Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Why Does Aggregate Employment Fluctuate

Business cycles appear to reflect predominantly the effects of changes in aggregate demand for output on real variables such as aggregate employment. The measurement of the magnitude and timing of these effects is not a trivial problem. However, recent work, for example, by Robert Hall and by Robert King, supports the impression that the response of aggregate employment to aggregate demand is prompt and large, apparently peaking within a few months of the disturbance at a level equalling or exceeding the value of the disturbance, but also temporary, giving way over time to adjustments in wages and prices. These observations suggest that cyclical fluctuations in aggregate employment are not symptoms of the familiar nonneutralities that arise in analyzing the effects of changes in the stock of money or its velocity of circulation in a Walrasian general equilibrium context. Rather, the characteristics of the relation between aggregate demand and aggregate employment suggest that the actual economy differs in significant respects from the imaginary Walrasian economy, in which exchange takes place only under market-clearing conditions that emerge from a tatonnement process conducted with all agents in possession of complete information about wages and prices. This conclusion that the Walrasian paradigm does not do justice to the real world does not seem controversial. However, research in macroeconomics has witnessed persistent disagreement about the usefulness of specific non-Walrasian paradigms for modelling the determination of aggregate employment. This disagreement reflects basic differences in perceptions of the essential characteristics of the actual economy that are responsible for the non-Walrasian behavior of aggregate employment. The discussion that follows evaluates the current state of this controversy, focusing on recent disenchantment with the popular nonmarket-clearing approach and, more positively, on the prospect that a resolution of this paradigm conflict is presently at hand. As explained below, this impending settlement involves recognition that incomplete information is the critical factor in the generation of non-Walrasian fluctuations in employment, together with explicit allowance for the implications of implicit contractual arrangements for efficient shifting and pooling of risk in labor and product markets. The present discussion is not concerned with the causes of fluctuations in aggregate demand or, in particular, with the relative importance of variations in the stock of money and its velocity of circulation. Rather, the focus is only on why such fluctuations in aggregate demand cause observed nonWalrasian fluctuations in aggregate employment, taking this causal link to be a matter of fact.
Developing a Conversational In-Car Dialog System

In recent years, an increasing number of new devices have found their way into the cars we drive. Speech-operated devices in particular provide a great service to drivers by minimizing distraction, so that they can keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road. Most current examples of such systems, however, rely on using restricted language and scripted dialog interactions. Speech interfaces in highly stressed settings with large information content call for more flexible dialog with robust, wide-coverage language understanding, and proper responses with right amount of information. We describe an initial effort at addressing flexible and rich dialog in a system with a number of features, such as full spoken language understanding, a multi-threaded dialog manager, dynamic update of information, and organized responses.
Valuation of travel time savings in WTP and preference space in the presence of taste and scale heterogeneity

A major concern with the derivation of willingness to pay (WTP) distributions from mixed logit models is the incidence of values over a range that are deemed 'behaviourally questionable', with respect to the sign and magnitude. Recent research in redefining the 'space' within which a choice model is estimated as WTP space, instead of preference-space, has offered encouraging evidence in reducing the range of behavioural implausibility. This paper develops models to compare the empirical evidence when a mixed logit model is estimated with unconstrained distributions on random parameters in WTP and preference space, taking into account scale and the correlation between the attributes. The findings suggest that the gap between the evidence in WTP and preference space narrows significantly when both scale and preference heterogeneity are identified. © 2011 LSE and the University of Bath
India's Evolving Political Settlement and the Challenge of Sustaining Development

