Responding to the Coffee Crisis: What Can We Learn from Price Dynamics

We develop a semi-structural price vector autoregression to capture coffee price dynamics over various time horizons. The presence of the International Coffee Agreement is permitted to alter supply responses to price signals through yield and planting effects. In the short run, the ICA caused Brazilian farm prices to become disconnected from international prices. In the long run, the ICA promoted supply response by providing a stable environment in which producers could use current price information to predict future prices. In the intermediate run, it muted supply response by necessitating an institutional price wedge between wholesale and farm level prices. In net, the ICA created a price cycle that does not exist in non-ICA periods. Oxfam's proposal to burn 300 million pounds of coffee will provide temporary relief to farmers, but cannot be used repeatedly as a long term strategy. The low coffee prices experienced since the disintegration of the ICA may be due to the interaction of supply lags, a shift in the composition of coffee demand, and low price response due to price uncertainty. No evidence of asymmetric price transmission is found.

Price Dynamics in a Vertical Sector: The Case of Butter

We develop a reduced-form model of price transmission in a vertical sector, allowing for refined asymetric, contemporaneous and lagged, own and cross price effects. The model is used to analyze wholesale-retail price dynamics in the US butter market. The analysis provides strong evidence of asymmetric price transmissions. It documents the complex nature of nonlinear price dynamics in a vertical sector and its implications for the distribution of future prices. It finds evidence that the asymmetric response to shocks is stronger in the sort run for retail prices, and in the longer run for wholesale prices.

Random Matrix Theory and the Failure of Macroeconomic Forecasts

By scientific standards, the accuracy of short-term economic forecasts has been poor, and shows no sign of improving over time. We form a delay matrix of time-series data on the overall rate of growth of the economy, with lags spanning the period over which any regularity of behaviour is postulated by economists to exist. We use methods of random matrix theory to analyse the correlation matrix of the delay matrix. This is done for annual data from 1871 to 1994 for 17 economies, and for post-war quarterly data for the US and the UK. The properties of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of these correlation matrices are similar, though not identical, to those implied by random matrix theory. This suggests that the genuine information content in economic growth data is low, and so forecasting failure arises from inherent properties of the data.Comment: 15 Pages, 2 Figure

Telemedicine Management of Diabetics in an Underserved Community

Information technology via telemedicine offers the potential for cost-effective and active management of type 2 diabetes mellitus for people in high-risk underserved communities such as Harlem, NY and the Bronx, NY. Telemedicine is the use of telecommunications technology for medical diagnostic, monitor- ing, and therapeutic purposes to communicate information instantaneously from one location to another, such as from a patients’ home to a hospital. We compared the baseline Hemoglobin A1C levels to the levels recorded after the patient was enrolled in the Housecalls telemedicine program for at least 3 months. The initial results indicate that the Housecalls program is effective in improving compliance and management of diabetes. The initial success of the program is encouraging and demonstrates a great po- tential for the use of telemedicine in monitoring chronic disease

Importance of Interactive Small Group Discussions to Educate Community Health Workers

AbstractCommunity health workers (CHWs) are an effective solution to address the double burden of chronic and infectious diseases in developing countries. Due to limited resources, CHWs seldom receive adequate training. A standardized training regimen with three educational methods was tested with CHWs in Kenya to identify the optimal method. CHWs were divided into three breakout groups each testing a different pedagogy. It was concluded that each method was equally effective. Interactive small group learning methods do not require additional resources and can be easily integrated into CHW training regimens to produce better-prepared health workers

Importance of Interactive Small Group Discussions to Educate Community Health Workers

AbstractCommunity health workers (CHWs) are an effective solution to address the double burden of chronic and infectious diseases in developing countries. Due to limited resources, CHWs seldom receive adequate training. A standardized training regimen with three educational methods was tested with CHWs in Kenya to identify the optimal method. CHWs were divided into three breakout groups each testing a different pedagogy. It was concluded that each method was equally effective. Interactive small group learning methods do not require additional resources and can be easily integrated into CHW training regimens to produce better-prepared health workers

Transmit power setting based on dynamic SAR

Emitted power from consumer devices is required to meet a specific absorption rate (SAR) limit. Since SAR limits apply to the total transmitted power, mobile devices that have multiple radios limit transmit power on each radio based on the on/off status of other radios. For example, if cellular is enabled, then the maximum power available to WiFi is reduced. Such an approach does not account for the actual instantaneous power transmitted by a radio. For example, the cellular radio may be transmitting well below its maximum power when proximate to a base station. In such a case, the WiFi (or Bluetooth) radios can safely transmit power at relatively high levels while staying with the SAR limit. The techniques of this disclosure calculate the maximum transmissible power of a radio based, e.g., on the actual power transmitted by other radios; on the priority of different radios; on the scheduling of packets within each radio; etc. The techniques thereby can achieve a higher per-radio transmit power, e.g., higher link throughput, while operating within the SAR limit