Logic in the Land of Make-Believe

Philosophers call it “contagion” when pretense influences belief, behavior, perception, or emotion. This pejorative terminology is justified in some cases: fantasy and imagination can exercise a pathological influence. This essay, however, reviews some logical techniques that allow pretense to govern belief in a rational and beneficial way. Philosophers might want similar techniques in their tool-kits when they explore interactions between belief and pretense

Expressive Three-valued Truth Functions

The expressive truth functions of two-valued logic have all been characterized, as have the expressive unary truth functions of finitely-many-valued logic. This paper introduces some techniques for identifying expressive functions in three-valued logics

The Augmented SOLOW Model And The OECD Sample

In their influential work on the augmented Solow model, Mankiw, Romer and Weil (1992) showed that cross-section evidence was reasonably consistent with the Solow growth model augmented to include human capital for a wide range of countries.  However, for the sample of OECD countries, they found that the model had low explanatory power and underestimated the output elasticity of physical capital. We revisit their seminal work using data from the recently released version 6.1 of the Penn World Table. We find that the ability of the augmented Solow model to explain the cross-country variation in income per capita in the OECD sample improves significantly. Our results highlight the importance of taking into account changes that take place over time in the collection and measurement of national accounts data in estimating and testing the augmented Solow model

Forensic Imaging

At the microscopic level, printing on a substrate exhibits imperfections that can be used as a unique identifier for labels, documents and other printed items. In previous work, we have demonstrated using these minute imperfections around a simple forensic mark such as a single printed character for robust authentication of the character with a low cost (and mobile) system. This approach allows for product authentication even when there is only minimal printing (e.g. on a small label or medallion), supporting a variety of secure document workflows. In this paper, we present an investigation on the influence that the substrate type has on the imperfections of the printing process that are used to derive the character "signature". We also make a comparison between two printing processes, dry electro photographic process (laser) and (thermal) inkjet. Understanding the sensitivity of this approach is important so that we know the limitations of the approach for document forensics

The Mixture Of Distribution Hypothesis And The Russian Stock Market

According to the mixture of distributions hypothesis (MDH), a serially correlated mixture of variables measuring the rate at which information arrives to the market explains the GARCH effects in stock returns. While reasonable amount of empirical evidence supports this hypothesis for developed, highly liquid stock markets in industrial countries, the current literature does not provide much findings for stock markets in countries that have recently experienced the transition from economic planning to capitalism. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to provide a first piece of evidence for one of the newly created stock market, the Russian stock market. Examination of the relationship between risk, returns, volatility and volume existing in the Russian stock market provides evidence in support of the MDH and suggests that even in emerging and turbulent markets risk and returns are jointly integrated to the flow of information arriving to the market

Rational Expectations and Output Supply: Evidence from the Sugar Cane and Coffee Industries in Jamaica

This paper investigates the rationality and price responsiveness of sugar cane and coffee farmers in Jamaica for the period 1960-1980. The output supplied by these farmers is modeled to incorporate anticipation by farmers of commodity board actions. The structure of constraints imposed by the rationality of these anticipated responses 1s derived and tested by means of a likelihood ratio test statistic. The results support the joint hypothesis of rationality and price responsiveness. Policy implications of the anticipated response function are also identifies

Labor Allocation and Productivity of Men and Women on Thai Farms

This paper examines the efficiency at labor allocation and the productivity of labor by gender between and within farm and non-farm enterprises on Thai farms. A Cobb-Douglas production function is estimated for both types of enterprises using disaggregated data. The estimated parameters of these functions are utilized to analyze efficiency and productivity issues. The results showed that inter-enterprise efficiency can be enhanced by allocating more labor of men to non-farm enterprises and mare labor of women to farm enterprises, but cultural constraints may impede such substitution. Policy makers need to improve incentives for non-farm enterprises

Price Policy and Agricultural Export Performance in Jamaica

Exact date of working paper unknown

Rational Expectations and Output Supply: Evidence from the Sugar Cane and Coffee Industries in Jamaica

Exact date of working paper unknown