India’s economic development was given a huge boost by the growth acceleration that began roughly in the 1980s. Coming at precisely the time when India’s planning institutions were coming apart, the coincidence was seen by many economists as a vindication of the benefits of liberalization. Greater market access and access to foreign technologies and capital markets did indeed have a role to play in sustaining three decades of high growth in India, but the drivers of the growth acceleration are more complex than a simple liberalization model suggests with significant implications for the policy challenges facing India today. This analysis uses the analytical framework of ‘political settlements’ (in Khan 2010a) to look at the interface between politics, economics and the enforcement of the institutional framework to look at the technology acquisition processes that have been driving growth.
Differences in Admitting Hospital Characteristics for Black and White Medicare Beneficiaries With Acute Myocardial Infarction

Background— Racial disparities in acute myocardial infarction treatment may be due to differences in admitting hospitals. Little is known about factors associated with hospital selection for black and white acute myocardial infarction patients. Methods and Results— We identified black and white Medicare beneficiaries with acute myocardial infarction in 63 hospital referral regions with at least 50 black admissions during 2005 (n=65 633). We calculated distance from patient home to hospital referral region hospitals using ZIP code centroids. We assessed hospital quality using a composite score made up of hospital risk-adjusted 30-day mortality and acute myocardial infarction performance measures. Hospitals with a score in the top 20% were categorized as high quality, and those in the lowest 20% as low quality. We used conditional multinomial logit models to examine differences in hospital selection for blacks and whites. On average, blacks lived closer to revascularization hospitals (mean, 3.8 versus 6.8 miles; P<0.001) and to high-quality hospitals (mean, 5.6 versus 9.7 miles; P<0.001). After distance was accounted for, blacks were relatively less likely (P<0.001) to be admitted to revascularization hospitals (risk ratio [RR], 0.87; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.80 to 0.95) and to high-quality hospitals (RR, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.801 to 0.95) but more likely (P<0.001) to be admitted to low-quality hospitals (RR, 1.17; 95% CI, 1.05 to 1.29). In analyses matched by home ZIP code, differences in admissions to revascularization (RR, 0.92; 95% CI, 0.80 to 1.05), high-quality (RR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.81 to 1.07), and low-quality (RR, 1.15; 95% CI, 0.94 to 1.35) hospitals were not significant. Conclusions— Differences in admissions to revascularization and high-quality hospitals may contribute to disparities in acute myocardial infarction care. These differences may be due in part to residential ZIP code characteristics.
The Theory of Industrial Organization

The Theory of Industrial Organization is the first primary text to treat the new industrial organization at the advanced-undergraduate and graduate level. Rigorously analytical and filled with exercises coded to indicate level of difficulty, it provides a unified and modern treatment of the field with accessible models that are simplified to highlight robust economic ideas while working at an intuitive level. To aid students at different levels, each chapter is divided into a main text and supplementary section containing more advanced material. Each chapter opens with elementary models and builds on this base to incorporate current research in a coherent synthesis. Tirole begins with a background discussion of the theory of the firm. In part I he develops the modern theory of monopoly, addressing single product and multi product pricing, static and intertemporal price discrimination, quality choice, reputation, and vertical restraints. In part II, Tirole takes up strategic interaction between firms, starting with a novel treatment of the Bertrand-Cournot interdependent pricing problem. He studies how capacity constraints, repeated interaction, product positioning, advertising, and asymmetric information affect competition or tacit collusion. He then develops topics having to do with long term competition, including barriers to entry, contestability, exit, and research and development. He concludes with a "game theory user's manual" and a section of review exercises.
Motivations for police blogging and how fear of being ‘outed’ can force a blogger to cease.

There is an expanding literature on the police use of storytelling, but very little has been written in a policing context in relation to the contemporary practice of blogging. Consequentially, this paper reports on an ongoing research project into the UK police use of blogging. In dealing with motivations for starting and stopping the authoring of blogs this article makes an incremental contribution to the literatures of blogging and of police storytelling by articulating reasons given by respondents as to why they stopped blogging. These include fear of being outed; fear of professional loss of face and collateral damage to careers. We argue that blogging has educational and therapeutic values and should be encouraged by the Service for these reasons. An agreed code of practice could reduce the climate of fear.
Adenylyl Cyclase Type 5 Contributes to Corticostriatal Plasticity and Striatum-Dependent Learning

