El fin del carnavalismo o la creación del Corpus Lucianeum

In a key passage for the understanding of Lucian’s work, the Fisherman 25– 27, the philosopher Diogenes of Sinope complains that Parrhesiades, a Lucianlike authorial figure, mocks philosophers not within the fixed boundaries of a carnivalesque festival, as Old Comedy used to do, and to which Lucian’s work is otherwise highly indebted, but by means of his constantly published writings. This statement is even more relevant, since the Fisherman belongs to a group of texts which show clear cross-references to other writings within the corpus (such as Essays in Portraiture Defended, Apology, and The Runaways). By creating indirect authorial commentaries and intratextual references throughout his œuvre—a hidden (auto)biobibliography, as it were—, Lucian thus reinforces the idea of an organic literary work and the coherency of his corpus which is—notwithstanding its thematic variatio—well-publicized and far away from carnivalesque exceptionality. In this way, the aesthetics of perpetual transgression is in a unique way related to the construction of authorial self-referentiality in Lucian’s satires.En un pasaje clave para entender la obra de Luciano, Piscator 25–27, el filósofo Diógenes de Sinope se queja de que Parresíades, una figura de autoría parecida a Luciano, no se burla de los filósofos dentro de los límites carnavalescos del festival, como lo hacía la Comedia Vieja, a la que tanto debe la obra de Luciano, sino mediante constantes publicaciones de escritos. Esta afirmación adquiere aún mayor importancia por el hecho de que el Piscator pertenece a un grupo de textos que muestra evidentes referencias cruzadas a otros escritos del corpus (como Pro imaginibus, Apologia o Fugitivi). Al crear indirectamente comentarios de autoría y referencias intertextuales a través de su obra ‘multitemática’ – por así decir, una (auto)bibliobiografía escondida –, Luciano refuerza la idea de una obra literaria orgánica y un corpus coherente que se encuentra – a pesar de la variatio temática – bien divulgado y lejos de la excepcionalidad carnavalesca. Así, la estética de la trasgresión perpetua está relacionada de manera única con la construcción de la auto-referencialidad como autor en las sátiras de Luciano

"Europeanization of the core executive in the transition from circumstances of EU accession to full EU membership"

Only recently have the direct and indirect ‘European’ impacts (of political outcomes at the European level) on domestic political systems started to be studied (i.e. Spanou, 1998; Bulmer and Burch, 1998 and 2001; Kassim, Peters and Wright, eds. 2000; Goetz and Hix, eds. 2001; Knill, 2001; Schneider and Aspinwall, eds. 2001; Goetz, ed., 2001; Laffan, 2001b). For the purpose of our paper, we understand Europeanization processes as the impacts of EU integration on specific countries' political institution-building and institutional adjustments including constitutional and administrative law, as well as on how the political system is organized and operated. This paper focuses on one of the three alternative perspectives of the ‘top-down’ approach to studying the processes of Europeanization as defined by Goetz (2001), namely the linkage perspective. Obviously, for recent new EU member states it is the national administrative adjustments for negotiating accession with the EU that have so far prevailed over national administrative adjustments made in the circumstances of (very recent) full EU membership. Our comparative research of three EU accession states/recent new EU member states, in line with a dynamic view, include Estonia, Hungary and Slovenia. While taking some key common features of the selected countries into account, the countries’ idiosyncrasies including variations in the institutional adaptation of their core executives relying on research findings in the framework of the European project ‘Organizing for Enlargement’ are investigated. Preliminary comparative research findings and tentative conclusions on variables that may cause variations in the adaptation of national administrations to the European integration challenges in the three (otherwise in some respects) relatively similar countries are presented

Economic Development and Technology Diffusion

I first present a New Economic Geography model and analyze the impact of R&D on economic development of integrating countries. I find that technology diffusion and skilled labor migration stimulates economic development through fix cost reduction on a firm level. As the inclusion of foreign technology matters for structurally backward countries, I second use time series data for Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland representing European integration during the 1980s and 1990s. In considering three different technology diffusion channels, estimates, however, reduces to Portugal as test procedures confirm nonstationarity and cointegration only for this country. I find empirical evidence for bilateral trade as a diffusion channel but not for FDI or foreign patents.Economic Geography, Agglomeration, Technology Diffusion, Nonstationary Time Series

Simple approximations for option pricing under mean reversion and stochastic volatility

This paper provides simple approximations for evaluating option prices and implied volatilities under stochastic volatility. Simple recursive formulae are derived that can easily be implemented in spreadsheets. The traditional random walk assumption, dominating in the analysis of financial markets, is compared with mean reversion which is often more relevant in commodity markets. Deterministic components in the mean and volatility are taken into consideration to allow for seasonality, another frequent aspect of commodity markets. The stochastic volatility is suitably modelled by GARCH. An application to electricity options shows that the choice between a random walk and a mean reversion model can have strong effects for predictions of implied volatilities even if the two models are statistically close to each other.seasonality;stochastic volatility;derivatives;mean reversion;energy markets;spreadsheets

Agglomeration, Migration and Tax Competition

This paper focuses on tax competition and international migration in R&D sectors as agglomeration forces and trade restrictions are present. Economic integration forces industrialized countries to adapt their tax rates in order to keep their industrial status quo. Unlike the often discussed "race to the bottom" result, taxes are increased and the provision of public goods is maintained. It is also proven that taxes that redistribute between mobile and immobile labor lead to a tax burden that favors mobile labor. As integration continues, the cutback of factor mobility restrictions supports economic development in industrialized countries at the expense of structurally backward regions. --Economic Geography,Agglomeration,Migration,Tax Competition

Cation distribution studies in clinopyroxenes, olivines and feldspars using Moessbauer spectroscopy of Fe 57 Final technical progress report, period ending 31 Jan. 1971

Cation distribution in clinopyroxenes, olivines, and feldspars separated from Apollo 11 and 12 rocks determined with Mossbauer spectroscopy of Fe-5

Temporal aggregation of multivariate GARCH processes

This paper derives results for the temporal aggregation of multivariate GARCH processes in the general vector specification. It is shown that the class of weak multivariate GARCH processes is closed under temporal aggregation. Fourth moment characteristics turn out to be crucial for the low frequency dynamics for both stock and flow variables. The framework used in this paper can easily be extended to investigate joint temporal and contemporaneous aggregation. Discussing causality in volatility, I find that there is not much room for spurious instantaneous causality in multivariate GARCH processes, but that spurious Granger causality will be more common however numerically insignificant. Forecasting volatility, it is generally advisable to aggregate forecasts of the disaggregate series rather than forecasting the aggregated series directly, and unlike for VARMA processes the advantage does not diminish for large forecast horizons. Finally, results are derived for the distribution of multivariate realized volatility if the high frequency process follows multivariate GARCH. A numerical example illustrates some of the resultsmultivariate GARCH, temporal aggregation, causality in volatility, forecasting volatility, realized volatility