Puerto Rico and the Netherworld of Sovereign Debt Restructuring

Puerto Rico has incurred debt well beyond its ability to repay. It attempted to address its fiscal woes through legislation allowing the restructuring of some its debt. The Supreme Court put a stop to this effort, holding that Congress in the Bankruptcy Code barred the Commonwealth from enacting its own restructuring regime. Yet all agreed that the Bankruptcy Code did not provide anything in its place. While Congress quickly enacted PROMESA in an attempt to address the Puerto Rico’s fiscal ills, we explore in this paper whether Congress has the power to bar Puerto Rico from enacting a restructuring mechanism and not offer an alternative. We submit that the answer is no. When it comes to a state, the Supreme Court has held that the power to issue debt necessarily implies the power to restructure that debt. Congress can preempt that power, so long as it puts something in its place. To preempt and leave nothing, however, runs afoul of our federal system. The same reasoning, with greater force, applies to Puerto Rico. The federal government entered into a compact with the citizens of Puerto Rico, granting them, among other things, the power to issue debt. Puerto Rico implicitly received the power to restructure this debt. Congress could offer a substitute to any regime that Puerto Rico might enact, but it cannot leave the Commonwealth without any means to address its fiscal affairs

Automated Classification of 2000 Bright IRAS Sources

An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been employed using a supervised back-propagation scheme to classify 2000 bright sources from the Calgary database of IRAS (Infrared Astronomy Satellite) spectra in the wavelength region of 8-23 microns. The data base has been classified into 17 pre-determined classes based on spectral morphology. We have been able to classify more than 80 percent of the 2000 sources correctly at the first instance. The speed and robustness of the scheme will allow us to classify the whole of LRS database, containing more than 50,000 sources in the future.Comment: 26 pages, To appear in ApJS after July 200

Vertical coordination in high-value commodities

"Rising per capita income, urbanization and globalization are changing the consumption basket in the developing countries towards high-value commodities (like fruits & vegetables, milk, meat, poultry, fish, etc.). This paper explores how smallholders can benefit from the emerging opportunities from a silent demand-driven changes in high-value agriculture in India. The study examines the institutional mechanisms adopted by different firms to integrate small producers of milk, broilers and vegetables in supply chain and their effects on producers' transaction costs and farm profitability. The study finds that the innovative institutional arrangements in the form of contract farming have considerably reduced transaction costs and improved market efficiency to benefit the smallholders. The study does not find any bias against smallholders in contract farming. Also, the study does not find that the relevant firms have exploited their monopsonistic position by paying lower prices to farmers. On the contrary, contract producers were found enjoying benefits of assured procurement of their produce and higher prices. The study lists policy hurdles in scaling up the innovative models of vertical coordination in high-value food commodities" Authors' AbstractHigh value commodities ,Urbanization ,High value agriculture ,Scaling up ,

Large-scale changes in cortical dynamics triggered by repetitive somatosensory electrical stimulation.

BackgroundRepetitive somatosensory electrical stimulation (SES) of forelimb peripheral nerves is a promising therapy; studies have shown that SES can improve motor function in stroke subjects with chronic deficits. However, little is known about how SES can directly modulate neural dynamics. Past studies using SES have primarily used noninvasive methods in human subjects. Here we used electrophysiological recordings from the rodent primary motor cortex (M1) to assess how SES affects neural dynamics at the level of single neurons as well as at the level of mesoscale dynamics.MethodsWe performed acute extracellular recordings in 7 intact adult Long Evans rats under ketamine-xylazine anesthesia while they received transcutaneous SES. We recorded single unit spiking and local field potentials (LFP) in the M1 contralateral to the stimulated arm. We then compared neural firing rate, spike-field coherence (SFC), and power spectral density (PSD) before and after stimulation.ResultsFollowing SES, the firing rate of a majority of neurons changed significantly from their respective baseline values. There was, however, a diversity of responses; some neurons increased while others decreased their firing rates. Interestingly, SFC, a measure of how a neuron's firing is coupled to mesoscale oscillatory dynamics, increased specifically in the δ-band, also known as the low frequency band (0.3- 4 Hz). This increase appeared to be driven by a change in the phase-locking of broad-spiking, putative pyramidal neurons. These changes in the low frequency range occurred without a significant change in the overall PSD.ConclusionsRepetitive SES significantly and persistently altered the local cortical dynamics of M1 neurons, changing both firing rates as well as the SFC magnitude in the δ-band. Thus, SES altered the neural firing and coupling to ongoing mesoscale dynamics. Our study provides evidence that SES can directly modulate cortical dynamics

The Rise of Supermarkets and Vertical Relationships in the Indonesian Food Value Chain: Causes and Consequences

This paper reviews the causes of the emergence of modern retailing and the vertical relationships in the Indonesian food value chain, and the consequences of these changes on market organization and value distribution. The findings of this paper suggest that there are both demand- and supply-side factors that contribute to the emergence of modern retailing. The evolution of vertical relationships between farmers and modern retailers observed in Indonesia is a direct response to risks and quality uncertainty. In the vertical relation, large-scale retailers may earn a monopsonistic rent, and there are risks of exclusion of small-scale farmers from the emerging food value chain. However, there are alternative channels through which farmers may sell their products, albeit at a lower price compared to the modern channels, and measures can be instituted to protect them against monopsonistic rents. The findings have important policy implications for developing countries.supermarkets, retailing, Indonesia, food value chain

Innovations in irrigation financing

"Financing for water projects, especially for irrigation, has been moving towards collapse in recent years due to declining donor and government funding. Some Indian states have undertaken innovative institutional reforms by setting up financially autonomous corporations to mobilise required funds from the domestic bond market. This analysis of the performance of one such corporation, Karnataka's Krishna Bhagya Jal Nigam Limited, indicates that although adequate funds were mobilised, and physical works are on schedule, the new institution did not attempt to enhance overall irrigation performance and to move towards financial sustainability of the irrigation project. This paper describes the background of this institution, its achievements, inadequacies and potential of the innovative efforts made in irrigation financing reforms." Authors' AbstractIrrigation India ,Irrigation projects India ,Finance ,Government spending policy ,

Institutional reforms in Indian irrigation:

"Irrigation is critical to food security and economic growth in contemporary India. The performance of irrigation systems is of serious concern to farmers who rely on them for their crops and livelihoods and to governments that have invested heavily in their development. The most severe problems facing Indian irrigation systems are the increasing costs of new schemes, the huge backlog of incomplete schemes, and the increasing neglect of existing systems. Large-scale canal irrigation systems, in particular, are in poor condition: they are not properly maintained, operations are inadequate, water supplies do not reach the end of systems, and the timing of water supply is unreliable. The wide gap between actual and desirable performance threatens the sustainability of irrigated agriculture. How did this state of affairs come to pass?....[The authors conclude that] more than just structural changes are necessary to achieve adequate reform and improve the performance and long-term sustainability of irrigation systems. Changes in attitudes are also required in how government agencies view farmers and how farmers depend on the government." From Text

Gossip Codes for Fingerprinting: Construction, Erasure Analysis and Pirate Tracing

This work presents two new construction techniques for q-ary Gossip codes from tdesigns and Traceability schemes. These Gossip codes achieve the shortest code length specified in terms of code parameters and can withstand erasures in digital fingerprinting applications. This work presents the construction of embedded Gossip codes for extending an existing Gossip code into a bigger code. It discusses the construction of concatenated codes and realisation of erasure model through concatenated codes.Comment: 28 page