Riding the South Sea bubble

This paper presents a case study of a well-informed investor in the South Sea bubble. We argue that Hoare's Bank, a fledgling West End London banker, knew that a bubble was in progress and nonetheless invested in the stock; it was profitable to "ride the bubble." Using a unique dataset on daily trades, we show that this sophisticated investor was not constrained by institutional factors such as restrictions on short sales or agency problems. Instead, this study demonstrates that predictable investor sentiment can prevent attacks on a bubble; rational investors may only attack when some coordinating event promotes joint action.

With a bang, not a whimper: Pricking Germany's "stock market bubble" in 1927 and the slide into depression

In May 1927, the German central bank intervenedindirectly to reduce lending to equity investors.The crash that followed ended the only stockmarket boom during Germany s relative stabilization 1924-28. This paper examines thefactors that lead to the intervention as well asits consequences. We argue that genuine concernabout the exuberant level of the stock market,in addition to worries about an inflow offoreign funds, tipped the scales in favour ofintervention. The evidence strongly suggeststhat the German central bank under HjalmarSchacht was wrong to be concerned aboutstockprices-there was no bubble. Also, theReichsbank was mistaken in its belief thata fall in the market would reduce theimportance of short-term foreign borrowing,and help to ease conditions in the money market.The misguided intervention had important realeffects. Investment suffered, helping to tipGermany into depression.

Trade, migration and regional unemployment

We formulate a dynamic core-periphery model with frictions in the job matching process to study the interplay between trade costs, migration and regional unemploymentin the short- and long-run. We find that the spatial distribution of unemployment mirrors (inversely) the distribution of economic activities. Further, we highlight a contrast between the short-run and the long-run effects of trade-induced migration on regional unemployment. In particular, an inßow of immigrants from the periphery into the core reduces the unemployment gap in the short-run, but exacerbates unemployment disparities in the long-run.

Credible redistributive policies and migration across US States

Does worker mobility undermine governments ability to redistribute income? Thispaper analyzes the experience of US states in the recent decades. We build a tractablemodel where both migration decisions and redistribution policies are endogenous. Wecalibrate the model to match skill premium and worker productivity at the state level,as well as the size and skill composition of migration flows. The calibrated modelis able to reproduce the large changes in skill composition as well as key qualitativerelationships of labor flows and redistribution policies observed in the data. Our resultssuggest that regional di¤erences in labor productivity are an important determinantof interstate migration. We use the calibrated model to compare the cross-section ofredistributive policies with and without worker mobility. The main result of the paperis that interstate migration has induced substantial convergence in tax rates acrossUS states, but no race to the bottom. Skill-biased in-migration has reduced the skillpremium and the need for tax-based redistribution in the states that would have hadthe highest tax rates in the absence of mobility.

The dot-com bubble, the Bush deficits and the US current account

Over the past decade the US has experienced widening current account deficits and a steady deterioration of its net foreign asset position. During the second half of the 1990s, this deterioration was fueled by foreign investment in a booming US stock market. During the first half of the 2000s, this deterioration has been fuelled by foreign purchases of rapidly increasing US government debt. A somewhat surprising aspect of the current debate is thatstock market movements and fiscal policy choices have been largely treated as unrelated events. Stock market movements are usually interpreted as reflecting exogenous changes in perceived or real productivity, while budget deficits are usually understood as a mainly political decision. We challenge this view here and develop two alternative interpretations. Both are based on the notion that a bubble (the dot-com bubble) has been driving the stock market, but differ in their assumptions about the interactions between this bubble and fiscal policy (the Bush deficits). The benevolent view holds that a change in investorsentiment led to the collapse of the dot-com bubble and the Bush deficits were a welfare-improving policy response to this event. The cynical view holds instead that the Bush deficits led to the collapse of the dot-com bubble as the new administration tried to appropriate rents from foreign investors. We discuss the implications of each of these views for the future evolution of the US economy and, in particular, its net foreign asset position.

Migration across Spanish provinces: Evidence from the social security records (1978-1992)

This paper uses Social Security records to study internal migrationin Spain. This is the first paper that uses this data source, whichhas some advantages with respect to existing data sources: it includesonly job-seeking migrants and it allows to identify temporary migration. Within the framework of an extended gravity model, we estimate a Generalized Negative Binomial regression on gross migration flows between provinces. We quantify the effect of local labor market imbalances on workers' mobility and discuss the equilibrating role of internal migration in Spain. Our main results show that the effect of employment opportunities have changed after 1984; migrants seem to be more responsive to economic conditions but, consistently with previous studies for the Spanish labor market, the migration response to wage differentials is wrongly signed. Our analysis also confirms the larger internal mobility of highly qualified workers.

Recreating the South Sea bubble: Lessons from an experiment in financial history

Major bubble episodes are rare events. In this paper, we examine what factors might cause some asset price bubbles to become very large. We recreate, in a laboratory setting, some of the specific institutional features investors in the South Sea Company faced in 1720. Several factors have been proposed as potentially contributing to one of the greatest periods of asset overvaluation in history: an intricate debt-for-equity swap, deferred payment for these shares, and the possibility of default on the deferred payments. We consider which aspect might have had the most impact in creating the South Sea bubble. The results of the experiment suggest that the company?s attempt to exchange its shares for government debt was the single biggest contributor to the stock price explosion, because of the manner in which the swap affected fundamental value. Issuing new shares with only partial payments required, in conjunction with the debt-equity swap, also had a significant effect on the size of the bubble. Limited contract enforcement, on the other hand, does not appear to have contributed significantly.

