"The Fed's Real Reaction Function: Monetary Policy, Inflation, Unemployment, Inequality-and Presidential Politics"

Using a VAR model of the American economy from 1984 to 2003, we find that, contrary to official claims, the Federal Reserve does not target inflation or react to "inflation signals." Rather, the Fed reacts to the very "real" signal sent by unemployment, in a way that suggests that a baseless fear of full employment is a principal force behind monetary policy. Tests of variations in the workings of a Taylor Rule, using dummy variable regressions, on data going back to 1969 suggest that after 1983 the Federal Reserve largely ceased reacting to inflation or high unemployment, but continued to react when unemployment fell "too low." Further, we find that monetary policy (measured by the yield curve) has significant causal impact on pay inequality-a domain where the Fed refuses responsibility. Finally, we test whether Federal Reserve policy has exhibited a pattern of partisan bias in presidential election years, with results that suggest the presence of such bias, after controlling for the effects of inflation and unemployment.

Anonymous Single-Sign-On for n designated services with traceability

Anonymous Single-Sign-On authentication schemes have been proposed to allow users to access a service protected by a verifier without revealing their identity which has become more important due to the introduction of strong privacy regulations. In this paper we describe a new approach whereby anonymous authentication to different verifiers is achieved via authorisation tags and pseudonyms. The particular innovation of our scheme is authentication can only occur between a user and its designated verifier for a service, and the verification cannot be performed by any other verifier. The benefit of this authentication approach is that it prevents information leakage of a user's service access information, even if the verifiers for these services collude which each other. Our scheme also supports a trusted third party who is authorised to de-anonymise the user and reveal her whole services access information if required. Furthermore, our scheme is lightweight because it does not rely on attribute or policy-based signature schemes to enable access to multiple services. The scheme's security model is given together with a security proof, an implementation and a performance evaluation.Comment: 3

Consumption caught in the cash nexus.

During the last thirty years, ‘consumption’ has become a major topic in the study of contemporary culture within anthropology, psychology and sociology. For many authors it has become central to understanding the nature of material culture in the modern world but this paper argues that the concept is, in British writing at least, too concerned with its economic origins in the selling and buying of consumer goods or commodities. It is argued that to understand material culture as determined through the monetary exchange for things - the cash nexus - leads to an inadequate sociological understanding of the social relations with objects. The work of Jean Baudrillard is used both to critique the concept of consumption as it leads to a focus on advertising, choice, money and shopping and to point to a more sociologically adequate approach to material culture that explores objects in a system of models and series, ‘atmosphere’, functionality, biography, interaction and mediation

Premenopausal endogenous oestrogen levels and breast cancer risk: a meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Many of the established risk factors for breast cancer implicate circulating hormone levels in the aetiology of the disease. Increased levels of postmenopausal endogenous oestradiol (E2) have been found to increase the risk of breast cancer, but no such association has been confirmed in premenopausal women. We carried out a meta-analysis to summarise the available evidence in women before the menopause. METHODS: We identified seven prospective studies of premenopausal endogenous E2 and breast cancer risk, including 693 breast cancer cases. From each study we extracted odds ratios of breast cancer between quantiles of endogenous E2, or for unit or s.d. increases in (log transformed) E2, or (where odds ratios were unavailable) summary statistics for the distributions of E2 in breast cancer cases and unaffected controls. Estimates for a doubling of endogenous E2 were obtained from these extracted estimates, and random-effect meta-analysis was used to obtain a pooled estimate across the studies. RESULTS: Overall, we found weak evidence of a positive association between circulating E2 levels and the risk of breast cancer, with a doubling of E2 associated with an odds ratio of 1.10 (95% CI: 0.96, 1.27). CONCLUSION: Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis of a positive association between premenopausal endogenous E2 and breast cancer risk

Preformed and regenerated phosphate in ocean general circulation models: can right total concentrations be wrong?

Phosphate distributions simulated by seven state-of-the-art biogeochemical ocean circulation models are evaluated against observations of global ocean nutrient distributions. The biogeochemical models exhibit different structural complexities, ranging from simple nutrient-restoring to multi-nutrient NPZD type models. We evaluate the simulations using the observed volume distribution of phosphate. The errors in these simulated volume class distributions are significantly larger when preformed phosphate (or regenerated phosphate) rather than total phosphate is considered. Our analysis reveals that models can achieve similarly good fits to observed total phosphate distributions for a very different partitioning into preformed and regenerated nutrient components. This has implications for the strength and potential climate sensitivity of the simulated biological carbon pump. We suggest complementing the use of total nutrient distributions for assessing model skill by an evaluation of the respective preformed and regenerated nutrient components

Levinson's theorem and scattering phase shift contributions to the partition function of interacting gases in two dimensions

We consider scattering state contributions to the partition function of a two-dimensional (2D) plasma in addition to the bound-state sum. A partition function continuity requirement is used to provide a statistical mechanical heuristic proof of Levinson's theorem in two dimensions. We show that a proper account of scattering eliminates singularities in thermodynamic properties of the nonideal 2D gas caused by the emergence of additional bound states as the strength of an attractive potential is increased. The bound-state contribution to the partition function of the 2D gas, with a weak short-range attraction between its particles, is found to vanish logarithmically as the binding energy decreases. A consistent treatment of bound and scattering states in a screened Coulomb potential allowed us to calculate the quantum-mechanical second virial coefficient of the dilute 2D electron-hole plasma and to establish the difference between the nearly ideal electron-hole gas in GaAs and the strongly correlated exciton/free-carrier plasma in wide-gap semiconductors such as ZnSe or GaN.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures; new version corrects some minor typo

Analysis of model rotor blade pressures during parallel interaction with twin vortices

This paper presents and provides analysis of unsteady surface pressures measured on a model rotor blade as the blade experienced near parallel blade vortex interaction with a twin vortex system. To provide a basis for analysis, the vortex system was characterized by hot-wire measurements made in the interaction plane but in the absence of the rotor. The unsteady pressure response resulting from a single vortex interaction is then presented to provide a frame of reference for the twin vortex results. A series of twin vortex interaction cases are then presented and analyzed. It is shown that the unsteady blade pressures and forces are very sensitive to the inclination angle and separation distance of the vortex pair. When the vortex cores lie almost parallel to the blade chord, the interaction is characterized by a two-stage response associated with the sequential passage of the two cores. Conversely, when the cores lie on a plane that is almost perpendicular to the blade chord, the response is similar to that of a single vortex interaction. In all cases, the normal force response is consistent with the distribution of vertical velocity in the flow field of the vortex system. The pitching moment response, on the other hand, depends on the localized suction associated with the vortex cores as they traverse the blade chord