Persistence in Convergence

In this paper, we examine the convergence hypothesis using a long memory framework that allows for structural breaks and the non reliance on a benchmark country. We find that even though the long memory framework of analysis is much richer than the simple I(1)/I(0) alternative, a simple absolute divergence and rapid convergence dichotomy produced by the latter is sufficient to capture the behavior of the gaps in per capita GDP levels and growth rates results respectively. This is in contrast to the findings of Dufrénot, Mignon and Naccache (2009) who found strong evidence of long memory for output gaps. The speed of convergence captured by the estimated long memory parameter d, is explained by differences in physical and human capital as well as fiscal discipline characteristics of economic policies pursued by different countries.Growth Convergence, Long Memory

Persistence in Convergence

In this paper, we examine the convergence hypothesis using a long memory framework that allows for structural breaks and the non reliance on a benchmark country. We find that even though the long memory framework of analysis is much richer than the simple I(1)=I(0) alternative, a simple absolute divergence and rapid convergence dichotomy produced by the latter is sufficient to capture the behavior of the gaps in per capita GDP levels and growth rates results respectively. This is in contrast to the findings of Dufrénot, Mignon and Naccache (2009) who found strong evidence of long memory for output gaps. The speed of convergence captured by the estimated long memory parameter d, is explained by differences in physical and human capital as well as fiscal discipline characteristics of economic policies pursued by different countries.growth convergence, long memory

Introduction: Special Issue on Afro-Americanophilia in Germany.

From a ‘provincial’ and (hopefully) self-aware European perspective, it is clear that cultural forms or practices that originated among African Americans have, beyond their value to African Americans themselves and people elsewhere, contributed tremendously to life on the European continent. Those contributions include everything from the political imaginaries of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, through philosophical thought, to literature, film, television, theatre, dance, sports, visual culture and everyday aesthetics. Most prominent, perhaps, have been forms of music—blues and jazz to r’n’b, rap, and hybrid electronic music forms—all of which have ‘furnished’ European listeners’ lives, whatever their so-called race. While deeply embedded racism can run through these processes of cultural flow, transfer, and appropriation, and numerous forms of exploitation are at work, in many cases there is also an ambiguous love for Black diasporic culture, at least according to the appropriating subjects’ view of themselves, which manifests itself in admiration, desire, a sense of affinity or connection, and sometimes in fantasies of ‘becoming blac

Periodizing and Historicizing German Afro-Americanophilia: From Antebellum to Postwar (1850–1967)

In this essay, which builds on the methodological considerations and the definitions we sketched in the introduction to the special edition on what we are calling twentieth-century German Afro-Americanophilia, we delve into the history of Afro-Americanophilia in Germany and of its precursors. Afro-Americanophilia denotes the affirmative, enthusiastic, even loving approaches to African American culture, politics, and people. These, in turn, are heterogeneous acts that encompass imaginations, practices and social relationships. Such acts have been theorized with concepts such as mimesis, identification, desire, translation, misunderstanding, appropriation, expropriation, fetishism, hybridisation, or becoming-minor. Our aim here, however, is not to theorize Afro-Americanophilia, but to establish a preliminary, mostly descriptive periodization and to draw out some of the particularly significant moments, ruptures, and continuities within it. In the process, we also identify some of the salient ways scholars have interpreted Afro-Americanophilia during those periods. The timeframe we cover in this first review essay stretches from the nineteenth century until the mid–1960s, from which point the second essay continues. Focusing on a variety of appropriative practices, communicative media, actors and forms of agency, power differentials, and sociocultural contexts, we discuss positive images of and affirmative approaches to black people in German culture and its imaginary prior to the colonial era, and then during the colonial, Weimar, Nazi and postwar era

Trading interactions for topology in scale-free networks

Scale-free networks with topology-dependent interactions are studied. It is shown that the universality classes of critical behavior, which conventionally depend only on topology, can also be explored by tuning the interactions. A mapping, $\gamma' = (\gamma - \mu)/(1-\mu)$, describes how a shift of the standard exponent $\gamma$ of the degree distribution $P(q)$ can absorb the effect of degree-dependent pair interactions $J_{ij} \propto (q_iq_j)^{-\mu}$. Replica technique, cavity method and Monte Carlo simulation support the physical picture suggested by Landau theory for the critical exponents and by the Bethe-Peierls approximation for the critical temperature. The equivalence of topology and interaction holds for equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems, and is illustrated with interdisciplinary applications.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Using synchronizing heuristics to construct homing sequences

Computing a shortest synchronizing sequence of an automaton is an NP-Hard problem. There are well-known heuristics to find short synchronizing sequences. Finding a shortest homing sequence is also an NP-Hard problem. Unlike existing heuristics to find synchronizing sequences, homing heuristics are not widely studied. In this paper, we discover a relation between synchronizing and homing sequences by creating an automaton called homing automaton. By applying synchronizing heuristics on this automaton we get short homing sequences. Furthermore, we adapt some of the synchronizing heuristics to construct homing sequences