Time Consistency of Fiscal and Monetary Policy: A Solution

This paper demonstrates how time consistency of the Ramsey policy–the optimal fiscal and monetary policy under commitment–can be achieved. Each government should leave its successor with a unique maturity structure for the nominal and indexed debt, such that the marginal benefit of a surprise inflation exactly balances the marginal cost. Unlike in earlier papers on the topic, the result holds for quite a general Ramsey policy, including time varying polices with positive inflation and positive nominal interest rates. We compare our results with those in Persson, Persson, and Svensson (1987), Calvo and Obstfeld (1990), and Alvarez, Kehoe, and Neumeyer (2004).time consistency; Ramsey policy; surprise inflation

Debt, Cash Flow and Inflation Incentives: A Swedish Example

The fiscal gains from, and hence the political incentives to, an increase in inflation rate of ten percentage points may be substantial: with Swedish data from 1994, these gains would have been an annual real flow of 3-4 percent of GDP, or a capitalized value of nearly 100 percent of GDP. They would mainly have arisen from the nominalistic features of the tax and transfer systems rather than from the traditional sources: seignorage and real depreciation of the public debt. The welfare costs of such an inflation increase would have been even larger, however, and would thus have reduced net welfare. Possible institutional reforms, aimed at making the political costs of inflation more equal to the social costs, are presented and discussed

Estimating agricultural production in Scania, 1702–1881 : User guide for the Historical Database of Scanian Agriculture and overall results

The Historical Database of Scanian Agriculture (HDSA) is a micro-level database over farm production in the most southern Swedish region of Scania (Skåne) based on flexible tithes. It contains over 85,000 farm level observations of both vegetable and animal production for the period 1702 to 1881. Moreover, this information is supplemented by information on the farmer, the farm, on enclosures, natural conditions, and distances from the farmstead to towns. The database is an open source and this paper provides information on the sources behind the data, the composition of the sample, and the way the database can be used to estimate production. The second part of the paper performs an overall analysis of the agricultural revolution in the area, showing the development over time of the vegetable and animal production, their respective significance, and an estimation of production per capita 1702 to 1865

Computerization of the Article 9 Filing System: Thoughts on Building the Electronic Highway

The most basic purpose of the Article 9 filing system is to make a filing accessible to a searcher. Problems with the current system are discussed, and it is concluded that it will take more than computerization to fix the problems

SYNAPS systems analytical process oriented tool for sector integration

“Sustainable development” is mentioned in most documents concerned with society and progress. However, in today’s society there are many conflicting views concerned with what sustainable development is and specially how it may be achieved and the three sustainability dimensions balanced and finally measured. Region Skåne, responsible for the development of SYNAPSE, believes methods and tools to help illustrate and illuminate the interrelationships between the three dimensions of sustainable development are fundamentally important to both try and explain what sustainable development is but in particular in trying to facilitate the how. It is the firm belief of the people behind SYNAPSE that sustainable development is about taking responsibility for our actions and decisions and to do so by acknowledging that environmental, social and economic issues are mutually reinforcing, sometimes counteracting each other, but often dependent upon each other. One feasible way to take such responsibility is to apply methods that may allow for consequence analysis of various decisions upon society and its development. As a regional public body responsible for all developmental issues in Skåne, Sweden, Region Skåne has a responsibility towards its citizens, its 33 municipalities and the various different actors of this region to make sure that great efforts are made into reinforce means and resources that can ensure that the region develops in a sustainable way. This in turn implies the need for new ways of working with society and progress by, for instance, trying to develop methods and model as well as to measure sustainable development and to engage different interested parties in this process at a very early stage. SYNAPSE is the result of a two year process involving a range of different actors - from different sectors but also from different political levels i.e. local, regional, national and international. SYNAPSE aims to offer a concrete form of how to practically work with sustainable development at several different levels of society, weighing both objective as well subjective components together and to turn rethorics into action

Channel Tracking for AF MIMO Relaying Systems

In this paper, we consider the problem of channel estimation in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) amplifyand- forward (AF) relaying systems operating over time varying channels. Only data at the receiving end are assumed available for the estimation. By employing a first-order autoregressive (AR) model for characterizing the time-varying nature of the channels to be estimated, we derive an expectation-maximization (EM) Kalman filter (KF) that utilizes the received signal at the destination to track the individual channel links. The extended KF algorithm is also derived and compared to the proposed EM-based KF. Our simulation results show that the proposed EM-based KF offers better estimation performance with less complexity when compared to the EKF algorithm

Famines in the Nordic countries, AD 536 - 1875

The first part of this paper aims at identifying the timing of famines in the Nordic countries since the middle ages. This is done by using qualitative famine reports from the literature since quantitative data on famines are scarce or non-existent, at least before the early modern period. We supplement the reports with climate data and price data. Our survey indicates that widespread famine was always a rare occurrence in the Nordic countries, despite frequent crop failures. The second part studies the regional famine pattern and its demographic characteristics in Sweden 1750–1910. This part is based on demographic data on parish level from the official statistics and price data. We identify two periods of excess mortality: the last major famine in Sweden in the early 1770s and the excess mortality in 1809 due to epidemic outbreaks. Examining the age-specific mortality and seasonality pattern in these two years of mortality crises in Sweden we show a highly similar pattern explained by similar causes of death being involved: dysentery and typhus. All age groups were affected during the crisis, but children over the age of one were hardest hit. Mortality was highest during the summer and early fall as epidemics spread rapidly through water and food. Thus, while Nordic people clearly were vulnerable to economic fluctuations, conditions rarely deteriorated to famine levels, which can be explained as a combination of a reasonably well-functioning market, a diversified economy, a population density in line with resource availability and the absence of serious political or war-related conditions conducive to famine

Mercantilist inequality: wealth and poverty in Stockholm, 1650-1750

This article describes and analyses social structure, poverty, wealth, and economic inequality in Stockholm from 1650 to 1750. We begin by establishing the social structure, using census data and other sources. To study wealth and poverty, the main sources are a complete record of the wealth tax of 1715, comprising 17,782 taxpayers, and a total of 1,125 probate inventories sampled from the years 1650, 1700, and 1750. These provide detailed and sometimes surprising insights into the living standards of both the poor and the rich. Stockholm in this period was a starkly unequal city, with the top decile of wealth holders owning about 90 per cent of total wealth. We relate this inequality to mercantilist policies. The city was run as an oligarchy and the oligarchical political institutions engendered policies that were rigged for inequality. The case of Stockholm thus shows the need for the historical inequality literature to consider class and power relations to understand the determinants of inequality

A thief crawled into grandmother’s and grandfather’s bed

Abstract: Why should one person’s past be forgotten, repressed, while the other’s story is continuously re-told