The Genotype of the Endosperm and Embryo as It Influences Vivipary in Maize

The development of the maize seed is dependent on the orderly unfolding of events in which each component of the developing caryopsis has a particular role to play. The ultimate control of these events must depend upon numerous genes, which if altered will interfere with normal development. Many mutants of this type have been described, ranging from those which produce relatively slight alteration in the caryopsis to those which prevent practically all development. Among those producing relatively slight changes are mutants which give rise to premature germination. The seeds of these mutants develop normally until late in ontogeny. During the early dough stage the plumule begins to elongate, and the seeds germinate while still attached to the ear. Such mutants have been called viviparous

Ergodicity of skew products over linearly recurrent IETs

We prove that the skew product over a linearly recurrent interval exchange transformation defined by almost any real-valued, mean-zero linear combination of characteristic functions of intervals is ergodic with respect to Lebesgue measure.Comment: V2: Rewrite of Sections 3, 4.4, 4.5 and

Firm Behaviour Under the Threat of Liquidation: Implications for Output, Investment & Business Cycle Transmission

Cash balances of the firm follow a diffusion process, triggering liquidation when they cross a threshold value. Access to external funds is constrained. Shareholders are impatient. With these assumptions there is a precautionary motive for retaining earnings; the internal cost of funds and local risk-aversion are decreasing functions of net worth; and, in extensions of our basic model, output and investment are increasing functions of net worth. We numerically simulate aggregate behaviour of a population of such firms. Shocks to net worth lead to substantial and prolonged deviations from steady state, consistent with a financial mechanism of business cycle transmission.Financing constraints, output, investment

Do peer Groups Matter? Peer Groups versus Schooling Effects on Academic Attainment

In this paper we estimate an educational production function. Educational attainment is a function of three types of inputs: peer group, parental and schooling. We find that conventional measures of school quality are not good predictors for academic attainment, once we control for peer group effects. Parental qualities also have strong effects on academic atainment. This academic attainment is then a key determinant of subsequent labour market success, as measured by earnings.

Factor Residuals in SUR Regressions: Estimating Panels Allowing for Cross Sectional Correlation

This paper describes a method for estimating panels by imposing a factor structure on the residuals. The method allows SUR estimation of panel models by providing a full-rank estimator of the system covariance matrix when the usual estimate is rank-deficient. We charactersie completely the circumstances when this is possible. When the usual estimator is of full rank, our procedure provides a more parsimonious representation of the covariance matrix, which can lead to efficiency gains in finite samples. Monte Carlo analysis of convergence regressions and PPP regressions in the Heston-Summers data-set indicates that the proposed estimator has better performance in terms of RMSE and bias than standard panel or SUR estimators (where available), as well as offering unbiased inference.Panel data, cross sectional correlation, factor analysis

Five Weeks in the Life of the Pound: Interest Rates

Yields to maturity of a set of nominal and index linked gilts are used to obtain estimates of the term structures of nominal and real interest rates. These allow calculation of the term structures of nominal and real interest rates. These also allow calculation of expected inflation. The estimation is performed for a period of five weeks including the date of sterling's exit from the ERM. We look at the macroeconomic consequences of the shift in the exchange rate regime as implied by the behaviour of financial markets, and how those markets incorporate new information.

Unique equilibrium states for some intermediate beta transformations

We prove uniqueness of equilibrium states for subshifts corresponding to intermediate beta transformations with $\beta > 2$ having the property that the orbit of 0 is bounded away from 1