The great inflation: did the shadow know better?

The Shadow Open Market Committee was formed in 1973 in response to rising inflation and the apparent unwillingness of U.S. policymakers to implement policies necessary to maintain price stability. This paper describes how the Committee's policy views differed from those of most Federal Reserve officials and many academic economists at the time. The Shadow argued that price stability should be the primary goal of monetary policy, and favored gradual adjustment of monetary growth to a rate consistent with price stability. The paper evaluates the Shadow's policy rule in the context of the New Keynesian macroeconomic model of Clarida, Gali and Gertler (1999). Simulations of the model suggest that the gradual stabilization of monetary growth favored by the Shadow would have lowered inflation with less impact on output growth, and with less variability in output and inflation, than a one-time reduction in monetary growth. We conclude that the Shadow articulated a sensible policy that would have outperformed the policies actually implemented by the Federal Reserve during the Great Inflation era.Inflation (Finance) ; Monetary policy

Birds of Lake McConaughy and the North Platte River Valley, Oshkosh to Keystone

Cedar Point Biological Station was established in 1975 at a site approximately one mile below Kingsley Dam in Keith County, Nebraska. Since that time, summer ornithology classes have been periodically offered beginning in 1977 when it was taught by Dr. Stephen Fretwell. A variety of ornithologists have kept records of the summer birds of the area. Beginning in 1970, when he first visited the area, the senior author has accumulated a large amount of data covering all seasons of the year, which form the primary basis for the seasonal information in this paper. In addition, much information was contributed by C. Fred Zeillemaker from late 1977 to early 1982, when he was Manager at nearby Crescent Lake National Wildlife Refuge. Other contributors include: Charles Brown, Craig Faanes, Don Mahoney, Dorothy and Mark Rasche, and Melly Zeillemaker. Because of the unusual diversity of terrestrial and aquatic habitats within the rather circumscribed area of Lake McConaughy and adjoining localities, it is of special interest to ornithologists. Furthermore, the area is essentially in the middle of the east-west faunal transition zone in the Great Plains, so that a number of closely related species-pairs (buntings, grosbeaks, tanagers, orioles, et al.) are represented. Finally the annual concentration of biologists at Cedar Point makes it desirable that a comprehensive bird list for the area be prepared. The following is largely limited to the North Platte River Valley from Oshkosh east to the vicinity of Keystone as indicated in Figure 1. Major birding areas include the Oshkosh sewage lagoons, the Lewellen area, Ash Hollow State Historical Park, Clear Creek State Game Management Area, Lake McConaughy, Lake Ogallala, Keystone Lake, and Cedar Point Biological Station. Except where otherwise indicated, the observations are those of the authors

The Great Inflation: Did the Shadow Know Better?

The Shadow Open Market Committee was formed in 1973 in response to rising inflation and the apparent unwillingness of U.S. policymakers to implement policies necessary to maintain price stability. This paper describes how the Committee’s policy views differed from those of most Federal Reserve officials and many academic economists at the time. The Shadow argued that price stability should be the primary goal of monetary policy and favored gradual adjustment of monetary growth to a rate consistent with price stability. This paper evaluates the Shadow’s policy rule in the context of the New Keynesian macroeconomic model of Clarida, Gali, and Gertler (1999). Simulations of the model suggest that the gradual stabilization of monetary growth favored by the Shadow would have lowered inflation with less impact on output growth and less variability in inflation or output than a one-time reduction in monetary growth. We conclude that the Shadow articulated a policy that would have outperformed the policies actually implemented by the Federal Reserve during the Great Inflation era.

Content-Based Video Description for Automatic Video Genre Categorization

International audienceIn this paper, we propose an audio-visual approach to video genre categorization. Audio information is extracted at block-level, which has the advantage of capturing local temporal information. At temporal structural level, we asses action contents with respect to human perception. Further, color perception is quantified with statistics of color distribution, elementary hues, color properties and relationship of color. The last category of descriptors determines statistics of contour geometry. An extensive evaluation of this multi-modal approach based on more than 91 hours of video footage is presented. We obtain average precision and recall ratios within [87% − 100%] and [77% − 100%], respectively,nwhile average correct classification is up to 97%. Additionally, movies displayed according to feature-based coordinates in a virtual 3D browsing environment tend to regroup with respect to genre, which has potential application with real content-based browsing systems

Use of Drawings to Explore US Women's Perspectives on Why People Might Decline HIV Testing

The purpose of this research is to explore through drawings and verbal descriptions women's perspectives about reasons why persons might decline human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing. We asked 30 participants to draw a person that would NOT get tested for HIV and then explain drawings. Using qualitative content analysis, we extracted seven themes. We found apprehension about knowing the result of an HIV test to be the most commonly identified theme in women's explanations of those who would not get tested. This technique was well received and its use is extended to HIV issues