6,640 research outputs found
Fiscal policy and inflation volatility
Among the harmful effects of inflation, the negative consequences of inflation volatility are of particular concern. These include higher risk premia, hedging costs and unforeseen redistribution of wealth. This paper presents panel estimations for a sample of OECD countries which suggest that activist fiscal policies may have an important impact on CPI inflation volatility. Major results are robust for unconditional and conditional inflation volatility, the latter derived from country-specific GARCH models, and across different data frequencies, time periods and econometric methodologies. From a policy perspective, these results point to the possibility of further destabilising effects of discretionary fiscal policies, in addition to their potential to destabilise output. JEL Classification: E31, E62Fiscal Policy, inflation volatility
Learning Less is More - 6D Camera Localization via 3D Surface Regression
Popular research areas like autonomous driving and augmented reality have
renewed the interest in image-based camera localization. In this work, we
address the task of predicting the 6D camera pose from a single RGB image in a
given 3D environment. With the advent of neural networks, previous works have
either learned the entire camera localization process, or multiple components
of a camera localization pipeline. Our key contribution is to demonstrate and
explain that learning a single component of this pipeline is sufficient. This
component is a fully convolutional neural network for densely regressing
so-called scene coordinates, defining the correspondence between the input
image and the 3D scene space. The neural network is prepended to a new
end-to-end trainable pipeline. Our system is efficient, highly accurate, robust
in training, and exhibits outstanding generalization capabilities. It exceeds
state-of-the-art consistently on indoor and outdoor datasets. Interestingly,
our approach surpasses existing techniques even without utilizing a 3D model of
the scene during training, since the network is able to discover 3D scene
geometry automatically, solely from single-view constraints.Comment: CVPR 201
Selenocysteine, pyrrolysine and the unique energy metabolism of methanogenic archaea
Methanogenic archaea are a group of strictly anaerobic microorganisms characterized by their strict dependence on the process of methanogenesis for energy conservation. Among the archaea, they are also the only known group synthesizing proteins containing selenocysteine or pyrrolysine. All but one of the known archaeal pyrrolysine-containing and all but two of the confirmed archaeal selenocysteine-containing protein are involved in methanogenesis. Synthesis of these proteins proceeds through suppression of translational stop codons but otherwise the two systems are fundamentally different. This paper highlights these differences and summarizes the recent developments in selenocysteine- and pyrrolysine-related research on archaea and aims to put this knowledge into the context of their unique energy metabolism
Population ageing and public pension reforms in a small open economy
This paper aims to address the issue of public pension reforms under demographic ageing that is likely to occur in Europe over the next 50 years. Three possible scenarios are analysed in a Blanchard OLG framework. These include: i) a decrease both in public pensions and the lump sum
labour income tax, ii) a decrease both in public pensions and the distortionary corporate tax, iii) an increase in the retirement age. The analysis focuses on the effects of these fiscal policies on key economic variables such as consumption, private and public debt, output and wages. Quantitative experiments assess the impact of different fiscal policies in terms of public debt sustainability but most importantly suggest policies that smooth the
transition of the economy to the new equilibrium. The main results suggest that the adverse effects of pension reforms on consumption are moderated when they are accompanied by appropriate taxation policies. In particular, when the tax response is rapid most of the adverse movement in consumption is avoided while public and national debt reach lower equilibrium levels
Learning an Interactive Segmentation System
Many successful applications of computer vision to image or video
manipulation are interactive by nature. However, parameters of such systems are
often trained neglecting the user. Traditionally, interactive systems have been
treated in the same manner as their fully automatic counterparts. Their
performance is evaluated by computing the accuracy of their solutions under
some fixed set of user interactions. This paper proposes a new evaluation and
learning method which brings the user in the loop. It is based on the use of an
active robot user - a simulated model of a human user. We show how this
approach can be used to evaluate and learn parameters of state-of-the-art
interactive segmentation systems. We also show how simulated user models can be
integrated into the popular max-margin method for parameter learning and
propose an algorithm to solve the resulting optimisation problem.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, 4 table
Relativistic photoemission theory for general nonlocal potentials
An improved formulation of the one-step model of photoemission from crystal
surfaces is proposed which overcomes different limitations of the original
theory. Considering the results of an electronic-structure calculation, the
electronic (one-particle) potential and the (many-body) self-energy, as given
quantities, we derive explicit expressions for the dipole transition-matrix
elements. The theory is formulated within a spin-polarized, relativistic
framework for general nonspherical and space-filling one-particle potentials
and general nonlocal, complex and energy-dependent self-energies. It applies to
semi-infinite lattices with perfect lateral translational invariance and
arbitrary number of atoms per unit cell.Comment: LaTeX, 18 pages, no figur
The impact of high and growing government debt on economic growth: an empirical investigation for the euro area
This paper investigates the average impact of government debt on per-capita GDP growth in twelve euro area countries over a period of about 40 years starting in 1970. It finds a non-linear impact of debt on growth with a turning point—beyond which the government debt-to-GDP ratio has a deleterious impact on long-term growth—at about 90-100% of GDP. Confidence intervals for the debt turning point suggest that the negative growth effect of high debt may start already from levels of around 70-80% of GDP, which calls for even more prudent indebtedness policies. At the same time, there is evidence that the annual change of the public debt ratio and the budget deficit-to-GDP ratio are negatively and linearly associated with per-capita GDP growth. The channels through which government debt (level or change) is found to have an impact on the economic growth rate are: (i) private saving; (ii) public investment; (iii) total factor productivity (TFP) and (iv) sovereign long-term nominal and real interest rates. From a policy perspective, the results provide additional arguments for debt reduction to support longer-term economic growth prospects. JEL Classification: H63, O40, E62, E43Economic Growth, Fiscal Policy, public debt, sovereign long-term interest rates
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