Dopamine (DA)-dependent corticostriatal plasticity is thought to underlie incremental procedural learning. A primary effector of striatal DA signaling is cAMP, yet its role in corticostriatal plasticity and striatum-dependent learning remains unclear. Here, we show that genetic deletion of a striatum-enriched isoform of adenylyl cyclase, AC5 knock-out (AC5KO), impairs two forms of striatum-dependent learning and corticostriatal synaptic plasticity. AC5KO mice were severely impaired in acquisition of a response strategy in the cross maze, a striatum-dependent task requiring a correct body turn to find a goal arm. In addition, AC5KO mice were impaired in acquisition of a motor skill, as assessed by the accelerated rotarod. Slice electrophysiology revealed a deficit in corticostriatal long-term depression (LTD) after high-frequency stimulation of tissue from AC5KO mice. LTD was rescued by activation of either presynaptic cannabinoid type 1 (CB1) receptors or postsynaptic metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs), suggesting a postsynaptic role of AC5–cAMP, upstream of endocannabinoid release. In striatopallidal-projecting medium spiny neurons, DA D2 receptors are negatively coupled to cAMP production, and activation of these receptors is required for endocannabinoid release and corticostriatal LTD. Recordings from striatopallidal neurons indicated that this is mediated by AC5, because coactivation of D2 and mGluRs could induce LTD in wild-type but not in AC5KO neurons. To further examine the role of cAMP in corticostriatal plasticity, we elevated cAMP in striatal neurons of wild-type mice via the recording electrode. Under these conditions, corticostriatal LTD was eliminated. Together, these data suggest an AC5–cAMP–endocannabinoid–CB1 signaling pathway in corticostriatal plasticity and striatum-dependent learning.
Persistence in Intertrade Durations

This paper examines long-term dependence in times between trades on financial markets. The autocorrelation functions of several intertrade duration series show a slow, hyperbolic rate of decay typical for long memory processes. For example, a shock to times between trades of the Alcatel stock on the Paris Stock Exchange (SBF Paris Bourse) may persist in the transactions time for a long period of 1000 or 2000 ticks. With an average duration of 52 seconds between transactions this may amount to sixteen or thirty two hours in calendar time. This paper introduces a fractionally integrated autoregressive conditional duration (FIACD) model for intertrade duration series. It also examines transformed duration processes representing times between consecutive returns to states of null, positive or negative returns. This approach captures the relationship between the duration persistence and return dynamics. The times elapsed between returns to various states feature very similar autocorrelation patterns and do not possess the long memory property. The persistence in durations is also determined by the times spent within specific states of returns. The average visiting time is state dependent, features intraday variation and may be considered as an instantaneous measure of state persistence. The long memory patterns are examined in data on the Alcatel and IBM stocks traded on the SBF Paris Bourse and NYSE.
Functional methods for time series prediction: a nonparametric approach

The problem of prediction in time series using nonparametric functional techniques is considered. An extension of the local linear method to regression with functional explanatory variable is proposed. This forecasting method is compared with the functional Nadaraya–Watson method and with finite-dimensional nonparametric predictors for several real‐time series. Prediction intervals based on the bootstrap and conditional distribution estimation for those nonparametric methods are also compared. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Does a Least-Preferred Candidate Win a Seat? A Comparison of Three Electoral Systems

