The plutocratic bias in the CPI : evidence from Spain

We define the plutocratic bias as the difference between the inflation measured according to the current official CPI and a democratic index in which all households receive the same weight. (i) We estimate that during the 1990s the plutocratic bias in Spain amounts to 0.055 per cent per year, or about one third of the classical substitution bias estimated by the Boskin Commission for the U.S. (ii) We find that a 16-dimensional commodity space can be conveniently reduced to 3 dimensions, consisting of a luxury good and two necessities. The price behavior of these 3 goods provides a convincing explanation of the oscillations experimented by the plutocratic bias. (iii) Finally, the fact that the plutocratic bias is positive during this period, implies that the change in money income inequality is between 2 and 5 per cent greater than the change in real income inequality. We study the robustness of these results to the time period considered and to the definition of the group index which serves as an alternative to the CPI. We estimate that during the 1980s and the second part of the 1970s in Spain, the plutocratic bias is 0.033 and 0.239 per cent per year, respectively

The Laspeyres bias in the Spanish consumer price index

The CPI compares the cost of acquiring a reference quantity vector at current and base prices. Such reference vector is the vector of mean quantities actually bought by a reference population, whose consumption patterns are investigated during a period t prior to the index base period 0. In this paper we show that unless one takes into account the price change between these two dates, the CPI ceases to be a proper statistical price index of the Laspeyres type. Among several negative consequences, the most important is that this omission produces a bias in the measurement of inflation which we call the `Laspeyres bias.' Using Spanish data, we estimate that, e.g., from 1992 to 1998, the size of the Laspeyres bias is -0.061 per cent per year, or about 6 per cent (in absolute terms) of the positive bias estimated by the Boskin commission for the U.S., which is equal to 1.1 per cent per year. The Laspeyres bias in shorter time periods reached -0.122, and -0.108 per cent per year in 1992, and 1997, respectivel

The plutocratic gap in the CPI : evidence from Spain

The plutocratic gap is defined as the difference between the inflation measured according to the current official consumer price index (CPI) and a democratic index in which all households receive the same weight. During 1992–97, the plutocratic gap in Spain averaged 0.055 percentage points a year. Since positive and negative gaps cancel out, however, the average absolute gap is significantly larger: 0.090 percentage points a year. For the purposes of accounting for the plutocratic gap, a 53-dimensional commodity space can be conveniently reduced to two dimensions: a luxury index and a necessities index.Publicad

The Plutocratic Gap in the CPI: Evidence from Spain

The plutocratic gap is defined as the difference between the inflation measured according to the current official consumer price index (CPI) and a democratic index in which all households receive the same weight. During 1992-97, the plutocratic gap in Spain averaged 0.055 percentage points a year. Since positive and negative gaps cancel out, however, the average absolute gap is significantly larger: 0.090 percentage points a year. For the purposes of accounting for the plutocratic gap, a 53-dimensional commodity space can be conveniently reduced to two dimensions: a luxury index and a necessities index. Copyright 2003, International Monetary Fund

Distributive aspects of the quality change bias in the CPI.

This paper shows that the richer households are significantly more affected by the quality-change bias (QCB) in the CPI. The empirical analysis combines the detailed information pertaining to the size of the QCB for the US with household-specific CPIs for Spain.Plutocratic gap; Money inequality; Price index; CPI; Quality bias;

The Laspeyres bias in the Spanish consumer price index.

The CPI compares the cost of acquiring a reference quantity vector at current and base prices. Such reference vector is the vector of mean quantities actually bought by a reference population, whose consumption patterns are investigated during a period tau prior to the index base period 0. This paper shows that unless the price change between these two dates is taken into account, the CPI ceases to be a proper statistical price index of the Laspeyres type. Among several negative consequences, the most important is that this omission produces a bias in the measurement of inflation: the 'Laspeyres bias'. Using Spanish data, the size of the Laspeyres bias is estimated at -0.061% per year, during 1992-1998. The Laspeyres bias in shorter time periods reached -0.122% per year in 1992, and -0.108 in 1997.

