Harvard, the Chicago tradition, and the quantity theory : a reply to James Ahiakpor

James Ahiakpor's critique of our 2002 work on the relationship between a certain 1932 Harvard memorandum on antidepression policies and the 1932 Harris Foundation manifesto dealing with the same issues misses the significance of these documents, and of the relationships between them, both for the literature of the time, and for later debates about the origins of 1930s Chicago ideas about monetary economics. He is correct to locate these documents in a more general quantity theoretic tradition, but his discussion here is marred by a serious misunderstanding of the so-called forced saving doctrine and its place in that tradition. Finally, Ahiakpor fails to appreciate that the absence of positive policy proposals from the 1934 Harvard studies of The Economics of the Recovery Program, a point that he himself notes, is a major contributing factor to that book's mediocrity

Magnetic characterization of perpendicular recording media

In this paper, we describe techniques for the magnetic characterization of perpendicular recording media. Such measurements made using traditional techniques, such as the vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM) and alternating gradient force magnetometer (AGFM), have to be corrected for the sample shape demagnetizing factor, which is often found not to be equal to -4p. For measurements other than the simple hysteresis loop, such as remanence curves, this correction must be carried out in real time and we describe the method by which this can be achieved and the process for achieving the correct demagnetization of perpendicular films prior to measurements of the isothermal remanent magnetization curve. A further complication is that real perpendicular media have a soft underlayer beneath the recording layer, which swamps and confuses signals from instruments such as VSM or AGFM. Hence, we describe the construction and use of a magnetooptical Kerr effect magnetometer, which does not penetrate significantly into the soft layer and enables the perpendicular layer to be measured independently. We describe the properties of a traditional alloy perpendicular medium and a Co-Pd multilayer system, which in the latter case exhibits multiple switching behavior. We also address the issue of the effect of the soft underlayer on the coupling in similar longitudinal films and find that the presence of the underlayer induces significant additional coupling effects that may well give rise to an increase in noise in recorded signal

Hawtreyan 'credit deadlock' or Keynesian 'liquidity trap'? Lessons for Japan from the great depression

This paper outlines the ideas of Ralph Hawtrey and Lauchlin Currie on the need for monetised fiscal deficit spending in 1930s USA to combat the deep depression into which the economy had been allowed to sink. In such exceptional circumstances of 'credit deadlock' in which banks were afraid to lend and households and business afraid to borrow, the deadlock could best be broken through the spending of new money into circulation via large fiscal deficits. This complementarity of fiscal and monetary policy was shown to be essential, and as such indicates the potential power of monetary policy - in contrast to the Keynesian "liquidity trap" view that it is powerless This lesson was not learned by the Japanese authorities in their response to the asset price collapse of 1991-92, resulting in a lost decade as ballooning fiscal deficits were neutralised throughout the 1990s by unhelpfully tight monetary policy with the Bank of Japan refusing to monetise the deficits

An archival case study : revisiting the life and political economy of Lauchlin Currie

This paper forms part of a wider project to show the significance of archival material on distinguished economists, in this case Lauchlin Currie (1902-93), who studied and taught at Harvard before entering government service at the US Treasury and Federal Reserve Board as the intellectual leader of Roosevelt's New Deal, 1934-39, as FDR's White House economic adviser in peace and war, 1939-45, and as a post-war development economist. It discusses the uses made of the written and oral material available when the author was writing his intellectual biography of Currie (Duke University Press 1990) while Currie was still alive, and the significance of the material that has come to light after Currie's death

The beta-subunit of human chorionic gonadotrophin exists as a homodimer

The free beta-subunit of human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCGbeta) is well recognised as a product of many epithelial tumours. Recently, it has been shown that this ectopic production may have a functional relationship to tumour growth. The growth-promoting activity of hCGbeta may be explained by its structural similarity to a family of growth factors which all contain the same distinct topological fold known as the cystine-knot motif. Since the other members of this family all exhibit their activities as homo- and heterodimers, it is possible that the same may be true for hCGbeta. Using size-exclusion chromatography, low stringency SDS-PAGE and matrix assisted laser desorption/ionisation (MALDI) time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometry (MS) we have shown that pure preparations of hCGbeta contain hCGbetabeta homodimers. Size-exclusion chromatography revealed asymmetric elution profiles with a forward peak corresponding to the size-exclusion characteristic of a globular protein with an approximate mass of 44-54 kDa and a late shoulder centered around an elution position expected for a globular protein of approximately 29 kDa. Two immunoreactive hCGbeta species, of approximately 32 and 64 kDa, were clearly resolved by SDS-PAGE and Western blotting. When analysed by MALDI-TOF MS a |mf23 kDa monomer and a |mf46 kDa dimer were identified. Formation of hCGbetabeta homodimers is consistent with the behaviour of other cystine-knot growth factors and strengthens the inclusion of the glycoprotein hormones within this superfamily. It has yet to be determined whether it is this dimeric molecular species that is responsible for growth-promoting activity of hCGbeta preparations in tumours