In this paper, the differences between two variations of proportional representation (PR), open-list PR and closed-list PR, are analyzed in terms of their ability to accurately reflect voter preference. The single nontransferable vote (SNTV) is also included in the comparison as a benchmark. We construct a model of voting equilibria with a candidate who is least preferred by voters in the sense that replacing the least-preferred candidate in the set of winners with any loser is Pareto improving, and our focus is on whether the least-preferred candidate wins under each electoral system. We demonstrate that the least-preferred candidate never wins under the SNTV, but can win under open-list PR, although this is less likely than winning under closed-list PR.
The future incidence of leprosy: a scenario analysis.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the impact of the current strategy for the elimination of leprosy on its incidence and to assess the consequences of failure to sustain this strategy. METHODS Scenarios for assessing the impact of the elimination strategy were implemented in a computer simulation program. The scenarios reflected the assumptions made regarding contagiousness, transmission and bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccination. The trend in case detection rate for the main countries in which leprosy was endemic during 1985-98 was fitted, and incidence up to 2020 was projected. FINDINGS Owing to the gradual shortening of delays in detection up to 1998, and because of the low relapse rate that occurs with multidrug treatment MDT, incidence is predicted to decrease beyond 2000 in all scenarios. The annual decline was a few per cent higher when favourable assumptions were made about protection and coverage of BCG vaccination. Overall, the predicted annual decline in incidences ranged from 2% to 12%. CONCLUSION The elimination strategy reduces transmission, but the decline may be slow. Relaxation of control after 2005 is unjustified given the uncertainty about the rate of decline and the adverse effects of longer delays in detection. A long-term strategy for leprosy control should be adopted.
Remote sensing of smoke, land, and clouds from the NASA ER‐2 during SAFARI 2000

[1] The NASA ER-2 aircraft was deployed to southern Africa between 13 August and 25 September 2000 as part of the Southern African Regional Science Initiative (SAFARI) 2000. This aircraft carried a sophisticated array of multispectral scanners, multiangle spectroradiometers, a monostatic lidar, a gas correlation radiometer, upward and downward spectral flux radiometers, and two metric mapping cameras. These observations were obtained over a 3200 × 2800 km region of savanna, woody savanna, open shrubland, and grassland ecosystems throughout southern Africa and were quite often coordinated with overflights by NASA's Terra and Landsat 7 satellites. The primary purpose of this high-altitude observing platform was to obtain independent observations of smoke, clouds, and land surfaces that could be used to check the validity of various remote sensing measurements derived by Earth-orbiting satellites. These include such things as the accuracy of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) cloud mask for distinguishing clouds and heavy aerosol from land and ocean surfaces and Terra analyses of cloud optical and microphysical properties, aerosol properties, leaf area index, vegetation index, fire occurrence, carbon monoxide, and surface radiation budget. In addition to coordination with Terra and Landsat 7 satellites, numerous flights were conducted over surface AERONET sites, flux towers in South Africa, Botswana, and Zambia, and in situ aircraft from the University of Washington, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. As a result of this experiment, the MODIS cloud mask was shown to distinguish clouds, cloud shadows, and fires over land ecosystems of southern Africa with a high degree of accuracy. In addition, data acquired from the ER-2 show the vertical distribution and stratification of aerosol layers over the subcontinent and make the first observations of a “blue spike” spectral emission signature associated with air heated by fire advecting over a cooler land surface.
A study of infectious intestinal disease in England: risk factors associated with group A rotavirus in children

Objective: To identify risk factors for infectious intestinal disease (IID) due to rotavirus group A in children aged under 16 years. Methods: Case-control study of cases of IID with rotavirus infection presenting to general practitioners (GPs) or occurring in community cohorts, and matched controls. Results: There were 139 matched pairs. In children under 16 years the following risk factors were significantly associated with rotavirus IID: living in rented council housing (adjusted OR=3·78, P=0·022), accommodation with more than five rooms (OR=0·72, P=0·002), contact with someone ill with IID (OR=3·45, P<0·001). Some foods were associated with decreased risk. In infants, bottle feeding with or without breast feeding was associated with increased risk (OR=9·06, P<0·05). Conclusions: Contact with persons with IID, living in rented council housing and accommodation with fewer rooms, were significant risk factors for sporadic rotavirus IID in children whereas breast feeding is protective in infants.
CAF-1-induced oligomerization of histones H3/H4 and mutually exclusive interactions with Asf1 guide H3/H4 transitions among histone chaperones and DNA