Anomalous Proper-Motions in the Cygnus Super Bubble Region

In an analysis of proper motions of O and B stars contained the Input Catalogue for Hipparcos, we have found a clear deviation from the expected pattern of systematic motions which can be readily identified with the associations Cygnus OB1 and Cygnus OB9, located near de the edge of the Cygnus Superbubble. Teha anomalous motions are directed outwards from the center of the Superbubble, which is coincident with tha association Cygnus OB2. This seems to support the hypothesis of a strong stellar and supernova activity in Cygnus 0B2 giving rise to the Superbubble and, by means of gravitational instabilities in its boundaries, to Cygnus 0B1 and Cygnus OB9. New uvby-beta aperture photometry of selected O and B stars in the area of Cygnus OB1 and Cygnus OB9 is also presented and analyzed in this paper.

Reelin controls progenitor cell migration in the healty and pathological adult brain

Understanding the signals that control migration of neural progenitor cells in the adult brain may provide new therapeutic opportunities. Reelin is best known for its role in regulating cell migration during brain development, but we now demonstrate a novel function for reelin in the injured adult brain. First, we show that Reelin is upregulated around lesions. Second, experimentally increasing Reelin expression levels in healthy mouse brain leads to a change in the migratory behavior of subventricular zone-derived progenitors, triggering them to leave the rostral migratory stream (RMS) to which they are normally restricted during their migration to the olfactory bulb. Third, we reveal that Reelin increases endogenous progenitor cell dispersal in periventricular structures independently of any chemoattraction but via cell detachment and chemokinetic action, and thereby potentiates spontaneous cell recruitment to demyelination lesions in the corpus callosum. Conversely, animals lacking Reelin signaling exhibit reduced endogenous progenitor recruitment at the lesion site. Altogether, these results demonstrate that beyond its known role during brain development, Reelin is a key player in post-lesional cell migration in the adult brain. Finally our findings provide proof of concept that allowing progenitors to escape from the RMS is a potential therapeutic approach to promote myelin repair.

MYADM regulates Rac1 targeting to ordered membranes required for cell spreading and migration

Membrane organization into condensed domains or rafts provides molecular platforms for selective recruitment of proteins. Cell migration is a general process that requires spatiotemporal targeting of Rac1 to membrane rafts. The protein machinery responsible for making rafts competent to recruit Rac1 remains elusive. Some members of the MAL family of proteins are involved in specialized processes dependent on this type of membrane. Because condensed membrane domains are a general feature of the plasma membrane of all mammalian cells, we hypothesized that MAL family members with ubiquitous expression and plasma membrane distribution could be involved in the organization of membranes for cell migration. We show that myeloid-associated differentiation marker (MYADM), a protein with unique features within the MAL family, colocalizes with Rac1 in membrane protrusions at the cell surface and distributes in condensed membranes. MYADM knockdown (KD) cells had altered membrane condensation and showed deficient incorporation of Rac1 to membrane raft fractions and, similar to Rac1 KD cells, exhibited reduced cell spreading and migration. Results of rescue-of-function experiments by expression of MYADM or active Rac1L61 in cells knocked down for Rac1 or MYADM, respectively, are consistent with the idea that MYADM and Rac1 act on parallel pathways that lead to similar functional outcomes.

Dynamics of a paramagnetic colloidal particle driven on a magnetic-bubble lattice

We present a theoretical study of the recently observed dynamical regimes of paramagnetic colloidal particles externally driven above a regular lattice of magnetic bubbles [P. Tierno, T. H. Johansen, and T. M. Fischer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 038303 (2007)]. An external precessing magnetic field alters the potential generated by the surface of the film in such a way to either drive the particle circularly around one bubble, ballistically through the array, or in triangular orbits on the interstitial regions between the bubbles. In the ballistic regime, we observe different trajectories performed by the particles phase locked with the external driving. Superdiffusive motion, which was experimentally found bridging the localized and delocalized dynamics, emerge only by introducing a certain degree of randomness into the bubbles size distribution.

Migration Flows and Quality of Life in a Metropolitan Area: the Case of Barcelona-Spain

The phenomenon of human migration is certainly not new and it has been studied from a variety of perspectives. Yet, the attention on human migration and its determinant has not been fading over time as confirmed by recent contributions (see for instance Cushing and Poot 2004 and Rebhun and Raveh 2006). In this paper we combine the recent theoretical contributions by Douglas (1997) and Wall (2001) with the methodological advancements of Guimarães et al. (2000, 2003) to model inter-municipal migration flows in the Barcelona area. In order to do that, we employ two different types of count models, i.e. the Poisson and negative binomial and compare the estimations obtained. Our results show that, even after controlling for the traditional migration factors, QoL (measured with a Composite Index which includes numerous aspects and also using a list of individual variables) is an important determinant of short distance migration movements in the Barcelona area.

Migration Determinants at a Local Level

This paper is about determinants of migration at a local level. We use data from Catalan municipalities in order to understand what explains migration patterns trying to identify whether they are main explained by amenities or economic characteristics. We distinguish three typologies of migration in terms of distance travelled: short-distance, short-medium-distance and medium-distance and we hypothesize whether migration determinants vary across these groups. Our results show that, effectively, there are some noticeable differences, suggest that spatial issues must be taken into account and provide some insights for future research. Keywords: population dynamics, spatial econometrics. JEL codes: C21, R0, R23

The Catalan migration to New York. A view from La Llumanera de Nova York (1874-1881)

The first issue of La Llumanera de Nova York came out in November 1874 and was not published until 1881. The challenge was certainly complicated: editing a newspaper in Catalan in New York, with the aim of influencing a group of potential readers who were distributed in the United States and, at the same time, become a medium that would bring the ideas of a new era, both from a political and cultural point of view