Endogenous Private Transfer and Real Exchange Rate Dynamics in a Two-Sector Dependent Economy

Government to government transfers are treated understandably as exogenous in open economy macro models. Even private transfer like remittances are treated as exogenous in the extant literature. In this paper we examine the effects of endogenous private transfer (remittances) on the real exchange rates using a dynamic two-sector dependent economy model. We examine the effects of demand and supply shocks and found that the dynamic patterns for real exchange rates depends on endogeneity of the transfer and the factor intensity of the traded and non-traded sectors

Letting Go: Conceptualizing intervention de-implementation in public health and social service settings

The discontinuation of interventions that should be stopped, or de-implementation, has emerged as a novel line of inquiry within dissemination and implementation science. As this area grows in human services research, like public health and social work, theory is needed to help guide scientific endeavors. Given the infancy of de-implementation, this conceptual narrative provides a definition and criteria for determining if an intervention should be de-implemented. We identify three criteria for identifying interventions appropriate for de-implementation: (a) interventions that are not effective or harmful, (b) interventions that are not the most effective or efficient to provide, and (c) interventions that are no longer necessary. Detailed, well-documented examples illustrate each of the criteria. We describe de-implementation frameworks, but also demonstrate how other existing implementation frameworks might be applied to de-implementation research as a supplement. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of de-implementation in the context of other stages of implementation, like sustainability and adoption; next steps for de-implementation research, especially identifying interventions appropriate for de-implementation in a systematic manner; and highlight special ethical considerations to advance the field of de-implementation research

Accounting for City Real Exchange Rate Changes in India

We examine the role of non-traded goods in the city real exchange rate changes in India. Using the Mean Squared Error (MSE) decomposition we find that non-traded goods explain about 30% of the variation of the Indian city real exchange rate changes, rather than the small amount found in other cross-country studies. We also analyze the role of consumption elasticity of substitution between traded and non-traded goods

Price Convergence Among Indian Cities: A Cointegration Approach

Price dynamics in Indian cities were examined using cointegration analysis. We identified and calculated a common trend for prices in 25 major cities in India. Impulse response functions were obtained to calculate the rates of convergence to the prices and we found that the half-life of any shock is very small for Indian cities. Although a close to three-month half-life seems too fast, there is some indication in the literature that half-life can be much smaller than the conventional rates of 3 to 5 years. We have calculated half-life using the panel unit root method, and found that estimates of half-life from cointegration analysis provide a faster convergence rate than estimates using the panel unit root method. We also analyzed how shock can be transmitted from one city to another and found no systematic behavior of transmission from one city to another

Oil Prices and Remittances: Impacts of Oil Price Shocks on the Macroeconomy of a Small, Oil Importing, and Labor Exporting Country

We examine the dynamic effects of an oil price shock on a small open economy that imports oil and exports labor to the oil exporting countries. We find that the reduction in output resulting from the oil price shock is at least partially mitigated by an accompanying increase in remittances from the expatriated labor. We also show that with a jump in oil price, domestic labor use decreases and labor export increases, oil consumption falls, and steady-state capital and consumption fall. However, consumption may intially jump up depending on the relative sizes of the negative supply effect and the positive remittance effect. Although consumption will eventually fall below the pre-shock level as steady state is approached, the initial consumption increase may be sufficiently large and long lasting to make the shock scenario welfare improving

More Sources of Bias in Half-life Estimation

Biases in measurement of dynamics of time series from calculation of half- life received more attention lately. In particular, this issue amplifies the controversy surrounding the purchasing power parity doctrine. Cross-sectional and temporal aggregations along with mis-specified models were identified before as sources of this bias. We identified a few other sources of bias, namely, sampling error, wrong approximations, and structural breaks in time series. These sources should receive adequate attention for a sound measure of half-life

Macroeconomic Interdependence and Integration in Africa

There is a renewed interest in the debate on integration in Africa since the creation of the Africa Union in 2002. This study investigates the feasibility of a full-fledge union in Africa from an economic standpoint. Towards this goal, we examine both the contemporaneous and dynamic relations in the short- and long-run among six key macro variables--consumer price level, gross domestic product, consumption, investment, trade flows and government expenditures--in eight African countries. In the quarterly data from 1976 to 2005, we observe the existence of common trends in real output, price level, private consumption, government consumption, investment and trade flows among these eight countries. In addition, we also note that there exist common cycles in real output, investment and trade flows for these countries. These two critical findings indicate the existence of some macroeconomic interdependence among these countries. Thus, the chances for success of integration in Africa driven by these eight countries are appreciable

Currency Substitution in Selected African Countries

This study investigates the presence of currency substitution in eight African countries--Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Tunisia and Zambia--for the period 1976 to 2005 using both regional and US dollar as anchor currencies. We find that currency substitution is prevalent in Ghana and Nigeria when CFA franc is used as an anchor currency. However, when US dollar is used as an anchor currency there is no evidence of currency substitution in Ghana but we still observe the presence of currency substitution in Nigeria. Also we find presence of currency substitution in South Africa but not in Egypt when the US dollar is the anchor currency. For Kenya, Tunisia and Zambia there is no evidence of currency substitution irrespective of the anchor currencies considered. In the case of Morocco, we observe no evidence of currency substitution when the Egyptian pound is used as anchor currency but there is weak evidence of currency substitution when the US dollar is considered

Desalination Performance of Nano porous Mos2_2 Membrane on Different Salts of Saline Water: A Molecular Dynamics Study

The freshwater crisis is a growing concern and a pressing problem for the world because of the increasing population, civilization, and rapid industrial growth. The water treatment facilities are able to supply less than 1% of the total water demand. Water desalination can be a potential solution to deal with this alarming issue. Researchers have been exploring for quite some time to find novel nano-enhanced membranes and manufacturing techniques to increase the efficiency of the desalination process. Graphene and graphene modified membranes showed huge potential as desalination membranes for comparatively easier synthesis process and higher ion rejection rate than conventional filter materials. Currently, single-layer Mos$_2$ has been discovered to have the same potential of water permeability and ion rejection rate as graphene membrane in a more energy-efficient way. For almost analogous nano porous structure of the graphene membrane, almost 70% of the higher water flux is obtained from the Mos$_2$ membrane. In this work, it has been shown that nano porous Mos$_2$ membranes provide a promising result for desalinating other salts of seawater alongside NaCl. We have also observed the effect of variations in ions, pore size, and pressure on water permeation and ion rejection rates in the water desalination process. In this study, water permeation increased significantly by increasing the pore area from 20{\AA} to 80{\AA}. The rate of water filtration increases in proportion to both applied pressure and pore size, sacrificing the ion rejection rate for the type of ions studied. A combination of salt ions in the saline water for desalination has also been studied, where the rejection rates for the different ions are separately represented for various applied pressures. For seawater, the Mos$_2$ membrane has showed quite promising performance in the study of ion variation