The relevance of post-match LTC: why has the Spanish labor market become as volatile as the US one?

We present a Search and Matching model with heterogeneous workers (entrants and incumbents) that replicates the stylized facts characterizing the US and the Spanish labor markets. Under this benchmark, we find the Post-Match Labor Turnover Costs (PMLTC) to be the centerpiece to explain why the Spanish labor market is as volatile as the US one. The two driving forces governing this volatility are the gaps between entrants and incumbents in terms of separation costs and productivity. We use the model to analyze the cyclical implications of changes in labor market institutions affecting these two gaps. The scenario with a low degree of workers’ heterogeneity illustrates its suitability to understand why the Spanish labor market has become as volatile as the US one.

Co-movements between US and UK stock prices: the roles of macroeconomic information and time-series varying conditional correlations

This paper provides evidence on the sources of co-movement in monthly US and UK stock price movements by investigating the role of macroeconomic and financial variables in a bivariate system with time-varying conditional correlations. Crosscountry communality in response is uncovered, with changes in the US Federal Funds rate, UK bond yields and oil prices having similar negative effects in both markets. Other variables also play a role, especially for the UK market. These effects do not, however, explain the marked increase in cross-market correlations observed from around 2000, which we attribute to time variation in the correlations of shocks to these markets. A regime-switching smooth transition model captures this time variation well and shows the correlations increase dramatically around 1999-2000. JEL classifications: C32, C51, G15 Keywords: international stock returns, DCC-GARCH model, smooth transition conditional correlation GARCH model, model evaluation.

Price level convergence, purchasing power parity and multiple structural breaks: an application to US cities

This article provides a fresh methodological and empirical approach for assessing price level convergence and its relation to purchasing power parity (PPP) using annual price data for seventeen US cities. We suggest a new procedure that can handle a wide range of PPP concepts in the presence of multiple structural breaks using all possible pairs of real exchange rates. To deal with cross-sectional dependence, we use both cross-sectional demeaned data and a parametric bootstrap approach. In general, we find more evidence for stationarity when the parity restriction is not imposed, while imposing parity restriction provides leads toward the rejection of the panel stationar- ity. Our results can be embedded on the view of the Balassa-Samuelson approach, but where the slope of the time trend is allowed to change in the long-run. The median half-life point estimate are found to be lower than the consensus view regardless of the parity restriction.

Leading indicator properties of US high-yield credit spreads

In this paper we examine the out-of-sample forecast performance of high-yield credit spreads regarding real-time and revised data on employment and industrial production in the US. We evaluate models using both a point forecast and a probability forecast exercise. Our main findings suggest the use of few factors obtained by pooling information from a number of sector-specific high-yield credit spreads. This can be justified by observing that, especially for employment, there is a gain from using a principal components model fitted to high-yield credit spreads compared to the prediction produced by benchmarks, such as an AR, and ARDL models that use either the term spread or the aggregate high-yield spread as exogenous regressor. Moreover, forecasts based on real-time data are generally comparable to forecasts based on revised data. JEL Classification: C22; C53; E32 Keywords: Credit spreads; Principal components; Forecasting; Real-time data.

Health and income: a robust comparison of Canada and the US

This paper uses sequential stochastic dominance procedures to compare the joint distribution of health and income across space and time. It is the First application of which we are aware of methods to compare multidimensional distributions of income and health using procedures that are robust to aggregation techniques. The paper's approach is more general than comparisons of health gradients and does not require the estimation of health equivalent incomes. We illustrate the approach by contrasting Canada and the US using comparable data. Canada dominates the US over the lower bidimensional welfare distribution of health and income, though not generally in terms of the uni-dimensional distribution of health or income. The paper also finds that welfare for both Canadians and Americans has not unambiguously improved during the last decade over the joint distribution of income and health, in spite of the fact that the uni-dimensional distributions of income have clearly improved during that period.

Marine biotoxins in the Catalan littoral: could biosensors be integrated into monitoring programmes?

