The First Hundred Years of the Bureau of Labor Statistics

[Excerpt] This volume reports on the first century of a government agency whose founders hoped that, by publishing facts about economic conditions, the agency would help end strife between capital and labor. The Bureau\u27s early work included studies of depressions, tariffs, immigrants, and alcoholism and many assignments to investigate and mediate disputes between labor and management. Most of these functions- especially those involving formulation of policy- passed on to other agencies. The Bureau today remains one of the Nation\u27s principal economic factfinders. In writing the book, Drs. Goldberg and Moye had full freedom to interpret events in accordance with their judgments as historians, without conformance to an official view of institutional history. Given the perspective made possible by passing years, the authors offer broader evaluations of the Bureau\u27s early history than of contemporary events

Central bank intervention and overnight uncovered interest rate parity

This paper considers the impact of U.S. and German central bank intervention on the risk premium in forward foreign exchange markets.Foreign exchange - Law and legislation

The risk premium in forward foreign exchange markets and G-3 central bank intervention: evidence of daily effects, 1985-1990

Evidence that forward rates for foreign exchange are not unbiased forecasts of future spot rates suggests a time-varying risk premium. However, there is little evidence that the forecast error is related to fundamentals, although most investigations have lacked high-frequency data. In this paper, we use daily exchange-rate and official Federal Reserve intervention data to test for an impact of intervention on the forecast error. This paper extends recent analyses of daily changes in exchange rates by Baillie and Bollersev (1989) and Hsieh (1989) to the daily forward-rate forecast errors for the dm/US$and yen/US$ rates. We estimate an MA(21) process and utilize GARCH with a conditional student-t distribution. We find that 1) U.S. purchases of dollars on day t-1 affect the day t forecast error (ft-Et[st+k]), 2) there are day-of-the-week effects in the conditional variance, and 3) for the yen/US$ rate, there is GARCH-in-mean. These findings provide some support for considering intervention as a channel through which fundamentals influence risk premiaannel through which fundamentals influence risk premia.Foreign exchange - Law and legislation ; Risk

Nonlinear ac stationary response and dynamic magnetic hysteresis of quantum uniaxial superparamagnets

The nonlinear ac stationary response of uniaxial paramagnets and superparamagnets - nanoscale solids or clasters with spin number S ~ 10^0 - 10^4 - in superimposed uniform ac and dc bias magnetic fields of arbitrary strength, each applied along the easy axis of magnetization, is determined by solving the evolution equation for the reduced density matrix represented as a finite set of three-term differential-recurrence relations for its diagonal matrix elements. The various harmonic components of the magnetization, dynamic magnetic hysteresis loops, etc. are then evaluated via matrix continued fractions indicating a pronounced dependence of the nonlinear response on S arising from the quantum spin dynamics. In the linear response approximation, the results concur with existing solutions.Comment: 28 pages, 10 figures, 33 refererence

Caloric vestibular stimulation in aphasic syndrome

Caloric vestibular stimulation (CVS) is commonly used to diagnose brainstem disorder but its therapeutic application is much less established. Based on the finding that CVS increases blood flow to brain structures associated with language and communication, we assessed whether the procedure has potential to relieve symptoms of post-stroke aphasia. Three participants, each presenting with chronic, unilateral lesions to the left hemisphere, were administered daily CVS for 4 consecutive weeks. Relative to their pre-treatment baseline scores, two of the three participants showed significant improvement on both picture and responsive naming at immediate and one-week follow-up. One of these participants also showed improved sentence repetition, and another showed improved auditory word discrimination. No adverse reactions were reported. These data provide the first, albeit tentative, evidence that CVS may relieve expressive and receptive symptoms of aphasia. A larger, sham-controlled study is now needed to further assess efficacy

Intervention as information: a survey

Research has generally failed to find reliable connections between official exchange-market interventions and exchange rates that are consistent with either a monetary or a portfolio-balance theory of exchange-rate determination. Recently economists have suggested that intervention might sometimes influence exchange rates through its effects on agents’ expectations. This survey discusses newer research that analyzes informational aspects of intervention.Foreign exchange - Law and legislation

Probit models for capture-recapture data subject to imperfect detection, individual heterogeneity and misidentification

As noninvasive sampling techniques for animal populations have become more popular, there has been increasing interest in the development of capture-recapture models that can accommodate both imperfect detection and misidentification of individuals (e.g., due to genotyping error). However, current methods do not allow for individual variation in parameters, such as detection or survival probability. Here we develop misidentification models for capture-recapture data that can simultaneously account for temporal variation, behavioral effects and individual heterogeneity in parameters. To facilitate Bayesian inference using our approach, we extend standard probit regression techniques to latent multinomial models where the dimension and zeros of the response cannot be observed. We also present a novel Metropolis-Hastings within Gibbs algorithm for fitting these models using Markov chain Monte Carlo. Using closed population abundance models for illustration, we re-visit a DNA capture-recapture population study of black bears in Michigan, USA and find evidence of misidentification due to genotyping error, as well as temporal, behavioral and individual variation in detection probability. We also estimate a salamander population of known size from laboratory experiments evaluating the effectiveness of a marking technique commonly used for amphibians and fish. Our model was able to reliably estimate the size of this population and provided evidence of individual heterogeneity in misidentification probability that is attributable to variable mark quality. Our approach is more computationally demanding than previously proposed methods, but it provides the flexibility necessary for a much broader suite of models to be explored while properly accounting for uncertainty introduced by misidentification and imperfect detection. In the absence of misidentification, our probit formulation also provides a convenient and efficient Gibbs sampler for Bayesian analysis of traditional closed population capture-recapture data.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/14-AOAS783 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Analysis of a novel non-contacting waveguide backshort

A new non-contacting waveguide backshort has been developed for millimeter and submillimeter wave frequencies. The design consists of a metal bar with rectangular or circular holes cut into it, which is covered with a dielectric (mylar) layer to form a snug fit with the walls of a waveguide. Hole geometries are adjusted to obtain a periodic variation of the guide impedance on the correct length scale, in order to produce efficient reflection of RF power. It is a mechanically rugged design which can be easily fabricated for frequencies from 1 to 1000 GHz and is thus a sound alternative to the miniaturization of conventional non-contacting shorts. To aid in high-frequency design, a rigorous full-wave analysis has been completed, which will allow variations of the size, number and spacing of the holes to be easily analyzed. This paper will review the backshort design and the method developed for theoretical characterization, followed by a comparison of the experimental and numerical results. Low frequency models operating from 4-6 GHz are shown to demonstrate return loss of greater than -0.2 dB over a 33 percent bandwidth. The theory is in good agreement with measured data