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Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68151/2/10.1177_103841116900400601.pd

Editorial Comments

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67028/2/10.1177_103841116600100202.pd

Assessing Inference Methods

We consider different types of simulations that applied researchers may use to assess whether inference methods are reliable in their empirical applications. We present the advantages and disadvantages of different alternatives, considering the problems such assessments may detect, possibilities of distortions due to sequential testing, necessity of adaptation to specific applications, and implementation complexity. We show that even the use of simple and easy-to-implement assessments can detect problems in a wide range of settings, making scientific evidence more reliable. We analyze in detail the cases of Difference-in-Differences, shift-share designs, weighted OLS, clustering, block bootstrap, stratified experiments, and matching estimators

Border Bandits: Hollywood on the Southern Frontier (Book Review)

Fojas begins the preface to her book with a reference to May 1, 2006, a date on which American workers recognized International Labor Day by boycotting their jobs and marching to reject a law that repressed undocumented workers at the same time that it proposed the construction of a wall along the whole 700-mile Mexican border. The author claims that this protest marked a new era in the predicament of workers at the bottom of the labor market (vii). For Fojas, this moment marks a new visibility for Latinos and immigrant communities. It is against this historical and political horizon that Camilla Fojas undertakes her study of how Hollywood cinema has framed and continues to frame our image (national and international) of the Mexico-U.S. frontier. In the process, she traces the history of U.S. military interventions in Mexico and the political pressures imposed on the country South of the border by its more powerful neighbor

Textos del derrumbe: Horacio Castellanos Moya, Fernando Vallejo, Daniel Guebel

Me propongo aquí referirme a tres novelas que se publicaron entre los años 2001 y 2006, que pertenecen a tres escritores muy distantes entre sí en geografía, experiencia y propuesta literaria. Estos escritores también están separados generacionalmente: Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador, 1957) y Daniel Guebel (Argentina, 1956) y Fernando Vallejo (Colombia, 1942). Estas son Desmoronamiento (2006), de Horacio Castellano Moya; El desbarrancadero (2001) de Fernando Vallejo, y Derrumbe (2007), de Daniel Guebel. Estas novelas de obvias coincidencias en los títulos, pueden pensarse como espacios de representación de la crisis del sujeto literario moderno , más allá de las diferencias nacionales y regionales. Esta crisis tiene género, el masculino, y en los casos que voy a discutir se presenta en metáforas asociadas con la inestabilidad del espacio físico, el suelo que sostiene, el edificio que rodea: desbarrancar, desmoronar, derrumbar . Aparece también en otros textos en relación con la amenaza a la integridad físico-sexual del sujeto masculino, a los que no me referiré aquí, pero que constituirían sin duda un capítulo de interés para discutir esta cuestión. pueden citarse como ejemplos las novelas La astucia de la razón, de José Pablo Feinmann, y Lo imborrable, de Juan José Saer, así como el cuento El Ojo Silva , de Roberto Bolaño. En estos textos, la crisis está también asociada con la instauración de los regímenes políticos autoritarios y de terrorismo de estado de las décadas 1970 y 1980 en Latinoamérica

Switching monetary policy regimes and the nominal term structure

In this paper I propose a regime-switching approach to explain why the U.S. nominal yield curve on average has been steeper since the mid-1980s than during the Great Inflation of the 1970s. I show that, once the possibility of regime switches in the short-rate process is incorporated into investors' beliefs, the average slope of the yield curve generally will contain a new component called 'level risk'. Level-risk estimates, based on a Markov-Switching VAR model of the U.S. economy, are then provided. I find that the level risk was large and negative during the Great Inflation, reflecting a possible switch to lower short-rate levels in the future. Since the mid-1980s the level risk has been moderate and positive, reflecting a small but still relevant possibility of a return to the regime of the 1970s. I replicate these results in a Markov-Switching dynamic general equilibrium model, where the monetary policy rule followed by the Fed shifts between an active and a passive regime. The model also explains why in recent decades the U.S. yield curve on average has been steeper than the yield curve in countries that adopted explicit inflation targeting frameworks

Editorial Comments

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66609/2/10.1177_103841116600100103.pd