Aggregate business fixed investment

An aggregate business fixed investment error correction model (ECM) is estimated with Icelandic data. The user cost of capital increased considerably in the 1980s as capital markets in Iceland were liberalised and interest rates were adjusting. From the 1990s and onwards, however, the user cost has been decreasing steadily. And the relative price of business investment has been downward trending since the 1980s. A high Q ratio over the period portrays an increased demand for capital. The first order condition of capital for profits which is derived for a constant elasticity of substitution production function has minor long-run role for the user cost. Investment and capital, and investment, value added and the user cost do, however, give expected estimates of cointegration coefficients. In the short-run dynamics of the ECM, gearing, Q and profit ratios move with investment. Official figures show an unprecedented capital decrease in the 1990s in Iceland. The possibility of mismeasured technology investment is explored briefly.

Seismotectonics

Seismotectonics is the synthesis of earthquake, geophysical, geodetic and geological data to deduce the tectonic framework of a region [Scholz, 1990]. This approach has been applied successfully to active tectonic regions such as plate boundaries, regions of intraplate seismicity, and active volcanoes throughout the world

Crustal structure and seismicity distribution adjacent to the Pacific and North American plate boundary in southern California

New three-dimensional (3-D) V_P and V_P/V_S models are determined for southern California using P and S-P travel times from local earthquakes and controlled sources. These models confirm existing tectonic interpretations and provide new insights into the configuration of geological structures at the Pacific-North America plate boundary. The models extend from the U.S.-Mexico border in the south to the southernmost Coast Ranges and Sierra Nevada in the north and have a 15-km horizontal grid spacing and an average vertical grid spacing of 4 km, down to 22 km depth. The heterogeneity of the crustal structure as imaged by V_P and V_P/V_S models is larger within the Pacific plate than the North American plate. Similarly, the relocated seismicity deepens and shows more complex 3-D distribution in areas of the Pacific plate exhibiting compressional tectonics. The models reflect mapped changes in the lithology across major geological terranes such as the Mojave Desert, the Peninsular Ranges, and the Transverse Ranges. The interface between the shallow Mono of the Continental Borderland and the deep Moho of onshore California forms a broad zone to the north beneath the western Transverse Ranges, Ventura basin, and the Los Angeles basin and a narrow zone to the south, along the Peninsular Ranges. The near-surface increase in velocity, from the surface to up to 8 km depth, is rapid and has a logarithmic shape for stable blocks and mountain ranges but is slow with a linear shape for sedimentary basins. At midcrustal depths a rapid increase in V_P is imaged beneath the sediments of the large sedimentary basins, while beneath the adjacent mountain ranges the increase is small or absent

Absence of Evidence for a Shallow Magma Chamber Beneath Long Valley Caldera, California, in Downhole and Surface Seismograms

A downhole seismometer at 900-m depth and a temporary network of surface stations were deployed to use rays from local microearthquakes to study the upper and middle crust beneath the Long Valley caldera. The downhole seismograms show S waves with high apparent amplitudes from earthquakes located 2–20 km to the south of the downhole seismometer. In contrast, S waves from earthquakes located in the distance range 20–30 km to the south have low apparent amplitudes. If P and S amplitudes are normalized relative to the respective coda amplitudes, the S to coda amplitude ratios appear to remain constant but the P to coda amplitude ratios vary significantly with takeoff angle. A comparison of the calculated radiation patterns for a double couple in a uniform halfspace and focal mechanisms of the recorded earthquakes suggest that the observed variations in P and S amplitudes are caused by radiation pattern effects. Reanalysis of possible travel time delays found by Elbring and Rundle (1986), who used a subset of the borehole data analyzed in this study, shows that they underestimated the epicentral distances to three of the earthquakes and hence generated an artificial kink in the reduced travel time versus depth curve. Synthetic calculations of reduced travel time versus depth suggest that an apparent velocity of 5.7 km/s gives less scatter than 6.0 km/s used by Elbring and Rundle (1986). Plots of ts/tp versus depth show that contrary to the findings of Elbring and Rundle (1986), the Vp/Vs ratio stays fairly constant with depth and a small (<3-km diameter) magma chamber cannot easily be resolved. Furthermore, combined analysis of downhole and surface data shows that neither data set requires a low-velocity zone or a zone of anomalously high Vp/Vs at depth below the Casa Diablo area

State of Stress from Focal Mechanisms Before and After the 1992 Landers Earthquake Sequence

The state of stress in the Eastern California Shear Zone (ECSZ) changed significantly because of the occurrence of the 1992 M_w 6.1 Joshua Tree and the M_W 7.3 Landers earthquakes. To quantify this change, focal mechanisms from the 1975 Galway Lake sequence, the 1979 Homestead Valley sequence, background seismicity from 1981 to 1991, and the 1992 Landers sequence are inverted for the state of stress. In all cases, the intermediate principal stress axis (S2) remained vertical, and changes in the state of stress consisted of variations in the trend of maximum and minimum principal stress axes (S_1 and S_3) and small variations in the value of the relative stress magnitudes (ϕ). In general, the stress state in the ECSZ has S_1 trending east of north and ϕ = 0.43 to 0.65, suggesting that the ECSZ is a moderate stress refractor and the style of faulting is transtensional. South of the Pinto Mountain fault, in the region of the 1992 Joshua Tree earthquake, the stress state determined from the 1981 to 1991 background seismicity changed on 23 April and again on 28 June 1992. In the central zone, S_1 rotated from N14° ± 5°E to N28° ± 5°E on 23 April and back again to N16° ± 5°E on 28 June. Thus, the Landers mainshock in effect recharged some of the shear stress in the region of the M_w 6.1 Joshua Tree earthquake. Comparison of the state of stress before and after 28 June 1992, along the Landers mainshock rupture zone, showed that the mainshock changed the stress orientation. The S1 trend rotated 7° to 20° clockwise and became progressively more fault normal from south to north. Along the Emerson-Camp Rock faults, the variation was so prominent that the focal mechanisms of aftershocks could not be fit by a single deviatoric stress tensor. The complex distribution of P and T axes suggests that most of the uniform component of the applied shear stress along the northern part of the rupture zone was released in the mainshock. The San Bernardino Mountains region of the M_w 6.2 Big Bear earthquake has a distinctively different state of stress, as compared to the Landers region, with S_1 trending N3° ± 5°W. This region did not show any significant change in the state of stress following the 1992 M_w 6.2 Big Bear sequence