Individual Decision-Making and Inflation Persistence

The traditional task of a central bank is to preserve price stability and, in doing so, not to impair the real economy more than necessary. To meet this challenge, it is of great relevance whether inflation is only driven by inflation expectations and the current output gap or whether it is, in addition, influenced by past inflation. In the former case, as described by the New Keynesian Phillips curve, the central bank can immediately and simultaneously achieve price stability and equilibrium output, the so-called ‘divine coincidence’ (Blanchard and Galí 2007). In the latter case, the achievement of price stability is costly in terms of output and will be pursued over several periods. Similarly, it is important to distinguish this latter case, which describes ‘intrinsic’ inflation persistence, from that of ‘extrinsic’ inflation persistence, where the sluggishness of inflation is not a ‘structural’ feature of the economy but merely ‘inherited’ from the sluggishness of the other driving forces, inflation expectations and output. ‘Extrinsic’ inflation persistence is usually considered to be the less challenging case, as policy-makers are supposed to fight against the persistence in the driving forces, especially to reduce the stickiness of inflation expectations by a credible monetary policy, in order to reestablish the ‘divine coincidence’. The scope of this dissertation is to contribute to the vast literature and ongoing discussion on inflation persistence: Chapter 1 describes the policy consequences of inflation persistence and summarizes the empirical and theoretical literature. Chapter 2 compares two models of staggered price setting, one with a fixed two-period duration and the other with a stochastic duration of prices. I show that in an economy with a timeless optimizing central bank the model with the two-period alternating price-setting (for most parameter values) leads to more persistent inflation than the model with stochastic price duration. This result amends earlier work by Kiley (2002) who found that the model with stochastic price duration generates more persistent inflation in response to an exogenous monetary shock. Chapter 3 extends the two-period alternating price-setting model to the case of 3- and 4-period price durations. This results in a more complex Phillips curve with a negative impact of past inflation on current inflation. As simulations show, this multi-period Phillips curve generates a too low degree of autocorrelation and too early turnings points of inflation and is outperformed by a simple Hybrid Phillips curve. Chapter 4 starts from the critique of Driscoll and Holden (2003) on the relative real-wage model of Fuhrer and Moore (1995). While taking the critique seriously that Fuhrer and Moore’s model will collapse to a much simpler one without intrinsic inflation persistence if one takes their arguments literally, I extend the model by a term for inequality aversion. This model extension is not only in line with experimental evidence but results in a Hybrid Phillips curve with inflation persistence that is observably equivalent to that presented by Fuhrer and Moore (1995). In chapter 5, I present a model that especially allows to study the relationship between fairness attitudes and time preference (impatience). In the model, two individuals take decisions in two subsequent periods. In period 1, both individuals are endowed with resources and are able to donate a share of their resources to the other individual. In period 2, the two individuals might join in a common production after having bargained on the split of its output. The size of the production output depends on the relative share of resources at the end of period 1 as the human capital of the individuals, which is built by means of their resources, cannot fully be substituted one against each other. Therefore, it might be rational for a well-endowed individual in period 1 to act in a seemingly ‘fair’ manner and to donate own resources to its poorer counterpart. This decision also depends on the individuals’ impatience which is induced by the small but positive probability that production is not possible in period 2. As a general result, the individuals in the model economy are more likely to behave in a ‘fair’ manner, i.e., to donate resources to the other individual, the lower their own impatience and the higher the productivity of the other individual. As the (seemingly) ‘fair’ behavior is modelled as an endogenous outcome and as it is related to the aspect of time preference, the presented framework might help to further integrate behavioral economics and macroeconomics.

A storage scheme for an automated archive

Presentation given at the Al-Azhar Engineering First Conference, AEC’89, Dec. 9-12 1989, Cairo, Egypt. The paper presented at AEC'89 suggests an infinite storage scheme divided into one volume which is online and an arbitrary number of off-line volumes arranged into a linear chain which hold records which haven't been accessed recently. The online volume holds the records in sorted order (e.g. as a B-tree) and contains shortest prefixes of keys of records already pushed offline. As new records enter, older ones are retired to the first volume which is going offline next. Statistical arguments are given for the rate at which an off-line volume needs to be fetched to reload a record which had been retired before. The rate depends on the distribution of access probabilities as a function of time. Applications are medical records, production records or other data which need to be kept for a long time for legal reasons.

