Options for China in a Dollar Standard World: A Sovereign Currency Approach

This paper examines the fiscal and monetary policy options available to China as a sovereign currency-issuing nation operating in a dollar standard world. We first summarize a number of issues facing China, including the possibility of slower growth, global imbalances, and a number of domestic imbalances. We then analyze current monetary and fiscal policy formation and examine some policy recommendations that have been advanced to deal with current areas of concern. We next outline the sovereign currency approach and use it to analyze those concerns. We conclude with policy recommendations consistent with the policy space open to China

Money Manager Capitalism and the Global Financial Crisis

This paper applies Hyman Minsky's approach to provide an analysis of the causes of the global financial crisis. Rather than finding the origins in recent developments, this paper links the crisis to the long-term transformation of the economy from a robust financial structure in the 1950s to the fragile one that existed at the beginning of this crisis in 2007. As Minsky said, 'Stability is destabilizing': the relative stability of the economy in the early postwar period encouraged this transformation of the economy. Today's crisis is rooted in what he called 'money manager capitalism,' the current stage of capitalism dominated by highly leveraged funds seeking maximum returns in an environment that systematically under-prices risk. With little regulation or supervision of financial institutions, money managers have concocted increasingly esoteric instruments that quickly spread around the world. Those playing along are rewarded with high returns because highly leveraged funding drives up prices for the underlying assets. Since each subsequent bust wipes out only a portion of the managed money, a new boom inevitably rises. Perhaps this will prove to be the end of this stage of capitalism-the money manager phase. Of course, it is too early even to speculate on the form capitalism will take. I will only briefly outline some policy implications

Lessons from the Subprime Meltdown

This paper uses Hyman P. Minsky's approach to analyze the current international financial crisis, which was initiated by problems in the American real estate market. In a 1987 manuscript, Minsky had already recognized the importance of the trend toward securitization of home mortgages. This paper identifies the causes and consequences of the financial innovations that created the real estate boom and bust. It examines the role played by each of the key playersincluding brokers, appraisers, borrowers, securitizers, insurers, and regulatorsin creating the crisis. Finally, it proposes short-run solutions to the current crisis, as well as longer-run policy to prevent it (a debt deflation) from happening again

Exploring the Digital Twin implementation for sustainable production

The Digital Twin (DT) is the representation and real-time integration of physical systems in a digital model using several technologies. The DT development can be an effective solution for improving sustainability indicators of production activities. Despite the growing interest in this research area, there are still many problems with enabling an efficient application of DT to improve the sustainable performance of production activities. To contribute to the construction of knowledge in this domain, this paper aims to investigate, by a literature review, how the DT is currently applied to support sustainable production and what are the main components characterizing the existing DT frameworks or architectures. Production activities and objectives, the main layers and enabling technologies considered by literature frameworks, and some examples of sustainability goals and indicators considered by the DT literature for sustainable production were identified. Based on the review results, the main elements that characterize architectures or frameworks based on DT for the sustainability of production activities were established

Detection of residual tissue viability within the infarct zone in patients with acute myocardial infarction:ultrasonic integrated backscatter analysis versus dobutamine stress echocardiography

Abstract OBJECTIVES: The goals of this study were to analyze temporal changes in cardiac cyclic variation of integrated backscatter (CVIB) in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and to investigate the predictive value of CVIB normalization compared with that of dobutamine stress echocardiography (DSE) in the assessment of functional recovery after revascularization. BACKGROUND: The normal CVIB is blunted by ischemia and recovers early after reperfusion, faster than wall motion improvement. Analysis of CVIB has been widely investigated for its potential to detect viable myocardium in the early stage of infarction. No studies have compared CVIB analysis with other techniques for viability assessment in patients with acute ischemic. Methods and Results: Integrated backscatter images were obtained in 12 patients with AMI on days 1, 3, and 7 after admission and 1 month after revascularization. On day 7, DSE was performed in all patients. On admission, 22 of 144 segments were dyssynergic. On day 1, CVIB was abnormal in all 22 infarcted segments, on day 3, in 16, and on day 7, in only 10 infarcted segments. Eight of 10 segments nonviable by CVIB (CVIB-nonviable) were also nonrespondent by DSE; whereas 12 of 14 segments viable by DSE (DSE-viable) were also CVIB-viable. At follow-up, 10 CVIB-viable segments and 1 CVIB-nonviable segment showed functional recovery; whereas 10 of 14 DSE-viable segments showed functional recovery. Thus the positive predictive value of CVIB and DSE was 83% and 72%, respectively, with a diagnostic agreement between techniques in 77% of segments. CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggest that the normalization in CVIB in the first week after AMI accurately predicts residual tissue viability within the infarct zone. We also observed that the initial pattern of cyclic variation may be predictive of functional recovery. Finally, we found a good correlation between the recovery of a normal CVIB in segments that were still dysfunctional and a more validated method to assess tissue viability, such as the dobutamine test

