Empirical analysis on the real effects of inflation and exchange rate uncertainty: The case of Colombia

This paper re-examines the effects of inflation and exchange rate uncertainty on real economic activity. The existent literature has treated both issues as separate subject matters. It has emphasized either the issue of inflation uncertainty or exchange rate uncertainty on economic growth or on different measures of economic activity. This paper attempts dealing with both issues by analyzing the magnitudes and direction of the effect of both: inflation and exchange rate uncertainty on real economic activity. By introducing dummy variables, we control for monetary policy change (the change to inflation targeting and flexible exchange rate). By using a generalized autoregressive conditional variance (GARCH) model of inflation and exchange rates, the conditional variances of the model’s forecast errors were extracted as measures of uncertainty. The results suggest that higher levels of inflation Granger cause more uncertainty and vice versa for the Colombian economy. Also, only inflation uncertainty matters for output by exerting a negative influence.Inflation Targeting, Inflation Uncertainty, Exchange Rate, Uncertainty, GARCH models, Granger causality

About the theory and empirical analysis of “the persistence of profit” and its applicability to Colombia

This paper looks into the application of the theory of “the persistence of profits” and how it can be used to model manufacturing industries in Colombia. By explaining where the theory of “persistence of profits” comes from, what it is, and what its determinants are brief descriptions of the theory is given. This paper proposes a model for examining persistence of profits in Colombian manufacturing industry. By analyzing the literature and the modeling in developed countries the model takes into account the characteristics of the manufacturing industry.Monopoly, Market structure, Barriers to Entry

Common Volatility across Latin American Foreign Exchange Markets

This paper uses high frequency exchange rate data for a group of twelve Latin American countries to analyze volatility comovements. Particular interest is posed on understanding the existence of a common volatility process during the 1994–2005 period. The analysis relies on bivariate common factor models. We test for second-order common features using the common ARCH-feature methodology developed by Engle and Kozicki (1993). Overall, the results of this paper indicate that while most currencies display evidence of time-varying variance, the volatility movements in the Latin American foreign exchange markets seems to be mainly country specific. Only a few markets show evidence of a common volatility process.

About the Theory and empirical analysis of the persistence of Profits and its applicability to Colombia

This paper looks into the application of the theory of 'the persistence of profits' and how it can be used to model manufacturing industries in Colombia. By explaining where the theory of persistence comes from and what are its determinants, this paper proposes a model for examining persistence of profits in colombian manufacturing industries.persistence of profits, Colombia

Exchange Rate as a Determinant of Foreign Direct Investment: Does it Really Matter? Theoretical Aspects, Literature Review and Applied Proposal.

This paper re-examines the role of exchange rates as determinant of FDI. It extends the analysis to include the issue of how exchange rates determine the decision of invest in one country depending on whether the firm is deciding to invest on the country to service the local market or to invest on the country in order to re-export. This paper offers a broad literature review of the state of the empirical research in order to draw conclusions of the real importance of the exchange rate as a determinant of FDI. Details of FDI current behavior in Latin American are described and I propose a model of FDI to be applied for these countries. Data sources are given.FDI, Exchange Rates, Exchange Rates Volatility

“Kate Williams’s The Pleasures of Men" (2012): mental disorder, trauma, resilience

Violence against women has been an important issue for neo-Victorian studies. Women’s bodies and minds have been the object of violence in Victorian times and historical fiction echoes traumas from the past that need restoration and healing in the present. Kate Williams’s The Pleasures of Men (2012) is an example of a novel where the protagonist, Catherine Sorgeiul, is a middle-class girl who lives in a house in the East of London with her uncle after a traumatic past. She needs to heal the scars of her suffering after becoming an orphan, but she believes herself to be evil. She feels a fascination for the murders committed by a serial killer nicknamed The Man of Crows in London in 1840. Catherine is a heroine with a vivid imagination and a mysterious past. This Gothic thriller takes the reader to a neo-Victorian city which becomes the landscape for female subjectless subjectivities. The victims of the killer and Catherine herself become fragmented, dislocated and haunted identities. London is the labyrinth where the lives of the poor and the destitute is precarious and has no value. The notion of Otherness can be found in the female victims as in Catherine herself, whose delirious psyche becomes akin to that of the killer. As the murders cause panic throughout the city, she comes to believe she can channel the voices of his victims and that they will lead her to the Man himself. However, lurking behind the lies she has been told about her past are secrets more deadly and devastating than anything her imagination can conjure. The aim of this paper is to show how neo-Victorian novels can speak about society’s crimes against women. These crimes need restoration and healing. At the same time, Judith Butler’s notions about vulnerability and resistance and Sarah Bracke’s ideas about resilience become relevant to claim for women’s agency after trauma as well as recovery through adaptation and forgiveness.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Memory frictions and reconciliation: Neo-victorian gothic and gender violence in Katy Darby’s The Whores’ Asylum (2012)

