Computation of Business Cycle Models: A Comparison of Numerical Methods

We compare the numerical methods that are most widely applied in the computation of the standard business cycle model with flexible labor. The numerical techniques imply economically insignificant differences with regard to business cycle summary statistics except for the volatility of investment. Furthermore, these results are robust with regard to the choice of the functional form of the utility function and the model’s parameterization. In conclusion, the simplest and fastest method, the log-linearization of the model around the steady state, is found to be most convenient and appropriate for the standard business cycle model.log-linearization, projection methods, extended path, value function iteration, parameterized expectations, genetic search

Portfolio saliency and ministerial turnover: Dynamics in Scandinavian postwar cabinets

© 2013 The Author(s) Scandinavian Political Studies © 2013 Nordic Political Science Association. This is the accepted version of the following article: Hansen, M. E., Klemmensen, R., Hobolt, S. B. and Bäck, H. (2013), Portfolio Saliency and Ministerial Turnover: Dynamics in Scandinavian Postwar Cabinets. Scandinavian Political Studies, 36: 227–248, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9477.12004/abstract.Why do certain ministers remain in their post for years while others have their time in office cut short? Drawing on the broader literature on portfolio allocation, this article argues that the saliency of individual portfolios shapes ministerial turnover. The main argument is that ministerial dismissals are less likely to occur the higher the saliency attributed to the ministerial portfolio since ministers appointed to important posts are more likely to have been through extensive screening before appointment. Importantly, it is also posited in the article that the effect of portfolio salience is conditioned by government approval ratings: when government ratings are on the decline, prime ministers are less likely to reshuffle or fire important ministers than when approval ratings are improving. To test these claims, Cox proportional hazards models are applied to a new dataset on ministerial turnover in Scandinavia during the postwar period. The results strongly support the proposition that portfolio saliency matters for ministerial survival, and that this effect is moderated by government popularity

High-throughput Proteomics Identifies THEMIS2 as Independent Biomarker of Treatment-free Survival in Untreated CLL

It remains challenging in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) to distinguish between patients with favorable and unfavorable time-to-first treatment (TTFT). Additionally, the downstream protein correlates of well-known molecular features of CLL are not always clear. To address this, we selected 40 CLL patients with TTFT ≤24 months and compared their B cell intracellular protein expression with 40 age- and sex-matched CLL patients with TTFT &gt;24 months using mass spectrometry. In total, 3268 proteins were quantified in the cohort. Immunoglobulin heavy-chain variable (IGHV) mutational status and trisomy 12 were most impactful on the CLL proteome. Comparing cases to controls, 5 proteins were significantly upregulated, whereas 3 proteins were significantly downregulated. Of these, only THEMIS2, a signaling protein acting downstream of the B cell receptor, was significantly associated with TTFT, independently of IGHV and TP53 mutational status (hazard ratio, 2.49 [95% confidence interval, 1.62-3.84]; P &lt; 0.001). This association was validated on the mRNA and protein level by quantitative polymerase chain reaction and ELISA, respectively. Analysis of 2 independently generated RNA sequencing and mass spectrometry datasets confirmed the association between THEMIS2 expression and clinical outcome. In conclusion, we present a comprehensive characterization of the proteome of untreated CLL and identify THEMIS2 expression as a putative biomarker of TTFT.</p

Right here, right now: situated interventions to change consumer habits

Consumer behavior-change interventions have traditionally encouraged consumers to form conscious intentions, but in the past decade it has been shown that while these interventions have a medium-to-large effect in changing intentions, they have a much smaller effect in changing behavior. Consumers often do not act in accordance with their conscious intentions because situational cues in the immediate environment automatically elicit learned, habitual behaviors. It has therefore been suggested that researchers refocus their efforts on developing interventions that target unconscious, unintentional influences on behavior, such as cue-behavior (“habit”) associations. To develop effective consumer behavior-change interventions, however, we argue that it is first important to understand how consumer experiences are represented in memory, in order to successfully target the situational cues that most strongly predict engagement in habitual behavior. In this article, we present a situated cognition perspective of habits and discuss how the situated cognition perspective extends our understanding of how consumer experiences are represented in memory, and the processes through which these situational representations can be retrieved in order to elicit habitual consumer behaviors. Based on the principles of situated cognition, we then discuss five ways that interventions could change consumer habits by targeting situational cues in the consumer environment and suggest how existing interventions utilizing these behavior-change strategies could be improved by integrating the principles of the situated cognition approach

Entrepreneurial Activity, Self-Perception and Gender

Drawing on Bem's psychological theory of self-perception, this paper presents and tests a model that examines the impact of gender and entrepreneurial activity on entrepreneurial self-perception. Based on a sample of alumni of a large Midwestern U.S. university, regression techniques are used to identify those activities associated with self-perceptions of entrepreneurship, as well as direct and indirect effects of gender. Results support the model of both direct and indirect effects of gender. The paper provides insights into gender issues in entrepreneurship as well as the definition of entrepreneurship in general.entrepreneurship;gender;behavior;self-perception

Impurity-induced orbital magnetization in a Rashba electron gas

We investigate the induced orbital magnetization density in a Rashba electron gas with magnetic impurities. Relying on classical electrodynamics, we obtain this quantity through the bound currents composed of a paramagnetic and a diamagnetic-like contribution which emerge from the spin-orbit interaction. Similar to Friedel charge ripples, the bound currents and the orbital magnetization density oscillate as function of distance away from the impurity with characteristic wavelengths defined by the Fermi energy and the strength of the Rashba spin-orbit interaction. The net induced orbital magnetization was found to be of the order of magnitude of its spin counterpart. Besides the exploration of the impact of the electronic filling of the impurity states, we investigate and analyze the orbital magnetization induced by an equilateral frustrated trimer in various non-collinear magnetic states. On the one hand, we confirm that non-vanishing three-spin chiralities generate a finite orbital magnetization density. On the other hand, higher order contributions lead to multiple-spin chiralities affecting non-trivially and significantly the overall magnitude and sign of the orbital magnetization