Credit Booms and Busts in the Caribbean

Since 1970, private sector credit has grown quite rapidly in the Caribbean. More recently, between 2004 and 2006, total real credit in the Caribbean has risen by a cumulative 55.7 percent, or approximately 19 percent per annum. In some countries, the rate of expansion has even been stronger, which is of concern given the likely negative macroeconomic consequences of credit booms. This paper attempts to identify the factors that have led to credit booms and conversely busts in the Caribbean, employing annual data for 13 Caribbean countries covering the period 1970 to 2006 in the analysis. This study employs a panel count data regression approach. Three key groups of variables are considered: (1) macroeconomic developments; (2) macroeconomic policy, and (3) external shocks. The reported results suggest that macroeconomic developments were the main determinants of credit booms in the Caribbean, with low inflation, high growth in GDP per capita, investment booms as well as less developed financial systems leading to the emergence of credit booms and conversely for busts.Credit Booms, Credit Busts, Caribbean, Count Data Model

Climate Change and Tourism Features in the Caribbean

The tourist industry is widely recognised as the key engine of growth in the Caribbean, representing a significant source of foreign exchange earnings and employment. The present study provides an assessment of how climate change could likely impact on regional tourism features. The analysis is undertaken by comparing historical tourism climatic indices to those obtained under the various climate change scenarios. The results suggest that the biggest losers, in terms of deteriorations in their climatic features, are likely to be the Caribbean, Central America and South America.Tourism climate index; Climate Change; Caribbean

A numerically exact local solver applied to salt boundary inversion in seismic full-waveform inversion

In a set of problems ranging from 4-D seismic to salt boundary estimation, updates to the velocity model often have a highly localized nature. Numerical techniques for these applications such as full-waveform inversion (FWI) require an estimate of the wavefield to compute the model updates. When dealing with localized problems, it is wasteful to compute these updates in the global domain, when we only need them in our region of interest. This paper introduces a local solver that generates forward and adjoint wavefields which are, to machine precision, identical to those generated by a full-domain solver evaluated within the region of interest. This means that the local solver computes all interactions between model updates within the region of interest and the inhomogeneities in the background model outside. Because no approximations are made in the calculation of the forward and adjoint wavefields, the local solver can compute the identical gradient in the region of interest as would be computed by the more expensive full-domain solver. In this paper, the local solver is used to efficiently generate the FWI gradient at the boundary of a salt body. This gradient is then used in a level set method to automatically update the salt boundary

Toward target-oriented FWI: An exact local wave solver applied to salt boundary inversion

Seismic full waveform inversion (FWI) uses the gradient of the objective function for computing model updates. This requires computation of the forward and adjoint wavefields on the current model estimate. Calculating the gradient on the full computational domain is wasteful when it is only required in a limited region of interest, as is the case in 4D seismic and salt boundary estimation, for example. In this paper, a local solver is introduced that accurately computes, up to machine precision, all the wavefield interactions between model updates restricted to a region of interest and inhomogeneities in the background model outside. The local solver therefore generates exactly the same forward and adjoint wavefields in the region of interest that a full domain solver would have generated. In this paper, the exact local gradient at the boundary of a salt body is computed from these exact local wavefields. A level set method uses this gradient to automatically update the local salt boundary estimate

Physical Capital and Capital Service Costs in U.S. Colleges and Universities: 1993

Physical capital represents an important input to the production of higher education--the essential services of buildings, equipment, and land--for which we have only highly inadequate measures. This paper has three objectives: to report estimates of the value of the capital stocks used by 3,148 colleges and universities in the US in 1993 (virtually all of them), to give a sense of the distribution of that physical capital and of capital service costs among different kinds of institutions, and to make these estimates available to other students of higher education in the form of FoxPro or Excel files.Education

Climate Change and Tourism Features in the Caribbean

The tourist industry is widely recognised as the key engine of growth in the Caribbean, representing a significant source of foreign exchange earnings and employment. The present study provides an assessment of how climate change could likely impact on regional tourism features. The analysis is undertaken by comparing historical tourism climatic indices to those obtained under the various climate change scenarios. The results suggest that the biggest losers, in terms of deteriorations in their climatic features, are likely to be the Caribbean, Central America and South America

Credit Booms and Busts in the Caribbean

Since 1970, private sector credit has grown quite rapidly in the Caribbean. More recently, between 2004 and 2006, total real credit in the Caribbean has risen by a cumulative 55.7 percent, or approximately 19 percent per annum. In some countries, the rate of expansion has even been stronger, which is of concern given the likely negative macroeconomic consequences of credit booms. This paper attempts to identify the factors that have led to credit booms and conversely busts in the Caribbean, employing annual data for 13 Caribbean countries covering the period 1970 to 2006 in the analysis. This study employs a panel count data regression approach. Three key groups of variables are considered: (1) macroeconomic developments; (2) macroeconomic policy, and (3) external shocks. The reported results suggest that macroeconomic developments were the main determinants of credit booms in the Caribbean, with low inflation, high growth in GDP per capita, investment booms as well as less developed financial systems leading to the emergence of credit booms and conversely for busts

