AHRC-DFG Project "Songs of the Revolution of 1848 and their Reception History in Germany"

This on-line project consists of commentaries and critical editions of the songs of the 'Vormaerz' and the 1848 Revolution which have shaped the cultural memory of this period in Germany. Looking at both textual and musical developments the research deals with the history of reception of key 1848 songs by established as well as anonymous poets. These together have formed an enduring corpus in the repertoires of singers of German political song. One of the main findings is how songs are not static: they evolve musically and textually and can undergo changes of function during a process of historical reception which is often ideologically motivated.

"Where am I?" Impact of display and content variables on spatial presence and comprehension in virtual environments

Forgetting immediate physical reality and having awareness of one�s location in the simulated world is critical to enjoyment and performance in virtual environments be it an interactive 3D game such as Quake or an online virtual 3d community space such as Second Life. Answer to the question "where am I?" at two levels, whether the locus is in the immediate real world as opposed to the virtual world and whether one is aware of the spatial co-ordinates of that locus, hold the key to any virtual 3D experience. While 3D environments, especially virtual environments and their impact on spatial comprehension has been studied in disciplines such as architecture, it is difficult to determine the relative contributions of specific attributes such as screen size or stereoscopy towards spatial comprehension since most of them treat the technology as monolith (box-centered). Using a variable-centered approach put forth by Nass and Mason (1990) which breaks down the technology into its component variables and their corresponding values as its theoretical basis, this paper looks at the contributions of five variables (Stereoscopy, screen size, field of view, level of realism and level of detail) common to most virtual environments on spatial comprehension and presence. The variable centered approach can be daunting as the increase in the number of variables can exponentially increase the number of conditions and resources required. We overcome this drawback posed by adoption of such a theoretical approach by the use of a fractional factorial design for the experiment. This study has completed the first wave of data collection and starting the next phase in January 2007 and expected to complete by February 2007. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.

MODELLING AND FORECASTING INFLATION RATES IN GHANA: AN APPLICATION OF SARIMA MODELS

Ghana faces a macroeconomic problem of inflation for a long period of time. The problem in somehow slows the economic growth in this country. As we all know, inflation is one of the major economic challenges facing most countries in the world especially those in African including Ghana. Therefore, forecasting inflation rates in Ghana becomes very important for its government to design economic strategies or effective monetary policies to combat any unexpected high inflation in this country. This paper studies seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average model to forecast inflation rates in Ghana. Using monthly inflation data from July 1991 to December 2009, we find that ARIMA (1,1,1)(0,0,1)12 can represent the data behavior of inflation rate in Ghana well. Based on the selected model, we forecast seven (7) months inflation rates of Ghana outside the sample period (i.e. from January 2010 to July 2010). The observed inflation rate from January to April which was published by Ghana Statistical Service Department fall within the 95% confidence interval obtained from the designed model. The forecasted results show a decreasing pattern and a turning point of Ghana inflation in the month of July.

On the welfare costs of business-cycle fluctuations and economic-growth variation in the 20th century

Lucas (1987) has shown a surprising result in business-cycle research: the welfare cost of business cycles are very small. Our paper has several original contributions. First, in computing welfare costs, we propose a novel setup that separates the effects of uncertainty stemming from business-cycle fluctuations and economic-growth variation. Second, we extend the sample from which to compute the moments of consumption: the whole of the literature chose primarily to work with post-WWII data. For this period, actual consumption is already a result of counter-cyclical policies, and is potentially smoother than what it otherwise have been in their absence. So, we employ also pre-WWII data. Third, we take an econometric approach and compute explicitly the asymptotic standard deviation of welfare costs using the Delta Method. Estimates of welfare costs show major differences for the pre-WWII and the post-WWII era. They can reach up to 15 times for reasonable parameter values -β=0.985, and ∅=5. For example, in the pre-WWII period (1901-1941), welfare cost estimates are 0.31% of consumption if we consider only permanent shocks and 0.61% of consumption if we consider only transitory shocks. In comparison, the post-WWII era is much quieter: welfare costs of economic growth are 0.11% and welfare costs of business cycles are 0.037% - the latter being very close to the estimate in Lucas (0.040%). Estimates of marginal welfare costs are roughly twice the size of the total welfare costs. For the pre-WWII era, marginal welfare costs of economic-growth and business- cycle fluctuations are respectively 0.63% and 1.17% of per-capita consumption. The same figures for the post-WWII era are, respectively, 0.21% and 0.07% of per-capita consumption.

