Regional Debt in Monetary Unions: Is it Inflationary?

This paper studies the inflationary implications of interest bearing regional debt in a monetary union. Is this debt simply backed by future taxation with no inflationary consequences? Or will the circulation of region debt induce monetization by a central bank? We argue here that both outcomes can arise in equilibrium. In the model economy, there are multiple equilibria which reflect the perceptions of agents regarding the manner in which the debt obligations will be met. In one equilibrium, termed Ricardian, the future obligations are met with taxation by a regional government while in the other, termed Monetization, the central bank is induced to print money to finance the region's obligations. The multiplicity of equilibria reflects a commitment problem of the central bank. A key indicator of the selected equilibrium is the distribution of the holdings of the regional debt. We show that regional governments, anticipating central bank financing of their debt obligations, have an incentive to create excessively large deficits. We use the model to assess the impact of policy measures within a monetary union.Monetary Union ; Inflation tax ; Seigniorage ; Public debt.

Insulation impossible: monetary policy and regional fiscal spillovers in a federation

This paper studies the effects of monetary policy rules in a fiscal federation, such as the European Union. The focus of the analysis is the interaction between the fiscal policy of member countries (regions) and the monetary authority. Each of the countries structures its fiscal policy (spending and taxes) with the interests of its citizens in mind. Ricardian equivalence does not hold due to the presence of monetary frictions, modeled here as reserve requirements. When capital markets are integrated, the fiscal policy of one country influences equilibrium wages and interest rates. Under certain rules, monetary policy may respond to the price variations induced by regional fiscal policies. Depending on the type of rule it adopts, interventions by the monetary authority affect the magnitude and nature of the spillover from regional fiscal policy.Monetary Union, Inflation tax, Seigniorage, monetary rules, public debt.

Monetary rules and the spillover of regional fiscal policies in a federation.

This paper studies the effects of monetary policy rules in a fiscal federation, such as the European Union. The focus of the analysis is the interaction between the fiscal policy of member countries (regions) and the monetary authority. Each of the countries structures its fiscal policy (spending and taxes) with the interests of its citizens in mind. Ricardian equivalence does not hold due to the presence of monetary frictions, modelled here as reserve requirements. When capital markets are integrated, the fiscal policy of one country influences equilibrium wages and interest rates. Under certain rules, monetary policy may respond to the price variations induced by regional fiscal policies. Depending on the type of rule it adopts, interventions by the monetary authority affect the magnitude and nature of the spillover from regional fiscal policy.Monetary Union ; Inflation tax ; Seigniorage ; monetary rules ; public debt.

Vasculature deprivation – induced osteonecrosis of the rat femoral head as a model for therapeutic trials

EXPERIMENTAL OSTEONECROSIS: The authors' experience with experimentally produced femoral capital osteonecrosis in rats is reviewed: incising the periosteum at the base of the neck of the femur and cutting the ligamentum teres leads to coagulation necrosis of the epiphysis. The necrotic debris is substituted by fibrous tissue concomitantly with resorption of the dead soft and hard tissues by macrophages and osteoclasts, respectively. Progressively, the formerly necrotic epiphysis is repopulated by hematopoietic-fatty tissue, and replaced by architecturally abnormal and biomechanically weak bone. The femoral heads lose their smooth-surfaced hemispherical shape in the wake of the load transfer through the hip joint such that, together with regressive changes of the joint cartilage and inflammatory-hyperplastic changes of the articular membrane, an osteoarthritis-like disorder ensues. THERAPEUTIC CHOICES: Diverse therapeutic options are studied to satisfy the different opinions concerning the significance of diverse etiological and pathogenic mechanisms: 1. Exposure to hyperbaric oxygen. 2. Exposure to hyperbaric oxygen and non-weight bearing on the operated hip. 3. Medication with enoxaparin. 4. Reduction of intraosseous hypertension, putting to use a procedure aimed at core decompression, namely drilling a channel through the femoral head. 5. Medication with vascular endothelial growth factor with a view to accelerating revascularization. 6. Medication with zoledronic acid to decrease osteoclastic productivity such that the remodeling of the femoral head is slowed. Glucocorticoid-related osteonecrosis appears to be apoptosis-related, thus differing from the vessel-deprivation-induced tissue coagulation found in idiopathic osteonecrosis. The quantities of TNF-α, RANK-ligand and osteoprotegerin are raised in glucocorticoid-treated osteoblasts so that the differentiation of osteoclasts is blocked. Moreover, the osteoblasts and osteocytes of the femoral cortex mostly undergo apoptosis after a lengthy period of glucocorticoid medication

Computing the Similarity Between Moving Curves

In this paper we study similarity measures for moving curves which can, for example, model changing coastlines or retreating glacier termini. Points on a moving curve have two parameters, namely the position along the curve as well as time. We therefore focus on similarity measures for surfaces, specifically the Fr\'echet distance between surfaces. While the Fr\'echet distance between surfaces is not even known to be computable, we show for variants arising in the context of moving curves that they are polynomial-time solvable or NP-complete depending on the restrictions imposed on how the moving curves are matched. We achieve the polynomial-time solutions by a novel approach for computing a surface in the so-called free-space diagram based on max-flow min-cut duality

A Game-Theoretic Foundation for the Maximum Software Resilience against Dense Errors

