The Suspension of the Gold Standard as Sustainable Monetary Policy

This paper models the gold standard as a state contingent commitment technology that is only feasible during peace. Monetary policy during war, when the gold convertibility rule suspended, can still be credible, if the policy maker’s plan is to resume the gold standard in the future. The DGE model developed in this paper suggests that the resumption of the gold standard was a sustainable plan, which replaced the gold standard as a commitment technology and made monetary policy time consistent. Trigger strategies support the equilibrium: private agents retaliate if a policy maker defaults its plan to resume the gold standard

Opera\u27s Not Over \u27Til Arepo Returns

With the recent discovery in the north of England of yet another example of the famous Latin palindromic square illustrated at the left, it is time to review the mystery surrounding this clever construction. Found at an archeological site in Manchester, this joins the other discoveries in various sites throughout the lands of the former Roman Empire

Afterberners: An Assemblage of Nouns

The English language owes a debt of gratitude of Dame Juliana Berners. She was born circa 1388 and is believed to have been the prioress of a nunnery near St. Albans, Hertforshire, England. Her major contribution to literature is The Boke of St. Albans, a treatise on hawking, hunting and heraldry first published in 1486

Isolating intrinsic noise sources in a stochastic genetic switch

The stochastic mutual repressor model is analysed using perturbation methods. This simple model of a gene circuit consists of two genes and three promotor states. Either of the two protein products can dimerize, forming a repressor molecule that binds to the promotor of the other gene. When the repressor is bound to a promotor, the corresponding gene is not transcribed and no protein is produced. Either one of the promotors can be repressed at any given time or both can be unrepressed, leaving three possible promotor states. This model is analysed in its bistable regime in which the deterministic limit exhibits two stable fixed points and an unstable saddle, and the case of small noise is considered. On small time scales, the stochastic process fluctuates near one of the stable fixed points, and on large time scales, a metastable transition can occur, where fluctuations drive the system past the unstable saddle to the other stable fixed point. To explore how different intrinsic noise sources affect these transitions, fluctuations in protein production and degradation are eliminated, leaving fluctuations in the promotor state as the only source of noise in the system. Perturbation methods are then used to compute the stability landscape and the distribution of transition times, or first exit time density. To understand how protein noise affects the system, small magnitude fluctuations are added back into the process, and the stability landscape is compared to that of the process without protein noise. It is found that significant differences in the random process emerge in the presence of protein noise

Macroeconomic Implications of Gold Reserve Policy of the Bank of England during the Eighteenth Century

By imposing a simple adjustment cost on gold purchases the Bank of England was able to manage external drains of monetary gold while maintaining the convertibility of pound during the eighteenth century. This was a period during which constant political disturbances and external shocks on the market price of gold made monetary policy a challenging task. The implications of adjustment cost were not just limited to the gold reserves of the Bank, but stabilised consumption and the price level.Gold standard, Monetary policy, Monetary regimes, Adjustment Costs.

Filling of a Poisson trap by a population of random intermittent searchers

We extend the continuum theory of random intermittent search processes to the case of $N$ independent searchers looking to deliver cargo to a single hidden target located somewhere on a semi--infinite track. Each searcher randomly switches between a stationary state and either a leftward or rightward constant velocity state. We assume that all of the particles start at one end of the track and realize sample trajectories independently generated from the same underlying stochastic process. The hidden target is treated as a partially absorbing trap in which a particle can only detect the target and deliver its cargo if it is stationary and within range of the target; the particle is removed from the system after delivering its cargo. As a further generalization of previous models, we assume that up to $n$ successive particles can find the target and deliver its cargo. Assuming that the rate of target detection scales as $1/N$, we show that there exists a well--defined mean field limit $N\rightarrow \infty$, in which the stochastic model reduces to a deterministic system of linear reaction--hyperbolic equations for the concentrations of particles in each of the internal states. These equations decouple from the stochastic process associated with filling the target with cargo. The latter can be modeled as a Poisson process in which the time--dependent rate of filling $\lambda(t)$ depends on the concentration of stationary particles within the target domain. Hence, we refer to the target as a Poisson trap. We analyze the efficiency of filling the Poisson trap with $n$ particles in terms of the waiting time density $f_n(t)$. The latter is determined by the integrated Poisson rate $\mu(t)=\int_0^t\lambda(s)ds$, which in turn depends on the solution to the reaction-hyperbolic equations. We obtain an approximate solution for the particle concentrations by reducing the system of reaction-hyperbolic equations to a scalar advection--diffusion equation using a quasi-steady-state analysis. We compare our analytical results for the mean--field model with Monte-Carlo simulations for finite $N$. We thus determine how the mean first passage time (MFPT) for filling the target depends on $N$ and $n$