Health care expenditure disparities in the European Union and underlying factors: a distribution dynamics approach

This paper examines health care expenditure (HCE) disparities between the European Union countries over the period 1995-2010. By means of using a continuous version of the distribution dynamics approach, the key conclusions are that the reduction in disparities is very weak and, therefore, persistence is the main characteristic of the HCE distribution. In view of these findings, a preliminary attempt is made to add some insights into potentially main factors behind the HCE distribution. The results indicate that whereas per capita income is by far the main determinant, the dependency ratio and female labour participation do not play any role in explaining the HCE distribution; as for the rest of the factors studied (life expectancy, infant mortality, R&D expenditure and public HCE expenditure share), we find that their role falls somewhat in between

Constrained smoothing B-splines for the term structure of interest rates

The constrained smoothing B-splines (COBS) is proposed as a nonparametric approach to estimate the term structure of interest rate. Compared to the existing methods in the literature, COBS' main innovation lies in its incorporation of important constraints imposed by no-arbitrage, such as monotonically decreasing and boundary conditions for the discount function, positive forward and spot rates. In addition, by estimating the conditional median function. COBS is less sensible to outliers in reduced samples than other common methods in the literature. Estimation for high and low liquidity markets together with simulation exercises puts COBS in an intermediate position between usual parametric and nonparametric methods in the literature. It has more flexibility than parametric methods and, compared to other nonparametric methods, satisfies no-arbitrage constraints and generates parsimonious shapes of the term structure of interest rates. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.46233935

Exchange rate movements and monetary policy in Brazil: Econometric and simulation evidence

The literature on monetary economy has aroused growing interest in macroeconomics. Due to computational advancements, models have become increasingly more complex and accurate, allowing for an in-depth analysis of the relationships between real economic variables and nominal variables. Therefore, using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model, based on Gali and Monacelli (2005), we propose and estimate a model for the Brazilian economy by employing Bayesian methods so as to assess whether the Central Bank of Brazil takes exchange rate fluctuations into account in the conduct of monetary policy. The most striking result of the present study is that the Central Bank of Brazil does not directly change the interest rate path due to exchange rate movements. A simulation exercise is also used. Our conclusion is that the economy quickly accommodates shocks induced separately on the exchange rate, on the terms of trade, interest rate, and global inflation. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.27128429

Fast linear control for maximum energy efficiency of wireless power transfer systems

3rd IEEE International Future Energy Electronics Conference and ECCE Asia, IFEEC - ECCE Asia 2017, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 3-7 June 2017Inductive power transfer (IPT) converters are resonant converters that optimize energy efficiencies at some loads. To achieve maximum efficiency, it is common to cascade the IPT converter with front-side and load-side dc-dc converters. The two dc-dc converters are normally controlled cooperatively in order to meet the requirements of output regulation and maximum efficiency tracking using a control technique based on perturbation and observation, which is inevitably slow in response. In this paper, a decoupled control technique is developed. The load-side dc-dc converter is solely responsible for output regulation while the front-side converter is responsible for impedance-matching of the IPT converter by controlling its input-to-output voltage ratio. The controls are linear and therefore fast. DC and small-signal transfer functions are derived for designing the control parameters. The performances of fast regulation and high efficiency of the IPT converter system are verified using a prototype system.Department of Electronic and Information Engineering2016-2017 > Academic research: refereed > Refereed conference paperbcw