The real exchange rate process and its real effects: The cases of Mexico and the USA

Exchange rate management is a salient macroeconomic issue, especially in developing countries. In this paper, we study political economy factors that may affect the real exchange rate (RER) process and the real economic effects of the RER. We review recent literature on the effects of elections on the exchange rate, and adapt Ball’s (1992) model to show that uncertainty about the future course of policy may make more appreciated RER’s less predictable. We also review the literature on the real effect of RER appreciations and of RER uncertainty. We then construct a simultaneous GARCH-M model of the joint determination of the RER and output capable of testing our hypotheses simultaneously in a single model. We estimate the model using data first from Mexico, a developing country, and the US. In Mexico we find that elections significantly affect the evolution of the RER, that more appreciated RERs are less predictable, that RER depreciations lower output growth and that RER uncertainty lowers output growth, even when controlling for its wellstudied effect on trade. By contrast, none of these effects are found in the US data.real exchange rate volatility, economic growth, electoral cycle

El papel de la estrategia cambiaria en el comportamiento económico de países en desarrollo: evidencia para 1997

We examine the effect of different exchange rate regimes on the economic behavior of 16 developing countries during 1997. While current account deficits predict well the subsequent degree of currency depreciation, holding constant the deficit, the exchange rate regime in place at the beginning of the year is statistically irrelevant. However, countries with a fixed exchange rate at the beginning of 1997 suffered significantly larger stock market losses (measured in U.S. dollars) than those with floating rates. Given these results, we question the wisdom of encouraging developing countries to create and defend fixed exchange rates.

The Asymmetric Effects of Uncertainty on Inflation and Output Growth

We study the effects of growth volatility and inflation volatility on average rates of output growth and inflation for post-war U.S. data. Our results suggest that growth uncertainty is associated with higher average growth and lower average inflation. Inflation uncertainty is significantly negatively correlated with both output growth and average inflation. Both inflation and growth display evidence of significant asymmetric response to positive and negative shocks of equal magnitude.growth, inflation, uncertainty, asymmetry, generalised impluse response functions

Uncertainty in United States coastal wetland greenhouse gas inventorying

© The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Environmental Research Letters 13 (2018): 115005, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aae157.Coastal wetlands store carbon dioxide (CO2) and emit CO2 and methane (CH4) making them an important part of greenhouse gas (GHG) inventorying. In the contiguous United States (CONUS), a coastal wetland inventory was recently calculated by combining maps of wetland type and change with soil, biomass, and CH4 flux data from a literature review. We assess uncertainty in this developing carbon monitoring system to quantify confidence in the inventory process itself and to prioritize future research. We provide a value-added analysis by defining types and scales of uncertainty for assumptions, burial and emissions datasets, and wetland maps, simulating 10 000 iterations of a simplified version of the inventory, and performing a sensitivity analysis. Coastal wetlands were likely a source of net-CO2-equivalent (CO2e) emissions from 2006–2011. Although stable estuarine wetlands were likely a CO2e sink, this effect was counteracted by catastrophic soil losses in the Gulf Coast, and CH4 emissions from tidal freshwater wetlands. The direction and magnitude of total CONUS CO2e flux were most sensitive to uncertainty in emissions and burial data, and assumptions about how to calculate the inventory. Critical data uncertainties included CH4 emissions for stable freshwater wetlands and carbon burial rates for all coastal wetlands. Critical assumptions included the average depth of soil affected by erosion events, the method used to convert CH4 fluxes to CO2e, and the fraction of carbon lost to the atmosphere following an erosion event. The inventory was relatively insensitive to mapping uncertainties. Future versions could be improved by collecting additional data, especially the depth affected by loss events, and by better mapping salinity and inundation gradients relevant to key GHG fluxes. Social Media Abstract: US coastal wetlands were a recent and uncertain source of greenhouse gasses because of CH4 and erosion.Financial support was provided primarily by NASA Carbon Monitoring Systems (NNH14AY67I) and the USGS Land Carbon Program, with additional support from The Smithsonian Institution, The Coastal Carbon Research Coordination Network (DEB-1655622), and NOAA Grant: NA16NMF4630103

Globalization, Roundaboutness, and Relative Wages

We depart from the trade and wages literature and its emphasis on North-South trade, examining North-North by developing the basic linkages between trade-based integration and relative wages in an Ethier-type division of labor model. Using this model we identify a formal relationship between international trade, productivity, and wages. We then examine the trivariate relationship between trade, growth in total factor productivity (TFP), and the skill premium in a vector autoregression framework. We find evidence of a long-run relationship between growth in intermediate goods and changes in TFP. Controlling for this relationship we also find a positive relationship between trade and the skill-premium

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Hα and Hβ reverberation measurements from first-year spectroscopy and photometry

Funding: UK Sciences and Technology Facilities Council STFC grant ST/M001296/1 (KH).We present reverberation mapping results from the first year of combined spectroscopic and photometric observations of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project. We successfully recover reverberation time delays between the g+i band emission and the broad Hβ emission line for a total of 44 quasars, and for the broad Hα emission line in 18 quasars. Time delays are computed using the JAVELIN and CREAM software and the traditional interpolated cross-correlation function (ICCF): using well-defined criteria, we report measurements of 32 Hβ and 13 Hα lags with JAVELIN, 42 Hβ and 17 Hα lags with CREAM, and 16 Hβ and eight Hα lags with the ICCF. Lag values are generally consistent among the three methods, though we typically measure smaller uncertainties with JAVELIN and CREAM than with the ICCF, given the more physically motivated light curve interpolation and more robust statistical modeling of the former two methods. The median redshift of our Hβ-detected sample of quasars is 0.53, significantly higher than that of the previous reverberation mapping sample. We find that in most objects, the time delay of the Hα emission is consistent with or slightly longer than that of Hβ. We measure black hole masses using our measured time delays and line widths for these quasars. These black hole mass measurements are mostly consistent with expectations based on the local – relationship, and are also consistent with single-epoch black hole mass measurements. This work increases the current sample size of reverberation-mapped active galaxies by about two-thirds and represents the first large sample of reverberation mapping observations beyond the local universe (z < 0.3).PostprintPeer reviewe

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected

Natural climate solutions for the United States

© The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Science Advances 4 (2018): eaat1869, doi:10.1126/sciadv.aat1869.Limiting climate warming to <2°C requires increased mitigation efforts, including land stewardship, whose potential in the United States is poorly understood. We quantified the potential of natural climate solutions (NCS)—21 conservation, restoration, and improved land management interventions on natural and agricultural lands—to increase carbon storage and avoid greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. We found a maximum potential of 1.2 (0.9 to 1.6) Pg CO2e year−1, the equivalent of 21% of current net annual emissions of the United States. At current carbon market prices (USD 10 per Mg CO2e), 299 Tg CO2e year−1 could be achieved. NCS would also provide air and water filtration, flood control, soil health, wildlife habitat, and climate resilience benefits.This study was made possible by funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. C.A.W. and H.G. acknowledge financial support from NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System program (NNH14ZDA001N-CMS) under award NNX14AR39G. S.D.B. acknowledges support from the DOE’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research Program under the award DE-SC0014416. J.W.F. acknowledges financial support from the Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research program under National Science Foundation grant no. DEB-1237517

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Key Results

We present the final data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping (SDSS-RM) project, a precursor to the SDSS-V Black Hole Mapper Reverberation Mapping program. This data set includes 11-year photometric and 7-year spectroscopic light curves for 849 broad-line quasars over a redshift range of 0.1<z<4.5 and a luminosity range of Lbol=1E44-47.5 erg/s, along with spectral and variability measurements. We report 23, 81, 125, and 110 reverberation mapping lags (relative to optical continuum variability) for broad Halpha, Hbeta, MgII and CIV using the SDSS-RM sample, spanning much of the luminosity and redshift ranges of the sample. Using 30 low-redshift RM AGNs with dynamical-modeling black hole masses, we derive a new estimate of the average virial factor of =0.62+-0.07 for the line dispersion measured from the RMS spectrum. The intrinsic scatter of individual virial factors is 0.31+-0.07 dex, indicating a factor of two systematic uncertainty in RM black hole masses. Our lag measurements reveal significant R-L relations for Hbeta and MgII at high redshift, consistent with the latest measurements based on heterogeneous samples. While we are unable to robustly constrain the slope of the R-L relation for CIV given the limited dynamical range in luminosity, we found substantially larger scatter in CIV lags at fixed L1350. Using the SDSS-RM lag sample, we derive improved single-epoch (SE) mass recipes for Hbeta, MgII and CIV, which are consistent with their respective RM masses as well as between the SE recipes from two different lines, over the luminosity range probed by our sample. The new Hbeta and MgII recipes are approximately unbiased estimators at given RM masses, but there are systematic biases in the CIV recipe. The intrinsic scatter of SE masses around RM masses is ~0.45 dex for Hbeta and MgII, increasing to ~0.58 dex for CIV.Comment: 33 pages. Data products available at ftp://quasar.astro.illinois.edu/public/sdssrm/final_result