Is labour becoming more or less flexible? Changing dynamic behaviour and asymmetries of labour input in US manufacturing

Have employment and hours become more flexible over time? Vector auto-regressions are estimated using monthly time-series data to generate impulse responses, which reflect the dynamic response of employment and average hours of labour input following a given shock in output demand. A marked change in the US manufacturing sector occurred after 1979. Although there is heterogeneity by industry and asymmetry over the business cycle, hours have become somewhat more and employment considerably less flexible, particularly during expansion phases. Employers are apparently delaying hiring and relying more on using hours as a buffer to absorb fluctuations in output demand. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

Searching for nonlinearities in real exchange rates

A recent innovation in modelling exchange rates has been the use of nonlinear techniques such as threshold autoregressive models and its smooth transition variants. This article investigates the Smooth Transition Autoregressive (STAR) modelling strategy in an application to real exchange rates. The key findings are as follows. First, using the methodology advocated by Terasvirta (1994), we find evidence of nonlinear dynamics for several of the spot dollar real exchange rates using monthly data on five of the G7 countries. However, once estimated, we find that the STAR specification is appropriate for only one of the three exchange rate series indicated to be an Exponential Smooth Transition Autoregressive (ESTAR) process. Moreover, using simulations, we show that the underlying methodology used to detect nonlinearities in the data exhibit substantial size biases, which we attribute to influential observations. We find, upon investigating alternative nonlinear specifications, that the open-loop Threshold Autoregressive (TAR) process is a more appropriate specification than the ESTAR process for the dollar-sterling and dollar-lira real exchange rates.

Searching for Nonlinearities in Real Exchange Rates?

A recent innovation in modeling exchange rates has been the use of nonlinear techniques such as threshold autoregressive models and its smooth transition variants. This paper investigates the smooth transition autoregressive (STAR) modeling strategy in an application to real exchange rates. The key findings are as follows. First, using the methodology advocated by Teräsvirta (1994), we find evidence of nonlinear dynamics for several of the spot dollar real exchange rates using monthly data on five of the G7 countries. However, once estimated, we find that the STAR specification is appropriate for only one of the three exchange rate series indicated to be an ESTAR process. Moreover, using simulations, we show that the underlying methodology used to detect nonlinearities in the data exhibit substantial size biases, which we attribute to influential observations. We also investigate an alternative nonlinear specification and find that we can model the dollar-sterling and the dollar-lira real exchange rates better as an open-loop TAR process instead of a SETAR process.Nonlinear Models of Exchange Rates, Threshold Models, ESTAR, TAR, PPP

Cosmetic appreciation and emotional processing in patients with a peripheral facial palsy: A systematic review

Item does not contain fulltextBackground; The goal of this review is 1) to summarize the studies assessing PFP by casual observers, patients themselves and the cosmetic appreciation of the PFP and 2) to summarize the studies assessing whether there is a difference in emotional recognition/processing of facial emotions and/or cognitive tasks in patients with a PFP. Materials and Methods; A multi-database systematic literature search was performed using the following databases: Pubmed, Embase, Medline, and The Cochrane Library from the earliest date of each database up to December 2019. Population of interest consisted of patients with a PFP and studies that investigated cosmetic appreciation and/or emotional recognition and/or emotional processing in these patients. Two authors rated the methodological quality of the included studies independently using the 'Newcastle - Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale' for nonrandomised studies' (NOS). Two authors extracted the outcome data regarding cosmetic appreciation and/or emotional recognition/processing from the included studies. Results; Twelve hundred and thirty-two studies were found of which eleven studies met the inclusion criteria. Most studies were assessed to be of 'fair' to 'good' methodological quality. The Cohen's kappa (between author RL and SP) was 0.68. Two studies investigated emotional processing and/or emotional recognition. Nine studies investigated cosmetic appreciation in both patients and casual observers. Important findings of this systematic review are that there is a correlation between the perceived severity of the PFP of the patients and the ratings by casual observers. Secondly there seems to be a laterality difference in cosmetic appreciation and thirdly there might to be a decreased emotional recognition and processing in patients with a PFP. Conclusion; Emotional recognition and cosmetic appreciation in patients with a PFP is an under investigated area, in which further studies are needed to substantiate the findings in current literature