Any Link Between Legal Central Bank Independence and Inflation? Evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean

This paper reviews central bank legislation in 24 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean during the 1990s. Using panel regressions, the paper finds a negative relationship between legal central bank independence (CBI) and inflation. This result holds for three alternative measures of CBI, and after controlling for international inflation, banking crises, and exchange regimes. The result is also robust to the inclusion of a broader indicator of structural reforms that usually go along with changes in central bank legislation, illustrating the complementary nature of various aspects of economic reform. The paper fails, however, to find a causal relationship running from CBI to inflation.Central bank independence, inflation, Latin America

The Lending Channel in Emerging Economics: Are Foreign Banks Different?

This paper assembles a dataset comprising 1,565 banks in 20 Asian and Latin American countries during 1989-2001 and compares the response of the volume of loans, deposits, and bank-specific interest rates on loans and deposits, to various measures of monetary conditions, across domestic and foreign banks. It also looks for systematic differences in the behavior of domestic and foreign banks during periods of financial distress and tranquil times. Using differences in bank ownership as a proxy for financial constraints on banks, the paper finds weak evidence that foreign banks have a lower sensitivity of credit to monetary conditions relative to their domestic competitors, with the differences driven by banks with lower asset liquidity and/or capitalization. At the same time, the lending and deposit rates of foreign banks tend to be smoother during periods of financial distress, albeit the differences with domestic banks do not appear to be strong. These results provide weak support to the existence of supply-side effects in credit markets and suggest that foreign bank entry in emerging economies may have contributed somewhat to stability in credit markets.

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Symbolic analysis tools-the state of the art

This paper reviews the main last generation symbolic analyzers, comparing them in terms of functionality, pointing out also their shortcomings. The state of the art in this field is also studied, pointing out directions for future research

Complementary music therapy for cancer patients in at-home palliative care and their caregivers: protocol for a multicentre randomised controlled trial

Background Patients with advanced cancer, receiving at-home palliative care, are subject to numerous symptoms that are changeable and often require attention, a stressful situation that also impacts on the family caregiver. It has been suggested that music therapy may benefit both the patient and the caregiver. We propose a study to analyse the efficacy and cost utility of a music intervention programme, applied as complementary therapy, for cancer patients in palliative care and for their at-home caregivers, compared to usual treatment. Method A randomised, double-blind, multicentre clinical trial will be performed in cancer patients in at-home palliative care and their family caregivers. The study population will include two samples of 40 patients and two samples of 41 caregivers. Participants will be randomly assigned either to the intervention group or to the control group. The intervention group will receive a seven-day programme including music sessions, while the control group will receive seven sessions of (spoken word) therapeutic education. In this study, the primary outcome measure is the assessment of patients' symptoms, according to the Edmonton Symptom Assessment System, and of the overload experienced by family caregivers, measured by the Caregiver Strain Index. The secondary outcomes considered will be the participants' health-related quality of life, their satisfaction with the intervention, and an economic valuation. Discussion This study is expected to enhance our understanding of the efficacy and cost-utility of music therapy for cancer patients in palliative care and for their family caregivers. The results of this project are expected to be applicable and transferrable to usual clinical practice for patients in home palliative care and for their caregivers. The approach described can be incorporated as an additional therapeutic resource within comprehensive palliative care. To our knowledge, no previous high quality studies, based on a double-blind clinical trial, have been undertaken to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of music therapy. The cost-effectiveness of the project will provide information to support decision making, thereby improving the management of health resources and their use within the health system

Defining Desire: Re(storyng) a 'fraudulent' marriage in 1901 Spain

In the second half of the 19th century, two Spanish primary school teachers were married despite the fact that their legal status as women rendered this union not only illegal but also publicly scandalous. In 2008 their story was resurrected in the form of a book based on an extensive review of educational, legal, and media archives. The Spanish press responded to the book’s publication by embedding the events within a more recent historical narrative around the struggle for gay marriage rights. In this article, we analyze the events in light of the understandings of sex, gender and sexuality that were available at the time, and then explore both the continuities and discontinuities with the modern interpretive framework that affords these women a lesbian identity, drawing upon Bennett’s notion of ‘‘lesbian-like’’ practices in eras where such identities were not yet conceptualized

