MASCOTTE: Model for AnalySing and foreCasting shOrT TErm developments

MASCOTTE is the new version of the Banque de France's macro-econometric forecasting model. Following the last rebasing of National Accounts (currently at 1995 price), the previous version of the model was simplified, re-specified and re-estimated. The model is essentially used for making macro-economic projections of the French economy over a two-to-three year horizon, which requires an accounting framework as close as possible to the French National Accounts. The main agents are companies, households, general government and the rest of the world. The new version now includes a supply block derived from the explicit optimisation behaviour of companies using a Cobb-Douglas technology under imperfect competition, and a new Wage Setting schedule. Full homogeneity of the nominal side of the model ensures the independence between the nominal equilibrium and the real equilibrium, the latter being only determined in the long run by relative prices. Furthermore, as regards the specification of equations, special attention was paid to the consequences of changes in short-term interest rates.Macro-economic model ; Applied econometrics ; Forecasting ; France

PIB potentiel et écart de PIB : quelques évaluations pour la France.

This Study and Research Paper is devoted to different estimates of the French economy's potential output and output gap. Several methods, which are presented in detail, are put forward to measure these indicators. The first two sections of the paper profile statistical univariate approaches: smoothing using the Hodrick-Prescott filter; and estimation of a trend, potentially including breaks. The next two sections extend the discussion on statistical techniques to multivariate cases. To be precise, they involve the analysis of structural VAR models and unobserved component models. The final section proposes a structural method for estimating potential output, where business sector output is described by a Cobb-Douglas function, while that of the non-business sector is assumed to be exogenous. For this structural method, the NAIRU has to be calculated before estimating the short to medium-term level of potential output.

Composition law of cardinal order permutations

In this paper the theorems that determine composition laws for both cardinal ordering permutations and their inverses are proven. So, the relative positions of points in a hs-periodic orbit become completely known as well as in which order those points are visited. No matter how a hs-periodic orbit emerges, be it through a period doubling cascade (s=2^n) of the h-periodic orbit, or as a primary window (like the saddle-node bifurcation cascade with h=2^n), or as a secondary window (the birth of a $s-$periodic window inside the h-periodic one). Certainly, period doubling cascade orbits are particular cases with h=2 and s=2^n. Both composition laws are also shown in algorithmic way for their easy use

Systemic lupus erythematosus induced by anti-tumour necrosis factor alpha therapy: a French national survey

The development of drug-induced lupus remains a matter of concern in patients treated with anti-tumour necrosis factor (TNF) alpha. The incidence of such adverse effects is unknown. We undertook a retrospective national study to analyse such patients. Between June and October 2003, 866 rheumatology and internal medicine practitioners from all French hospital centres prescribing anti-TNF in rheumatic diseases registered on the website of the 'Club Rhumatismes et Inflammation' were contacted by email to obtain the files of patients with TNF-induced systemic lupus erythematosus. Twenty-two cases were collected, revealing two aspects of these manifestations. Ten patients (six patients receiving infliximab, four patients receiving etanercept) only had anti-DNA antibodies and skin manifestations one could classify as 'limited skin lupus' or 'toxidermia' in a context of autoimmunity, whereas 12 patients (nine patients receiving infliximab, three patients receiving etanercept) had more complete drug-induced lupus with systemic manifestations and at least four American Congress of Rheumatology criteria. One patient had central nervous system manifestations. No patients had lupus nephritis. The signs of lupus occurred within a mean of 9 months (range 3–16 months) in patients treated with infliximab and within a mean of 4 months (range 2–5 months) in patients treated with etanercept. In all cases after diagnosis was determined, anti-TNF was stopped and specific treatment introduced in eight patients: two patients received intravenous methylprednisolone, four patients received oral steroids (15–35 mg/day), and two patients received topical steroids. Lupus manifestations abated within a few weeks (median 8 weeks, standard deviation 3–16) in all patients except one with longer-lasting evolution (6 months). At that time, cautious estimations (unpublished data from Schering Plough Inc. and Wyeth Inc.) indicated that about 7700 patients had been exposed to infliximab and 3000 to etanercept for inflammatory arthritides in France. It thus appears that no drug was more implicated than the other in lupus syndromes, whose incidence was 15/7700 = 0.19% with infliximab and 7/3800 = 0.18% with etanercept. Clinicians should be aware that lupus syndromes with systemic manifestations may occur in patients under anti-TNF alpha treatment

Complexity of multi-dimensional spontaneous EEG decreases during propofol induced general anaesthesia

Emerging neural theories of consciousness suggest a correlation between a specific type of neural dynamical complexity and the level of consciousness: When awake and aware, causal interactions between brain regions are both integrated (all regions are to a certain extent connected) and differentiated (there is inhomogeneity and variety in the interactions). In support of this, recent work by Casali et al (2013) has shown that Lempel-Ziv complexity correlates strongly with conscious level, when computed on the EEG response to transcranial magnetic stimulation. Here we investigated complexity of spontaneous high-density EEG data during propofol-induced general anaesthesia. We consider three distinct measures: (i) Lempel-Ziv complexity, which is derived from how compressible the data are; (ii) amplitude coalition entropy, which measures the variability in the constitution of the set of active channels; and (iii) the novel synchrony coalition entropy (SCE), which measures the variability in the constitution of the set of synchronous channels. After some simulations on Kuramoto oscillator models which demonstrate that these measures capture distinct ‘flavours’ of complexity, we show that there is a robustly measurable decrease in the complexity of spontaneous EEG during general anaesthesia

Causality and the Entropy-Complexity Plane: Robustness and Missing Ordinal Patterns

We deal here with the issue of determinism versus randomness in time series. One wishes to identify their relative weights in a given time series. Two different tools have been advanced in the literature to such effect, namely, i) the "causal" entropy-complexity plane [Rosso et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 99 (2007) 154102] and ii) the estimation of the decay rate of missing ordinal patterns [Amig\'o et al. Europhys. Lett. 79 (2007) 50001, and Carpi et al. Physica A 389 (2010) 2020-2029]. In this work we extend the use of these techniques to address the analysis of deterministic finite time series contaminated with additive noises of different degree of correlation. The chaotic series studied here was via the logistic map (r = 4) to which we added correlated noise (colored noise with f-k Power Spectrum, 0 {\leq} k {\leq} 2) of varying amplitudes. In such a fashion important insights pertaining to the deterministic component of the original time series can be gained. We find that in the entropy-complexity plane this goal can be achieved without additional computations.Comment: submitted to Physica

Effective-Range Expansion of the Neutron-Deuteron Scattering Studied by a Quark-Model Nonlocal Gaussian Potential

The S-wave effective range parameters of the neutron-deuteron (nd) scattering are derived in the Faddeev formalism, using a nonlocal Gaussian potential based on the quark-model baryon-baryon interaction fss2. The spin-doublet low-energy eigenphase shift is sufficiently attractive to reproduce predictions by the AV18 plus Urbana three-nucleon force, yielding the observed value of the doublet scattering length and the correct differential cross sections below the deuteron breakup threshold. This conclusion is consistent with the previous result for the triton binding energy, which is nearly reproduced by fss2 without reinforcing it with the three-nucleon force.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures and 6 tables, submitted to Prog. Theor. Phy