The Mexican Peso Crisis: Sudden Death or Death Foretold?

We argue that allowing for the possibility of a self-fulfilling panic helps understand several features of the recent Mexican crisis. Self-fulfilling expectations became decisive in generating a panic only after the government ran down gross reserves and ran up short-term dollar debt. We present a simple model to explain how and why multiple equilibria can occur for some levels of reserves or debt, but not for others.MEXICO;MONEY;CURRENCIES;MONETARY POLICY;EXCHANGE RATE

Evaluating the feasibility of using smartphones for ITS safety applications

“©2013 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Driving security and comfort can be improved by applying Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) proposals. The low adoption rate of new ITS hardware and software products is slowing down the market introduction of these solutions. In this paper we present a driving safety application for smartphones based on a warning dissemination protocol called eMDR. The use of smartphones minimizes the hardware cost and eliminates most of the adoption barriers; users will no longer have to install new dedicated devices in their vehicles. Instead, they will simply have to install an application in their smartphone. Our application is integrated with a Navigation System which provides access to road maps, current location, and route information. We analyzed the behavior of the wireless channel and the GPS location service under different conditions to assess the feasibility of our proposal. Results showed that, in C2C communications, smartphones are able to provide a reasonable degree of connectivity, and that the degree of precision achieved is enough for certain types of driving safety applications.This work was partially supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain, under Grants TIN2011-27543-C03-01 and BES-2012-052673.Tornell, SM.; Tavares De Araujo Cesariny Calafate, CM.; Cano Escribá, JC.; Manzoni, P.; Fogue, M.; Martínez, FJ. (2013). Evaluating the feasibility of using smartphones for ITS safety applications. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/VTCSpring.2013.6692553

Managerial delegation in a dynamic renewable resource oligopoly

I propose a differential oligopoly game of resource extraction under (quasi-static) open-loop and nonlinear feedback strategies, where firms are managerial and two alternative types of delegation contract are considered. Under open-loop information, delegation expands the residual steady state resource stock. Conversely, under nonlinear feedback information the outcome depends on the structure of managerial incentives. If sales are used, once again delegation favours resource preservation. On the contrary, if market shares are included in the delegation contract, this combines with an underlying voracity effect in shrinking the steady state volume of the resource

International Coercion, Emulation and Policy Diffusion: Market-Oriented Infrastructure Reforms, 1977-1999

Why do some countries adopt market-oriented reforms such as deregulation, privatization and liberalization of competition in their infrastructure industries while others do not? Why did the pace of adoption accelerate in the 1990s? Building on neo-institutional theory in sociology, we argue that the domestic adoption of market-oriented reforms is strongly influenced by international pressures of coercion and emulation. We find robust support for these arguments with an event-history analysis of the determinants of reform in the telecommunications and electricity sectors of as many as 205 countries and territories between 1977 and 1999. Our results also suggest that the coercive effect of multilateral lending from the IMF, the World Bank or Regional Development Banks is increasing over time, a finding that is consistent with anecdotal evidence that multilateral organizations have broadened the scope of the “conditionality” terms specifying market-oriented reforms imposed on borrowing countries. We discuss the possibility that, by pressuring countries into policy reform, cross-national coercion and emulation may not produce ideal outcomes.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40099/3/wp713.pd

Genetic Dissection of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Signaling during Luteinizing Hormone-Induced Oocyte Maturation

Recent evidence that luteinizing hormone (LH) stimulation of ovulatory follicles causes transactivation of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) has provided insights into the mechanisms of ovulation. However, the complete array of signals that promote oocyte reentry into the meiotic cell cycle in the follicle are still incompletely understood. To elucidate the signaling downstream of EGFR involved in oocyte maturation, we have investigated the LH responses in granulosa cells with targeted ablation of EGFR. Oocyte maturation and ovulation is disrupted when EGFR expression is progressively reduced. In granulosa cells from mice with either global or granulosa cell-specific disruption of EGFR signaling, LH-induced phosphorylation of MAPK3/1, p38MAPK, and connexin-43 is impaired. Although the LH-induced decrease in cGMP is EGFR-dependent in wild type follicles, LH still induces a decrease in cGMP in Egfrdelta/f Cyp19-Cre follicles. Thus compensatory mechanisms appear activated in the mutant. Spatial propagation of the LH signal in the follicle also is dependent on the EGF network, and likely is important for the control of signaling to the oocyte. Thus, multiple signals and redundant pathways contribute to regulating oocyte reentry into the cell cycle