Improving industrial sustainability by the use of digital twin models in maintenance and production activities

The industrial world is undergoing a digitalization process, in which information and communication technologies bring new opportunities for sustainable development. The Digital Twin (DT) technology is mentioned in the literature as one of the main tools to support production and maintenance activities and can effectively contribute to the achievement of sustainability goals. The aim of this study is to investigate, through the results of a systematic literature review, the state-of-the-art and the opportunities that the adoption of DT technology can bring for the realization of sustainable industrial maintenance and production activities. The review results show a growing interest in this field of research, in which, the DT has been applied in different industrial sectors, and considers a variety of maintenance and production activities. Furthermore, this paper investigates how the sustainability issue is addressed by the current DT literature and a list of the sustainability criteria considered with the respective frequency of use was provided. This study reveals that the economic dimension of sustainability is the most considered, followed by the environmental dimension, and lastly by the social dimension. Moreover, the majority of the analysed studies explore few sustainability issues: energy cost and efficiency are the most frequently used criteria in sustainable maintenance and production. Copyright (C) 2022 The Authors

A maintenance scheduling optimization model for a multi-component machine in a digitalized manufacturing context

Manufacturing systems are facing a digital transformation that supports data-driven decision making and the improvement of the efficiency of condition-based or predictive maintenance systems. In this context, international standards and previous works related to the architecture of condition-based maintenance (CBM) systems are available, and the interest in maintenance scheduling optimization, triggered by failure predictions, are increasing. This work is framed within the scope of the PICOePRO project and considers a critical multi-component welding machine. This paper first provides a predictive maintenance architecture, coherent with the OSA-CBM standard and proposed within the project, and then develops one of the modules of this system, in which the main component is a maintenance scheduling optimization model. The defined architecture allows real-time decision-making, and the proposed model minimizes the machine maintenance cost, exploring the potential for cost-saving by grouping maintenance and using machine downtime to perform maintenance activities. The functioning of the module and the potential gains from the adoption of the developed model are illustrated using a numerical example. The architecture and the model provide a viable approach to guide maintenance decision-making in the era of digitalized manufacturing

Investigating Human Factors Integration into DT-Based Joint Production and Maintenance Scheduling

The technological advances of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and the human-centricity objectives evidenced by Industry 5.0 (I5.0) are changing the traditional joint production and maintenance scheduling (JPMS) approaches. The new Digital Twin (DT) technology allows a real-time representation of the production system, favoring dynamic scheduling. At the same time, the relevance of research on human factors that deal with human interaction in productive environments to support workers’ safety, well-being, and performance is increasing. Through a Systematic literature review (SLR), this study aims to characterize the literature on DT-based JPMS and investigate how human factors can be integrated into a DT for JPMS. A classification scheme that reflects essential features of studies in this domain distinguishing human-related characteristics was proposed. As a review results, it was identified that studies on DT-based JPMS still consider a few human aspects: dual resource production environment, workforce scheduling, rescheduling due to worker absence, and definition of stochastic parameters considering human influence. Consequently, a framework has been proposed to provide some initial inputs for future research on DT-based JPMS supporting worker safety, well-being, and productivity