Can we declare military Keynesianism dead?

This paper empirically tests the Keynesian hypothesis that government defence spending positively impacts on aggregate output, by using a long run equilibrium model for the US and the UK. Our contribution, with respect to previous works, is twofold. First, our inferences are adjusted for structural breaks exhibited by the data concerning fiscal and monetary variables. Second, we take into account different dynamics between defence spending on aggregate output, showing that the results are sensitive to sub-sample choices. Though the estimated elasticities in both countries show a lack of significance in the more recent years of the sample, defence spending priorities addressed to international security may revitalize pro-cyclical effects in the UK, by an industrial policy of defence shared with the EU members.Military spending, Output, Long run models

Disentangling Civilian and Military Spending Shocks: A Bayesian DSGE Approach for the US Economy

In this paper, we disentangle public spending components in order analyse their effects on the U.S. economy. Our Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model (DSGE) model includes both civilian and military expenditures. We take into account the changes in the effects of these public spending components before and after the structural break that occurred in the U.S. economy around 1980, namely financial liberalisation. Therefore, we estimate our model with Bayesian methods for two sample periods: 1954:3–1979:2 and 1983:1–2008:2. Our results suggest that total government spending has a positive effect on output, but it induces a fall in private consumption. Moreover, we find important differences between the effects of civilian and military spending. In the pre-1980 period, higher civilian spending induced a rise in private consumption, whereas military spending shocks systematically decreased it. Our findings indicate that civilian spending has a more positive impact on output than military expenditure. Our robustness analysis assesses the impact of public spending shocks under alternative monetary policy assumptions

Challenging the drug-likeness dogma for new drug discovery in Tuberculosis

The emergence of multi- and extensively drug resistant tuberculosis worldwide poses a great threat to human health and highlight the need to discover and develop new, effective and inexpensive antituberculosis agents. High-throughput screening assays against well-validated drug targets and structure based drug design have been employed to discover new lead compounds. However, the great majority fail to demonstrate any antimycobacterial activity when tested against Mycobacterium tuberculosis in whole-cell screening assays. This is mainly due to some of the intrinsic properties of the bacilli, such as the extremely low permeability of its cell wall, slow growth, drug resistance, drug tolerance, and persistence. In this sense, understanding the pathways involved in M. tuberculosis drug tolerance, persistence, and pathogenesis, may reveal new approaches for drug development. Moreover, the need for compounds presenting a novel mode of action is of utmost importance due to the emergence of resistance not only to the currently used antituberculosis agents, but also to those in the pipeline. Cheminformatics studies have shown that drugs endowed with antituberculosis activity have the peculiarity of being more lipophilic than many other antibacterials, likely because this leads to improved cell penetration through the extremely waxy mycobacterial cell wall. Moreover, the interaction of the lipophilic moiety with the membrane alters its stability and functional integrity due to the disruption of the proton motive force, resulting in cell death. When a ligand-based medicinal chemistry campaign is ongoing, it is always difficult to predict whether a chemical modification or a functional group would be suitable for improving the activity. Nevertheless, in the "instruction manual" of medicinal chemists, certain functional groups or certain physicochemical characteristics (i.e., high lipophilicity) are considered red flags to look out for in order to safeguard drug-likeness and avoid attritions in the drug discovery process. In this review, we describe how antituberculosis compounds challenge established rules such as the Lipinski's "rule of five" and how medicinal chemistry for antituberculosis compounds must be thought beyond such dogmatic schemes.publishersversionpublishe

The Role of Fiscal Policy Components in Private Consumption: a Re-examination of the Effects of Military and Civilian Spending

In this paper, we re-examine the magnitude of the impact of government spending on private consumption by a new Keynesian approach, focusing on the role of military spending. For this reason, we separate civilian and military spending in the U.S. economy and analyse their respective effects. Our VAR estimates show, as expected, that civilian expenditure induces a positive and significant response on private consumption whereas military spending has a negative impact. We then develop a simple DSGE new Keynesian model to simulate the empirical evidence under a larger persistence of shocks and a different financing mechanism in military spending, the latter reproducing the propensity of policy-makers to use budget deficits to finance wars. Lastly, simulated impulse response functions of alternative specification models prove the robustness of our analysis

Are all the fiscal policy shocks identical? Analysing the effects on private consumption of civilian and military spending shocks

In this paper, we show that civilian and military government spending have specific characteristics that can affect differently private consumption. Our VAR estimates for the US economy show that civilian expenditure induces a positive and significant response on private consumption whereas military spending has a negative impact. We adopt a new Keynesian approach and develop a DSGE model in order to simulate the empirical evidence. Both the larger persistence of shocks in military spending and the different financing mechanisms, which accounts for the propensity of policy-makers to use budget deficits to finance wars, mimic the differences in the empirical responses of private consumption. Simulated impulse response functions of alternative specification models prove the robustness of our analysis

Are all the fiscal policy shocks identical? Analysing the effects on private consumption of civilian and military spending shocks

In this paper, we show that civilian and military government spending have specific characteristics that can affect differently private consumption. Our VAR estimates for the US economy show that civilian expenditure induces a positive and significant response on private consumption whereas military spending has a negative impact. We adopt a new Keynesian approach and develop a DSGE model in order to simulate the empirical evidence. Both the larger persistence of shocks in military spending and the different financing mechanisms, which accounts for the propensity of policy-makers to use budget deficits to finance wars, mimic the differences in the empirical responses of private consumption. Simulated impulse response functions of alternative specification models prove the robustness of our analysis

Are all the fiscal policy shocks identical? Analysing the effects on private consumption of civilian and military spending shocks

In this paper, we show that civilian and military government spending have specific characteristics that can affect differently private consumption. Our VAR estimates for the US economy show that civilian expenditure induces a positive and significant response on private consumption whereas military spending has a negative impact. We adopt a new Keynesian approach and develop a DSGE model in order to simulate the empirical evidence. Both the larger persistence of shocks in military spending and the different financing mechanisms, which accounts for the propensity of policy-makers to use budget deficits to finance wars, mimic the differences in the empirical responses of private consumption. Simulated impulse response functions of alternative specification models prove the robustness of our analysis

Prevalence and time course of post-stroke pain: A multicenter prospective hospital-based study

OBJECTIVE: Pain prevalence data for patients at various stages after stroke. DESIGN: Repeated cross-sectional, observational epidemiological study. SETTING: Hospital-based multicenter study. SUBJECTS: Four hundred forty-three prospectively enrolled stroke survivors. METHODS: All patients underwent bedside clinical examination. The different types of post-stroke pain (central post-stroke pain, musculoskeletal pains, shoulder pain, spasticity-related pain, and headache) were diagnosed with widely accepted criteria during the acute, subacute, and chronic stroke stages. Differences among the three stages were analyzed with χ(2)-tests. RESULTS: The mean overall prevalence of pain was 29.56% (14.06% in the acute, 42.73% in the subacute, and 31.90% in the chronic post-stroke stage). Time course differed significantly according to the various pain types (P < 0.001). The prevalence of musculoskeletal and shoulder pain was higher in the subacute and chronic than in the acute stages after stroke; the prevalence of spasticity-related pain peaked in the chronic stage. Conversely, headache manifested in the acute post-stroke stage. The prevalence of central post-stroke pain was higher in the subacute and chronic than in the acute post-stroke stage. Fewer than 25% of the patients with central post-stroke pain received drug treatment. CONCLUSIONS: Pain after stroke is more frequent in the subacute and chronic phase than in the acute phase, but it is still largely undertreated

Colonial ceramic materials in Antiguyoc (Jujuy puna, Argentina): an approach to their production,circulation and use

Presentamos los resultados obtenidos hasta la fecha del estudio de evidencias materiales y documentación histórica de Antiguyoc, una localidad de la Puna de Jujuy vinculada a la minería del oro de época tardocolonial. El objetivo particular del trabajo consistió en aportar conocimientos acerca de la organización de la manufactura y la circulación de materiales cerámicos, en el marco de objetivos más amplios que consisten en el estudio del devenir histórico del lugar, de la vida cotidiana de las personas que lo habitaron y de las actividades que llevaron a cabo.El estudio presentado hace hincapié en parte de los materiales cerámicos recuperados en superficie del sitio Antiguyoc 1, el cual funcionó desde fines del siglo XVIII como asiento minero y viceparroquia. A su vez incorporamos datos provenientes de fuentes escritas que si bien refieren a otros espacios, son lugares próximos al mencionado sitio y que en la época analizada formaban parte de la jurisdicción de Antiguyoc.In this paper we present the results obtained to date of the study of material evidence and historical documentation of Antiguyoc, a town in Puna de Jujuy linked to colonial gold mining. The particular objective was to provide knowledge about the organization of the manufacture and circulation of ceramic materials in Antiguyoc, within the framework of broader objectives that consist in the study of the historical development of the place, of people’s daily life and the activities they carried out. The study emphasizes part of the ceramic materials recovered on the surface of the Antiguyoc 1 site, which functioned since the end of the 18th century as a mining seat and vice parish. At the same time, we incorporate data from written sources that, although they refer to other spaces, are places close to the mentioned site and that at the time analyzed were part of the jurisdiction of Antiguyoc.Fil: Perez Pieroni, María Josefina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucumán. Instituto Superior de Estudios Sociales. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Instituto Superior de Estudios Sociales; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales e Instituto Miguel Lillo. Instituto de Arqueología y Museo; ArgentinaFil: Giusta, Marco Nicolás. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales e Instituto Miguel Lillo. Instituto de Arqueología y Museo; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucumán. Instituto Superior de Estudios Sociales. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Instituto Superior de Estudios Sociales; Argentin