APPLICATION OF A DYNAMIC PANEL DATA ESTIMATOR TO CROSS-COUNTRY COFFEE DEMAND: A TALE OF TWO ERAS

We estimate price and income elasticities of demand for green coffee beans in panels of up to 40 countries, both during and after the operation of export quotas under International Coffee Agreements. The dynamic panel estimator proposed in Han and Phillips (2007) is used because it is a consistent estimator, for any length of panel, regardless of the presence of unit roots. Dynamic panel data models, of any type, do not seem to have been previously applied to coffee demand. We find evidence of a concave relationship between income and coffee consumption for countries which are members of the International Coffee Organization, but no evidence of such a relationship for other countries. A further conclusion is that measures which increase the price of coffee beans can be expected to have little effect on coffee sales.Coffee Demand, Dynamic Panel Data, International Coffee Organization

Keck constraints on a varying fine-structure constant: wavelength calibration errors

The Keck telescope's HIRES spectrograph has previously provided evidence for a smaller fine-structure constant, alpha, compared to the current laboratory value, in a sample of 143 quasar absorption systems: da/a=(-0.57+/-0.11)x10^{-5}. This was based on a variety of metal-ion transitions which, if alpha varies, experience different relative velocity shifts. This result is yet to be robustly contradicted, or confirmed, by measurements on other telescopes and spectrographs; it remains crucial to do so. It is also important to consider new possible instrumental systematic effects which may explain the Keck/HIRES results. Griest et al. (2009, arXiv:0904.4725v1) recently identified distortions in the echelle order wavelength scales of HIRES with typical amplitudes +/-250m/s. Here we investigate the effect such distortions may have had on the Keck/HIRES varying alpha results. We demonstrate that they cause a random effect on da/a from absorber to absorber because the systems are at different redshifts, placing the relevant absorption lines at different positions in different echelle orders. The typical magnitude of the effect on da/a is ~0.4x10^{-5} per absorber which, compared to the median error on da/a in the sample, ~1.9x10^{-5}, is relatively small. Consequently, the weighted mean value changes by less than 0.05x10^{-5} if the corrections we calculate are applied. Nevertheless, we urge caution, particularly for analyses aiming to achieve high precision da/a measurements on individual systems or small samples, that a much more detailed understanding of such intra-order distortions and their dependence on observational parameters is important if they are to be avoided or modelled reliably. [Abridged]Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables. Invited contribution to Proc. IAU XXVIIth General Assembly, Joint Discussion 9, "Are the fundamental constants varying with time?". To appear in P. Molaro, E. Vangioni-Flam, eds, Memorie della Societa Astronomica Italiana (MmSAIt), Vol. 80. Complete version of Table 1 available at http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~mmurphy/pub.htm

“More than a Music, It’s a Movement”: West Papua Decolonization Songs, Social Media, and the Remixing of Resistance

In the 1980s, Melanesian musicians began to compose songs protesting the Indonesian occupation of West Papua. Thirty years on, and facilitated through social media, such songs have begun to proliferate across Melanesia, with musicians from elsewhere in Oceania now contributing. The continuing colonial occupation of West Papua has led to the coalescence of a new wave of Pacific-wide performed resistance. In this study, we focus on a corpus of fifty freedom songs that not only are a manifestation of this movement but are also bound up in the digitally enabled remixing and dissemination processes of the identity, unity, and decolonization discourses that drive it. This article explores links between songs, a popular protest medium, and fan-produced accompanying videos and the new- Pasifika discourse of wansolwara (Melanesian Pidgin: shared ocean), which we argue is closely related to emergent understandings of Pacific indigeneity

The Way to the Stars

This article concerns the mathematics of simple one point perspective projection, a.k.a. Renaissance perspective; its focus the author\u27s intent to quantify that most fundamental of properties regarding our perception of material objects in space

"I fought the Law and the Law won": The clash between Police and Criminals on prime-time TV

The mass media are one of our most important sources of information about the criminal justice system. Television, in particular, is a resource from which people may come to understand what is acceptable, necessary and just. This article presents a content analysis of recent prime-time New Zealand television which draws out implications this may have for social control. The author advances two arguments. First, as a form of narrative cloaked in myth, programmes which deal with crime perform a stabilizing role by making the conventional aspects of the law enforcement system seem obvious. Secondly, they foster social cohesion by ritually enacting shared understandings of permissible behaviour and reinforcing the inevitability of punishment for deviant behaviour