How central banks shape liquidity production: The case of India

This thesis develops a theoretical framework to study the role of central banks in shaping liquidity production in different financial structures and applies the framework to India. The theoretical framework draws on the three different ways in which scholars have interpreted the concept of liquidity—monetary liquidity (bank reserves held with the central bank), funding liquidity (ease of accessing cash) and market liquidity (ease of buying or selling a financial asset). The framework consists of two pillars. The first one represents how central banks create monetary liquidity, and is shaped by the monetary-fiscal nexus, capital account policy and exchange rate policy. The second pillar represents the link between funding liquidity of financial institutions and market liquidity of collateral in the money market. To examine how this relationship operates in different financial structures, the thesis develops the concept of position-making structures, which build on Minsky’s concept of position-making. A position-making structure undergirds the money market, and is of one of two types, depending on whether the purpose of the money market is to meet cash demands primarily arising from bank deposits issued in the process of making loans (deposits-focussed position-making) or to enable the financing of securities by issuing repo liabilities (repo-focussed position-making). The ability to leverage collateral, which ties funding liquidity of financial institutions to market liquidity of collateral, is essential to repo-focussed position-making. The position-making structures, in turn, map on to the two financial structures, bank-based finance and market-based finance.The empirical section chronicles the evolution of India’s monetary liquidity framework and position-making structure following the economic reforms of the early 1990s, narrating how the RBI has resisted market-based finance while adopting a Neoliberal monetary liquidity framework. It shows how a system of shadow repo-focussed position-making developed in the early 1990s, culminating in a scam that prompted the Indian central bank to restrict leveraged trading of collateral and to double down on bank-based finance. At the same time, India was moving towards a monetary liquidity framework dominated by capital flows.Following the Great Financial Crisis, the central bank continued to resist liberalizing repo markets, leading to the rise of non-bank-lending without market-based finance. The thesis concludes with policy implications for DECs and an agenda for further research

An Unbiased Look at Datasets for Visuo-Motor Pre-Training

Visual representation learning hold great promise for robotics, but is severely hampered by the scarcity and homogeneity of robotics datasets. Recent works address this problem by pre-training visual representations on large-scale but out-of-domain data (e.g., videos of egocentric interactions) and then transferring them to target robotics tasks. While the field is heavily focused on developing better pre-training algorithms, we find that dataset choice is just as important to this paradigm's success. After all, the representation can only learn the structures or priors present in the pre-training dataset. To this end, we flip the focus on algorithms, and instead conduct a dataset centric analysis of robotic pre-training. Our findings call into question some common wisdom in the field. We observe that traditional vision datasets (like ImageNet, Kinetics and 100 Days of Hands) are surprisingly competitive options for visuo-motor representation learning, and that the pre-training dataset's image distribution matters more than its size. Finally, we show that common simulation benchmarks are not a reliable proxy for real world performance and that simple regularization strategies can dramatically improve real world policy learning. https://data4robotics.github.ioComment: Accepted to CoRL 202

ENHANCED USER PLANE SELECTION FUNCTIONALITIES IN 5G DEPLOYMENTS

Within a 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) fifth generation (5G) environment, a number of user plane challenges may arise. For example, in order to achieve minimum latency in a 5G environment, it is critical to have the same User Plane Function (UPF) for both a Serving Gateway (SGW) control plane (SGW-C) function and a packet data network (PDN) Gateway (PGW) control plane (PGW-C) function call leg. Additionally, in order to handle the scale of user plane traffic in a 5G environment, the user planes must be as efficient and as optimized as possible regarding data packet processing while at the same time the control plane also needs to establish a mobile session as quickly as possible with minimum latency. To address the type of challenges that were described above, various solutions are provided herein through several techniques. A first technique, among other things, ensures a configuration-agnostic UPF selection (which does not depend upon static configuration in multiple places) which may be performed dynamically based on UPF profiles. A second technique, among other things, not only improves upon control path session setup time by removing unwanted delays every time a handover is processed, but also uplifts the UPF processing capacity by converging different legs of the same call at the same node. Features such as these are critically important to make the 5G story a success

Baryon squishing in synthetic dimensions by effectiveSU(M)gauge fields

The “synthetic dimension” proposal [A. Celi et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 043001 (2014)] uses atoms with M internal states (“flavors”) in a one dimensional (1D) optical lattice, to realize a hopping Hamiltonian equivalent to the Hofstadter model (tight-binding model with a given magnetic flux per plaquette) on an M-sites-wide square lattice strip. We investigate the physics of SU (M) symmetric interactions in the synthetic dimension system. We show that this system is equivalent to particles [with SU (M) symmetric interactions] experiencing a SU (M) Zeeman field at each lattice site and a non-Abelian SU (M) gauge potential that affects their hopping. This equivalence brings out the possibility of generating nonlocal interactions between particles at different sites of the optical lattice. In addition, the gauge field induces a flavor-orbital coupling, which mitigates the “baryon breaking” effect of the Zeeman field. For M particles, concomitantly, the SU (M) singlet baryon which is site localized in the usual 1D optical lattice, is deformed to a nonlocal object (“squished baryon”). We conclusively demonstrate this effect by analytical arguments and exact (numerical) diagonalization studies. Our study promises a rich many-body phase diagram for this system. It also uncovers the possibility of using the synthetic dimension system to laboratory realize condensed-matter models such as the SU (M) random flux model, inconceivable in conventional experimental systems

