Fiscal Policy in the Transition to Monetary Union: a Structural VAR Model

In order to assess the effect of fiscal rules in Stage Three of EMU for France and Germany, Bayoumi and Eichengreen's (1992) structural VAR analysis is extended by including the general government financial surplus and conditioning by external variables. This allows a distinction between fiscal and monetary shocks. During the period 1972.1-1995.4, monetary policy has a significant effect on prices in both countries. On the other hand, fiscal shocks, whose effect on the deficit provides a measure of the " structural deficit ", only contribute to a significant part of the dynamics of output in Germany. For that period, they appear to have little effect in France. In addition, fiscal shocks are uncorrelated between the two countries, although it is difficult to conclude that it reflects purely idiosyncratic shocks rather than a different policy-mix.Budget deficit ; Ricardian equivalence ; Structural VAR ; EMU

Differentiability of fractal curves

While self-similar sets have no tangents at any single point, self-affine curves can be smooth. We consider plane self-affine curves without double points and with two pieces. There is an open subset of parameter space for which the curve is differentiable at all points except for a countable set. For a parameter set of codimension one, the curve is continuously differentiable. However, there are no twice differentiable self-affine curves in the plane, except for parabolic arcs

Stress Testing and Corporate Finance.

The article contributes to the literature on financial fragility, studying how macro-economic shocks affect supply and demand in the corporate debt market. We take into account the effect of the competitive environment, as well as the risk level, measured by companies' default rate. The model is estimated using data from the Harmonised BACH database of corporate accounts for large euro area countries on the 1993-2005 period, in order to carry out an illustrative stress testing exercise. We measure the impact of large macroeconomic shocks (a severe recession and a sharp increase in oil prices) on the equilibrium in the debt market.Corporate Finance ; Debt ; Financial Fragility ; Stress Tests ; Panel Data.

Convergence in Household Credit Demand Across Euro Area Countries: Evidence from Panel Data.

The paper contributes to the literature on the convergence of financial systems in the euro area by estimating household credit demand in individual countries. Using the ARDL framework advocated notably by Pesaran et al. (1999), the paper provides evidence on the convergence of long run credit demand determinants (interest rates, investment and house prices) among the largest euro area countries, while short run dynamics remain heterogenous across countries. The paper also demonstrates that the equation uncovers demand rather than supply behaviour.Credit demand ; Panel cointegration ; Households ; Bank profitability.

Forecasting Inflation using Economic Indicators: the Case of France

In order to provide short run forecasts of headline and core HICP inflation for France, we assess the forecasting performance of a large set of economic indicators, individually and jointly, as well as using dynamic factor models. We run out-of-sample forecasts implementing the Stock and Watson (1999) methodology. It turns out that, according to usual statistical criteria, the combination of several indicators -in particular those derived from surveys- provides better results than dynamic factor models, even after pre-selection of the variables included in the panel. However, factors included in VAR models exhibit more stable forecasting performance over time. Results for HICP excluding unprocessed food and energy are very encouraging. Moreover, we show that it is possible to use forecasts on this indicator to project overall inflation.Inflation ; Out-of-sample forecast ; Indicator models ; Dynamic factor models ; Phillips curve.

Resting state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging integrated with intraoperative neuronavigation for functional mapping after aborted awake craniotomy

BACKGROUND: Awake craniotomy is currently the gold standard for aggressive tumor resections in eloquent cortex. However, a significant subset of patients is unable to tolerate this procedure, particularly the very young or old or those with psychiatric comorbidities, cardiopulmonary comorbidities, or obesity, among other conditions. In these cases, typical alternative procedures include biopsy alone or subtotal resection, both of which are associated with diminished surgical outcomes. CASE DESCRIPTION: Here, we report the successful use of a preoperatively obtained resting state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) integrated with intraoperative neuronavigation software in order to perform functional cortical mapping in the setting of an aborted awake craniotomy due to loss of airway. CONCLUSION: Resting state functional connectivity MRI integrated with intraoperative neuronavigation software can provide an alternative option for functional cortical mapping in the setting of an aborted awake craniotomy

Assessing Aggregate Comovements in France, Germany and Italy. Using a Non Stationary Factor Model of the Euro Area.

The objective of the paper is to investigate to what extent business cycles co-move in Germany, France and Italy. We use a large-scale database of non-stationary series for the euro area in order to assess the effect of common versus idiosyncratic shocks, as well as transitory versus permanent shocks, across countries over the 1980:Q1 to 2003:Q4 period. We apply the method-ology proposed by Bai (2004) and Bai and Ng (2004) to construct a coincident indicator of the euro area business cycle to which national developments appear to be increasingly correlated at business cycle frequencies (8 to 32 quarters), while more significant différences appear at lower frequencies which measures potential growth. The indicator is also shown to be related to extra euro area economic developments.Factor models ; Non-stationary panel data models ; Euro area business cycles.

Boundaries of Disk-like Self-affine Tiles

Let $T:= T(A, {\mathcal D})$ be a disk-like self-affine tile generated by an integral expanding matrix $A$ and a consecutive collinear digit set ${\mathcal D}$, and let $f(x)=x^{2}+px+q$ be the characteristic polynomial of $A$. In the paper, we identify the boundary $\partial T$ with a sofic system by constructing a neighbor graph and derive equivalent conditions for the pair $(A,{\mathcal D})$ to be a number system. Moreover, by using the graph-directed construction and a device of pseudo-norm $\omega$, we find the generalized Hausdorff dimension $\dim_H^{\omega} (\partial T)=2\log \rho(M)/\log |q|$ where $\rho(M)$ is the spectral radius of certain contact matrix $M$. Especially, when $A$ is a similarity, we obtain the standard Hausdorff dimension $\dim_H (\partial T)=2\log \rho/\log |q|$ where $\rho$ is the largest positive zero of the cubic polynomial $x^{3}-(|p|-1)x^{2}-(|q|-|p|)x-|q|$, which is simpler than the known result.Comment: 26 pages, 11 figure

PIB potentiel et écart de PIB : quelques évaluations pour la France.

This Study and Research Paper is devoted to different estimates of the French economy's potential output and output gap. Several methods, which are presented in detail, are put forward to measure these indicators. The first two sections of the paper profile statistical univariate approaches: smoothing using the Hodrick-Prescott filter; and estimation of a trend, potentially including breaks. The next two sections extend the discussion on statistical techniques to multivariate cases. To be precise, they involve the analysis of structural VAR models and unobserved component models. The final section proposes a structural method for estimating potential output, where business sector output is described by a Cobb-Douglas function, while that of the non-business sector is assumed to be exogenous. For this structural method, the NAIRU has to be calculated before estimating the short to medium-term level of potential output.

Canonical Representatives of Morphic Permutations

An infinite permutation can be defined as a linear ordering of the set of natural numbers. In particular, an infinite permutation can be constructed with an aperiodic infinite word over $\{0,\ldots,q-1\}$ as the lexicographic order of the shifts of the word. In this paper, we discuss the question if an infinite permutation defined this way admits a canonical representative, that is, can be defined by a sequence of numbers from [0, 1], such that the frequency of its elements in any interval is equal to the length of that interval. We show that a canonical representative exists if and only if the word is uniquely ergodic, and that is why we use the term ergodic permutations. We also discuss ways to construct the canonical representative of a permutation defined by a morphic word and generalize the construction of Makarov, 2009, for the Thue-Morse permutation to a wider class of infinite words.Comment: Springer. WORDS 2015, Sep 2015, Kiel, Germany. Combinatorics on Words: 10th International Conference. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1503.0618