An early Harvard 'Memorandum' on anti-depression policies

[Introductory Note by David Laidler (University of Western Ontario) and Roger Sandilands (University of Strathclyde) ...] The Memorandum which this note introduces was completed by three young members of the Harvard economics department sometime in January 1932 Two of them, Lauchlin Currie and Harry Dexter White were soon to play key roles on the American, indeed the world-wide, policy scene. Both of them would go to Washington in 1934 as founding members of Jacob Viner’s 'Freshman Brains Trust'. In due course, first at the Federal Reserve Board, and later at the Treasury and the White House, Currie would become a highly visible and leading advocate of expansionary fiscal policy, while White, at the Treasury, was to be a co-architect, with Keynes, of the Bretton Woods system. Both would fall victim to anti-communist witch-hunts in the late 1940s, in White’s case perhaps at the cost of his life, since he died of a heart attack in 1948 three days after a strenuous hearing before the House Committee on Unamerican Activities (HUAC). The third author, P. T. Ellsworth, later a Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin, is perhaps best remembered nowadays as the author of a leading textbook in International Economics, though it is worth noting that he was also a very early (late 1936) but hitherto unrecognised discoverer of what came to be called the IS-LM model as a means of elucidating issues raised by Keynes' 'General Theory'. It is not known how widely this Memorandum was circulated, but the fact that it is a piece of policy advocacy, combined with its relatively polished style, makes it inconceivable that it was meant for the eyes and files of its authors alone. As readers will see, it sketches out an explanation of the then rapidly developing Great Contraction, as well as a comprehensive and radical policy programme for dealing with it. In keeping with its authors’ explanation of the Contraction as a consequence of a collapsing money supply, the main domestic components of that programme were to be vigorously expansionary open-market operations and substantial deficit spending that, particularly in its early stages, was to be financed by money creation; its international dimension involved a return to free trade and serious efforts to resolve the problems of international indebtedness that had originated in the Great War and in the Treaty of Versailles which had brought it to an uneasy end in 1919. [...

First-principles kinetic Monte Carlo simulations for heterogeneous catalysis, applied to the CO oxidation at RuO2(110)

We describe a first-principles statistical mechanics approach enabling us to simulate the steady-state situation of heterogeneous catalysis. In a first step density-functional theory together with transition-state theory is employed to obtain the energetics of all relevant elementary processes. Subsequently the statistical mechanics problem is solved by the kinetic Monte Carlo method, which fully accounts for the correlations, fluctuations, and spatial distributions of the chemicals at the surface of the catalyst under steady-state conditions. Applying this approach to the catalytic oxidation of CO at RuO2(110), we determine the surface atomic structure and composition in reactive environments ranging from ultra-high vacuum (UHV) to technologically relevant conditions, i.e. up to pressures of several atmospheres and elevated temperatures. We also compute the CO2 formation rates (turnover frequencies). The results are in quantitative agreement with all existing experimental data. We find that the high catalytic activity of this system is intimately connected with a disordered, dynamic surface ``phase'' with significant compositional fluctuations. In this active state the catalytic function results from a self-regulating interplay of several elementary processes.Comment: 18 pages including 9 figures; related publications can be found at http://www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/th/th.htm

Nonequilibrium orientational patterns in two-component Langmuir monolayers

A model of a phase-separating two-component Langmuir monolayer in the presence of a photo-induced reaction interconvering two components is formulated. An interplay between phase separation, orientational ordering and treaction is found to lead to a variety of nonequilibrium self-organized patterns, both stationary and traveling. Examples of the patterns, observed in numerical simulations, include flowing droplets, traveling stripes, wave sources and vortex defects.Comment: Submitted to the Physical Review

Molecular formations in ultracold mixtures of interacting and noninteracting atomic gases

Atom-molecule equilibrium for molecular formation processes is discussed for boson-fermion, fermion-fermion, and boson-boson mixtures of ultracold atomic gases in the framework of quasichemical equilibrium theory. After presentation of the general formulation, zero-temperature phase diagrams of the atom-molecule equilibrium states are calculated analytically; molecular, mixed, and dissociated phases are shown to appear for the change of the binding energy of the molecules. The temperature dependences of the atom or molecule densities are calculated numerically, and finite-temperature phase structures are obtained of the atom-molecule equilibrium in the mixtures. The transition temperatures of the atom or molecule Bose-Einstein condensations are also evaluated from these results. Quantum-statistical deviations of the law of mass action in atom-molecule equilibrium, which should be satisfied in mixtures of classical Maxwell-Boltzmann gases, are calculated, and the difference in the different types of quantum-statistical effects is clarified. Mean-field calculations with interparticle interactions (atom-atom, atom-molecule, and molecule-molecule) are formulated, where interaction effects are found to give the linear density-dependent term in the effective molecular binding energies. This method is applied to calculations of zero-temperature phase diagrams, where new phases with coexisting local-equilibrium states are shown to appear in the case of strongly repulsive interactions.Comment: 35 pages, 14 figure