Aquest article descriu els sensors enzimàtics i immunosensors electroquímics que s’han desenvolupat als nostres grups per a la detecció de la biotoxina marina àcid okadaic (OA), i discuteix la possibilitat d’integrar-los en programes de seguiment. Els sensors enzimàtics per a OA que es presenten es basen en la inhibició de la proteïna fosfatasa (PP2A) per aquesta toxina i la mesura electroquímica de l’activitat enzimàtica mitjançant l’ús de substrats enzimàtics apropiats, electroquímicament actius després de la seva desfosforació per l’enzim. Els immunosensors electroquímics descrits en aquest article es basen en un enzimoimmunoassaig sobre fase sòlida competitiu indirecte (ciELISA), amb fosfatasa alcalina (ALP) o peroxidasa (HRP) com a marcatges, i un sistema de reciclatge enzimàtic amb diaforasa (DI). Els biosensors presentats aquí s’han aplicat a l’anàlisi de dinoflagel·lats, musclos i ostres. Les validacions preliminars amb assaigs colorimètrics i LC-MS/MS han demostrat la possibilitat d’utilitzar les bioeines desenvolupades per al cribratge preliminar de biotoxines marines en mostres de camp o de cultiu, que ofereixen informació complementària a la cromatografia. En conclusió, tot i que encara cal optimitzar alguns paràmetres experimentals, la integració dels biosensors a programes de seguiment és viable i podria proporcionar avantatges respecte a altres tècniques analítiques pel que fa al temps d’anàlisi, la simplicitat, la selectivitat, la sensibilitat, el fet de poder ser d’un sol ús i l’efectivitat de cost. This article describes the electrochemical enzyme sensors and immunosensors that have been developed by our groups for the detection of marine biotoxin okadaic acid (OA), and discusses the possibility of integrating them into monitoring programmes. The enzyme sensors for OA reported herein are based on the inhibition of immobilised protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) by this toxin and the electrochemical measurement of the enzyme activity through the use of appropriate enzyme substrates, which are electrochemically active after dephosphorylation by the enzyme. The electrochemical immunosensors described in this article are based on a competitive indirect Enzyme- Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay (ciELISA), using alkaline phosphatase (ALP) or horseradish peroxidase (HRP) as labels, and an enzymatic recycling system with diaphorase (DI). The biosensors presented herein have been applied to the analysis of dinoflagellates, mussels and oysters. Preliminary validations with colorimetric assays and LC-MS/MS have demonstrated the possibility of using the developed biotools for the preliminary screening of marine biotoxins in field or cultured samples, offering complementary information to chromatography. In conclusion, although optimisation of some experimental parameters is still required, the integration of biosensors into monitoring programmes is viable and may provide advantages over other analytical techniques in terms of analysis time, simplicity, selectivity, sensitivity, disposability of electrodes and cost effectiveness.

Private Governance of Financial Markets: the US Regulatory Regime on Hedge Funds

The article investigates the private governance of financial markets by looking at the evolution of the regulatory debate on hedge funds in the US market. It starts from the premise that the privatization of regulation is always the result of a political decision and analyzes how this decision came about and was implemented in the case of hedge funds. The starting point is the failure of two initiatives on hedge funds that US regulators launched between 1999 an 2004, which the analysis explains by elaborating the concept of self-capture. Facing a trade off between the need to tackle publicly demonized issues and the difficulty of monitoring increasingly sophisticated and powerful private markets, regulators purposefully designed initiatives that were not meant to succeed, that is, they “self-captured” their own activity. By formulating initiatives that were inherently flawed, regulators saved their public role and at the same time paved the way for the privatization of hedge fund regulation. This explanation identifies a link between the failure of public initiatives and the success of private ones. It illustrates a specific case of formation of private authority in financial markets that points to a more general practice emerging in the regulation of finance.

