cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
BumbleBee: A Refactoring Environment for Spreadsheet Formulas
Creators: name: Felienne Hermans
name: Dig, Danny
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: 80309 Software Engineering
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: Applied Computer Science

description: Spreadsheets are widely used in industry. It is estimated that end-user programmers outnumber regular programmers by a factor of 5. However, spreadsheets are error-prone: several reports exist of companies that have lost big sums of money due to spreadsheet errors. In previous work, spreadsheet smells have proven to be the cause of some of these errors. To that end, we have developed a tool that can apply refactorings to spreadsheet formulas, implementing our previous work on spreadsheet refactoring, which showed that spreadsheet formula smells are very common and that refactorings for them are widely applicable and that refactoring them with a tool is both quicker and less error-prone. Our new tool Bumblebee is able to execute refactorings originating from both these papers, by means of an extensible syntax, and can furthermore apply refactorings on entire groups of formulas, thus improving upon the existing tool RefBook. Finally, BumbleBee can also execute transformations other than refactorings.
Virtual Agents for Alcohol Use Counseling: Exploring LLM-Powered Motivational Interviewing
Creators: name: Steenstra, Ian
name: Nouraei, Farnaz
name: Arjmand, Mehdi
name: Bickmore, Timothy W.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC)
subject: Computation and Language (cs.CL)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: We introduce a novel application of large language models (LLMs) in developing a virtual counselor capable of conducting motivational interviewing (MI) for alcohol use counseling. Access to effective counseling remains limited, particularly for substance abuse, and virtual agents offer a promising solution by leveraging LLM capabilities to simulate nuanced communication techniques inherent in MI. Our approach combines prompt engineering and integration into a user-friendly virtual platform to facilitate realistic, empathetic interactions. We evaluate the effectiveness of our virtual agent through a series of studies focusing on replicating MI techniques and human counselor dialog. Initial findings suggest that our LLM-powered virtual agent matches human counselors' empathetic and adaptive conversational skills, presenting a significant step forward in virtual health counseling and providing insights into the design and implementation of LLM-based therapeutic interactions.
title: Animal Norms: An Investigation of Normativity in the Non-Human Social World
Creators: name: Lorini, Giuseppe
Publisher: name: Fachinformationsdienst für internationale und interdisziplinäre Rechtsforschung
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: normativity
subject: animal norms
subject: nomic capacity
subject: nomic animal
subject: ethology of normativity
subject: legal ethology
subject: naïve normativity
subject: 340

description: A human being is not only a social and teleological animal, she/he is also a nomic animal, a creature that can act in light of rules. Starting from this new image of humankind, the author extends the investigation of normativity to other members of the animal kingdom, posing the question of whether other nomic animals exist outside the human species. Generally, the consensus tends toward the idea that non-human animals are incapable of acting in light of rules, as if this capacity were a specific characteristic of humanity excluded to all other species. The author instead assembles three impactful answers that counter this consensus, posited respectively by a legal expert, an ethologist, and a philosopher, responses that may pave the way for a new field of research: the ethology of normativity . In conclusion, the author points out how these new inquiries advance novel ideas of normativity that deserve investigating further, such as a “normativity without language,” and a “normativity without norms.”
description: Law, Culture and the Humanities, vol. 2022, no. 18, p. 652
Public Investment, Industrial Policy and U.S. Economic Renewal
Creators: name: Pollin, Robert
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2009

description: The U.S. economy faces enormous questions and challenges as it attempts to recover from the col-lapse of 2008-09. Some of the most pressing questions are a series of longer-term, structural chal-lenges: Can we establish a growth engine driven by something other than financial bubbles? Can we renew the automobile industry and, more generally, reestablish a healthy manufacturing sector? Can we accomplish these various tasks while also rebuilding the economy on a new foundation of clean energy as opposed to fossil fuel energy sources? Addressing these longer-term challenges is the over-arching theme of this paper.
Following an introductory discussion, in Section 2 we consider the overall evidence on the need for public investment in the traditional areas of transportation, energy, and water management. We then address the issue of financial crowding out. To do this, we examine evidence on how much of the U.S. economy’s financial resources have been flowing into productive private investments over time, as opposed to financial speculation. In Section 3, we then examine the U.S. ad hoc industrial policy, as it has been practiced both at the level of general manufacturing policies, such as with the auto bailouts, and in terms of technology incubation through the Pentagon. We consider ways of channel-ing these policy tools into supporting a strong technological base on a sustained basis. In Section 4, we bring together our discussions on public investment and industrial policies to sketch a policy ap-proach for supporting the revival of the U.S manufacturing sector, including the U.S. auto industry. In particular, we focus on the prospects for investments in public transportation: —to create an ex-panding market for U.S. automakers who are willing to convert part of their production lines to manufacturing buses and trains; to lower the costs of transportation for lower-income households; and to help advance the construction of a clean-energy economy in the United States.
QueueFlower: Orchestrating Microservice Workflows via Dynamic Queue Balancing
Creators: name: Anonymous, Anonymous
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 460601
subject: Cloud computing
classificationCode: 490304
subject: Optimisation