The Dynamic Structure of Everyday Life

Computational theories of action have generally understood the organized nature of human activity through the construction and execution of plans. By consigning the phenomena of contingency and improvisation to peripheral roles, this view has led to impractical technical proposals. As an alternative, I suggest that contingency is a central feature of everyday activity and that improvisation is the central kind of human activity. I also offer a computational model of certain aspects of everyday routine activity based on an account of improvised activity called running arguments and an account of representation for situated agents called deictic representation .

Sequential Optimal Recovery: A Paradigm for Active Learning

In most classical frameworks for learning from examples, it is assumed that examples are randomly drawn and presented to the learner. In this paper, we consider the possibility of a more active learner who is allowed to choose his/her own examples. Our investigations are carried out in a function approximation setting. In particular, using arguments from optimal recovery (Micchelli and Rivlin, 1976), we develop an adaptive sampling strategy (equivalent to adaptive approximation) for arbitrary approximation schemes. We provide a general formulation of the problem and show how it can be regarded as sequential optimal recovery. We demonstrate the application of this general formulation to two special cases of functions on the real line 1) monotonically increasing functions and 2) functions with bounded derivative. An extensive investigation of the sample complexity of approximating these functions is conducted yielding both theoretical and empirical results on test functions. Our theoretical results (stated insPAC-style), along with the simulations demonstrate the superiority of our active scheme over both passive learning as well as classical optimal recovery. The analysis of active function approximation is conducted in a worst-case setting, in contrast with other Bayesian paradigms obtained from optimal design (Mackay, 1992).

3D Object Recognition: Symmetry and Virtual Views

Many 3D objects in the world around us are strongly constrained. For instance, not only cultural artifacts but also many natural objects are bilaterally symmetric. Thoretical arguments suggest and psychophysical experiments confirm that humans may be better in the recognition of symmetric objects. The hypothesis of symmetry-induced virtual views together with a network model that successfully accounts for human recognition of generic 3D objects leads to predictions that we have verified with psychophysical experiments.

La biblioteca de la Universidad de Oviedo (1765-1934)

Analizar qu?? ocurri?? en la Espa??a del S. XVIII en el campo de las bibliotecas para que ??stas alcanzasen un notable grado de desarrollo y para que algunas de las mejores cabezas del pa??s se ocupasen de un asunto tan trascendental. Reflexionar sobre las ideas que expresaron a este respecto dos grandes figuras del setecientos: el padre Sarmiento y Campomanes, sin olvidarse del gran acontecimiento que supuso la creaci??n de la Biblioteca Real. Historia de la biblioteca de la Universidad de Oviedo, desde su fundaci??n en 1765 hasta su destrucci??n en 1934. Se analiza el desarrollo hist??rico del establecimiento bibliotecario ovetense, el contenido del fondo bibliogr??fico del mismo, la organizaci??n de las colecciones, la normativa de acceso a la biblioteca, el uso que hac??an los lectores de los libros y revistas en ella conservados, as?? como la vida econ??mica de la misma y los espacios que ocupaba en el edificio universitario. Fuentes manuscritas, fuentes impresas y bibliograf??a. La biblioteca de la Universidad de Oviedo naci?? en la segunda mitad del S. XVIII como una obra p??a, eregida con el dinero legado por el brigadier Sol??s, gracias al entusiasmo de Campomanes. Era gobernada por un patronato del cual el rector era solamente uno de sus miembros. A finales del S. XVIII se hab??a convertido en uno de los centros bibliogr??ficos m??s destacados de Espa??a. Esta etapa se ve interrumpida por la invasi??n francesa de 1808, tras la cual se inicia una etapa de acusada decadencia. A partir de 1926 pasa a depender del Ministerio de Fomento. Los profesores y alumnos de la Universidad, pero tambi??n los de la Escuela de Magisterio y los del Instituto de Segunda Ense??anza, eran los principales usuarios de la biblioteca. Consultaban mayoritariamente libros de texto y otros de apoyo a la ense??anza en las salas de la biblioteca, pues ni a??n cuando el reglamento de 1901 autoriz?? el pr??stamo de libros, este sistema de lectura lleg?? a ser implantado en Oviedo. La consulta frecuente de libros de texto, de otras obras m??s especializadas y de revistas cient??ficas, era la nota m??s destacada de la biblioteca de la Facultad de Derecho. Los lectores no universitarios no frecuentaban mucho la biblioteca.. Se puede afirmar que desde 1770 hasta 1808 y desde el ??ltimo cuarto del siglo XIX hasta 1934, los libros y revistas de la biblioteca de la Universidad de Oviedo, de la biblioteca especial de la Facultad de Derecho y el fondo bibliogr??fico de la Facultad de Ciencias, fueron, como instrumento a favor de la ense??anza y la investigaci??n, un elemento de capital importancia al servicio de la comunidad universitaria ovetense.

The single principle of compositional data analysis, continuing fallacies, confusions and misunderstandings and some suggested remedies

In any discipline, where uncertainty and variability are present, it is important to have principles which are accepted as inviolate and which should therefore drive statistical modelling, statistical analysis of data and any inferences from such an analysis. Despite the fact that two such principles have existed over the last two decades and from these a sensible, meaningful methodology has been developed for the statistical analysis of compositional data, the application of inappropriate and/or meaningless methods persists in many areas of application. This paper identifies at least ten common fallacies and confusions in compositional data analysis with illustrative examples and provides readers with necessary, and hopefully sufficient, arguments to persuade the culprits why and how they should amend their ways

Mi agenda de mediación.

Esta publicación es un ejemplo excelente de contribución a la cultura de paz desde el ámbito educativo. Se trata de un material sólidamente fundamentado que, a la vez, destaca por su orientación volcada a la práctica, una verdadera invitación a ejercitar en la vida escolar la técnica de la mediación, estrategia utilísima para la resolución pacífica de conflictos. La cultura de paz está vinculada intrínsecamente a la prevención y, desde luego, a la solución de conflictos por medios no violentos. Es una cultura fundada en la tolerancia, la convivencia y la solidaridad cotidiana; es una cultura que respeta los derechos de todos y que se orienta esencialmente a prevenir la agresividad derivada de un conflicto mal afrontado. Se sabe que el conflicto es consustancial al ser humano, forma parte de la vida y, en sí mismo, no es algo que haya que considerar necesariamente negativo. Muchas veces, la existencia de conflictos deriva de la diversidad humana y de la legítima diferencia entre las personas. El único peligro está en adoptar la salida siempre fácil y mostrenca de la violencia. Por el contrario: intentar encontrar soluciones pacíficas para solventar diferencias es siempre el mejor método para hacer crecer al ser humano; en sabiduría, en creatividad, en imaginación... El aprendizaje de resolución pacífica de conflictos es, pues, una dimensión trascendental de la Educación para la Paz, teniendo en cuenta que si realmente es importante conocer las razones del conflicto, mucho más aún es disponer, inventar y movilizar mecanismos para que su regulación se haga por medios pacíficos. Y en esta órbita se inscribe la labor de mediación que discurre siempre por la senda de la negociación, del diálogo, de las soluciones pactadas. Por lo tanto, para vivir en un mundo pacífico no basta con desearlo, ni con hacer grandes proclamas o declaraciones, es imprescindible entrenarse para la paz, practicar las vías pacíficas hasta conseguir hacer de la nuestra una cultura de paz.

Don Jos?? P??rez Jim??nez (1887-1967)

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Hermenéutica jurídica de la competencia en Colombia : estudio de la Cláusula de Prohibición General del artículo 7 de la Ley 256 de 1996

La tesis tiene como objetivo central, desde un punto de vista crítico en el que se resalta la influencia de la política y del sistema económico en las decisiones judiciales, exponer la forma en que las autoridades judiciales y administrativas han interpretado las normas que regulan la competencia en Colombia, específicamente el caso del artículo 7 de la Ley 256 de 1996. Y preguntarse si dependiendo del método de interpretación que se acoge al momento de fallar se busca reforzar o no el modelo económico liberal, en especial la adopción de los argumentos que sustentan la decisión.

Biocombustibles : una argumentación en construcción

Los biocombustibles o la materia orgánica del aserradero, la agricultura y los residuos transformados por un proceso químico en una fuente de energía, son ampliamente estudiados tras la década de los 70. Hoy son un tema de interés mundial guiado por los argumentos a favor y en contra de su producción y consumo.

Els Naturals i el rei natural en la Catalunya de la Guerra dels Segadors: a propòsit d´un sermó de Gaspar Sala (1641)

La guerra dels Segadors (1640-1652/59) va ser també una guerra d'idees o arguments polítics. A diferència, però, d'altres conflictes anteriors (com ara l'anomenada guerra civil catalana de mitjan segle xv), aquests arguments antagònics conegueren (al Principat i fins i tot mes enllà) una difusió sense precedents; sobretot pel fet que s'expressaren tot sovint per la via impresa

Aula oberta

Ressenya sobre la conferència “Els arguments universals al segle XXI” que va pronunciar Jordi Balló a la Facultat de Lletres en motiu de la cloenda de l'assignatura sobre teoria literària impartida pel professor Xavier Pla

Lecture 4 - Methods and Stuff

Banking Parameters and arguments Passing Objects Primitives Returning Getters and Setters