CP Asymmetries in (Semi-)Inclusive B0 Decays

It was recently pointed out that inclusive B^0(t) decays could show CP violation. The totally inclusive asymmetry is expected to be tiny [O(10^{-3})] because of large cancellations among the asymmetries in the charmless, single charm and double charm final states. Enriching particular final state configurations could significantly increase the CP-asymmetry and observability. Such studies can extract fundamental CKM (Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa) parameters, and (perhaps) even Delta m(B_s). A superb vertex detector could see CP violation with 10^5 (10^6) flavor-tagged B_s (B_d) mesons within the CKM model. Because the effects could be significantly larger due to new physics, they should be searched for in existing or soon available data samples.Comment: RevTex, 20 pages, no figure

Externalities, Incentives, and Economic Reforms

The paper emphasizes the role of institutions and incentives in the presence of externalities. An economy with multiple public decision makers is likely to experience "overspending," "undertaxing," "overborrowing," and "overinflation" unless effective institutions exist for overcoming coordination failure. External financing may weaken incentives for adjustment over the longer run unless assistance is made conditional on fundamental institutional reforms. The paper also analyses reforms that strengthen incentives to provide effort. Uncertainty regarding future taxes reduces present effort and the responsiveness of output to market signals. In addition, the paper addresses the adverse effects of bank insurance and soft budget constraints.

Can Public Discussion Enhance Program Ownership?

We use the concepts of deliberative democracy from political science and cheap talk from economics to develop a better understanding of how public discussion can contribute to building and demonstrating ownership of IMF programs and hence to program success. We argue that ownership is more complex than many discussions of it would suggest, since it must include not only the willingness to carry out a program, but also the technical capacity and especially the political ability to do so. Public discussion can serve a number of purposes, each of which can be better understood by moving to a more formal treatment. We illustrate our points by means of simple examples. We also consider some of the drawbacks of public discussion, especially as applied to IMF programs.

Monetary Policy Strategies

The paper considers the merits of rules and discretion for monetary policy when the structure of the macroeconomic model and the probability distributions of disturbances are not well defined. It is argued that when it is costly to delay policy reactions to seldom-experienced shocks until formal algorithmic learning has been accomplished, and when time consistency problems are significant, a mixed strategy that combines a simple verifiable rule with discretion is attractive. The paper also discusses mechanisms for mitigating credibility problems and emphasizes that arguments against various types of simple rules lost their force under a mixed strategy.

Creation of a New Domain and Evaluation of Comparison Generation in a Natural Language Generation System

We describe the creation of a new domain for the Methodius Natural Language Generation System, and an evaluation of Methodius ’ parameterized comparison generation algorithm. The new domain was based around music and performers, and texts about the domain were generated using Methodius. Our evaluation showed that test subjects learned more from texts that contained comparisons than from those that did not. We also established that the comparison generation algorithm could generalize to the music domain.

Philadelphia region input-output study working papers. Volume 3 - Final demand

Input-output coefficients for 86 final demand sectors in Philadelphia regio