Motivations for knowledge sharing in virtual social networks: a comparative study between Brazil and France

Sociedades pós-modernas caracterizam-se pela transição de economias baseadas em ativos tangíveis para economias de conhecimento, onde indivíduos vivenciam uma imprescindível conectividade, mas ao mesmo tempo, experimentam um enfraquecimento das estruturas sociais, que tem generado uma crescente necessidade de se criar bases cognitivas e afetivas para a vida (Rheingold, 1992; Wasko & Farah, 2005; Arvidsson, 2008). Nesse cenário se desenvolve o fenômeno das redes sociais virtuais, agregando milhões de pessoas que compartilham mensagens de texto, imagens e vídeos todos os dias (Nielsen, 2012) fazendo com que organizações privadas foquem cada vez mais seus investimentos para acompanhar as novas tendências (McWilliam, 2000; Reichheld & Schefter, 2000; Yoo, Suh & Lee, 2002; Arvidsson, 2008). Consequentemente, uma das mais importantes questões que vem ganhando importância no meio academico e entre profissionais da área é justamente: por que as pessoas compartilham conhecimento online? (Monge, Fulk, Kalman, Flanigan, Parnassa & Rumsey, 1998; Lin, 2001) Por meio de uma metodologia de estudo de caso conduzida no Brasil e na França, este estudo objetiva produzir uma relevante revisão teórica acerca do tema, trazendo novas idéias de diferentes contextos, e propondo um modelo para avaliar as principais motivações que conduzem indivíduos a compartilhar conhecimento em redes sociais virtuais. Essas razões foram estruturadas em cinco dimensões: capital estrutural, cognitivo e relacional, motivações pessoais e razões monetárias (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Wasko & Faraj, 2005; Chiu et al, 2006). As evidências sugerem que o processo de participar e compartilhar conhecimento em redes sociais virtuais é resultado de uma complexa combinação de motivações de orientação pessoal e coletiva, que parecem variar pouco de acordo com os diferentes objetivos e contextos dessas comunidades, onde as razões financeiras parecem ser secundárias.

On the welfare costs of business-cycle fluctuations and economic-growth variation in the 20th century

Lucas(1987) has shown a surprising result in business-cycle research: the welfare cost of business cycles are very small. Our paper has several original contributions. First, in computing welfare costs, we propose a novel setup that separates the effects of uncertainty stemming from business-cycle uctuations and economic-growth variation. Second, we extend the sample from which to compute the moments of consumption: the whole of the literature chose primarily to work with post-WWII data. For this period, actual consumption is already a result of counter-cyclical policies, and is potentially smoother than what it otherwise have been in their absence. So, we employ also pre-WWII data. Third, we take an econometric approach and compute explicitly the asymptotic standard deviation of welfare costs using the Delta Method. Estimates of welfare costs show major diferences for the pre-WWII and the post-WWII era. They can reach up to 15 times for reasonable parameter values = 0:985, and = 5. For example, in the pre-WWII period (1901-1941), welfare cost estimates are 0.31% of consumption if we consider only permanent shocks and 0.61% of consumption if we consider only transitory shocks. In comparison, the post-WWII era is much quieter: welfare costs of economic growth are 0.11% and welfare costs of business cycles are 0.037% the latter being very close to the estimate in Lucas (0.040%). Estimates of marginal welfare costs are roughly twice the size of the total welfare costs. For the pre-WWII era, marginal welfare costs of economic-growth and business-cycle uctuations are respectively 0.63% and 1.17% of per-capita consumption. The same gures for the post-WWII era are, respectively, 0.21% and 0.07% of per-capita consumption.

On the welfare costs of business-cycle fluctuations and economic-growth variation in the 20th century and beyond

The main objective of this paper is to propose a novel setup that allows estimating separately the welfare costs of the uncertainty stemming from business-cycle uctuations and from economic-growth variation, when the two types of shocks associated with them (respectively,transitory and permanent shocks) hit consumption simultaneously. Separating these welfare costs requires dealing with degenerate bivariate distributions. Levis Continuity Theorem and the Disintegration Theorem allow us to adequately de ne the one-dimensional limiting marginal distributions. Under Normality, we show that the parameters of the original marginal distributions are not afected, providing the means for calculating separately the welfare costs of business-cycle uctuations and of economic-growth variation. Our empirical results show that, if we consider only transitory shocks, the welfare cost of business cycles is much smaller than previously thought. Indeed, we found it to be negative - -0:03% of per-capita consumption! On the other hand, we found that the welfare cost of economic-growth variation is relatively large. Our estimate for reasonable preference-parameter values shows that it is 0:71% of consumption US$ 208:98 per person, per year.

Comparative cytogenetic studies of Bufo ictericus, B. paracnemis (Amphibia, Anura) and an intermediate form in sympatry

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)