Reduction of Anyons to One Dimension and Calogero-Sutherland-type Models

The two-dimensional anyon system, when reduced to one dimension, yields models related to the Calogero-Sutherland model. One such reduction leads to a new model with a class of exact solutions. This model is one of a family of models obtained upon dimensional reduction of spherically symmetric models in arbitrary dimensions.Comment: 12 pages, no Figures, to appear in IJMP

Fields in Motion, Fields of Friction: Tales of Betrayal and Promise from Kangra District, India

Over a period of five decades, Kangra District, located in the mountainous northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, has been continually si(gh)ted within different development imaginaries that have evolved at particular configurations of scale and time and been given shape within a succession of international bilateral projects. These development flows into the region have in turn fostered a plethora of competing institutions and practices, contributing their own sometimes divergent flows within an inherently mobile and “developmentalizing” terrain. While this dynamic and multi-textured terrain offers rich opportunities for partnerships forged across disparate sites, there is, I argue, a need to revisit “collaboration” as a key feminist tool for facilitating social justice and change. Widely lauded for its empowering, equalizing and transformative potential by feminist scholars, collaboration is also viewed prescriptively in terms of “success” and “failure.” Consequently, “strategies and solutions” are sought to negotiate its minefields and to resolve, often futilely, the friction that repeatedly erupts within them. In this paper, I suggest a re-viewing of friction as a valuable methodological frame within feminist collaborative research and praxis. In place of the prevalent emphasis on containing and resolving friction generated at border crossings, I contend that feminist-oriented “location work” that engages with friction and follows its routes through the fluid and fertile space of a “developmentalizing terrain” can provide promising avenues and detours for empowerment and social justice. Drawing on Tsing’s (2005) discussion of the creative role of friction across global connections, I reflect on some of the ways in which it played out as a creative source of production, interruption and mutation within two of my collaborative ventures in Kangra. In doing so, I demonstrate how an attention to the sometimes unanticipated and diversionary routes that are generated by friction within collaborative efforts, and the vistas of “betrayal” and promise that they reveal, offer valuable insights for encounters at the interface of feminist praxis, anthropology and development practice

Some Remarks on the Quantization of Gauge Theories

The methods of reduced phase space quantization and Dirac quantization are examined in a simple gauge theory. A condition for the possible equivalence of the two methods is discussed.Comment: 8 pages. RevTex (two-column), no figures. The dvi version can be downloaded from: http://www.imsc.ernet.in/physweb/papers/radhika/pa2.dv

On Optimal Monetary Policy in a Liquidity Effect Model

This paper examines the implications of introducing a variable rate of time preference on the role of monetary policy in a dynamic general equilibrium framework explicitly designed to capture liquidity effects. Variable time preference is incorporated by allowing the discount factor applied to future utility to be decreasing in contemporaneous utility. The model is a more general one, in the sense that the fixed discount factor economy is nested as a special case. Numerical simulations of the more general model indicate that for a range of parameters optimal monetary policy can be qualitatively different. This is in spite of the fact that there are very small quantitative differences in the magnitude of monetary non-neutralities, such as liquidity effects, in the fixed and flexible discount factor environments. Furthermore, within this range, monetary policy is less activist, in the sense that it is procyclical to productivity shocks, as opposed to being countercyclical as in the fixed time preference model.

A Further Exploration of Some Computational Issues in Equilibrium Business Cycle Theory

This paper revisits some of the issues involved in the comparison of alternative computational procedures within the context of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. The framework in question is a more general one, in which a “standard” or relatively simple model is nested as a special case. Results of numerical experiments suggest that different computational methods may be used interchangeably in the case of the standard model, but not in the case of the more general model. Varying a preference parameter allows us to compare what happens to solutions using alternative procedures as one moves away from the special case to the more general framework. On the basis of the numerical experiments conducted, we find that not only do differences in solutions become larger, but answers to several economic issues of interest can yield qualitatively different answers depending on the solution method used. Examples of such issues include how second moment features change as one varies the parameters of a model, and the relative contribution of different types of stochastic shocks to fluctuations in variables.

Rethinking Public Employment Programmes: Moving Beyond Safety Nets?

Public works and public employment programmes (PEPs) have long been considered a staple of social assistance. For the most part, though, they have been designed as ?safety nets? in the context of counter-cyclical programme interventions and responses to shocks. In some cases they have also focused on reducing poverty or addressing structural unemployment challenges over the longer term, but they have seldom been implemented on a scale that would make a dent in structural poverty. Recent advances in conceptualising and implementing scalable PEPs suggest that these programmes also have a broader development role to play. (...)Rethinking Public Employment Programmes: Moving Beyond Safety Nets?