Pass-through of International food prices to domestic ination during and after the great recession: evidence from a set of Latin American economies

We examined how international food price shocks have impacted local ination processes in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru in the past decade -- Using impulse-response analysis coming from cointegrated VARs, we wind that international food ination shocks take from one to six quarters to pass through to domestic head-line ination, depending on the country -- In addition, by calculating the elasticity of local prices to an international food price shock, we found that this pass-through is not complete -- We also take a closer look at how this type of shock affects local food and core prices separately, and asses the possibility second round effects over core ination stemming from the shock -- We wind that a transmission to headline prices does occur, and that part of the transmission is associated with rising core prices both directly and through possible second round effects, which implies a role for monetary policy when such a shock takes place -- This is especially relevant given that international food prices have recently been on an upward trend after falling considerably during the Great Recession

An Analysis of Colombian Power Market Price Behavior from an Industrial Organization Perspective

We analyze the behavior of spot prices in the Colombian wholesale power market, using a series of models derived from industrial organization theory -- We first create a Cournot-based model that simulates the strategic behavior of the market-leader power generators, which we use to estimate two industrial organization variables, the Index of Residual Demand and the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) -- We use these variables to create VAR models that estimate spot prices and power market impulse-response relationships -- The results from these models show that hydroelectric generators can use their water storage capability strategically to affect off-peak prices primarily, while the thermal generators can manage their capacity strategically to affect on-peak prices -- In addition, shocks to the Index of Residual Capacity and to the HHI cause spot price fluctuations, which can be interpreted as the generators´ strategic response to these shocks

EGCL: an extended G-Code Language with flow control, functions and mnemonic variables

In the context of computer numerical control (CNC) and computer aided manufacturing (CAM), the capabilities of programming languages such as symbolic and intuitive programming, program portability and geometrical portfolio have special importance -- They allow to save time and to avoid errors during part programming and permit code re-usage -- Our updated literature review indicates that the current state of art presents voids in parametric programming, program portability and programming flexibility -- In response to this situation, this article presents a compiler implementation for EGCL (Extended G-code Language), a new, enriched CNC programming language which allows the use of descriptive variable names, geometrical functions and flow-control statements (if-then-else, while) -- Our compiler produces low-level generic, elementary ISO-compliant Gcode, thus allowing for flexibility in the choice of the executing CNC machine and in portability -- Our results show that readable variable names and flow control statements allow a simplified and intuitive part programming and permit re-usage of the programs -- Future work includes allowing the programmer to define own functions in terms of EGCL, in contrast to the current status of having them as library built-in functions