GRCBox: Extending Smartphone Connectivity in Vehicular Networks

The low penetration of connectivity-enabled OBUs is delaying the deployment of Vehicular Networks (VNs), and therefore the development of Vehicular Delay Tolerant Network (VDTN) applications, among others. In this paper we present GRCBox, an architecture based on RaspberryPi that allows integrating smartphones in VNs. GRCBox is based on a low-cost device that combines several pieces of software to provide ad-hoc and multi-interface connectivity to smartphones. Using GRCBox each application can choose the interface for its data flows, which increases flexibility and will allow developers to easily implement applications based on ad-hoc connectivity, such as VDTN applications.This work was partially supported by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, Spain, under Grants TIN2011-27543-C03-01 and BES-2012-052673, and by the European Commission under Svagata.eu, the Erasmus Mundus Programme, Action 2 (EMA2).Martínez Tornell, S.; Patra, S.; Tavares De Araujo Cesariny Calafate, CM.; Cano Escribá, JC.; Manzoni, P. (2015). GRCBox: Extending Smartphone Connectivity in Vehicular Networks. International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks. 2015:1-13. doi:10.1155/2015/478064S1132015Hartenstein, H., & Laberteaux, K. P. (2008). A tutorial survey on vehicular ad hoc networks. IEEE Communications Magazine, 46(6), 164-171. doi:10.1109/mcom.2008.4539481Wu, H., Palekar, M., Fujimoto, R., Guensler, R., Hunter, M., Lee, J., & Ko, J. (2005). An empirical study of short range communications for vehicles. Proceedings of the 2nd ACM international workshop on Vehicular ad hoc networks - VANET ’05. doi:10.1145/1080754.1080769Jerbi, M., Senouci, S.-M., & Haj, M. A. (2007). Extensive Experimental Characterization of Communications in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks within Different Environments. 2007 IEEE 65th Vehicular Technology Conference - VTC2007-Spring. doi:10.1109/vetecs.2007.533Lee, K. C., Lee, S., Cheung, R., Lee, U., & Gerla, M. (2007). First Experience with CarTorrent in a Real Vehicular Ad Hoc Network Testbed. 2007 Mobile Networking for Vehicular Environments. doi:10.1109/move.2007.4300814Giordano, E., Tomatis, A., Ghosh, A., Pau, G., & Gerla, M. (2008). C-VeT An Open Research Platform for VANETs: Evaluation of Peer to Peer Applications in Vehicular Networks. 2008 IEEE 68th Vehicular Technology Conference. doi:10.1109/vetecf.2008.462Cesana, M., Fratta, L., Gerla, M., Giordano, E., & Pau, G. (2010). C-VeT the UCLA campus vehicular testbed: Integration of VANET and Mesh networks. 2010 European Wireless Conference (EW). doi:10.1109/ew.2010.5483535Santa, J., Tsukada, M., Ernst, T., & Gomez-Skarmeta, A. F. (2009). Experimental analysis of multi-hop routing in vehicular ad-hoc networks. 2009 5th International Conference on Testbeds and Research Infrastructures for the Development of Networks & Communities and Workshops. doi:10.1109/tridentcom.2009.4976248Paula, M. C. G., Isento, J. N., Dias, J. A., & Rodrigues, J. J. P. C. (2011). A real-world VDTN testbed for advanced vehicular services and applications. 2011 IEEE 16th International Workshop on Computer Aided Modeling and Design of Communication Links and Networks (CAMAD). doi:10.1109/camad.2011.5941108Campbell, A., & Choudhury, T. (2012). From Smart to Cognitive Phones. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 11(3), 7-11. doi:10.1109/mprv.2012.41Vandenberghe, W., Moerman, I., & Demeester, P. (2011). On the feasibility of utilizing smartphones for vehicular ad hoc networking. 2011 11th International Conference on ITS Telecommunications. doi:10.1109/itst.2011.6060061Sawada, D., Sato, M., Uehara, K., & Murai, J. (2011). iDANS: A platform for disseminating information on a VANET consisting of smartphone nodes. 2011 11th International Conference on ITS Telecommunications. doi:10.1109/itst.2011.6060062Tornell, S. M., Calafate, C. T., Cano, J.-C., Manzoni, P., Fogue, M., & Martinez, F. J. (2013). Evaluating the Feasibility of Using Smartphones for ITS Safety Applications. 2013 IEEE 77th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring). doi:10.1109/vtcspring.2013.6692553Mitchell, G. (2012). The Raspberry Pi single-board computer will revolutionise computer science teaching. Engineering & Technology, 7(3), 26-26. doi:10.1049/et.2012.0300Fielding R. T.Architectural styles and the design of network-based software architectures [Ph.D. thesis]2000University of Californi

Instability of Democracy as Resource Curse

We suggest a dynamic game theoretic model to explain why resource abundance may lead to instability of democracy. Stationary Markov perfect equilibria of this game with four players – Politician, Oligarch, Autocrat and Public (voters) – are analyzed. Choosing a rate of resource rent tax, potential Autocrat competes with conventional Politician for the office, and Oligarch, the owner of the resource wealth, bribes Politician to influence her decisions. Actual Autocrat's tax policy may be different from the announced one. If the difference is large, then Public may revolt or Oligarch may organize a coup to throw Autocrat down. It is shown that the probability of democracy preservation is decreasing in the amount of resources if the institutional quality is low enough. It does not depend on the amount of resources, if the institutional quality is higher than a threshold. The level of the threshold, however, depends positively on the resource wealth. We have found also that under very low institutional quality, a paradoxical effect takes place: the probability of democracy preservation may decrease with small improvements of institutional quality. It is shown as well that Oligarch earns larger part of rent under democracy than under autocracy. This result conforms to empirical observation which is demonstrated in the paper: under low quality of institutions, democratization leads to higher inequality and inequality entails worsening of the attitude to democracy