Anti-silencing function 1 (Asf1) and Chromatin Assembly Factor 1 (CAF-1) chaperone histones H3/H4 during the assembly of nucleosomes on newly replicated DNA. To understand the mechanism of histone H3/H4 transfer among Asf1, CAF-1 and DNA from a thermodynamic perspective, we developed and employed biophysical approaches using full-length proteins in the budding yeast system. We find that the C-terminal tail of Asf1 enhances the interaction of Asf1 with CAF-1. Surprisingly, although H3/H4 also enhances the interaction of Asf1 with the CAF-1 subunit Cac2, H3/H4 forms a tight complex with CAF-1 exclusive of Asf1, with an affinity weaker than Asf1–H3/H4 or H3/H4–DNA interactions. Unlike Asf1, monomeric CAF-1 binds to multiple H3/H4 dimers, which ultimately promotes the formation of (H3/H4)2 tetramers on DNA. Thus, transition of H3/H4 from the Asf1-associated dimer to the DNA-associated tetramer is promoted by CAF-1-induced H3/H4 oligomerization.
Monetary theory and policy

The money study group - a memoir, David Laidler, Bob Nobay and Michael Parkin modelling the demand for money, Keith Cuthbertson the determination of interest rates and asset prices, Christopher Green exchange rate economics, Ron MacDonald and Mark Taylor the money transmission mechanism, David Miles and Joe Wilcox the conduct of monetary policy, charles Goodhart modelling the monetary sector, Kent Matthews the international co-ordination of monetary policy, David Currie and Paul Levine.
Hyperammonemia in Urinary Tract Infections

Objectives The present study investigated the incidence of hyperammonemia in urinary tract infections and explored the utility of urinary obstruction relief and antimicrobial administration to improve hyperammonemia. Methods This was an observational study. Subjects were patients who were diagnosed with urinary tract infection and hospitalized between June 2008 and June 2009. We measured plasma ammonia levels on admission in patients who were clinically diagnosed with urinary tract infection and hospitalized. We assessed each patient's level of consciousness on admission using the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) and performed urine and blood cultures. We also assessed hearing prior to hospitalization using the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status (ECOG-PS). In cases with high ammonia levels on admission, plasma ammonia and GCS were measured 24 hours and 5–7 days later. Results Sixty-seven candidates were enrolled; of these, 60 cases (89.6%) with bacterial cell counts ≥104 CFU/mL were studied. Five cases (8.3%) presented with high plasma ammonia levels. Cases with hyperammonemia were significantly more likely to present with low GCS scores and urinary retention rate. All five cases received antimicrobial therapy with an indwelling bladder catheter to relieve urinary retention. The case 5 patient died shortly after admission due to complicated aspiration pneumonia; in the remaining cases, plasma ammonia levels were rapidly normalized and the level of consciousness improved. Conclusions The occurrence of hyperammonemia in urinary tract infections is not rare. The cause of hyperammonemia is urinary retention obstruction. Therefore, along with antimicrobial administration, relief of obstruction is important for the treatment of hyperammonemia caused by this mechanism.
Urban skylines from Schelling model

We propose a metapopulation version of the Schelling model where two kinds of agents relocate themselves, with unconstrained destination, if their local fitness is lower than a tolerance threshold. We show that, for small values of the latter, the population redistributes highly heterogeneously among the available places. The system thus stabilizes on these heterogeneous skylines after a long quasi-stationary transient period, during which the population remains in a well mixed phase. Varying the tolerance passing from large to small values, we identify three possible global regimes: microscopic clusters with local coexistence of both kinds of agents, macroscopic clusters with local coexistence (soft segregation), macroscopic clusters with local segregation but homogeneous densities (hard segregation). The model is studied numerically and complemented with an analytical study in the limit of extremely large node capacity.