Financial globalization : unequal blessings

The authors present a framework to analyze financial globalization. They argue that financial globalization needs to take into account the relation between money (particularly in its role as store of value), asset and factor price flexibility, and contractual and regulatory institutions. Countries that have the"blessed trinity"(international currency, flexible exchange rate regime, and sound contractual and regulatory environment) can integrate successfully into the world financial markets. But developing countries normally display the"unblessed trinity"(weak currency, fear of floating, and weak institutional framework). The authors define and discuss two alternative avenues (a"dollar trinity"and a"peso trinity") for developing countries to safely embrace international financial integration while the blessed trinity remains beyond reach.Economic Theory&Research,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Banks&Banking Reform,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Financial Intermediation,Financial Economics,Macroeconomic Management,Economic Stabilization,Economic Theory&Research,Fiscal&Monetary Policy

Financial globalization: Unequal blessings

This paper presents a framework to analyze financial globalization. It argues that financial globalization needs to take into account the relation between money (particularly in its role as store of value), asset and factor price flexibility, and contractual and regulatory institutions. Countries that have the “blessed trinity” (international currency, flexible exchange rate regime, and sound contractual and regulatory environment) can integrate successfully into the (imperfect) world financial markets. But developing countries normally display the “unblessed trinity” (weak currency, fear of floating, and weak institutional framework). The paper defines and discusses two alternative avenues (a “dollar trinity” and a “peso trinity”) for developing countries to safely embrace international financial integration while the blessed trinity remains beyond reach.

Living and dying with hard pegs : the rise and fall of Argentina's currency board

The rise and fall of Argentina's currency board shows the extent to which the advantages of hard pegs have been overstated. The currency board did provide nominal stability and boosted financial intermediation, at the cost of endogenous financial dollarization, but did not foster monetary or fiscal discipline. The failure to adequately address the currency-growth-debt trap into which Argentina fell at the end of the 1990s precipitated a run on the currency and the banks, followed by the abandonment of the currency board and a sovereign debt default. The crisis can be best interpreted as a bad outcome of a high-stakes strategy to overcome a weak currency problem. To increase the credibility of the hard peg, the government raised its exit costs, which deepened the crisis once exit could no longer be avoided. But some alternative exit strategies would have been less destructive than the one adopted.Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Financial Intermediation,Banks&Banking Reform,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Financial Intermediation,Financial Economics,Economic Theory&Research

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: Evaluation and Modelling of Verbal Associations

We present a quantitative analysis of human word association pairs and study the types of relations presented in the associations. We put our main focus on the correlation between response types and respondent characteristics such as occupation and gender by contrasting syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations. Finally, we propose a personalised distributed word association model and show the importance of incorporating demographic factors into the models commonly used in natural language processing.Comment: AIST 2017 camera-read

Will to live in older people’s medical decisions: immediate and delayed effects of aging stereotypes

This research explores the duration of age stereotype priming effects on individuals’ will to live when faced with a medical terminal illness decision. Study 1 established the content of the stereotype of the older age group in Portugal. Study 2 tested the effects of priming positive or negative age stereotypes on older and younger individuals’ will to live, immediately after priming or after a delay. Results showed significant effects of stereotype valence on older people’s will to live. As expected, immediate and delayed will-to-live scores were both lower in the negative than in the positive condition. In contrast, among younger people there were no significant effects of stereotype valence. These findings demonstrate the robustness of these types of unconscious influences on older people’s fundamental decisions

Preeminent role of the Van Hove singularity in the strong-coupling analysis of scanning tunneling spectroscopy for two-dimensional cuprates

In two dimensions the non-interacting density of states displays a Van Hove singularity (VHS) which introduces an intrinsic electron-hole asymmetry, absent in three dimensions. We show that due to this VHS the strong-coupling analysis of tunneling spectra in high-$T_c$ superconductors must be reconsidered. Based on a microscopic model which reproduces the experimental data with great accuracy, we elucidate the peculiar role played by the VHS in shaping the tunneling spectra, and show that more conventional analyses of strong-coupling effects can lead to severe errors.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

General transport properties of superconducting quantum point contacts: a Green functions approach

We discuss the general transport properties of superconducting quantum point contacts. We show how these properties can be obtained from a microscopic model using nonequilibrium Green function techniques. For the case of a one-channel contact we analyze the response under different biasing conditions: constant applied voltage, current bias and microwave-induced transport. Current fluctuations are also analyzed with particular emphasis on thermal and shot-noise. Finally, the case of superconducting transport through a resonant level is discussed. The calculated properties show a remarkable agreement with the available experimental data from atomic-size contacts measurements. We suggest the possibility of extending this comparison to several other predictions of the theory.Comment: 10 pages, revtex, 8 figures, submitted to a special issue of Superlattices and Microstructure

Using Entropy-Based Methods to Study General Constrained Parameter Optimization Problems

In this letter we propose the use of physics techniques for entropy determination on constrained parameter optimization problems. The main feature of such techniques, the construction of an unbiased walk on energy space, suggests their use on the quest for optimal solutions of an optimization problem. Moreover, the entropy, and its associated density of states, give us information concerning the feasibility of solutions.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, references correcte

Strong-coupling analysis of scanning tunneling spectra in Bi2_2Sr2_2Ca2_2Cu3_3O10+δ_{10+\delta}

We study a series of spectra measured in the superconducting state of optimally-doped Bi-2223 by scanning tunneling spectroscopy. Each spectrum, as well as the average of spectra presenting the same gap, is fitted using a strong-coupling model taking into account the band structure, the BCS gap, and the interaction of electrons with the spin resonance. After describing our measurements and the main characteristics of the strong-coupling model, we report the whole set of parameters determined from the fits, and we discuss trends as a function of the gap magnitude. We also simulate angle-resolved photoemission spectra, and compare with recent experimental results.Comment: Published versio