IMPROVING SMART GRID SECURITY USING MERKLE TREES

Abstract—Presently nations worldwide are starting to convert their aging electrical power infrastructures into modern, dynamic power grids. Smart Grid offers much in the way of efficiencies and robustness to the electrical power grid, however its heavy reliance on communication networks will leave it more vulnerable to attack than present day grids. This paper looks at the threat to public key cryptography systems from a fully realized quantum computer and how this could impact the Smart Grid. We argue for the use of Merkle Trees in place of public key cryptography for authentication of devices in wireless mesh networks that are used in Smart Grid applications

Trade Openness And Real Exchange Rate Volatility: Panel Data Evidence

A recent strand of the literature, the so-called “New Open Economy Macroeconomics”, argues that nonmonetary factors have gained importance in explaining exchange rate volatility. In this context, it has been suggested the inclusion of shocks to productivity, terms of trade, and government spending, among others. The goal of the present paper is to explain the real exchange rate volatility by positing a structural relationship between volatility and its determinants. To perform our task we collected information on exchange rates, output, terms of trade, government spending, monetary aggregates, exchange rate regimes, trade and financial openness for a sample of industrial and developing countries for the 1974-2003 period. We will use GMM-IV methods for panel data to test the following hypotheses: (a) real exchange rate (RER) fluctuations are less volatile in more open countries, and (b) trade openness helps attenuate the impact of highly volatile shocks to fundamentals on the volatility of RER fluctuations.

Fron Neo-classical Entrepreneur to Socio-economic Organization

Despite the growing role that business has played in the development of capitalism, the neo-classical paradigm has largely ignored the concept of organization. This paper illustrates the neo-classical concept of the firm and the entrepreneur. Analyzing both, the moral and economic thought of Adam Smith, this paper explains why, in the heart of Industrial Revolution, the paradigm elects an unrealistic and quasi-medieval concept of the firm. The paper argues that it is not by chance that the collective actions and thinking were neglected, rather it is necessary in order to maintain the core-values of the paradigm. Finally, the paper discusses if a firm could be a good subject for institutionalizing of socioeconomics.

Do Free Trade Agreements Enhance the Transmission of Shocks Across Countries?.

World Trade has experienced an increased integration over the last 15 years. More than half of world trade currently takes place under actual or future trading blocks. Our main goal is to test whether free trade or regional integration agreements (FTA or RIA, respectively) have strengthened the trade channel of international transmission of business cycles. With annual information for 147 countries over the 1960-99 period, we conduct our analysis for a panel data of country pairs (33676 country pairs), and we find the following results: (i) Higher trade intensity between two countries generates a stronger cycle synchronization. (ii) This impact is even stronger among country pairs with a free trade agreement. (iii) The impact of trade intensity on cycle synchronization is stronger among industrial than among developing country pairs. (iv) The impact within each group of country pairs is higher for the ones engaged in FTAs. (v) Economic effects of higher trade intensity in the presence of FTAs are stronger during the 1990s.

Real Exchange Rates in the Long and Short Run: A Panel Co-Integration Approach

The empirical literature on long-run real exchange rate behavior has shown mixed evidence due to problems involving the lack of long time series data and the low power of time-series unit root tests in small samples. The main objective of the present paper is to tackle these empirical issues by applying the recently developed panel cointegration techniques to the long-run real exchange rate equation implied by our model. Using annual data for 67 countries over the 1966-97, we find that the cointegrating relationship between the real exchange rate, the ratio of net foreign assets to GDP, the relative Home to Foreign productivity of the traded and non-traded sector, and the terms of trade is valid in the long run. This result holds for all sub-sample of countries (whether they are classified by income per capita or capital controls). Furthermore, our coefficient estimates are consistent with the theoretical values implied by the calibrated parameters of preferences and technology in Stockman and Tesar (1995). Robustness checks reveal that: (i) “pooling” the data to obtain a common long-run equilibrium relationship across countries is valid for the samples of countries with high income and low capital controls, (ii) the oil shock crisis in 1973 represents a structural change for these sub-samples. Finally, deviations from the equilibrium are large and persistent with half-life estimates (between 2.8 and 5) consistent with the consensus interval of 2.5-5 found in the literature (Murray and Papell, 2002).

Equivalence between the real time Feynman histories and the quantum shutter approaches for the "passage time" in tunneling

We show the equivalence of the functions $G_{\rm p}(t)$ and $|\Psi(d,t)|^2$ for the ``passage time'' in tunneling. The former, obtained within the framework of the real time Feynman histories approach to the tunneling time problem, using the Gell-Mann and Hartle's decoherence functional, and the latter involving an exact analytical solution to the time-dependent Schr\"{o}dinger equation for cutoff initial waves

Branching ratios and CP asymmetries in charmless nonleptonic B decays to radially excited mesons

Nonleptonic two body B decays including radially excited $\pi(1300)$ or $\rho(1450)$ mesons in the final state are studied using the framework of generalized naive factorization approach. Branching ratios and CP asymmetries of $B\to P\pi(1300)$, $B\to V\pi(1300)$, $B\to P\rho(1450)$ and $B\to V\rho(1450)$ decays are calculated, where P and V stand for pseudoscalar and vector charmless mesons. Form factors for $B\to \pi(1300)$ and $B\to \rho(1450)$ transitions are estimated in the improved version of the Isgur-Scora-Grinstein-Wise quark model. In some processes, CP asymmetries of more than 10% and branching ratios of $10^{-5}$ order are found, which could be reached in experiments.Comment: 18 pages, 11 table