Structural Changes in the Transmission Mechanism of Monetary Policy in Mexico: A Non-linear VAR Approach

In this paper we present a first approach to the study of the transformation in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy that has taken place in Mexico in recent years. For this purpose, we use a non-linear VAR model that allows for regime shifts. The comparison of the different regimes identified leads to the following main findings: a) there was a major structural change in the transmission mechanism around January 2001, date that coincides with the formal adoption of the inflation targeting framework; b) after this change, fluctuations in the real exchange rate have had smaller effects on the process of price formation, the formation of inflation expectations and the nominal interest rate; c) also, there have been stronger reactions of the nominal interest rate to increases in the output gap and the rate of inflation; and d) the movements of the nominal interest rate have a more effective influence on the real exchange rate and the rate of inflation.Monetary policy, Mexico, Monetary transmission mechanism

Banks, Liquidity Crises and Economic Growth

How do the liquidity functions of banks affect investment and growth at different stages of economic development? How do financial fragility and the costs of banking crises evolve with the level of wealth of countries? We analyze these issues using an overlapping generations growth model where agents, who experience idiosyncratic liquidity shocks, can invest in a liquid storage technology or in a partially illiquid Cobb-Douglas technology. By pooling liquidity risk, banks play a growth-ancing role in reducing ineffcient liquidation of long-term projects, but they may face liquidity crises associated with severe output losses. We show that middle-income economies may find it optimal to be exposed to liquidity crises, while poor and rich economies have more incentives to develop a fully covered banking system.Growth models, Liquidity, Financial intermediation, Financial fragility, Banking crises

Wealth, Financial Intermediation and Growth

This paper presents empirical support for the existence of wealth effects in the contribution of financial intermediation to economic growth, and offers a theoretical explanation for these effects. Using GMM dynamic panel data techniques applied to study the growth-promoting effects of financial intermediation, we show that the exogenous contribution of financial development to economic growth has different effects for different levels of income per capita. We find that this contribution is generally increasing with the level of income per capita of the economy, up to a relatively high level of income.Growth models, Liquidity, Financial intermediation, Financial fragility, Banking crises

Performance scalability analysis of JavaScript applications with web workers

Web applications are getting closer to the performance of native applications taking advantage of new standard–based technologies. The recent HTML5 standard includes, among others, the Web Workers API that allows executing JavaScript applications on multiple threads, or workers. However, the internals of the browser’s JavaScript virtual machine does not expose direct relation between workers and running threads in the browser and the utilization of logical cores in the processor. As a result, developers do not know how performance actually scales on different environments and therefore what is the optimal number of workers on parallel JavaScript codes. This paper presents the first performance scalability analysis of parallel web apps with multiple workers. We focus on two case studies representative of different worker execution models. Our analyses show performance scaling on different parallel processor microarchitectures and on three major web browsers in the market. Besides, we study the impact of co–running applications on the web app performance. The results provide insights for future approaches to automatically find out the optimal number of workers that provide the best tradeoff between performance and resource usage to preserve system responsiveness and user experience, especially on environments with unexpected changes on system workload.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Mesoscopic entanglement induced by spontaneous emission in solid-state quantum optics

Implementations of solid-state quantum optics provide us with devices where qubits are placed at fixed positions in photonic or plasmonic one-dimensional waveguides. We show that solely by controlling the position ofthe qubits and withthe help of a coherent driving, collective spontaneous decay may be engineered to yield an entangled mesoscopic steady state. Our scheme relies on the realization of pure superradiant Dicke models by a destructive interference that cancels dipole-dipole interactions in one dimension

Thin film instability with thermal noise

We study the effects of stochastic thermal fluctuations on the instability of the free surface of a flat liquid film upon a solid substrate. These fluctuations are represented as a standard Brownian motion that can be added to the deterministic equation for the film thickness within the lubrication approximation. Here, we consider that while the noise term is white in time, it is coloured in space. This allows for the introduction of a finite correlation length in the description of the randomized intermolecular interaction. Together with the expected spatial periodicity of the flow, we find a dimensionless parameter, $\beta$, that accounts for the relative importance of the spatial correlation. We perform here the linear stability analysis (LSA) of the film under the influence of both terms, and find the corresponding power spectra for the amplitudes of the normal modes of the instability. We compare this theoretical result with the numerical simulations of the complete non-linear problem, and find a good agreement for early times. For late times, we find that the stochastic LSA predictions on the dominant wavelength remains basically valid. We also use the theoretical spectra to fit experimental data from a nanometric melted copper film, and find the corresponding times of the evolution as well as the values of the parameter, $\beta$

El desarrollo demográfico de la ciudad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (siglos XVI-XX)

En el presente trabajo queremos analizar los aspectos de la dinámica y la estructura demográfica de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, para ello valoraremos el crecimiento real de la población a través de los distintos censos y padrones que se han ido produciendo a lo largo de sus cinco siglos de historia, pues la ciudad se funda en 1478. Asimismo abordaremos los aspectos relacionados con el crecimiento vegetativo de la población, es decir las diferencias entre los índices de natalidad y mortalidad. Por último, nos centraremos en algunas cuestiones relacionadas con la composición de la propia población, como son: la estructura por edad y sexo, el estado socioprofesional y los niveles de instrucción. Las Fuentes para el estudio han sido los censos y padrones de población para conocer la evolución de la población, su estructura y composición. Por lo que respecta a la dinámica de la misma, es decir al crecimiento natural, las fuentes utilizadas han sido fundamentalmente el movimiento natural de la población y los registros civiles. Esta información la hemos elaborado en cuadros y gráficos que iremos exponiendo a lo largo del presente artículo. Por último también ha sido de gran ayuda los numerosos trabajos bibliográficos que distintos autores han elaborado hasta el momento, y que nosotros iremos reseñando a través de las distintas citas del trabajo. [...

El uso de los cuestionarios moodle para aprender la prioridad de operaciones

En el presente artículo se describe cómo se utilizó la herramienta cuestionario de la plataforma moodle para el aprendizaje de la jerarquía de operaciones en el nivel de 1º de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria, ESO, con alumnos de 12 años