The Effects of Rounding on the Consumer Price Index

The Bureau of Labor Statistics rounds the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to a single decimal place before releasing it, and the published CPI inflation series is calculated from those rounded index values. While rounding has only a relatively small effect on the level of the CPI series at present, it can have a significant effct on CPI inflation, the monthly percent changes in the CPI. This paper estimates the impact of rounding error on the published CPI inflation for both contemporaneous and historical data. Using an unrounded CPI series from January 1986 to July 2005 as a benchmark, I find that published CPI inflation differs from its full-precision counterpart approximately 25% of the time, and that reporting the CPI levels to three decimal places would reduce these discrepancies to under 0.5%. Further, the variance introduced by rounding error is large when compared to the sampling variation in CPI inflation. I find that the BLS could reduce total CPI inflation error variance by 42% by simply reporting more digits in the CPI index, resulting in a significantly more accurate reflection of monthly inflation. In order to extend these results to the CPI historical series, I derive the distribution of the rounding error component of inflation. From this analysis, it is possible to estimate the probability of large rounding errors for a given CPI level and rounding precision. Three regimes emerge. Before the 1970’s inflation, discrepancies due to rounding were both frequent and frequently large relative to the underlying inflation rate. During the inflationary period of the mid-1970’s to mid-1980’s, both the probability and relative magnitude of discrepancies decrease dramatically. Finally, the last twenty years are characterized by a slowly falling probability of any rounding-induced error, but a roughly constant probability of an error of a given size.Consumer Price Index, Variance, Rounding, Inflation

Reconsideration of Weighting and Updating Procedures in the US CPI

Production capital and technology (i.e., total factor productivity) in U.S. manufacturing are fundamental for understanding output and productivity growth of the U.S. economy but are unobserved at this level of aggregation and must be estimated before being used in empirical analysis. Previously, we developed a method for estimating production capital and technology based on an estimated dynamic structural economic model and applied the method using annual SIC data for 1947-1997 to estimate production capital and technology in U.S. total manufacturing. In this paper, we update this work by reestimating the model and production capital and technology using annual SIC data for 1949-2001 and partly overlapping NAICS data for 1987-2005.Aggregation, Consumer Price Index, CPI, Index Number

World-class is-enabled business innovation: A case study of is leadership, strategy & governance

While many global corporations acknowledge they lack corporate capabilities for successful technology-enabled business innovation, an Australian financial services provider has been ranked by an international ratings agency in its highest categories due to the capabilities of its Information Systems. Its Loan Processing system has been commended by the ratings agency as the principal reason for its high ranking and for the organization's inclusion on a global list of selected service providers. This paper presents a longitudinal case study of how an organization with 750 employees located in rural Australia came to develop world-class strategic Information Systems. From its first system nearly 30 years ago, this paper shows how the organization has grown in-house capabilities to devise, develop, implement and manage applications of technology from operational systems that automate specific functions to systems that inform and enable enterprise strategy. The implications for theory and practice are discussed

World-Class IS-Enabled Business Innovation: A Case Study of IS Leadership, Strategy & Governance

While many global corporations acknowledge they lack corporate capabilities for successful technology-enabled business innovation, an Australian financial services provider has been ranked by an international ratings agency in its highest categories due to the capabilities of its Information Systems. Its Loan Processing system has been commended by the ratings agency as the principal reason for its high ranking and for the organization’s inclusion on a global list of selected service providers. This paper presents a longitudinal case study of how an organization with 750 employees located in rural Australia came to develop world-class strategic Information Systems. From its first system nearly 30 years ago, this paper shows how the organization has grown in-house capabilities to devise, develop, implement and manage applications of technology from operational systems that automate specific functions to systems that inform and enable enterprise strategy. The implications for theory and practice are discussed

An IS contribution to the UN Millennium Development Goals: Next generation vaccination management in the developing world

More than 9.5 million people die in the developing world unnecessarily each year due not to a lack of medicine but due to poor information management. It is proposed that the IS Discipline could contribute to resolving this and similar global challenges by making a greater contribution to high impact and high visibility global issues such as the UN's Millennium Development Goals. In this paper we illustrate the potential for the IS Discipline to take a leading role in high impact issues by presenting an innovative design for a mainstream IS solution to an illustrative global healthcare issue through appropriate applications of mobile technologies, cloud computing, social networking and geolocation services. © 2010 Wei Wang, Steve Elliot & Mary-Anne Williams

Uniquely human CHRFAM7A gene increases the hematopoietic stem cell reservoir in mice and amplifies their inflammatory response.