Model Predictive Control for Spacecraft Rendezvous in Elliptical Orbits with On/Off Thrusters

IFAC Workshop on Advanced Control and Navigation for Autonomous Aerospace Vehicles. 08/06/2015. SevillaIn previous works, the authors have developed a trajectory planning algorithm for spacecraft rendezvous which computed optimal Pulse-Width Modulated (PWM) control signals, for circular and eccentric Keplerian orbits. The algorithm is initialized by solving the impulsive problem first and then, using explicit linearization and linear programming, the solution is refined until a (possibly local) optimal value is reached. However, trajectory planning cannot take into account orbital perturbations, disturbances or model errors. To overcome these issues, in this paper we develop a Model Predictive Control (MPC) algorithm based on the open-loop PWM planner and test it for elliptical target orbits with arbitrary eccentricity (using the linear time-varying Tschauner-Hempel model). The MPC is initialized by first solving the open-loop problem with the PWM trajectory planning algorithm. After that, at each time step, our MPC saves time recomputing the trajectory by applying the iterative linearization scheme of the trajectory planning algorithm to the solution obtained in the previous time step. The efficacy of the method is shown in a simulation study where it is compared to MPC computed used an impulsive-only approach

Robust Model Predictive Control for Spacecraft Rendezvous with Online Prediction of Disturbance Bounds

IFAC Workshop Aerospace Guidance, Navigation and Flight Control Systems (AGNFCS' 09) Samara, RUSSIA June 30 - July 2, 2009A Model Predictive Controller is introduced to solve the problem of rendezvous of spacecraft, using the HCW model and including additive disturbances and line-of-sight constraints. It is shown that a standard MPC is not able to cope with disturbances. Then a robust Model Predictive Control that introduces the concepts of robust satisfaction of constraints is proposed. The formulation also includes a predictor of the disturbance properties which are needed in the robust algorithm. In simulations it is shown that the robust MPC scheme is able to handle not only additive disturbances (which are the ones used in the formulation) but also large multiplicative disturbances and unmodelled dynamics (due to eccentricity of the orbit of the target spacecraft)

OC-OT-LIBS: A novel approach to the chemical characterization of single particles

Spectral identification of individual micro- and nano-sized particles by the sequential intervention of optical catapulting, optical trapping and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy is presented [1]. The three techniques are used for different purposes. Optical catapulting (OC) serves to put the particulate material under inspection in aerosol form [2-4]. Optical trapping (OT) permits the isolation and manipulation of individual particles from the aerosol, which are subsequently analyzed by laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). Once catapulted, the dynamics of particle trapping depends on the laser beam characteristics (power and intensity gradient) and on the particle properties (size, mass and shape). Particles are stably trapped in air at atmospheric pressure and can be conveniently manipulated for a precise positioning for LIBS analysis. The spectra acquired from the individually trapped particles permit a straightforward identification of the inspected material. The current work focuses on the development of a procedure for simultaneously acquiring dual information about the particle under study via LIBS and time-resolved plasma images by taking advantage of the aforementioned features of the OC-OT-LIBS instrument to align the multiple lines in a simple yet highly accurate way. The plasma imaging does not only further reinforce the spectral data, but also allows a better comprehension of the chemical and physical processes involved during laser-particle interaction. Also, a thorough determination of the optimal excitation conditions generating the most information out of each laser event was run along the determination of parameters such as the width of the optical trap, its stability as a function of the laser power and the laser wavelength. The extreme sensibility of the presented OC-OT-LIBS technology allows a detection power of attograms for single/individual particle analysis.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech