Focal points and fiscal discipline. ACES Cases No. 2013.2

Many studies suggest that balanced budget rules can restrain sovereign debt and lower sovereign borrowing costs, even if those rules are never enforced in court. Typically, this is explained as a result of a legal deterrence logic, in which the threat of judicial enforcement deters sovereigns from violating the rules. By contrast, we argue that balanced budget rules work by coordinating decentralized punishment of sovereigns by bond markets, rather than by posing a credible threat of judicial enforcement. Therefore, the clarity of the focal point provided by the rule, rather than the strength of its judicial enforcement mechanisms, determines its effectiveness. We develop a formal model that captures the logic of our argument, and we assess this model using data on US states. We then consider implications of our argument for the impact of the balanced budget rules recently imposed on eurozone states in the Fiscal Compact Treaty.

Harry A. Levinson, 9527 Brighton Way, Beverly Hills, California, plaintiff, v. Arthur E. Summerfield, individually and as Postmaster General of the United States, Washington D.C., defendent : points and authorities in support of mottion for preliminary injunction, in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Mode of access: Internet.

A Chance medley of legal points and legal stories.

Includes index.

Modern British permanent way. Treating of rails, chairs, fishbolts, fishplates, keys, sleepers, ballast, rail-joints, points and crossings, &c.

"Originally written as a series of articles for ʻThe Railway Newsʾ, in which they appeared at various periods between the years 1911 and 1914."--Pref.

The bantams down-to-date. A detailed description of the colors, types, standard points and weights of all the exhibition bantams; how to mate for the production of all breeds and varieties of game and "variety" bantams; inbreeding, double mating, the founding of strains and the creation of new species; housing, feeding, hatching; fitting for exhibition and general management; simplified doctoring of sick bantams.

Mode of access: Internet.

Memoriana, or a series of communications published in the Kingston Herald between the years 1839 and 1844 on the subject of the statute law of the province, or the law of the land, establishing the true boundaries and lines of survey on a permanent basis, and thereby securing the rights of land in the original patents to the loyalists and their heirs.

Mode of access: Internet.

Six theosophic points and other writings,

Six theosophic points.--Six mystical points.--On the earthly and heavenly mystery.--On the divine intution.

Ground water model calibration using pilot points and regularization

Use of nonlinear parameter estimation techniques is now commonplace in ground water model calibration. However, there is still ample room for further development of these techniques in order to enable them to extract more information from calibration datasets, to more thoroughly explore the uncertainty associated with model predictions, and to make them easier to implement in various modeling contexts. This paper describes the use of pilot points as a methodology for spatial hydraulic property characterization. When used in conjunction with nonlinear parameter estimation software that incorporates advanced regularization functionality (such as PEST), use of pilot points can add a great deal of flexibility to the calibration process at the same time as it makes this process easier to implement. Pilot points can be used either as a substitute for zones of piecewise parameter uniformity, or in conjunction with such zones. In either case, they allow the disposition of areas of high and low hydraulic property value to be inferred through the calibration process, without the need for the modeler to guess the geometry of such areas prior to estimating the parameters that pertain to them. Pilot points and regularization can also be used as an adjunct to geostatistically based stochastic parameterization methods. Using the techniques described herein, a series of hydraulic property fields can be generated, all of which recognize the stochastic characterization of an area at the same time that they satisfy the constraints imposed on hydraulic property values by the need to ensure that model outputs match field measurements. Model predictions can then be made using all of these fields as a mechanism for exploring predictive uncertainty.