Safety-critical systems need to maintain their functionality in the presence of multiple errors caused by component failures or disastrous environment events. We propose a game-theoretic foundation for synthesizing control strategies that maximize the resilience of a software system in defense against a realistic error model. The new control objective of such a game is called $k$ -resilience. In order to be $k$ -resilient, a system needs to rapidly recover from infinitely many waves of a small number of up to $k$ close errors provided that the blocks of up to $k$ errors are separated by short time intervals, which can be used by the system to recover. We first argue why we believe this to be the right level of abstraction for safety critical systems when local faults are few and far between. We then show how the analysis of $k$ -resilience problems can be formulated as a model-checking problem of a mild extension to the alternating-time $\mu$ -calculus (AMC). The witness for $k$ resilience, which can be provided by the model checker, can be used for providing control strategies that are optimal with respect to resilience. We show that the computational complexity of constructing such optimal control strategies is low and demonstrate the feasibility of our approach through an implementation and experimental results

The Achilles heel of a strong private knowledge sector: evidence from Israel

Scientific research in universities is a critical and powerful component of knowledge creation for any society. However, for a country like Israel, one with no resources but its human capital – and that faces constant regional instability - scientific research is crucial for its existence. Historically, there was a fundamental understanding that in such a small country only universities can ensure viable, profound and high-calibre research, by critical mass of human capital and by optimising its resources. In this study, we look at the role of Israeli research universities in the National R&D System, why Israel is unique in its R&D structure, and how that structure is related to the universities' roles. We found that, despite Israel's outstanding ranking, in comparison to other OECD countries, for its R&D inputs and outputs, the Israeli universities' R&D output – measured in patents – is highly volatile and mostly affected by the country's strong business sector. This finding has implications regarding the strengthening of specific fields of research and the discussion about the role of universities in conducting applied vs basic research

Parvalbumin interneuron dysfunction in a thalamo-prefrontal cortical circuit in Disc1 locus impairment mice

Altered cortical excitation-inhibition (E-I) balance resulting from abnormal parvalbumin interneuron (PV IN) function is a proposed pathophysiological mechanism of schizophrenia (SZ) and other major psychiatric disorders. Preclinical studies have indicated that disrupted-in-schizophrenia-1 (DISC1) is a useful molecular lead to address the biology of prefrontal cortex dependent cognition and PV IN function. To date, prefrontal cortical inhibitory circuit function has not been investigated in depth in Disc1 locus impairment (LI) mouse models. Therefore, we used a Disc1 LI mouse model to investigate E-I balance in medial prefrontal cortical (mPFC) circuits. We found that inhibition onto layer 3 excitatory pyramidal neurons in the mPFC was significantly reduced in Disc1 LI mice. This reduced inhibition was accompanied by decreased GABA release from local PV, but not somatostatin (SOM) interneurons, and by impaired feedforward inhibition in the mediodorsal thalamus (MD) to mPFC circuit. Our mechanistic findings of abnormal PV IN function in a Disc1 LI model provide insight into biology that may be relevant to neuropsychiatric disorders including schizophrenia.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT A popular theory suggests that dysregulation of fast-spiking parvalbumin interneurons (PV INs) and elevated excitation-inhibition (E-I) balance contribute to the pathophysiology of various psychiatric disorders. Previous studies suggest that genetic perturbations of the disrupted-in-schizophrenia-1 (Disc1) gene affect prefrontal cortex-dependent cognition and PV IN function, but synaptic and circuit physiology data are lacking. Here, we provide evidence that the presynaptic function of PV INs in the medial prefrontal cortex is altered in Disc1 LI mice and that E-I balance is elevated within a thalamofrontal circuit known to be important for cognition. These findings may contribute to our understanding of the biology that gives rise to cognitive symptoms in a range of neuropsychiatric disorders

Abstract Interpretation with Unfoldings

We present and evaluate a technique for computing path-sensitive interference conditions during abstract interpretation of concurrent programs. In lieu of fixed point computation, we use prime event structures to compactly represent causal dependence and interference between sequences of transformers. Our main contribution is an unfolding algorithm that uses a new notion of independence to avoid redundant transformer application, thread-local fixed points to reduce the size of the unfolding, and a novel cutoff criterion based on subsumption to guarantee termination of the analysis. Our experiments show that the abstract unfolding produces an order of magnitude fewer false alarms than a mature abstract interpreter, while being several orders of magnitude faster than solver-based tools that have the same precision.Comment: Extended version of the paper (with the same title and authors) to appear at CAV 201

Two-Dimensional Electron Gas in InGaAs/InAlAs Quantum Wells

We designed and performed low temperature DC transport characterization studies on two-dimensional electron gases confined in lattice-matched In$_{0.53}$Ga$_{0.47}$As/In$_{0.52}$Al$_{0.48}$As quantum wells grown by molecular beam epitaxy on InP substrates. The nearly constant mobility for samples with the setback distance larger than 50nm and the similarity between the quantum and transport life-time suggest that the main scattering mechanism is due to short range scattering, such as alloy scattering, with a scattering rate of 2.2 ps$^{-1}$. We also obtain the Fermi level at the In$_{0.53}$Ga$_{0.47}$As/In$_{0.52}$Al$_{0.48}$As surface to be 0.36eV above the conduction band, when fitting our experimental densities with a Poisson-Schr\"odinger model.Comment: Accepted in Applied Physics Letter