La Cooperation policière internationale dans le corps des Mossos d'Esquadra

La police est « une administration, une force publique qui veille au maintien de la sécurité publique» . De la même manière la Loi organique des forces et corps de sécurité espagnole, rappelle que toute force portant le nom de police se doit d’avoir pour fonction principale « le maintien de la sécurité publique ». Ainsi, France et Espagne partagent la même vision de la police. De même la définition de la « Coopération », « action de participer à une œuvre commune, politique d’entente et d’échanges entre deux États » ou encore la définition de la Coopération internationale, « politique d’aide économique, technique et financière des pays développés en faveur des pays en développement » sont admises par tous les pays. Néanmoins la façon de coopérer est propre à chaque pays, et dans le cas de la coopération policière, à chaque corps de police. Certains font plus de la coordination (« harmonisation d’activités diverses dans un souci d’efficacité ») d’autres considèrent qu’ils font plutôt de la collaboration (« participer à une œuvre avec d’autres »). En réalité, ces trois termes, coordination, coopération et collaboration, sont tellement proches qu’il est parfois difficile de les distinguer, surtout les deux derniers. En effet pour définir une collaboration on dit aussi que c’est « une politique de coopération active avec l’occupant ennemi ». On comprend alors que Sanchez Moron estime que la collaboration et la coopération sont des « sous-espèces » du concept général de coordination qu’ils font plutôt de la collaboration (« participer à une œuvre avec d’autres »). En réalité, ces trois termes, coordination, coopération et collaboration, sont tellement proches qu’il est parfois difficile de les distinguer, surtout les deux derniers. Dès lors, traiter de la coopération policière internationale peut s’avérer complexe, car il est difficile d’établir des limites au sujet, de définir ce qui est ou non de la coopération policière internationale. Cela est d’autant plus difficile que les sources documentaires sur la coopération policière, bien qu’existantes, ne sont pas toutes de première jeunesse. Et concernant la place et le rôle de l’Espagne dans celle-ci les sources documentaires sont réduites à un très faible nombre, et sont inexistantes sur les Mossos d’Esquadra. Par ailleurs, sans même se spécialiser dans la coopération internationale, les recherches parues sur les Mossos d’Esquadra sont très peu nombreuses, très rarement de moins de vingt ans et encore plus difficile à trouver en langue française. Michel DAUGE écrivait dans l’introduction de sa recherche sur les Mossos d’Esquadra, : « Les polices autonomes espagnoles, que ce soit la catalane, et dans une moindre mesure la basque, si elles constituent un domaine peu exploré en Espagne (sujet tabou que la classe politique évite d’aborder) demeurent totalement méconnues en France.

Application of compositional data analysis to geochemical data of marine sediments

In an earlier investigation (Burger et al., 2000) five sediment cores near the RodriguesTriple Junction in the Indian Ocean were studied applying classical statistical methods(fuzzy c-means clustering, linear mixing model, principal component analysis) for theextraction of endmembers and evaluating the spatial and temporal variation ofgeochemical signals. Three main factors of sedimentation were expected by the marinegeologists: a volcano-genetic, a hydro-hydrothermal and an ultra-basic factor. Thedisplay of fuzzy membership values and/or factor scores versus depth providedconsistent results for two factors only; the ultra-basic component could not beidentified. The reason for this may be that only traditional statistical methods wereapplied, i.e. the untransformed components were used and the cosine-theta coefficient assimilarity measure.During the last decade considerable progress in compositional data analysis was madeand many case studies were published using new tools for exploratory analysis of thesedata. Therefore it makes sense to check if the application of suitable data transformations,reduction of the D-part simplex to two or three factors and visualinterpretation of the factor scores would lead to a revision of earlier results and toanswers to open questions . In this paper we follow the lines of a paper of R. Tolosana-Delgado et al. (2005) starting with a problem-oriented interpretation of the biplotscattergram, extracting compositional factors, ilr-transformation of the components andvisualization of the factor scores in a spatial context: The compositional factors will beplotted versus depth (time) of the core samples in order to facilitate the identification ofthe expected sources of the sedimentary process.Kew words: compositional data analysis, biplot, deep sea sediments

The allometry of non-employment. What can compositional data analysis tell us about labour market performance across the UK's regions?

The low levels of unemployment recorded in the UK in recent years are widely cited asevidence of the country’s improved economic performance, and the apparent convergence of unemployment rates across the country’s regions used to suggest that the longstanding divide in living standards between the relatively prosperous ‘south’ and the more depressed ‘north’ has been substantially narrowed. Dissenters from theseconclusions have drawn attention to the greatly increased extent of non-employment(around a quarter of the UK’s working age population are not in employment) and themarked regional dimension in its distribution across the country. Amongst these dissenters it is generally agreed that non-employment is concentrated amongst oldermales previously employed in the now very much smaller ‘heavy’ industries (e.g. coal,steel, shipbuilding).This paper uses the tools of compositiona l data analysis to provide a much richer picture of non-employment and one which challenges the conventional analysis wisdom about UK labour market performance as well as the dissenters view of the nature of theproblem. It is shown that, associated with the striking ‘north/south’ divide in nonemployment rates, there is a statistically significant relationship between the size of the non-employment rate and the composition of non-employment. Specifically, it is shown that the share of unemployment in non-employment is negatively correlated with the overall non-employment rate: in regions where the non-employment rate is high the share of unemployment is relatively low. So the unemployment rate is not a very reliable indicator of regional disparities in labour market performance. Even more importantly from a policy viewpoint, a significant positive relationship is found between the size ofthe non-employment rate and the share of those not employed through reason of sicknessor disability and it seems (contrary to the dissenters) that this connection is just as strong for women as it is for men

Object and Scene Classification: what does a Supervised Approach Provide us?

