Accounting for Housing in a CPI

Statistical agencies in different nations usually use the rental equivalence approach to the treatment of housing in their CPIs but a few countries use the user cost approach. The paper argues that an opportunity cost approach is the correct theoretical framework for accounting for OOH in a CPI. This approach, first mentioned in a 2006 OECD paper by Diewert, is developed more fully here. We explore the relationship of this new approach to the usual rental equivalency and user cost approaches. The new approach leads to an Owner Occupied Housing Opportunity Cost (OOHOC) index that is a weighted average of the rental and the financial opportunity costs.Durable goods, Consumer Price Index, Cost of Living Index, Owner Occupied Housing, depreciation, hedonic regression models, rental equivalence approac

Accounting for housing in a CPI

In this paper, we take stock of how statistical agencies in different nations are currently accounting for housing in their consumer price indexes (CPIs). The rental equivalence and user cost approaches have been favourites of economists. Both can be derived from the fundamental equation of capital theory. Concerns about these approaches are taken up. We go on to argue that an opportunity cost approach is the correct theoretical framework for accounting for owner-occupied housing (OOH) in a CPI. This approach, first mentioned in a 2006 OECD paper by Diewert, is developed more fully here. We explore the relationship of this new approach to the usual rental equivalency and user cost approaches. The new approach leads to an owner-occupied housing opportunity cost (OOHOC) index that is a weighted average of the rental and the financial opportunity costs. ; We call attention to the need for more direct measures of inflation for owner-occupied housing services. In a 2007 paper, Mishkin argues that central banks with supervisory authority can reduce the likelihood of bubbles forming through prudential supervision of the financial system. However, the official mandates of central banks typically focus on managing measured inflation. Barack Obama has pledged to give the Federal Reserve greater oversight of a broader array of financial institutions. We believe that an important addition to this pledge should be to give the BLS, BEA, and Census Bureau the funds and the mandate to aggressively develop improved measures of inflation for owner-occupied housing services. Central banks and national governments have many policy instruments at their disposal that they could use, in the future, to control inflation in housing markets. What they lack are appropriate measures of inflation in the market for owner-occupied housing services. The proposed new opportunity cost measure for accounting for OOH in a CPI will not be simple or cheap to implement. However, the current financial crisis makes it clear that the costs of not having an adequate measure for inflation in the cost of owner-occupied housing services can be far greater.Durable goods, Consumer ; Consumer price indexes ; Cost of living adjustments ; Housing

Effects of Chemical Potential on Hadron Masses at Finite Temperature

We study the effects of the chemical potential on the $\rho$ meson mass at finite temperature. Our preliminary results show that some effects are seen in the vicinity of the phase transition point. Although the signal is still too noisy to obtain conclusive physical results within limited statistics, the mass susceptibility is consistent with zero.Comment: LATTICE98(hightemp), 3 page

Simulation of SU(2) Dynamical Fermion at Finite Chemical Potential and at Finite Temperature

SU(2) lattice gauge theory with dynamical fermion at non-zero chemical potential and at finite temperature is studied. We focus on the influence of chemical potential for quark condensate and mass of pseudoscalar meson at finite temperature. Hybrid Monte Carlo simulations with $N_f=8$ staggered fermions are carried out on $12 \times 12\times 24 \times 4$ lattice. At $\beta=1.1$ and $m_{q}=$0.05,0.07,0.1, we calculate the quark condensate and masses of pseudoscalar meson consisting of light and heavier quarks for chemical potential $\mu=$ 0.0,0.02,0.05,0.1,0.2.Comment: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Nonperturbative Methods and Lattice QCD, Guangzhou, Chin

Spin-orbit interactions in black-hole binaries

We perform numerical simulations of black-hole binaries to study the exchange of spin and orbital angular momentum during the last, highly nonlinear, stages of the coalescence process. To calculate the transfer of angular momentum from orbital to spin, we start with two quasi-circular configurations, one with initially non-spinning black holes, the other with corotating black holes. In both cases the binaries complete almost two orbits before merging. We find that, during these last orbits, the specific spin (a/m) of each horizon increases by only 0.012 for the initially non-spinning configuration, and by only 0.006 for the initially corotating configuration. By contrast, the corotation value for the specific spin should increase from 0.1 at the initial proper separation of 10M to 0.33 when the proper separation is 5M. Thus the spin-orbit coupling is far too weak to tidally lock the binary to a corotating state during the late-inspiral phase. We also study the converse transfer from spin into orbital motion. In this case, we start the simulations with parallel, highly-spinning non-boosted black holes. As the collision proceeds, the system acquires a non-head-on orbital motion, due to spin-orbit coupling, that leads to the radiation of angular momentum. We are able to accurately measure the energy and angular momentum losses and model their dependence on the initial spins.Comment: This version corrects two typos in Eq (4) and Table I present in the published versio

Information entropic superconducting microcooler

We consider a design for a cyclic microrefrigerator using a superconducting flux qubit. Adiabatic modulation of the flux combined with thermalization can be used to transfer energy from a lower temperature normal metal thin film resistor to another one at higher temperature. The frequency selectivity of photonic heat conduction is achieved by including the hot resistor as part of a high frequency LC resonator and the cold one as part of a low-frequency oscillator while keeping both circuits in the underdamped regime. We discuss the performance of the device in an experimentally realistic setting. This device illustrates the complementarity of information and thermodynamic entropy as the erasure of the quantum bit directly relates to the cooling of the resistor.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Introduction to Price and Productivity Measurement for Housing

This paper provides a brief introduction to a proposed new opportunity cost treatment of owner occupied housing in measures of inflation for the United States. In addition, the paper introduces, and provides links to, a collection of nine other papers that discuss various aspects of the treatment of owner occupied housing in measures of inflation for a number of nations including Canada, Germany, Iceland and the United States.Durable goods, Consumer Price Index, Cost of Living Index, Owner Occupied Housing, depreciation, hedonic regression models, rental equivalence approac

Study of acoustic emission during mechanical tests of large flight weight tank structure

A polyphenylane oxide insulated, flight weight, subscale, aluminum tank was monitored for acoustic emissions during a proof test and during 100 cycles of environmental test simulating space flights. The use of a combination of frequency filtering and appropriate spatial filtering to reduce background noise was found to be sufficient to detect acoustic emission signals of relatively small intensity expected from subcritical crack growth in the structure. Several emission source locations were identified, including the one where a flaw was detected by post-test X-ray inspections. For most source locations, however, post-test inspections did not detect flaws; this was partially attributed to the higher sensitivity of the acoustic emission technique than any other currently available NDT method for detecting flaws