Empirical Investigations of Inflation Targeting

A growing number of countries have anchored their monetary policy to an explicit numerical rate or range of inflation since such an inflation targeting framework was first adopted by New Zealand in 1989. This paper empirically investigates issues associated with inflation targeting using a dataset of 66 countries for the 1980-2000 period. The paper focuses on two issues. First, which factors are systematically associated with a country's decision to adopt inflation targeting as its monetary framework? Second, does inflation targeting improve the performance of inflation and output? Does the trade-off between inflation and output variability change under such a framework? The empirical results are informative and encouraging. A number of economic conditions, structure, and institution variables are significantly associated with the choice of inflation targeting. Both descriptive statistics and regression results suggest that inflation targeting does play a beneficial role in improving the performance of inflation and output. This paper explores an evident and positive relationship between inflation and output variability, which is different from the view based on the Taylor Curve. But the author finds limited support for the proposition that the adoption of inflation targeting improves the trade-off between inflation and output variability.

RAMSEY FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICY UNDER STICKY PRICES AND LIQUID BONDS

We construct a monetary model where government bonds also provide liquidity service. Liquid government bonds create an endogenous interest-rate spread; affect equilibrium allocations and inflation by altering the Ramsey planner’s sequence of implementability and sticky-price constraints. The trade-off confronting a planner in a sticky-price world, shown in recent literature, between using inflation surprise and labor-income tax is modified by the existence of the liquid bond. We find that the more sticky prices become, the more the planner stabilizes prices and also creates less distortionary and less volatile income taxes by taxing the liquidity service of bonds in order to replicate ex post real state-contingent debt.

Sample Complexity of Sample Average Approximation for Conditional Stochastic Optimization

In this paper, we study a class of stochastic optimization problems, referred to as the \emph{Conditional Stochastic Optimization} (CSO), in the form of \min_{x \in \mathcal{X}} \EE_{\xi}f_\xi\Big({\EE_{\eta|\xi}[g_\eta(x,\xi)]}\Big), which finds a wide spectrum of applications including portfolio selection, reinforcement learning, robust learning, causal inference and so on. Assuming availability of samples from the distribution \PP(\xi) and samples from the conditional distribution \PP(\eta|\xi), we establish the sample complexity of the sample average approximation (SAA) for CSO, under a variety of structural assumptions, such as Lipschitz continuity, smoothness, and error bound conditions. We show that the total sample complexity improves from \cO(d/\eps^4) to \cO(d/\eps^3) when assuming smoothness of the outer function, and further to \cO(1/\eps^2) when the empirical function satisfies the quadratic growth condition. We also establish the sample complexity of a modified SAA, when $\xi$ and $\eta$ are independent. Several numerical experiments further support our theoretical findings. Keywords: stochastic optimization, sample average approximation, large deviations theoryComment: Typo corrected. Reference added. Revision comments handle

A Signaling Model of Quality and Export: with application to dumping

Extending the literature on quality and trade and supported by the empirical evidence obtained from China, this paper demonstrates that in a developing country, a firm’s export to developed countries has a potential signaling effect on domestic consumers’ perception of its product quality. The model analyzes the signaling and imitating strategies of different types of firms in their decisions to export, and characterizes the conditions for the separating, pooling, and hybrid equilibria. Next, the analysis shows that the strategic exporting of low-quality producers under informational asymmetry can result in dumping. Moreover, the model shows that the implementation of antidumping measures of foreign countries can lead to a Pareto improvement for the firms and consumers of the home country under some circumstances.

インフルエンザウイルスRNAポリメラーゼ及びNP-RNA複合体の機能構造の研究

この博士論文は内容の要約のみの公開（または一部非公開）になっています筑波大学 (University of Tsukuba)201

Improvement of Memory Characteristics of Charge-Trapping Memory Device by Using HfO2_2/Al2_2O3_3 Laminate

Current portable memory device relies heavily on flash memory technology for its implementation. New generation of non-volatile memory is likely to replace floating gates, charge-trapping memory currently still suffering from inadequate retention performance and slow programming speeds as well as small memory window. In contrast, the use of HfO$_2$/Al$_2$O$_3$ stacked high-k materials has substantially increased the memory window of memory devices, with a 63% increase relative to pure HfO$_2$ materials. The current goal of up to 80% retention characteristics over a ten-year period has been achieved by adjusting the deposition ratio or dopant material. Process conditions can continue to be investigated in the future to reduce charge loss while maintaining the increased memory window