Did the introduction of the euro impact on inflation uncertainty? - An empirical assessment

We study the impact of the introduction of the European Monetary Union on inflation uncertainty. Two groups of economies, one consisting of three European Union members which are not part of the EMU and one of six OECD member economies, are used as control groups to contrast the effects of monetary unification against the counterfactual of keeping the status quo. We find that the monetary unification provides a significant payoff in terms of lower inflation uncertainty in comparison with the OECD. Regarding the difficulty of quantifying the latent inflation uncertainty, results are found to be robust over a set of four alternative estimates of inflation risk processes.Monetary policy regimes,euro introduction,inflation uncertainty,uncertainty measures,Did the introduction of the euro impact on infla,Hartmann,Herwartz,European Economy. Economic Papers

Predictors of metabolic energy expenditure from body acceleration and mechanical energies in new generation active computer games

The following paper is an original research project which uses state of the art sport science physiological and biomechanical approaches to gain information about active computer games. This project is found to be particular relevant for the field of computer science in sport, since biomechanical and physiological knowledge is required to model, track and understand human motion during computer game play

Summing up: A functional role of eye movements along the mental number line for arithmetic.

In Western cultures, small-left and large-right spatial-numerical associations are constantly found in various simple number processing tasks. It has recently been suggested that spatial associations are also involved in more complex number processing, for example that individuals make rightward or upward "mental" movements along the number line during addition, and leftward or downward movements during subtraction. In line with this, it has been shown that participants' spontaneous eye movements on a blank screen during upward and downward counting follow such associations. The present research investigated whether eye movements along the number line are simply an epiphenomenon of the recruitment of a spatial reference frame, or whether they play a functional role for the arithmetic computation. This question was addressed by using multi-step problems (e.g., 59 + 5 + 4 + 3) that show a larger proportion of computation (vs. retrieval) when compared to single-step problems (e.g., 59 + 5), as confirmed in Pretest 1. Moreover, the question was addressed only for addition problems and vertical eye movements, because spatial-arithmetic associations were not found in the other conditions (subtraction, horizontal eye movements) in Pretest 2. In the main experiment, participants (n = 29) solved addition problems while following a moving dot with their eyes (smooth pursuit) either in a congruent (upward) or incongruent (downward) direction, or while keeping their eyes fixated on to the center of the screen, or while moving their eyes freely on a blank screen. Arithmetic performance was faster in the congruent condition (upward eye movements) when compared to the other conditions (downward eye movements, central fixation, free viewing). These results suggest that vertical shifts in spatial attention along the mental number line are functionally involved in addition. The results support the view of shared mechanisms for directing spatial attention in external (visual) and representational (number space). Implications for embodied views of number processing are discussed

Non-musicians also have a piano in the head: Evidence for spatial-musical associations from line bisection tracking

The spatial representation of ordinal sequences (numbers, time, tones) seems to be a fundamental cognitive property. While an automatic association between horizontal space and pitch height (left-low pitch, right-high pitch) is constantly reported in musicians, the evidence for such an association in non-musicians is mixed. In this study, 20 non-musicians performed a line bisection task while listening to irrelevant high- and low-pitched tones and white noise (control condition). While pitch height had no influence on the final bisection point, participants’ movement trajectories showed systematic biases: When approaching the line and touching the line for the first time (initial bisection point), the mouse cursor was directed more rightward for high-pitched tones compared to low-pitched tones and noise. These results show that non-musicians also have a subtle but nevertheless automatic association between pitch height and the horizontal space. This suggests that spatial–musical associations do not necessarily depend on constant sensorimotor experiences (as it is the case for musicians) but rather reflect the seemingly inescapable tendency to represent ordinal information on a horizontal line

Forecast Performance, Disagreement, and Heterogeneous Signal-to-Noise Ratios

We propose an imperfect information model for the expectations of macroeconomic forecasters that explains differences in average disagreement levels across forecasters by means of cross sectional heterogeneity in the variance of private noise signals. We show that the forecaster-specific signal-to-noise ratios determine both the average individual disagreement level and an individuals' forecast performance: forecasters with very noisy signals deviate strongly from the average forecasts and report forecasts with low accuracy. We take the model to the data by empirically testing for this implied correlation. Evidence based on data from the Surveys of Professional Forecasters for the US and for the Euro Area supports the model for short- and medium-run forecasts but rejects it based on its implications for long-run forecasts

Inflation uncertainty, disagreement and monetary policy: Evidence from the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters

We analyze the determinants of average individual inflation uncertainty and disagreement based on data from the European Central Bank's Survey of Professional Forecasters. We empirically confirm the implication from a theoretical decomposition of inflation uncertainty that disagreement is an incomplete approximation to overall uncertainty. Both measures are associated with macroeconomic conditions and indicators of monetary policy, but the relations differ qualitatively. In particular, average individual inflation uncertainty is higher during periods of expansionary monetary policy, whereas disagreement rises during contractionary periods

Cross-sectional evidence on the relation between monetary policy, macroeconomic conditions and low-frequency inflation uncertainty

We examine how the interaction between monetary policy and macroeconomic conditions affects inflation uncertainty in the long-term. The unobservable inflation uncertainty is quantified by means of the slowly evolving long-term variance component of inflation in the framework of the Spline-GARCH model (Engle and Rangel, 2008). For a cross-section of 13 developed economies, we find that long-term inflation uncertainty is high if central bank governors are perceived as less inflation-averse and if the conduct of monetary policy is ad-hoc rather than rule-based