Thinking about the 'law of unintended consequences'

The United State’s now-not-so-covert drone based program targeting Al Qaeda (AQ) and Taliban commanders based in Pakistan’s inhospitable and hostile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FETA) has been operational since 2004. However, US air strikes in Pakistan’s tribal belt have steadily escalated over the past three years. The US has claimed that these attacks have successfully decimated core Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership. This past September alone the US military conducted 26 drone strikes in Pakistan, racking up a figure that the BBC is calling the "highest monthly total for the past six years". Not only do these steadily escalating drone strikes raise some pertinent questions about US/NATO successes claimed under the rubric of the Global War on Terror (or if you prefer, the Overseas Contingency Operations) but they also shed some light on the deteriorating political situation in Pakistan.Publisher PD

Scalable energy-efficient routing in mobile Ad hoc network

The quick deployment without any existing infrastructure makes mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) a striking choice for dynamic situations such as military and rescue operations, disaster recovery, and so on and so forth. However, routing remains one of the major issues in MANET due to the highly dynamic and distributed environment. Energy consumption is also a significant issue in ad hoc networks since the nodes are battery powered. This report discusses some major dominating set based approaches to perform energy efficient routing in mobile ad hoc networks. It also presents the performance results for each of these mentioned approaches in terms of throughput, average end to end delay and the life time in terms of the first node failure. Based on the simulation results, I identified the key issues in these protocols regarding network life time. In this report, I propose and discuss a new approach “Dynamic Dominating Set Generation Algorithm” (DDSG) to optimize the network life time. This algorithm dynamically selects dominating nodes during the process of routing and thus creates a smaller dominating set. DDSG algorithm thereby eliminates the energy consumption from the non-used dominating nodes. In order to further increase the network life time, the algorithm takes into consideration the threshold settings which helps to distribute the process of routing within the network. This helps to eliminate a single dominating node from getting drained out by continuous transmission and reception of packets. In this report, the detailed algorithmic design and performance results through simulation is discussed

Electromagnetic Interactions in the Quantum Hall Ferromagnet

The $\nu =1$ quantum Hall ground state in samples like GaAs is well known to be ferromagnetic. The global SU(2) spin symmetry of the microscopic action is broken down to a U(1) symmetry by the ground state. The Goldstone bosons corresponding to this spontaneous breaking of symmetry are the ferromagnetic magnons which are neutral spin waves. In addition, there are topologically nontrivial, electrically charged spin excitations known as spin skyrmions, which in these samples are the favoured charge carriers. In this letter, we look into the electromagnetic coupling of these spin excitations. The discrete symmetries P and T are also broken by the ground state and we find that to the leading order, the electromagnetic interaction of the spin waves occurs through a nonminimal coupling given by a Chern-Simons like term containing both the electromagnetic potentials and the two Euler angles that specify the coset SU(2)/U(1) and thereby, the Goldstone bosons.Comment: 13 pages, Plain TeX, no figure

The export-diversifying impact of and U.S. foreign direct investments in indian manufacturing sector

The paper highlights the export-diversifying impact of FDI in a developing country. FDI from a particular source may lead to export diversification of developing countries if it positively affects the export-intensity of the non-traditional export sector. Indirectly, FDI may encourage export diversification by spillover effects on the exportintensity of domestic firms in the non-traditional export sector. The empirical results forthe Indian economy in the post liberalization period show that FDI from U.S. has led to diversification of India's exports both directly as well as indirectly. However, Japanese FDI has had no significant impact on India's exportsFDI and Exports, Indian Exports, Export-Diversification, Japanese FDI, U.S. FDI

Distinguishing between observationally equivalent theories of crises

The objective of this paper is to empirically test across alternative, apparently observationally equivalent theories of currency crises. Theories of crises are often difficult to distinguish from each other based on the behavior of commonly used predictors. Using a comprehensive data set on gross external assets and liabilities for 167 countries created bythe World Bank's Latin America and the Caribbean Region and the Development Research Group, this study is able to make a significant move toward redressing this shortcoming. It focuses on identifying potential crisis predictors, as well as testing the validity of the distinct transmission mechanisms implied by various theories of currency crisis. Evidence is presented in support of insurance-based models, suggesting that proxies for contingent liability accumulation are effective crisis predictors.Economic Theory&Research,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring

School entry, educational attainment, and quarter of birth: a cautionary tale of a local average treatment effect

Studies of the effects of school entry age on short-run and long-run outcomes generally fail to capture the parameter of policy interest and/or are inconsistent because the instrument they use violates monotonicity, required for identification of a local average treatment effect. Our instrument addresses both problems and shows no effect of entry age on the educational attainment of children born in the fourth quarter who delay enrollment only because they are constrained by the law. We provide suggestive evidence that a waiver policy allowing some children to enter before the legally permissible age increases average educational attainment.We are grateful to Josh Angrist, Garry Barrett, Sandy Black, Jim Heckman, Caroline Hoxby, Claudia Olivetti, Daniele Paserman, two anonymous referees, the editors of this Journal, and participants in seminars at the Australian National University, Boston University, University of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California, Irvine, New York University, Pomona College, Singapore Management University, Tilburg University, the Tinbergen Institute, the University of Wollongong, Society of Labor Economists, and Econometric Society for helpful comments and suggestions. The usual caveat applies. Barua acknowledges funding under National Science Foundation American Educational Research Association grant REC-0634035. Lang acknowledges funding from the National Science Foundation under grant SEC-0339149. The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the funding agencies. (REC-0634035 - National Science Foundation American Educational Research Association; SEC-0339149 - National Science Foundation