Was malthus right? a var analysis of economic and demographic interactions in pre-industrial England

This paper shows that the interaction between economic and demographic variables in England before the onset of modern economic growth did not fit some crucial assumptions of the Malthusian model. I estimated a vector autoregression for data on fertility, nuptiality, mortality and real wages over the period 1541-1840 applying a well-known identification strategy broadly used in macroeconomics. The results show that endogenous adjustment of population to real wages functioned as Malthus assumed only until the 17th century: positive checks disappeared during the 17th century and preventive checks disappeared before 1740. This implies that the endogenous adjustment of population levels to changes in real wages -one of the cornerstones of the Malthusian model- did not work during an important part of the period usually considered within the "Malthusian regime"

The USSR and The GDR: Mutual Collapse

The Soviet Union had a number of satellite states, where communist puppet regimes were propped up in order to serve the interests of the Soviet Union. The Eastern Bloc was established with the goal of spreading the Soviet style of government, regardless of its unpopularity. The only reason that the communist regimes in these states were able to survive was because of Soviet support. This meant that the decline of the Soviet Union and the individual bloc states fed into each other. This is examined through the case of the German Democratic Republic and its relations with the Soviet Union

Adult mortality and investment: a new explanation of the English agricultural productivity in the 18th century

We claim that the exogenous decline of adult mortality at the end of the seventeenth century can be one of the causes driving both the decline of interest rate and the increase in agricultural production per acre in preindustrial England. Following the intuition of the life-cycle hypothesis, we show that the increase in adult life expectancy must have implied less farmer impatience and it could have caused more investment in nitrogen stock and land fertility, and higher production per acre. We analyse this dynamic interaction using an overlapping generation model and show that the evolution of agricultural production and capital rates of return predicted by the model coincide fairly well with their empirical pattern

A methodological approach to estimating the money demand in pre-industrial economies: probate inventories and Spain in the 18th century

The study of monetary phenomena and the understanding of price determination in Modern Europe are too often limited by the scarcity of good-quality data sets on the evolution across time of variables like money holdings, income, or wealth. In this paper we show that the information contained in probate inventories can be extremely useful to circumvent that problem. In particular, combining a data set of 114 inventories from Palencia (North of Spain) between 1750 and 1770 with census information (Catastro de Ensenada) we make a cross-section estimation of a money demand which is the first one ever produced for any period before the 19th century. The results provide meaningful insights about the relation between money demand and wealth, urbanization and structural change in a pre-industrial economy and highlight the potential of probate inventories to improve our knowledge of the monetary history of Modern Europe

Novel role for the LKB1 pathway in controlling monocarboxylate fuel transporters

A question preoccupying many researchers is how signal transduction pathways control metabolic processes and energy production. A study by Jang et al. (Jang, C., G. Lee, and J. Chung. 2008. J. Cell Biol. 183:11–17) provides evidence that in Drosophila melanogaster a signaling network controlled by the LKB1 tumor suppressor regulates trafficking of an Sln/dMCT1 monocarboxylate transporter to the plasma membrane. This enables cells to import additional energy sources such as lactate and butyrate, enhancing the repertoire of fuels they can use to power vital activities

'Real time'early warning indicators for costly asset price boom/bust cycles: a role for global liquidity

We test the performance of a host of real and financial variables as early warning indicators for costly aggregate asset price boom/bust cycles, using data for 18 OECD countries between 1970 and 2007. A signalling approach is used to predict asset price booms that have relatively serious real economy consequences. We use a loss function to rank the tested indicators given policy makers' relative preferences with respect to missed crises and false alarms. The paper analyzes the suitability of various indicators as well as the relative performance of financial versus real, global versus domestic and money versus credit based liquidity indicators. We find that global measures of liquidity are among the best performing indicators and display forecasting records, which provide useful information for policy makers interested in timely reactions to growing financial imbalances, as long as aversion against type I and type II errors is not too unbalanced. Furthermore, we explore out-of-sample whether the most recent wave of asset price booms (2005-2007) would be predicted to be followed by a serious economic downturn. JEL Classification: E37, E44, E51Early Warning Indicators, Leaning Against the Wind, Signalling Approach

Phase space description of the dynamics due to the coupled effect of the planetary oblateness and the solar radiation pressure perturbations

The aim of this work is to provide an analytical model to characterize the equilibrium points and the phase space associated with the singly-averaged dynamics caused by the planetary oblateness coupled with the solar radiation pressure perturbations. A two-dimensional differential system is derived by considering the classical theory, supported by the existence of an integral of motion comprising semi-major axis, eccentricity and inclination. Under the single resonance hypothesis, the analytical expressions for the equilibrium points in the eccentricity-resonant angle space are provided, together with the corresponding linear stability. The Hamiltonian formulation is also given. The model is applied considering, as example, the Earth as major oblate body, and a simple tool to visualize the structure of the phase space is presented. Finally, some considerations on the possible use and development of the proposed model are drawn

Comparisons Between Modeling and Measured Performance of the BNL Linac

Quite good agreement has been achieved between computer modeling and actual performance of the Brookhaven 200 MeV Linac. We will present comparisons between calculated and measured performance for the beam transport through the RFQ, the 6 meter transport from RFQ to the linac and meching and transport through the linac.Comment: 3 page

A Super-Conducting Linac Driver for the HFBR

This paper reports on the feasibility study of a proton Super-Conducting Linac (SCL) as a driver gor the High-Flux Breader Reactor (HFBR) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). The Linac operates in Continuos Wave (CW) mode to produce an average 10 MW of beam power. The Linac energy is 1.0 GeV. The average proton beam intensity is 10 mA.Comment: 3 page