion, at Reynolds numbers of 7,500 and 37,500. Comparisons were also drawn with steady flow features under similar conditions. In both unsteady cases, features of dynamic stall flow were observed. Unlike standard airfoil dynamic stall, the unsteady flow over a dynamic flap develops in the wake of the airfoil main element. This introduces many flow complexities such as reversed flows at low flap (deflection) angles of attack, dynamic stall developing from the wrap-around trailing edge flow that also interacts with main element boundary layer flow, unusual behavior for the main element, and flap clearance gap flow. However, since dynamic stall was observed at such flap deflections, it indicates that by differentially oscillating the flaps, it might be possible to develop differential lift on the two sides of a flight vehicle, which may provide better control authority than seen in steady flows. The results could be applied to unmanned air vehicles as well.http://archive.org/details/watertunnelstudi1094549468Lieutenant Commander, Mexican NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

El cuento fant?stico una estrategia did?ctica para fortalecer la competencia interpretativa y la producci?n textual en los estudiantes del grado 4 de la Instituci?n Educativa Escuela Normal Superior sede 4 Dosquebradas Icononzo Tolima

99 p. Recurso Electr?nicoEn la presente investigaci?n titulada el cuento fant?stico una estrategia did?ctica para fortalecer la competencia interpretativa y la producci?n textual en los estudiantes del grado 4 de la Instituci?n Educativa Escuela Normal Superior sede 4 Dosquebradas Icononzo Tolima, le permiti? al grupo investigador realizar una seria de intervenciones pedag?gicas, empleado como herramienta did?ctica el cuento fant?stico con el ?nico prop?sito de fortalecer al educando con relaci?n a la competencia interpretativa, y sin dejar de lado la producci?n textual. Sin duda alguna se debe denotar el modelo pedag?gico que se orienta en dicha instituci?n, ya que este se encuentra acobijado por la modalidad de Escuela Nueva la cual facilito de una manera u otra la aplicaci?n de la investigaci?n. Por otro lado en las intervenciones pedag?gicas se abarcaron tem?ticas relacionadas con las pruebas saber y la ense?anza de estas mismas. Finalmente el grupo investigador evidencio el impacto del proyect? dentro de la comunidad en general (estudiantes, padres de familia) puesto que este permiti? establecer lasos de comunicaci?n entre las misma comunidad, ya que en su mayor?a las intervenciones pedag?gicas apuntaban a la interacci?n entre educando- educador y el n?cleo familiar, de esta manera se pude afirmar que el cometido inicial de la presente investigaci?n se cumpli? a cabalidad dando a los educandos una nueva forma de ver los cuentos fant?sticos y a su vez fortaleciendo la competencia interpretativa y la producci?n textual en estos.In the present research titled the fantastic story a didactic strategy to strengthen the interpretative competence and the textual production in the students of grade 4 of the Educational Institution Normal High School headquarters 4 Dosquebradas Icononzo Tolima, allowed the investigating group to carry out a series of pedagogical interventions , Used as a didactic tool the fantastic story with the sole purpose of strengthening the student in relation to the interpretive competence, and without neglecting textual production. Undoubtedly, we must denote the pedagogical model that is oriented in this institution, since this one is cuddled by the modality of New School which facilitates of one way or another the application of the investigation. On the other hand in the pedagogic interventions were covered subjects related to the tests knowledge and the teaching of these same ones. Finally, the research group showed the impact of the project within the community in general (students, parents) since it allowed to establish communication links between the same community, since in the majority the pedagogical interventions pointed to the interaction between educando- Educator and the family nucleus, in this way it can be affirmed that the initial task of the present investigation was fully fulfilled giving the students a new way of seeing the fantastic stories and at the same time strengthening the interpretive competence and the textual production in them Keywords: interpretation, textual production, fantastic stories, context

Scattering on spin fluctuations in itinerant quantum disordered ferromagnets near quantum phase transition

Taking into account the long-ranged spin interactions due to weak localization effects in disordered itinerant ferromagnets the scattering of both electrons and neutrons on critical spin fluctuations near quantum phase transition is considered. It is shown that for the case of low electron density, when k_F \xi \ll 1, where k_F is the Fermi momentum and \xi is the magnetic correlation length, the transport cross section of electrons is proportional to conventional critical fluctuations in absence of weak localization effects. However, the intensity of the multiple small-angle neutron scattering becomes exponentially small as compared with the intensity of the multiple scattering by conventional critical fluctuations.Comment: 4 pages, latex, no figures; to appear in Phys. Stat. Sol. (b