Pricing in International Markets: Lessons From The Economist

Export firms are often assumed to stabilize destination market prices in the face of nominal exchange rate changes in order to protect market share. We show that standard tests of such pricing to market fail to discriminate against the alternative hypothesis of menu costs. As a case study, we examine the characteristics and determinants of changes in the cover prices of The Economist magazine in a sample of twelve countries over the floating rate period. We find that, while the law of one price fails, there is no evidence of systematic attempts to offset nominal exchange rate movements. Instead, the findings are consistent with menu cost driven pricing behavior.

Geographical and Sectoral Shocks in the U.S. Business Cycle

We examine whether the aggregate U.S. business cycle is driven mainly by geographical" shocks (affecting all sectors within a state), or by sectoral shocks (affecting the same sector in all" states). We find that, at the level of an individual sector in an individual state growth are driven by the sector, not by the state: textiles in Texas moves more with textiles" elsewhere in the U.S. than with other sectors in Texas. But shocks to sector growth rates exhibit" a lower correlation across sectors compared to the correlation of shocks to state growth rates" across states. As a result, geographical shocks gain greater importance at higher levels of" aggregation. Finally, we find that changes in the volatility of the aggregate U.S. business cycle" reflect, to a roughly comparable degree, both changes in the volatility of state and sector business" cycles, and changes in their correlation across sectors and states.

Non-spherical collapse of a two fluid star

We obtain the analogue of collapsing Vaidya-like solution to include both a null fluid and a string fluid, with a linear equation of state ($p_{\bot} = k \rho$), in non-spherical (plane symmetric and cylindrically symmetric) anti-de Sitter space-timess. It turns out that the non-spherical collapse of two fluid in anti-de Sitter space-times, in accordance with cosmic censorship, proceed to form black holes, i.e., on naked singularity ever forms, violating hoop conjecture.Comment: 7 pages, RevTeX 4, minor correction

Transport in Luttinger Liquids

We give a brief introduction to Luttinger liquids and to the phenomena of electronic transport or conductance in quantum wires. We explain why the subject of transport in Luttinger liquids is relevant and fascinating and review some important results on tunneling through barriers in a one-dimensional quantum wire and the phenomena of persistent currents in mesoscopic rings. We give a brief description of our own work on transport through doubly-crossed Luttinger liquids and transport in the Schulz-Shastry exactly solvable Luttinger-like model.Comment: Latex file, 15 pages, four eps figure

Coherent States for the Non-Linear Harmonic Oscillator

Wave packets for the Quantum Non-Linear Oscillator are considered in the Generalized Coherent State framerwork. To first order in the non-linearity parameter the Coherent State behaves very similarly to its classical counterpart. The position expectation value oscillates in a simple harmonic manner. The energy-momentum uncertainty relation is time independent as in a harmonic oscillator. Various features, (such as the Squeezed State nature), of the Coherent State have been discussed

Diamond degradation in hadron fields

The energy dependence of the concentration of primary displacements induced by protons and pions in diamond has been calculated in the energy range 50 MeV - 50 GeV, in the frame of the Lindhard theory. The concentrations of primary displacements induced by protons and pions have completely different energy dependencies: the proton degradation is very important at low energies, and is higher than the pion one in the whole energy range investigated, with the exception of the delta33 resonance region. Diamond has been found, theoretically, to be one order of magnitude more resistant to proton and pion irradiation in respect to silicon.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Constrained Dynamics of an Anomalous (g/neq2)(g/neq 2) Relativistic Spinning Particle in Electromagnetic Background

In this paper we have considered the dynamics of an anomalous ($g\neq 2$) charged relativistic spinning particle in the presence of an external electromagnetic field. The constraint analysis is done and the complete set of Dirac brackets are provided that generate the canonical Lorentz algebra and dynamics through Hamiltonian equations of motion. The spin-induced effective curvature of spacetime and its possible connection with Analogue Gravity models are commented upon.Comment: 10 pages Latex, minor corrections and changes in ref., slightly enlarged version, to appear in EPJ

Non-linear electrical conduction and broadband noise in charge-ordered rare earth manganate Nd_0.5Ca_0.5MnO_3

Measurements of the dc transport properties and the low-frequency conductivity noise in films of charge ordered Nd_0.5Ca_0.5MnO_3 grown on Si subtrate reveal the existence of a threshold field in the charge ordered regime beyond which strong non linear conduction sets in along with a large broad band conductivity noise. Threshold-dependent conduction disappears as T -> T_{CO}, the charge ordering temperature. This observation suggests that the charge ordered state gets depinned at the onset of the non-linear conduction.Comment: 3 pages of two-column text and 4 eps figure