Given a set of images of scenes containing different object categories (e.g. grass, roads) our objective is to discover these objects in each image, and to use this object occurrences to perform a scene classification (e.g. beach scene, mountain scene). We achieve this by using a supervised learning algorithm able to learn with few images to facilitate the user task. We use a probabilistic model to recognise the objects and further we classify the scene based on their object occurrences. Experimental results are shown and evaluated to prove the validity of our proposal. Object recognition performance is compared to the approaches of He et al. (2004) and Marti et al. (2001) using their own datasets. Furthermore an unsupervised method is implemented in order to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of our supervised classification approach versus an unsupervised one

What can spike train distances tell us about the neural code?

Time scale parametric spike train distances like the Victor and the van Rossum distancesare often applied to study the neural code based on neural stimuli discrimination.Different neural coding hypotheses, such as rate or coincidence coding,can be assessed by combining a time scale parametric spike train distance with aclassifier in order to obtain the optimal discrimination performance. The time scalefor which the responses to different stimuli are distinguished best is assumed to bethe discriminative precision of the neural code. The relevance of temporal codingis evaluated by comparing the optimal discrimination performance with the oneachieved when assuming a rate code.We here characterize the measures quantifying the discrimination performance,the discriminative precision, and the relevance of temporal coding. Furthermore,we evaluate the information these quantities provide about the neural code. Weshow that the discriminative precision is too unspecific to be interpreted in termsof the time scales relevant for encoding. Accordingly, the time scale parametricnature of the distances is mainly an advantage because it allows maximizing thediscrimination performance across a whole set of measures with different sensitivitiesdetermined by the time scale parameter, but not due to the possibility toexamine the temporal properties of the neural code.

Predictors of political orientation among US-born Mexican Americans: cultural identification, acculturation attitudes and socioeconomic status

With each passing election, U.S. political campaigns have renewed their efforts in courting the “Latino vote,” yet the Latino population is not a culturally homogenous voting bloc. This study examined how cultural identifications and acculturation attitudes in U.S. born Mexican Americans interacted with socioeconomic status (SES) to predict political orientation. Individuals who held stronger Mexican identity and supported biculturalism as an acculturation strategy had a more liberal orientation, while belonging to a higher SES group and holding stronger assimilation attitudes predicted a less liberal orientation. Mexican cultural identification interacted with SES such that those who held a weaker Mexican identity, but came from a higher social class were less liberal and more moderate in their political orientation. Weak Mexican identification and higher SES also predicted weaker endorsement of bicultural acculturation attitudes, which in turn, mediated the differences in political orientation. The acceptance of one’s ethnic identity and endorsement of bicultural attitudes predicted a more liberal political orientation. In light of these findings, political candidates should be cautious in how they pander to Latino constituents—referencing the groups’ ethnic culture or customs may distance constituents who are not strongly identified with their ethnic culture.

Le corps révélé: la représentation du corps dans le cinéma de Maurice Pialat

Cette étude part à la recherche des oeuvres qui font de l’esthétique incarnée leur quêteinconsciente. A travers le cinéma de Maurice Pialat, il s’agit de voir par quels moyens ilest possible de valoriser la présence du corps dans le cinéma. Dans la première partie de l’étude, nous chercherons à saisir les enjeux qui sous-tendent une nouvellereprésentation des corps au cinéma. Nous verrons donc en quoi le style de la narration, de la mise en scène et en particulier le travail avec les acteurs permettent de mettre en valeur de façon nouvelle les corps à l’écran. Puis dans la seconde partie, en étudiant les modes d’apparition des corps dans les films du réalisateur français, nous verrons dequelle manière le corps peut devenir un acteur à part entière de l’action

Structural changes in the US economy: Bad Luck or Bad Policy?

This paper investigates the relationship between time variations in output and inflation dynamics and monetary policy in the US. There are changes in the structural coefficients and in the variance of the structural shocks. The policy rules in the 1970s and 1990s are similar as is the transmission of policy disturbances. Inflation persistence is only partly a monetary phenomena. Variations in the systematic component of policy have limited effects on the dynamics of output and inflation. Results are robust to alterations in the auxiliary assumptions.