Trapped fermions in a synthetic non-Abelian gauge field

On increasing the coupling strength ($\lambda$) of a non-Abelian gauge field that induces a generalized Rashba spin-orbit interaction, the topology of the Fermi surface of a homogeneous gas of noninteracting fermions of density \rho \sim \kf^3 undergoes a change at a critical value, \lambda_T \approx \kf [Phys. Rev. B {\bf 84}, 014512 (2011)]. In this paper we analyze how this phenomenon affects the size and shape of a cloud of spin-\half fermions trapped in a harmonic potential such as those used in cold atom experiments. We develop an adiabatic formulation, including the concomitant Pancharatnam-Berry phase effects, for the one particle states in the presence of a trapping potential and the gauge field, obtaining approximate analytical formulae for the energy levels for some high symmetry gauge field configurations of interest. An analysis based on the local density approximation reveals that, for a given number of particles, the cloud shrinks in a {\em characteristic fashion with increasing $\lambda$}. For an isotropic harmonic trap, the local density approximation predicts a spherical cloud for all gauge field configurations, which are anisotropic in general. We show, via a calculation of the cloud shape using exact eigenstates, that for certain gauge field configurations there is systematic and observable anisotropy in the cloud shape that increases with increasing gauge coupling $\lambda$. These results should be useful in the design of cold atom experiments with fermions in non-Abelian gauge fields. An important spin-off of our adiabatic formulation is that it reveals exciting possibilities for the cold-atom realization of interesting condensed matter Hamiltonians (eg. quantum hall spherical geometry) by using a non-Abelian gauge field in conjunction with another potential.Comment: 10 Pages, 4 figure

Unconventional Phases of Attractive Fermi Gases in Synthetic Hall Ribbons

An innovative way to produce quantum Hall ribbons in a cold atomic system is to use M hyperfine states of atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice to mimic an additional “synthetic dimension.” A notable aspect here is that the SU(M) symmetric interaction between atoms manifests as “infinite ranged” along the synthetic dimension. We study the many-body physics of fermions with SU(M) symmetric attractive interactions in this system using a combination of analytical field-theoretic and numerical density-matrix renormalization-group methods. We uncover the rich ground-state phase diagram of the system, including unconventional phases such as squished baryon fluids, shedding light on many-body physics in low dimensions. Remarkably, changing the parameters entails interesting crossovers and transition; e.g., we show that increasing the magnetic field (that produces the Hall effect) converts a “ferrometallic” state at low fields to a “squished baryon superfluid” (with algebraic pairing correlations) at high fields. We also show that this system provides a unique opportunity to study quantum phase separation in a multi flavor ultracold fermionic system

Shaping gold nanocomposites with tunable optical properties

We report the synthesis of morphological uniform composites using miniemulsions of poly(tert-butyl acrylate) or poly(styrene) containing organically capped gold nanocrystals (NCs). The optical features of such hybrid structures are dominated by plasmonic effects and depend critically on the morphology of the resulting nanocomposite. In particular, we demonstrate the ability to tune the overall optical response in the visible spectral region by varying the Au NCs arrangement within the polymer matrix, and therefore the interparticle plasmon coupling, using Au NCs resulting from the same batch of synthesis. This is a consequence of two well-known effects on the optical properties of Au particles: the variation of the surrounding dielectric refractive index and interparticle plasmonic coupling. The research reported here shows a general strategy to produce optical responsive nanocomposites via control of the morphology of submicrometric polymer particles containing metal nanocrystals and thus is an alternative to the more common strategy of size tuning metal nanoparticles used as nanofillers

Surgical complications in neuromuscular scoliosis operated with posterior- only approach using pedicle screw fixation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There are no reports describing complications with posterior spinal fusion (PSF) with segmental spinal instrumentation (SSI) using pedicle screw fixation in patients with neuromuscular scoliosis.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Fifty neuromuscular patients (18 cerebral palsy, 18 Duchenne muscular dystrophy, 8 spinal muscular atrophy and 6 others) were divided in two groups according to severity of curves; group I (< 90°) and group II (> 90°). All underwent PSF and SSI with pedicle screw fixation. There were no anterior procedures. Perioperative (within three months of surgery) and postoperative (after three months of surgery) complications were retrospectively reviewed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There were fifty (37 perioperative, 13 postoperative) complications. Hemo/pneumothorax, pleural effusion, pulmonary edema requiring ICU care, complete spinal cord injury, deep wound infection and death were major complications; while atelectesis, pneumonia, mild pleural effusion, UTI, ileus, vomiting, gastritis, tingling sensation or radiating pain in lower limb, superficial infection and wound dehiscence were minor complications. Regarding perioperative complications, 34(68%) patients had at least one major or one minor complication. There were 16 patients with pulmonary, 14 with abdominal, 3 with wound related, 2 with neurological and 1 cardiovascular complications, respectively. There were two deaths, one due to cardiac arrest and other due to hypovolemic shock. Regarding postoperative complications 7 patients had coccygodynia, 3 had screw head prominence, 2 had bed sore and 1 had implant loosening, respectively. There was a significant relationship between age and increased intraoperative blood loss (p = 0.024). However it did not increased complications or need for ICU care. Similarly intraoperative blood loss > 3500 ml, severity of curve or need of pelvic fixation did not increase the complication rate or need for ICU. DMD patients had higher chances of coccygodynia postoperatively.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Although posterior-only approach using pedicle screw fixation had good correction rate, complications were similar to previous reports. There were few unusual complications like coccygodynia.</p