Stochastic Ion Acceleration by the Ion-cyclotron Instability in a Growing Magnetic Field

Using 1D and 2D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of a plasma with a growing magnetic field $\vec{B}$, we show that ions can be stochastically accelerated by the ion-cyclotron (IC) instability. As $\vec{B}$ grows, an ion pressure anisotropy $p_{\perp,i} > p_{||,i}$ arises, due to the adiabatic invariance of the ion magnetic moment ($p_{||,i}$ and $p_{\perp,i}$ are the ion pressures parallel and perpendicular to $\vec{B}$). When initially $\beta_i = 0.5$ ($\beta_i \equiv 8\pi p_i/|\vec{B}|^2$, where $p_i$ is the ion isotropic pressure), the pressure anisotropy is limited mainly by inelastic pitch-angle scattering provided by the IC instability, which in turn produces a non-thermal tail in the ion energy spectrum. After $\vec{B}$ is amplified by a factor $\sim 2.7$, this tail can be approximated as a power-law of index $\sim 3.4$ plus two non-thermal bumps, and accounts for $2-3\%$ of the ions and $\sim 18\%$ of their kinetic energy. On the contrary, when initially $\beta_i =2$, the ion scattering is dominated by the mirror instability and the acceleration is suppressed. This implies that efficient ion acceleration requires that initially $\beta_i \lesssim 1$. Although we focus on cases where $\vec{B}$ is amplified by plasma shear, we check that the acceleration occurs similarly if $\vec{B}$ grows due to plasma compression. Our results are valid in a sub-relativistic regime where the ion thermal energy is $\sim 10\%$ of the ion rest mass energy. This acceleration process can thus be relevant in the inner region of low-luminosity accretion flows around black holes

A Heating Mechanism via Magnetic Pumping in the Intracluster Medium

Turbulence driven by AGN activity, cluster mergers and galaxy motion constitutes an attractive energy source for heating the intracluster medium (ICM). How this energy dissipates into the ICM plasma remains unclear, given its low collisionality and high magnetization (precluding viscous heating by Coulomb processes). Kunz et al. 2011 proposed a viable heating mechanism based on the anisotropy of the plasma pressure (gyroviscous heating) under ICM conditions. The present paper builds upon that work and shows that particles can be gyroviscously heated by large-scale turbulent fluctuations via magnetic pumping. We study how the anisotropy evolves under a range of forcing frequencies, what waves and instabilities are generated and demonstrate that the particle distribution function acquires a high energy tail. For this, we perform particle-in-cell simulations where we periodically vary the mean magnetic field $\textbf{B}(t)$. When $\textbf{B}(t)$ grows (dwindles), a pressure anisotropy $P_{\perp}>P_{\parallel}$ ($P_{\perp}< P_{\parallel}$) builds up ($P_{\perp}$ and $P_{\parallel}$ are, respectively, the pressures perpendicular and parallel to $\textbf{B}(t)$). These pressure anisotropies excite mirror ($P_{\perp}>P_{\parallel}$) and oblique firehose ($P_{\parallel}>P_{\perp}$) instabilities, which trap and scatter the particles, limiting the anisotropy and providing a channel to heat the plasma. The efficiency of this mechanism depends on the frequency of the large-scale turbulent fluctuations and the efficiency of the scattering the instabilities provide in their nonlinear stage. We provide a simplified analytical heating model that captures the phenomenology involved. Our results show that this process can be relevant in dissipating and distributing turbulent energy at kinetic scales in the ICM.Comment: 24 pages, 17 figures, submitted to Ap

InfoStrom: Learning information infrastructures for crisis management in case of medium to large electrical power breakdowns

One of the most important infrastructures in modern industrialized societies is the electricity network. Due to its fundamental role for many aspects of our everyday life, power infrastructures manifest a strong dependence between power suppliers and customers. Customers take the infrastructure for granted; it appears mostly invisible to them as long as it works, but in the case of breakdowns in power supply customers become aware of the dependence on electricity. They join professional actors in the recovery and coping work with regard to the electricity breakdown: Maintenance workers of the power provider, police, firefighters, red cross, etc. These institutions are professionalized for dealing with such situations, but the people affected by a power outage also need to be considered as actors

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts