Geology of the Mt. Cosce sector (Narni Ridge, Central Apennines, Italy)

This paper is companion to a 1:15,000 scale geological map of the southern sector of the Narni Range in Central Italy. This sector of the Apenninic Chain was affected by the western Tethyan rifting stage during the Early Jurassic, and the inherited architectural setting in turn influenced the Mesozoic stratigraphy and the Neogene-Quaternary tectonic evolution of the area. Based on stratigraphic and structural field evidence, a Jurassic structural high has been identified in the Mt. Cosce sector, flanked northward and westward by deeper basins. The basin that had to exist to the east, as well as the top of the horst-block, cannot be observed due to recent erosion and orogenic deformation. The western margin of the Mt. Cosce High was rejuvenated during an extensional tectonic phase which took place in the late Early Cretaceous. This synsedimentary faulting is reported in this area for the first time, and is documented by a sedimentary breccia (Mt. Cosce Breccia) resting unconformably on the Jurassic footwall-block

Latest results on single electroweak boson production from the CMS experiment

The production of W and Z bosons is one of the most prominent examples of hard scattering processes at hadron colliders. The measurements of the corresponding inclusive and differential cross sections provide important tests of perturbative quantum chromodynamics and parton dis- tribution functions. Moreover, these processes constitute the main source of background for the searches for dark matter or other exotic final states, making the precise knowledge of W and Z boson kinematic spectra a fundamental tool to search for new physics. This paper reports a sum- mary of the latest measurements of single electroweak boson production carried out by the CMS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. They are based on data collected at a center-of- mass energy of 8 or 13 TeV. The measurements are performed exploiting the decay of W and Z bosons into electrons or muons, which provide a clean experimental final state with a low level of background. Results are corrected to the stable-particle level through unfolding techniques and compared with theoretical predictions obtained using several generators, allowing to validate different models for the parton shower and hard scattering processes. The main features of the selected analyses are illustrated and their role in the consolidation and development of our current knowledge of the electroweak sector is highlighted. Finally, the prospects for new measurements using the full dataset collected by CMS at 13 TeV by the end of 2018 are briefly discussed as well

Performance of the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter during the LHC Run II and its role in precision physics measurements

Many physics analyses using the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at the LHC require accurate, high resolution electron and photon energy measurements. Particularly important are the decays of the Higgs boson resulting in electromagnetic particles in the final state, as well as the searches for very high mass resonances decaying into energetic photons or electrons. Following the excellent performance achieved in Run I at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV, the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL) is operating at the LHC with proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV center-of-mass energy. The instantaneous luminosity delivered by the LHC during Run II has achieved unprecedented values, using 25 ns bunch spacing. High pileup levels necessitate a retuning of the ECAL readout and trigger thresholds and reconstruction algorithms, to maintain the best possible performance in these more challenging conditions. The energy response of the detector must be precisely calibrated and monitored to achieve and maintain the excellent performance obtained in Run I in terms of energy scale and resolution. A dedicated calibration of each detector channel is performed with physics events exploiting electrons from W and Z boson decays, photons from $pi^{0}$/$eta$ decays, and from the azimuthally symmetric energy distribution of minimum bias events. This contribution describes the calibration strategies and the performance of the CMS ECAL throughout Run II and its role in precision physics measurements with CMS involving electrons and photons

Herd behavior and contagion in financial markets

Imitative behavior and contagion are well-documented regularities of financial markets. We study whether they can occur in a two-asset economy where rational agents trade sequentially. When traders have gains from trade, informational cascades arise and prices fail to aggregate information dispersed among traders. During a cascade all informed traders with the same preferences choose the same action, i.e., they herd. Moreover, herd behavior can generate financial contagion. Informational cascades and herds can spill over from one asset to the other, pushing the price of the other asset far from its fundamental value

Herd behavior and contagion in financial markets

We study a sequential trading financial market where there are gains from trade, that is, where informed traders have heterogeneous private values. We show that an informational cascade (i.e., a complete blockage of information) arises and prices fail to aggregate information dispersed among traders. During an informational cascade, all traders with the same preferences choose the same action, following the market (herding) or going against it (contrarianism). We also study financial contagion by extending our model to a two-asset economy. We show that informational cascades in one market can be generated by informational spillovers from the other. Such spillovers have pathological consequences, generating long-lasting misalignments between prices and fundamentals

Herd behavior in financial markets: an experiment with financial market professionals

We study herd behavior in a laboratory financial market with financial market professionals. An important novelty of the experimental design is the use of a strategy-like method. This allows us to detect herd behavior directly by observing subjects' decisions for all realizations of their private signal. In the paper, we compare two treatments: one in which the price adjusts to the order flow in such a way that herding should never occur, and one in which the presence of event uncertainty makes herding possible. In the first treatment, subjects seldom herd, in accordance with both the theory and previous experimental evidence on student subjects. A proportion of subjects, however, engage in contrarianism, something not accounted for by the theory. In the second treatment, the proportion of herding decisions increases, but not as much as the theory would suggest. Moreover, contrarianism disappears altogether. In both treatments, in contrast with what theory predicts, subjects sometimes prefer to abstain from trading, which affects the process of price discovery negatively

Herding and price convergence in a laboratory financial market

We study whether herding can arise in a laboratory financial market in which agents trade sequentially. Agents trade an asset whose value is unknown and whose price is efficiently set by a market maker. We show that the presence of a price mechanism destroys the possibility of herding. Most agents follow their private information and prices converge to the fundamental value. This result contrasts with the case of a fixed price, where herding and cascades arise. When the price moves, however, agents may behave as contrarian, i.e., they may trade against the market, something not accounted for by the theory. Finally, we study whether informational cascades arise when trade is costly (e.g, because of a Tobin tax). With trade costs, most subjects rationally decided not to trade and the price was unable to aggregate private information efficiently