Measuring the response of macroeconomic uncertainty to shocks

Recent research documents the importance of uncertainty in determining macroeconomic outcomes, but little is known about the transmission of uncertainty across such outcomes. This paper examines the response of uncertainty about inflation and output growth to shocks documenting statistically significant size and sign bias and spillover effects. Uncertainty about inflation is a determinant of output uncertainty, whereas higher growth volatility tends to raise inflation volatility. Both inflation and growth volatility respond asymmetrically to positive and negative shocks. Negative growth and inflation shocks lead to higher and more persistent uncertainty than shocks of equal magnitude but opposite sign

The influence of government ideology on monetary policy:New cross-country evidence based on dynamic heterogeneous panels

Using data of 23 OECD countries over the 1980–2005 period, we examine whether government ideology affects monetary policy, conditional on central bank independence. Unlike previous studies in this line of literature, we estimate central bank behavior using forward‐looking and real‐time data in Taylor rule models and use estimators that allow for heterogeneity across countries. Our models with heterogeneous slope coefficients for the full sample do not suggest partisan effects. We also do not find evidence that central bank behavior is conditioned by the interaction of the ideology of the incumbent government and the electoral calendar

Measuring Central Bank Independence: Ordering, Ranking, or Scoring?

Central bank independence (CBI)as an area for international comparison and for study by international political economists has been around for approximately two decades, spurred on by the work of Bade and Parkin (1982). It probably reached its full fruition with the work of Cukierman and others, centering on work done at the World Bank. There are others too, and we should not ignore them, but since the mid-1990s most of the work done has centered on the Cukierman-type model. Interest in the CBI intensified after models of monetary policy found the likelihood of an inflationary bias in monetary policy operated by democratic governments. That analysis turned on the potential for monetary surprises being perpetrated by governments seeking electoral advantage. Later analysis found that if such incentives were fully anticipated by the public, inflation rates in democracies are higher than they would be if somehow government could make a credible commitment to price stability. The search began for how to establish monetary institutions that can be viewed as credible commitments. Delegation of monetary policy to an independent central bank was one strand of that exploration

Análise dos efeitos do sistema de rastreabilidade de bovinos na informatização da pecuária brasileira.

Este trabalho pretende analisar a criação do SISBOV, o sistema brasileiro de rastreabilidade de bovinos, e investigar sua vinculação com a informatização da pecuária brasileira, considerando a ação das certificadoras, empresas autorizadas pelo Ministério da Agricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento (MAPA) a executarem as atividades de certificação junto aos produtores. Serão expostas as razões pelas quais o MAPA criou o SISBOV, revelando quais eram os cenários no Brasil e no exterior que o antecederam. O trabalho identifica os principais atores e seus processos de enredamento e negociação, ressaltando a importância do SISBOV como agente catalisador no processo de informatização da pecuária brasileira

SPT-3G: A Next-Generation Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Experiment on the South Pole Telescope

We describe the design of a new polarization sensitive receiver, SPT-3G, for the 10-meter South Pole Telescope (SPT). The SPT-3G receiver will deliver a factor of ~20 improvement in mapping speed over the current receiver, SPTpol. The sensitivity of the SPT-3G receiver will enable the advance from statistical detection of B-mode polarization anisotropy power to high signal-to-noise measurements of the individual modes, i.e., maps. This will lead to precise (~0.06 eV) constraints on the sum of neutrino masses with the potential to directly address the neutrino mass hierarchy. It will allow a separation of the lensing and inflationary B-mode power spectra, improving constraints on the amplitude and shape of the primordial signal, either through SPT-3G data alone or in combination with BICEP-2/KECK, which is observing the same area of sky. The measurement of small-scale temperature anisotropy will provide new constraints on the epoch of reionization. Additional science from the SPT-3G survey will be significantly enhanced by the synergy with the ongoing optical Dark Energy Survey (DES), including: a 1% constraint on the bias of optical tracers of large-scale structure, a measurement of the differential Doppler signal from pairs of galaxy clusters that will test General Relativity on ~200 Mpc scales, and improved cosmological constraints from the abundance of clusters of galaxies.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures. To be published in Proceedings of SPIE Volume 9153. Presented at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2014, conference 915

Development and characterization of the readout system for POLARBEAR-2

POLARBEAR-2 is a next-generation receiver for precision measurements of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)). Scheduled to deploy in early 2015, it will observe alongside the existing POLARBEAR-1 receiver, on a new telescope in the Simons Array on Cerro Toco in the Atacama desert of Chile. For increased sensitivity, it will feature a larger area focal plane, with a total of 7,588 polarization sensitive antenna-coupled Transition Edge Sensor (TES) bolometers, with a design sensitivity of 4.1 uKrt(s). The focal plane will be cooled to 250 milliKelvin, and the bolometers will be read-out with 40x frequency domain multiplexing, with 36 optical bolometers on a single SQUID amplifier, along with 2 dark bolometers and 2 calibration resistors. To increase the multiplexing factor from 8x for POLARBEAR-1 to 40x for POLARBEAR-2 requires additional bandwidth for SQUID readout and well-defined frequency channel spacing. Extending to these higher frequencies requires new components and design for the LC filters which define channel spacing. The LC filters are cold resonant circuits with an inductor and capacitor in series with each bolometer, and stray inductance in the wiring and equivalent series resistance from the capacitors can affect bolometer operation. We present results from characterizing these new readout components. Integration of the readout system is being done first on a small scale, to ensure that the readout system does not affect bolometer sensitivity or stability, and to validate the overall system before expansion into the full receiver. We present the status of readout integration, and the initial results and status of components for the full array.Comment: Presented at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2014: Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy VII. Published in Proceedings of SPIE Volume 915