Discovering Resilience in Children who Witnessed their Caregivers with Cancer: A Retrospective Study

Cancer is a powerful disease and has been shown to affect both the individual battling the disease as well as the friends and families. Research has shown that children and/or adolescents who have witnessed their caregivers with cancer have emerged as resilient from this experience. Through interviews, this study investigated college students at a small liberal arts school in Southern New England, who have or have had primary caregivers with cancer to see if they have gained resilience. This study revealed the effects that cancer can have not only on the individual who is battling the disease, but also on the children and/or adolescents who have witnessed their struggle. It identified possible support systems that were used by the college students to cope with their caregiver’s cancer. Information from this study can be used to understand if children and/or adolescents that grow up with a parent with cancer may develop resiliency as they mature and grow older

The approach of Otto-Reznikoff revisited

In this article we consider a lattice system of unbounded continuos spins. Otto & Reznikoff used the two-scale approach to show that exponential decay of correlations yields a logarithmic Sobolev inequality (LSI) with uniform constant in the system size. We improve their statement by weakening the assumptions. For the proof a more detailed analysis based on two new ingredients is needed. The two new ingredients are a new basic covariance estimate and a uniform moment estimate. We additionally provide a comparison principle for covariances showing that the correlations for the conditioned Gibbs measures are controlled by the correlations of the original Gibbs measure with ferromagnetic interaction. The latter simplifies the application of the main result. As an application, we show how decay of correlations combined with the uniform LSI yields the uniqueness of the infinite-volume Gibbs measure, generalizing a result of Yoshida form finite-range to infinite-range interaction.Comment: 36 page

Behavioral Macroeconomics and the New Keynesian Model

The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, a thorough presentation of the state of the art of the New Keynesian Macroeconomic model is provided. A discussion of its empirical caveats follows and some recent extensions of the standard model are evaluated in more detail. Second, a key insight of Behavioral Economics, hyperbolic discounting, is used for the derivation of the IS Curve. It is argued that this approach is more appropriate than the usual praxis of allowing for a rule-of-thumb agent in an otherwise standard optimization framework.Behavioral Economics, New Keynesian Model, Rule-of-Thumbs,Hyperbolic Discounting

On the role of general purpose technologies within the Marshall-Jacobs controversy: The case of nanotechnologies

This paper investigates the role of nanotechnologies as a general purpose technology for regional development. Due to pervasiveness, nanotechnologies may be utilized in diverse applications thereby providing the basis for both localization and urbanization externalities. We carry out patent and publication analyses for the city state of Hamburg during the period 1990-2010. We find evidence that nanotechnologies are advanced in the context of regional knowledge bases and follow up prevailing specialization patterns. As nanotechnologies develop both industry specific and city specific externalities become effective leading to specialization deepening and specialization widening which both are functions of the increasing nano-knowledge base. --general purpose technology,nanotechnology,specialization,diversification,Marshall-Jacobs controversy,patent and publication analysis

Monetary Policy in a Small Open Economy Model: A DSGE-VAR Approach for Switzerland

We study the transmission of monetary shocks and monetary policy with a behavioral model, corrected for potential misspecification using the DSGE-VAR framework elaborated by DelNegro and Schorfheide (2004). In particular, we investigate if the central bank should react to movements in the nominal exchange rate. We contribute to the empirical literature as we use Swiss data, which is very rarely used in that context.