A subset of genes in the human genome are uniquely human and not found in other species. One example is CHRFAM7A, a dominant-negative inhibitor of the antiinflammatory α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (α7nAChR/CHRNA7) that is also a neurotransmitter receptor linked to cognitive function, mental health, and neurodegenerative disease. Here we show that CHRFAM7A blocks ligand binding to both mouse and human α7nAChR, and hypothesized that CHRFAM7A-transgenic mice would allow us to study its biological significance in a tractable animal model of human inflammatory disease, namely SIRS, the systemic inflammatory response syndrome that accompanies severe injury and sepsis. We found that CHRFAM7A increased the hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) reservoir in bone marrow and biased HSC differentiation to the monocyte lineage in vitro. We also observed that while the HSC reservoir was depleted in SIRS, HSCs were spared in CHRFAM7A-transgenic mice and that these mice also had increased immune cell mobilization, myeloid cell differentiation, and a shift to inflammatory monocytes from granulocytes in their inflamed lungs. Together, the findings point to a pathophysiological inflammatory consequence to the emergence of CHRFAM7A in the human genome. To this end, it is interesting to speculate that human genes like CHRFAM7A can account for discrepancies between the effectiveness of drugs like α7nAChR agonists in animal models and human clinical trials for inflammatory and neurodegenerative disease. The findings also support the hypothesis that uniquely human genes may be contributing to underrecognized human-specific differences in resiliency/susceptibility to complications of injury, infection, and inflammation, not to mention the onset of neurodegenerative disease

Improved eBusiness Treasury Risk Management using Intelligent Agents: Increasing Returns, Controlling Risk

Following the global economic downturn and a collapse in international equity markets, many financial institutions and corporations have sought the higher returns associated with higher risk from trading in foreign exchange derivatives. These derivatives have become increasingly complex to the point where few specialists are able to accurately determine the level of exposure. Top traders seek high rewards for their successful investments. Rogue traders seek high rewards by concealing their unsuccessful gambling, sometimes to the extent of endangering the viability of their employers. Current technology copes poorly with dynamically changing business requirements and conditions so there is little technological support available for organizations sensitized by reports of rogue trading and increasingly obliged by financial regulators to improve their risk management practices. This paper proposes a risk management framework that can support FX derivative monitoring and trading based on the Williams-Elliot Agent Architecture. The framework uses agent technologies for improved management of treasury risk by continuous monitoring of all transactions across an organisation; continuous evaluation of exposures compared with prescribed parameters across an organisation; instantaneous reporting to senior management where trading begins to approach or violates the parameters. Rigorous examples of typical transactions illustrate how intelligent agents can be used to monitor risk and to make trades within a powerful risk modelling and management framework

Implementing RightsStatements.org at the University of Miami Libraries

INTRODUCTION Library digital collections have historically contained unstandardized and often inadequate information regarding copyright status in the item-level metadata. The development of RightsStatements.org, international recommendations for describing rights status, provides an opportunity for libraries to improve their rights metadata and educate users about copyright for digital objects. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM This paper reports on a two-year project at the University of Miami Libraries to implement RightsStatements.org. Two librarians, who did not previously have a background in copyright issues, performed a copyright analysis of all 58,000 objects in the libraries' digital collections and developed workflows for updating rights metadata. Workflows for developing new digital projects were also updated to incorporate rights considerations more comprehensively throughout the process. CONCLUSIONS AND NEXT STEPS The copyright assessment project uncovered several challenges for analyzing the copyright status of digitized archival and special collections materials, including the need to periodically reevaluate materials as more content moves into the public domain in the United States. The project also reinforced the importance of risk management when planning digitization projects for online access. Project outcomes are discussed, as well as implications for other libraries considering implementing RightsStatements.org

Report on the Findings of the 2004 Australian National eProcurement Survey

This report highlights the key findings from the 2004 Australian National eProcurement Survey. The aim of the 2004 Australian National eProcurement Survey is to establish the nature, extent and adoption profile of eProcurement strategies and processes of Australian organisations.Australian Research Council (Grant No. LP0214841

Report on the Findings of the 2004 Australian National eProcurement Survey

This report highlights the key findings from the 2004 Australian National eProcurement Survey. The aim of the 2004 Australian National eProcurement Survey is to establish the nature, extent and adoption profile of eProcurement strategies and processes of Australian organisations.Australian Research Council (Grant No. LP0214841