Testing a Simple Structural Model of Endogenous Growth

The efect of taxation on growth is embodied in a model of a small open economy with endogenous growth. The structural model is estimated on post-war panel data for 76 countries and the bootstrap is used to produce the model’s sampling variation. Panel data regressions of growth on taxation do not reject this model but do reject a model with no tax effects.endogenous growth, taxation, business regulation, bootstrap, model validation.

Getting Cars Off the Road: The Cost-Effectiveness of an Episodic Pollution Control Program

Ground level ozone remains a serious problem in the United States. Because ozone non-attainment is a summer problem, episodic rather than continuous controls of ozone precursors are possible. We evaluate the costs and effectiveness of an episodic scheme that requires people to buy permits in order to drive on high ozone days. We estimate the demand function for permits based on a survey of 1,300 households in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Assuming that all vehicle owners comply with the scheme, the permit program would reduce VOCs by 50 tons and NOx by 42 tons per Code Red day at a permit price of $75. Allowing for non-compliance by 15$9 million (2008 USD). This compares favorably with permanent methods of reducing VOCs that cost $645 per ton per year.Ground-Level Ozone, Episodic Pollution Control Schemes, Mobile Sources, Volatile Organic Compounds (Vocs), Cost Per Ton of Vocs Removed

Article 158(3) of the Hong Kong Basic Law and the Preliminary Reference Procedure of the European Union

This Article analyses the preliminary reference procedure under Article 158(3) of the Hong Kong Basic Law and its transplantation from Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Preliminary reference procedures require courts of finalappeal to refer certain questions of law to a higher legal authority for determination before they can give judgement. This Article argues that this area of Hong Kong constitutional law is underdeveloped, due in large part to the unwillingness of the Hong Kong judiciary to respect the interests of the national legislature. An examination of the preliminary reference procedure, as practiced in the E.U., makes clear that the constitutional order in Hong Kong must do more tobalance regional and national interests. To that end, this Article recommends several reforms: 1) to eliminate the existing jurisprudence regarding Article 158(3) of the Basic Law; 2) to adopt E.U.-style doctrines of judicial economy, including irrelevant question, acte éclairé, and acte clair; 3) to adopt a doctrine of sincere cooperation, so as to increase the quality and quantity of judicial references; and 4) to modernize the concept of Hong Kong law to a hybrid system of common law and Chinese law

Force-insensitive optical cavity

We describe a rigidly-mounted optical cavity which is insensitive to inertial forces acting in any direction and to the compressive force used to constrain it. The design is based on a cubic geometry with four supports placed symmetrically about the optical axis in a tetrahedral configuration. To measure the inertial force sensitivity, a laser is locked to the cavity while it is inverted about three orthogonal axes. The maximum acceleration sensitivity is 2.5\times10^-11/g (where g=9.81 ms^-2), the lowest passive sensitivity to be reported for an optical cavity.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, journa

Asymmetric conditional correlations in stock returns

Modeling and estimation of correlation coefficients is a fundamental step in risk management, especially with the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008, which challenged the traditional measuring of dependence in the financial market. Because of the serial dependence and small signal-to-noise ratio, patterns of the dependence in the data cannot be easily detected and modeled. This paper introduces a common factor analysis into the conditional correlation coefficients to extract the features of dependence. While statistical properties are thoroughly derived, extensive empirical analysis provides us with common patterns for the conditional correlation coefficients that give new insight into a number of important questions in financial data, especially the asymmetry of cross-correlations and the factors that drive the cross-correlations

Hybrid Electrostatic/Flextensional Mirror for Lightweight, Large-Aperture, and Cryogenic Space Telescopes

A lightweight, cryogenically capable, scalable, deformable mirror has been developed for space telescopes. This innovation makes use of polymer-based membrane mirror technology to enable large-aperture mirrors that can be easily launched and deployed. The key component of this innovation is a lightweight, large-stroke, cryogenic actuator array that combines the high degree of mirror figure control needed with a large actuator influence function. The latter aspect of the innovation allows membrane mirror figure correction with a relatively low actuator density, preserving the lightweight attributes of the system. The principal components of this technology are lightweight, low-profile, high-stroke, cryogenic-capable piezoelectric actuators based on PMN-PT (piezoelectric lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate) single-crystal configured in a flextensional actuator format; high-quality, low-thermal-expansion polymer membrane mirror materials developed by NeXolve; and electrostatic coupling between the membrane mirror and the piezoelectric actuator assembly to minimize problems such as actuator print-through