Katy Derby’s first novel, The Whores’ Asylum (2012), is an attempt to deal with the issue of prostitution and rescue work in Oxford in the 1880s. Jericho is an area where, away from the prestigious university colleges, drunkards, thieves and prostitutes loiter around in depraved houses of accommodation and taverns. The protagonists, Stephen Chapman –a brilliant medical student --, Edward Fraser –a Theology student –, and Diana – the woman who runs a refuge for fallen women – are the three angles of a triangle where friendship, desire and secrets meet at the heart of Victorian England. A succession of dreadful events together with the violence exerted against women brings to light the context in which the helplessness of the innocent victims of lust and debauchery is shown. Their aim is not only to keep order in this working-class suburb, but also to find the way to show sympathy for the deaths and suffering of the “prostituted other”. At the same time Darby makes use of the Neo-Victorian Gothic to recover aspects of the Victorian archive which provide the setting to discuss issues of morality, sexual exploitation and reform so important for the Victorian mind but also of relevance in our contemporary societies. The role of medical practice and rescue work is emphasized from the very beginning, and allusions to many events and cultural aspects of the period are frequent, following the Neo-Victorian trend of re-writing the past. Similarly, the novel’s commitment to the memoir style represents an attempt at the restoration of justice for those neglected by past and present communities and whose suffering does not deserve any political consideration. Following Judith Butler’s theories of gender, violence and mourning, this paper aims to discuss issues of the Victorian neglected other and contemporary concerns about the deaths and suffering of the victims of sexual exploitation. As a consequence of humanity having been denied to particular groups of people both in the Victorian past and in our postmodern presents, violence has been justified against these marginalized groups that do not deserve mourning because of sexual, racial, religious or ethnic differences. In this context, the lives and deaths of prostitutes have no value or social relevance in the power regimes of the past and the present, perpetuating western systems of government and sovereignty across time and different locations.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Cambridge Prostitution and the Rules Governing the University Spinning House in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century

The aim of this paper is to analyse the situation of prostitution in Cambridge and its regulation by the middle of the nineteenth century based on archival research. Cambridge Universitiy was characterised at the time by being a singular institution regarding its relationship with town and with the application of its own norms within its jurisdiction. As a consequence, the University of Cambridge had its own system of regulation of prostitution through a proctorial system within its boundaries and with a place of detention for prostitutes known as the Spnning House. In this place, located in Hobson’s Charity, St. Andrew’s Sreet, fallen women were confined for a number of days as a way of punishment for their immoral activity. In this University prison, women were detained under unsalubrious conditions which, on some occasions, ended in the illness or premature death of some of the inmates. In particular, I am going to focus this paper on the close scrutiny of the “Rules for the Government of the Spinning House” of 1849 and 1854, which include the regulation of the inmates’ behaviour together with their diet. Also the rules that applied to the Matron, the Chaplain and the Medical Officer will be discussed in the light of some census data and prison records. As a result, a number of issues concerning the treatment of Cambridge prostitutes by University authorities can be discerned. Also the dreadful consequences of the system and the implication of different social agents can be examined through the close reading of these primary sources.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Prostitution, identity and the Neo-Victorian: Sarah Waters’ tipping the Velvet and the Ripper Street Series.

The analysis of sexual abuse and violence in two Neo-Victorian literary and visual productions, Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet (1999) and the BBC’s drama series Ripper Street (2012) will be the object of discussion in terms of agency of and mourning for the abused. Tipping the Velvet is set in the last decades of the nineteenth century and its two lesbian protagonists are given voice as the marginalised and the other, following the Neo-Victorian trend of re-writing the history of those whose lives were not found in the mainstream historical record. Judith Butler’s notion of gender performance is taken to its extremes in a story where male prostitution is exerted through a woman who behaves and dresses like a man, but who will also become the victim of sexual violence and abuse. In Ripper Street, the protagonist, the leader of the Whitechapel H Division, Inspector Edmund Reid, tries to do justice to the women who sell their bodies in London East End in 1889 after the Ripper’s murders. Their aim is not only to keep order in this working-class suburb, but also to find the way to show sympathy for the deaths and suffering of the “prostituted other”. Therefore, drawing from Butler’s theories of gender, violence and mourning, this paper will address Victorian and contemporary discourses connected with the notions of sexual identity and agency as the result of sexual violence and gender abuse, and of the prostituted body as the site of vulnerability and dependency of “the other”.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Genders, mobilities, and interdependencies: the aims and theoretical background of bodies in transit

The aim of this round table is to present an overview of the aims, research topics and theoretical framework of the new project “Bodies in Transit 2: Genders, Mobilities, and Interdependencies”. This project has connections with the previous one, “Bodies in Transit: from Conflict to Healing” in its focus on embodiment, and on how bodies are historically transformed through social relations and their technologies from feminist, queer, and posthuman theoretical approaches, but departs from it by shifting the focus from violence and healing to the body and its metamorphoses within a wider network of human and non-human actions. Rather than approaching the topic in discontinuous units, ie. one isolated example of conflict (with ensuing trauma and healing process if any) in its contemporary literary rendering, we aim to look at bodies as immersed in ever-widening circles of relations and interdependences with other natural and/or social formations. This general topic comprises four specific concepts that will be addressed in four work packages: Embodiments, Mobilities, Interdependencies, and Accountability.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech