Social Status, Human Capital Formation and the Long-run Effects of Money

This study examines the effects of monetary policy in a two-sector cash-in-advance economy of human capital accumulation. Agents concern about their social status represented by the relative physical capital and relative human capital. We find that if the desire for social status depends only on relative physical capital, money is superneutral in the growth-rate sense. However, if the desire for social status depends on relative human capital, the money growth rate will have a positive effect on the long-run economic growth rate. Furthermore, an increase in the desire to pursue human capital will raise the long-run growth rate, but an increase in the desire to pursue physical capital will lower it.Cash-in-advance economy; Endogenous growth; Social status.

The Role of Firm Size in Controlling Output Volatility during the Asian Financial Crisis

This study sets out to develop a simplified risk premium model to explain output volatility within the economies of Asia in the immediate aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. Firms are allowed to borrow from both domestic and foreign banks, with the firms� debts being loosely constrained (at high levels) prior to the crisis (lending boom) but becoming tightly constrained (at low levels) on the outbreak of the crisis (lending bust). The lending rate is a function of the debt-capital ratio; thus if firms have only limited access to the credit market, then they will accumulate less capital and become small firms. Given their lower collateral, small firms face higher risk premiums which will ultimately lead to a much greater reduction in output when a credit crunch suddenly hits. Our model predicts that small firm size will accelerate unanticipated shocks; therefore, output volatility will be greater in countries with small firms than in those with large firmsAsian financial crisis; Firm size; Credit constraints; Risk premiums

Top-quark flavor-changing tqZtqZ couplings and rare ΔF=1\Delta F=1 processes

We model-independently study the impacts of anomalous $tqZ$ couplings ($q=u,c$), which lead to the $t\to q Z$ decays, on low energy flavor physics. It is found that the $tuZ$-coupling effect can significantly affect the rare $K$ and $B$ decays, whereas the $tcZ$-coupling effect is small. Using the ATLAS's branching ratio (BR) upper bound of $BR(t\to uZ) < 1.7\times 10^{-4}$, the influence of the anomalous $tuZ$-coupling on the rare decays can be found as follows: (a) The contribution to the Kaon direct CP violation can be up to $Re(\epsilon'/\epsilon) \lesssim 0.8 \times 10^{-3}$; (b) $BR(K^+\to \pi^+ \nu \bar \nu) \lesssim 12 \times 10^{-11}$ and $BR(K_L \to \pi^0 \nu\bar \nu)\lesssim 7.9 \times 10^{-11}$; (c) the BR for $K_S \to \mu^+ \mu^-$ including the long-distance effect can be enhanced by $11\%$ with respect to the standard model result, and (d) $BR(B_d \to \mu^+ \mu^-) \lesssim 1.97 \times 10^{-10}$. In addition, although $Re(\epsilon'/\epsilon)$ cannot be synchronously enhanced with $BR(K_L\to \pi^0 \nu \bar\nu)$ and $BR(K_S\to \mu^+ \mu^-)$ in the same region of the CP-violating phase, the values of $Re(\epsilon'/\epsilon)$, $BR(K^+ \to \pi^+ \nu \bar\nu)$, and $BR(B_d \to \mu^+ \mu^-)$ can be simultaneously increased.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, version to be published in the European Physical Journal