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

What is absolutely continuous spectrum?

This note is an expanded version of the author's contribution to the Proceedings of the ICMP Santiago, 2015, and is based on a talk given by the second author at the same Congress. It concerns a research program devoted to the characterization of the absolutely continuous spectrum of a self-adjoint operator H in terms of the transport properties of a suitable class of open quantum systems canonically associated to H

Ecuador: The Continuing Challenge of Democratic Consolidation and Civil-Military Relations; Strategic Insights, v. 5, issue 2 (February 2006)

This article appeared in Strategic Insights, v.5, issue 2 (February 2006)Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Séquence sédimentaire du secteur aval de la rivière Coppermine, Territoires du Nord-Ouest

L'étude des sédiments exposés dans 31 coupes le long du cours inférieur de la rivière Coppermine, entre les monts September et Coppermine et le golfe du Couronnement, a permis de reconstituer l'évolution postglaciaire de la région. Après le retrait des glaces, Ia mer a envahi la zone côtière déprimée par glacio-isostasie sous le niveau marin. La déglaciation a aussi permis à la rivière Coppermine de reprendre son cours vers le nord. Or, celle-ci transportait d'énormes quantités de sédiments qui lui étaient fournies d'une part par les eaux de fonte provenant des masses de glace en décrépitude et, d'autre part, par le remaniement des sédiments du lac glaciaire Coppermine. La sédimentation dans les parties relativement profondes de la mer postglaciaire est représentée par d'importants dépôts de silt et d'argile rythmés. Ces rythmites résultent d'une mise en place par des courants de turbidité. Un diamicton de plus de 30 m d'épaisseur est intercalé dans les rythmites marines. On l'interprète comme étant le résultat d'une série de coulées boueuses provoquées par la liquéfaction des varves du lac glaciaire Coppermine. Ces dépôts ont été recouverts graduellement par des sédiments de plus en plus grossiers de plage ou de delta. Il s'agit donc d'une séquence sédimentaire inverse, caractéristique d'une sédimentation dans une mer en régression. Les datations indiquent que la mer postglaciaire a envahi la région avant 10 000 ans BP.The study of 31 sections along the Coppermine River, between September and Coppermine mountains and Coronation Gulf, makes it possible to understand the postglacial history of the area. Following déglaciation, the sea invaded the depressed coastal lowlands and the Coppermine River resumed its course northward. Its high sediment load originating from the sediment-laden glacial meltwaters and the reworked Glacial Lake Coppermine deposits resulted in an important sedimentation in the postglacial sea. Sedimentation in the deeper areas of the sea left thick deposits of silt and clay rythmites. These rythmites owe their origin to turbidity currents. A 30 m-thick diamicton is interbedded with the rythmites. It is interpreted as the result of a number of debris flows generated by liquefaction of Glacial Lake Coppermine varves early in the region's postglacial history. These deposits are gradually overlaid by coarser beach or deltaic sediments, up to gravel and boulder size. This coarsening-upward sequence is typical of sedimentation in an offlap marine phase. The 14C dates suggest a minimum age of 10,000 BP for the postglacial marine phase

The Center for Civil-Military Relations / Spanish Case Study

The Center for Civil-Military Relations at the Naval Post-Graduate School (CCMR, Monterey, CA) is an implementing organization of the U.S. Department of Defense's Expanded-International Military Education and Training Program and has amassed both scholarly and practical expertise educating civilian and military defense professionals from more than 40 countries. CCMR was established in 1994 and is sponsored by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA). CCMR conducts civil-military relations programs designed primarily for military officers, civilian officials, legislators, and non-government personnel. These programs include courses designed to be taught both in residence at NPS and in a Mobile Education Team (MET) format, depending upon requirements. Three programs offered by CCMR include the MET, the Masters Degree in International Security and Civil-Military Relations, and the Executive Program in Civil-Military Relations.The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) sponsored the research in this report under agreement AEP-A-00-98-00014-00, which established the Partnership for Democratic Governance and Society. The Partnership for Democratic Governance and Society (PDGS) conducts programs to strengthen the capacity of civilians to provide leadership in defense management, policymaking and analysis. The PDGS conducts its programs in cooperation with local legislatures, political parties, civic organizations, academic institutions, media and the civilian elements of the defense establishment.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

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.

Portugal: Problems and Prospects in the Creation of a New Regime

If the overwhelming majority of foreign observers were surprised but encouraged by the coup of 25 April 1974 which signaled an end to the Salazar· Caetano regime, the responses to developments since that time have been mixed. In part this ambivalence can be attributed to the developments them• selves which are both difficult to comprehend and almost impossible to place in a fixed context. Indeed, there is no fixed context

Putting the Military Back into Civil-Military Relations

There is no region in the world that exceeds Latin America in the number of books and articles, by local and foreign scholars, on the topic of civil-military relations. It is indicative of the great interest in the topic that Red de Seguridad y Defensa de América Latina (RESDAL), based in Buenos Aires, periodically publishes the Defense Atlas of Latin America and the Caribbean, which appears in Spanish but has also appeared in English and at least once in French. Despite serious and sustained efforts and interest in other regions, particularly in the Middle East, there is nothing similar anywhere else in the world. Currently, much is happening in both the United States and Latin America involving civil-military relations, for better and for worse. The value of several of these books is to redirect our attention at least in part back to the military institutions from which the currently democratic regimes evolved. The authors deal with fundamental issues of militaries including the centrality of strategy, the importance of roles and missions, and the necessity of institutions in the absence of which civilians are incapable of controlling the military. It must be stated up front that two major factors influence most of the literature on civil-military relations in the region, both of which revolve around the military but normally do not enter into military issues per se. First is the very serious human rights abuses in virtually all of the countries ruled by military regimes, and second, the transition from military regimes to electoral democracies, again in virtually all of the countries. It is no surprise, then, that the overwhelming emphasis in the literature is on the conditions for, and institutions created to exercise democratic civilian control, with very little attention to the military itself. The question thus arises: What happened to the military in civil-military relations in Latin America? The great novelty, and in my view, contribution of at least five of the books reviewed here is that they focus on precisely the military as an institution, how it should be organized, how it should be led, and what it should be doing: Chirio’s in her focus on the internal dynamics of the military in Brazil, Pion-Berlin’s as he focuses on roles or missions, Alsina’s as he deals with national security and defense strategy, Pion-Berlin and Martínez as they analyze military effectiveness, and Franqui-Rivera as he focuses on the military’s role in the culture in Puerto Rico. Each of these books, by refocusing the debate on the military institutions and their missions, brings the military back into the study of civil-military relations. While the book by Klein and Vidal Luna focuses mainly on the military regime, 1964–1985, and Chirio’s on the military regime and democratic transition, the remaining six deal primarily with the military in democratic regimes