Measurement of retinal vessels as a biomarker of cerebrovascular ageing in older HIV positive men compared to controls

Background: To compare retinal vascular measurements, biomarkers of cerebral small vessel disease (SVD), in HIV positive men aged 50 years and above with similarly-aged HIV negative men and younger HIV positive men. Methods: We recruited white, non-diabetic men to a cross-sectional substudy of a larger cohort including three demographically-matched groups. Optic disc centred 45° colour fundus photographs were used to calculate central retinal arterial and venous calibre and the arterial- venous ratio (AVR). We used univariate and multivariable linear regression to compare retinal vessel measurements in the three groups and to identify factors associated with AVR. Results: All HIV positive men were virologically suppressed. In a multivariable model, study group was not associated with AVR (adjusted β 0.010 for HIV positive men 50 years [n=120], 95% CI -0.018 to 0.038, p=0.47; adjusted β 0.00002 for HIV negative men >50 years [n=52], 95% CI -0.022 to 0.022, p=0.99). Factors associated with lower AVR were systolic BP (adjusted β -0.009 per +10 mmHg, 95% CI - 0.015 to -0.003, p=0.002), history of stroke or transient ischemic attack (adjusted β -0.070, 95% CI -0.12 to -0.015, p=0.01), and recent recreational drug use (adjusted β -0.037, 95% CI -0.057 to -0.018, p=0.0002). Conclusion: There were no differences in retinal vascular indices between HIV positive men aged >50 years and HIV negative men aged >50 years or HIV positive men aged <50 years, suggesting that HIV is not associated with an increased burden of cerebral SVD

Emotional valence and arousal affect reading in an interactive way: neuroimaging evidence for an approach-withdrawal framework

A growing body of literature shows that the emotional content of verbal material affects reading, wherein emotional words are given processing priority compared to neutral words. Human emotions can be conceptualised within a two-dimensional model comprised of emotional valence and arousal (intensity). These variables are at least in part distinct, but recent studies report interactive effects during implicit emotion processing and relate these to stimulus-evoked approach-withdrawal tendencies. The aim of the present study was to explore how valence and arousal interact at the neural level, during implicit emotion word processing. The emotional attributes of written word stimuli were orthogonally manipulated based on behavioural ratings from a corpus of emotion words. Stimuli were presented during an fMRI experiment while 16 participants performed a lexical decision task, which did not require explicit evaluation of a word's emotional content. Results showed greater neural activation within right insular cortex in response to stimuli evoking conflicting approach-withdrawal tendencies (i.e., positive high-arousal and negative low-arousal words) compared to stimuli evoking congruent approach vs. withdrawal tendencies (i.e., positive low-arousal and negative high-arousal words). Further, a significant cluster of activation in the left extra-striate cortex was found in response to emotional than neutral words, suggesting enhanced perceptual processing of emotionally salient stimuli. These findings support an interactive two-dimensional approach to the study of emotion word recognition and suggest that the integration of valence and arousal dimensions recruits a brain region associated with interoception, emotional awareness and sympathetic functions

Un método probabilístico para las clasificaciones estadísticas de jugadores en baloncesto = A probabilistic method to statistically classify players in basketball

[ESP] En esta investigación presentamos una nueva forma de interpretar las estadísticas individuales de la Liga ACB de baloncesto. Para ello, proponemos un enfoque probabilístico de los números individuales obtenidos por cada jugador al final de la temporada regular. Esto convierte a cada valor conseguido en un estimador del valor real teórico, por lo que tiene un error asociado que, en función de su magnitud, influye en los rankings de líderes estadísticos de la ACB. Asimismo, realizamos una aproximación paramétrica para cuantificar un tamaño de error máximo admisible, que debe servir como criterio para considerar si un jugador debe ser incluido en los rankings de cada apartado estadístico. Dada la importancia creciente que la utilización de la estadística está teniendo en el baloncesto profesional, este método presenta una contribución novedosa al análisis del desempeño de los jugadores, análisis que repercute en su valor económico y mediático, es decir, en el valor de mercado de éstos.[ENG] We introduce a method to re-elaborate the rankings of individual stats in the ACB League. The method is based on a probabilistic approach to interpret the individual performance achieved by each basketball player at the end of the regular season. Therefore, each individual record is an estimate of the real value of the parameter, with the corresponding associated error. The size of this error influences the final elaborated ranking. Under a parametric approach, we quantify the size of a maximum admissible error. Because of the growing interest of statistics in basketball, our proposal is a valuable contribution to analyse the performance of players, which is highly related to their market value