Were The Peseta Exchange Rate Crises Forecastable During Target Zone Period?

During the 1990’s several fixed or quasi-fixed exchange rate systems collapsed. Currency crises have happened in both developed and emerging countries so it is necessary to forecast and avoid them. However, financial market crises have been extremely di¢cult to forecast. Economic agents’ expectations are non-observable variables that cannot be ignored in our models. In addition, if we want to study the European case during the 1990’s, the censored disposition of the exchange rate cannot be ignored either. We propose a discrete time target zones model where these aspects are taken into account. It will be tested in a peseta/deutsche mark exchange rate framework, from June 1989 to December 1998. The results indicate differences between before and after the shift in band widths in August 1993.Target Zones, Currency Crises, Mean Reversion, Realignment Probability

Computational Results on Membership in R&D Cooperation Networks: To Be or Not To Be in a Research Joint Venture

In this study, we analyze firms’ membership in R&D (Research and Development) cooperation networks. Our main research hypothesis is that the membership in cooperation networks is related to the degree of the knowledge spillover. The approach focus on both cost symmetry and cost asymmetry. For that purpose, our work is developed in two tasks: we first develop an analytical model with three stages: in the first, firms decide whether to participate in a cooperative research network; in the second they simultaneously choose the level of R&D output, and finally firms choose the level of output through Cournot competition under both cost symmetry and cost asymmetry. Then we proceed with computational simulations in order to verify our hypothesis. From our results, we were able to conclude that cooperation leads to an improvement on RJV firms’ position in the market as it allows them to produce more than others with the same production conditions. Additionally, cooperating firms have to spend fewer resources on research, which turns the network a tremendous success on the productive efficiency level.R&D, networks, spillover, simulation, RJV

Exchange rate dynamics in crawling-band systems

In this note we show that an exchange rate crawling-band system can borrow a portion of those aspects of a target zone that lead to its stabilizing effects on the exchange rate, depending on the relationship between the crawl rate and the drift of the fundamentals process. If the crawl rate is sufficiently high (with respect to the drift), the crawling-band is similar to a free float regime. As the crawl rate decreases, the crawling-band system collapses to a standard target zone.crawling band

Business Cycle and Speculative Pressures in a Target Zone

In the past time, most economies have suffered cyclical fluctuations in their activity which may influence the optimal use of productive factors in long slow-growth phases or price stability in periods of fast growth. This paper focuses on the possible interrelationship between business cycles and exchange rate ‡uctuations. We have chosen the European Monetary System framework in the nineties, from June 1989 to December 1998, because the Peseta belonged to the EMS during that time. This sample is specially interesting because it includes the worst crisis of the System in 1992-93 and the following ones affecting emerging countries like Mexico, Brazil or Russia at the end of the decade. We use a Binary Dependent Variable Logit Model to estimate the readjustment probability inside a band for two currencies, the Peseta and the french Franc . We calculate the dependent variable values from a Markov-Switching Regime Model with constant transition probabilities. We prove that it is a suitable method and that it allows both real and monetary variables to be identified in order to explain speculative pressures.Readjustment Probability, Speculative Pressures, Economic Fluctuations.

Modern Era Centaur: the Fusion of Art and Religion

My dissertation, Modern Era Centaur: the Fusion of Art and Religion, focuses on art\u27s ability to assume other social functions outside its domain. It deals with a variety of artistic practices that take on overt religious roles or are otherwise implicitly grounded in a religiously inflected stance. I argue that the religious impulse of the modern era greatly motivates the poetic and visual aesthetic innovations in the European and American avant-garde. Framed through the thinking of Blaise Pascal, Emmanuel Levinas, and Niklas Luhmann, I show how proto-modernist poetics such as that of Charles Baudelaire and Emily Dickinson articulate similar religious commitments, as does the abstract art of such artists as Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich. The modernity of Dickinson and Baudelaire, I contend, stems from their articulation of a religious position independent from a particular religious system while nonetheless plundering that same system in an expropriation and transformation of its symbols, narratives, and personalities. Kandinsky and Malevich accomplished a similar feat in their disavowal of mimetic art, and their construction of a pictorial language--in the case of Malevich inspired by Orthodox Christian iconography--aimed at fulfilling a religious function outside of a religious system. Abstract art prefigures the visual language of science fiction films of the late twentieth century. Representations of outer space in this genre have however transformed the positive openness to infinity implicit in Renaissance perspectival painting into an angst-filled view of infinity. In particular, apocalyptic science fiction films envisioning end of the world scenarios are pictorial inheritors of abstract art, although they refuse the ontological positivity of Malevich and Kandinsky. To paraphrase Hannah Arendt, in these films one sees how the conquest of space has altered humanity\u27s perception of itself in the universe. Scholarship on modern and modernist literature and visual art often assumes the background of secularization. My dissertation, however, argues both for the importance of religion and for the unprecedented transformation of the meaning of a religiously informed outlook

Segmentação, crescimento e seguimento de células Escherichia coli em imagens microscópicas

Este trabalho tem como finalidade a obtenção do seguimento celular, sendo importante para os profissionais da área da microbiologia, visto que auxilia na contagem de células e na evolução e crescimento das mesmas de modo a diminuir os erros de contagem e seguimento manual das células. Neste projeto aborda-se o crescimento celular de células Escherichia coli (E.coli), a segmentação de células e o seguimento celular. Primeiramente analisou-se o software schnitzcells que é um programa de seguimento de células e deste modo procedeu-se a um estudo na tentativa de obter melhores resultados. Desta forma, através de modificações no processo de segmentação obtiveram-se melhores resultados do que no programa schnitzcells. De seguida, aplicou-se o método de sobreposição de imagens aos pares de modo que os centróides das células na imagem seguinte estivessem sobrepostos com os centróides das células na imagem anterior e assim proceder-se ao seguimento celular. No seguimento celular verificou-se os centróides dos objetos na imagem seguinte encontravam-se no interior de uma célula na imagem anterior e também calculou-se a distância mínima entre objetos, uma vez que existiam células não sobrepostas e deste modo obteve-se o seguimento celular. Assim, constata-se melhores resultados na metodologia implementada, visto que o processo realiza-se de forma automática enquanto no software schnitzcells necessita de correções manuais a nível da segmentação e do seguimento celular para obterem-se resultados corretos.This work aims to obtain the cell tracking, being important to the professionals in the area of microbiology, as it aids in the counting of cells and in the evolution and growth of them in order to decrease the errors of counting and manual tracking of cells. On this thesis it is described Escherichia Coli (E.coli) cellular growth, cellular segmentation and its tracking. At first it was conducted an analysis of the software schnitzcells, which is a program that tracks cells so that a study in an attempt to achieved better results could be executed. In this way, through some modifications in the process of segmentation, better results were indeed achieved than the ones presented in the program schnitzcells. Afterwards, the method of overlapping images was applied in pairs so that the centroids of the cells in the next image were overlapping with the centroids in the previous image in order to ensue to the tracking of the cells. In the process of tracking the cells, it was verified whether the centroids of the objects in the next image were inside a cell in the previous image. Thus, it was calculated the minimum distance between objects and it was obtained the segmentation of each cell. In short, better results are obtained in the implemented methodology, since the process is performed automatically while with the software schnitzcells manual corrections are required in the segmentation and in the cellular tracking in order to obtain correct results

Integración monetaria y convergencia: aspectos relevantes del debate

En un contexto de integración internacional creciente es importante asegurar un mínimo de estabilidad para que las economías puedan realizar plenamente su potencial de crecimiento. En el ámbito europeo, la Unión Económica y Monetaria (UEM) surge como respuesta para alcanzar este marco más estable. El Tratado de Maastricht ha previsto una transición gradual que está supeditada al cumplimiento de unos criterios establecidos de convergencia nominal. Este trabajo resalta las contribuciones más relevantes que se han realizado, dentro de la Teoría de la integración monetaria, para definir una zona como Area Monetaria Optima (AMO) y, si dichas contribuciones consideran como condición necesaria y suficiente el cumplimiento de los requisitos establecidos en Maastricht para formar una Unión Monetaria. Por último, se presenta el estado actual de los indicadores de convergencia nominal en los países de la Unión Europea