The Augsburg Confession in Context (Part 1)

Lutherans cannot truly look forward into the 1980s without first looking back to the 1520s and 1530s — to the “confessional rocks” from which they were hewn

Measuring labor market dynamics: gross flows of workers and jobs

Labor market

Moonlighting

Supplementary employment ; Labor supply

The transition from barter to fiat money

How did it become possible to exchange apparently valueless pieces of paper for goods? This paper provides an equilibrium account of the transition between barter and fiat money regimes. The explanation relies on the intervention of a self-interested government which must be able to promise credibly to limit the issue of money. To achieve credibility, the government must offset the benefits of seigniorage by internalizing some of the macroeconomic externalities generated by the issue of fiat money. The government's patience and the extent of its involvement in the economy are key determinants of whether the transition can be accomplished.Money ; Money theory

Feeding the national accounts

A complex tracking system, the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) is used to measure and monitor the U.S. economy. This article surveys the main data sources currently used in the NIPA. It is not primarily an article about methodology, but focuses instead on the raw inputs to the process: Who is answering what kinds of questions? Closer acquaintance with the data sources behind the accounts highlights the considerable uncertainty about exact magnitudes of various aggregate quantities (and their growth rates) and the need for ongoing evaluation of the data-collection efforts that support the accounts.Gross domestic product

A fast and portable Re-Implementation of Piskunov and Valenti's Optimal-Extraction Algorithm with improved Cosmic-Ray Removal and Optimal Sky Subtraction

We present a fast and portable re-implementation of Piskunov and Valenti's optimal-extraction algorithm (Piskunov & Valenti, 2002} in C/C++ together with full uncertainty propagation, improved cosmic-ray removal, and an optimal background-subtraction algorithm. This re-implementation can be used with IRAF and most existing data-reduction packages and leads to signal-to-noise ratios close to the Poisson limit. The algorithm is very stable, operates on spectra from a wide range of instruments (slit spectra and fibre feeds), and has been extensively tested for VLT/UVES, ESO/CES, ESO/FEROS, NTT/EMMI, NOT/ALFOSC, STELLA/SES, SSO/WiFeS, and finally, P60/SEDM-IFU data.Comment: 23 pages, 12 figure