description: Source code for "QueueFlower: Orchestrating Microservice Workflows via Dynamic Queue Balancing".Refer to the `readme.md` in `QueueFlower.tar.gz` to setup the environment and run the code.
BumbleBee: A Transformation Environment for Spreadsheet Formulas
Creators: name: Felienne Hermans
name: Dig, Danny
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: 80309 Software Engineering
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: Applied Computer Science

description: Spreadsheets are widely used in industry. It is estimated that end-user programmers outnumber regular programmers by a factor of 5. However, spreadsheets are error-prone: several reports exist of companies which have lost money because of spreadsheet errors. We assert that a contributing
factor to these problems is the di culty of consistent editing of spreadsheet formulas.
In this paper, we observe the occurrence of copy-equivalent regions in spreadsheets, non-connected regions with simi-lar formulas within one spreadsheet. These regions occur frequently in practice. Therefore, we design a strategy to
consistently transform them, by presenting a grammar with which formula transformations can be described. We implemented these transformations in our tool BumbleBee, which is an Excel add-in that consistently applies transformations to spreadsheet formulas.
To evaluate the usefulness of our approach, we perform
an evaluation that shows that 1) our transformation tool is
necessary, because a vast majority of spreadsheets with for-mulas (over 70%) contain similar formulas in non-connected
regions, 2) the BumbleBee grammar is expressive, as it can
be use to express all refactorings in previous work on spread-sheet formula refactoring, as well as all migrations to update
formulas to Excel 2010, and 3) that spreadsheet users per-form changes to spreadsheet formulas more e cient using
BumbleBee.
The Potential Revenue from Financial Transactions Taxes
Creators: name: Baker, Dean
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2009

description: The economic crisis of the last two years has led to serious concerns about the sharp growth in the federal government’s fiscal deficit as well as the government’s overall debt burden as a share of total U.S. GDP. Many analysts also believe that an excessive share of the economy’s resources is being consumed by the financial sector. A financial transactions or trading tax is a policy tool that can address both issues: raising a substantial amount of revenue and reducing the size of financial trading in the U.S. economy relative to the economy’s level of productive activity. This paper calculates the revenue potential from a set of financial trading taxes. It updates an earlier set of calculations, using a similar methodology. The rationale for the tax rates selected is explained more fully in that paper .
A Safety Valve for Emissions Trading
Creators: name: Stranlund, John K.
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2009

description: This paper considers the optimal design of an emissions trading program that includes a safety valve tax that allows pollution sources to escape the emissions cap imposed by the aggregate supply of emissions permits. I demonstrate that an optimal hybrid emissions trading/emissions tax policy involves a permit supply that is strictly less than under a pure emissions trading scheme and a safety valve tax that exceeds the optimal pure emissions tax as long as expected marginal damage is an increasing function. While the expected level of emissions under a hybrid policy may be more or less than under pure emissions trading or a pure emissions tax, under the assumption that uncertainty about aggregate marginal abatement costs is symmetric the most likely outcome is that emissions will turn out to be less under the hybrid. Finally, a steeper expected marginal damage function calls for higher permit supply and safety valve, which reduces expected aggregate emissions and the probability that the safety valve will be employed.
Comparing the Effectiveness of Regulation and Pro-Social Emotions to Enhance Cooperation: Experimental Evidence from Fishing Communities in Colombia
Creators: name: Lopez, Maria Claudia
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2009

description: This paper presents the results from a series of framed field experiments conducted in fishing communities off the Caribbean coast of Colombia. The goal is to investigate the relative effectiveness of exogenous regulatory pressure and pro-social emotions in promoting cooperative behavior in a public goods context. The random public revelation of an individual’s contribution and its consequences for the rest of the group leads to significantly higher public good contributions and social welfare than regulatory pressure, even under regulations that are designed to motivate fully efficient contributions.
Dynamics of Gender Bias within Computer Science
Creators: name: Misa, Thomas J.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Computers and Society (cs.CY)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: A new dataset (N = 7,456) analyzes women's research authorship in the Association for Computing Machinery's founding 13 Special Interest Groups or SIGs, a proxy for computer science. ACM SIGs expanded during 1970-2000; each experienced increasing women's authorship. But diversity abounds. Several SIGs had fewer than 10% women authors while SIGUCCS (university computing centers) exceeded 40%. Three SIGs experienced accelerating growth in women's authorship; most, including a composite ACM, had decelerating growth. This research may encourage reform efforts, often focusing on general education or workforce factors (across the entity of "computer science"), to examine under-studied dynamics within computer science that shaped changes in women's participation.
description: 27 pages, 5 figures, 1 table
Securing the Border from Invasives: Robust Inspections Under Severe Uncertainty
Creators: name: Moffitt, L. Joe
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2009

description: Two important features of agricultural quarantine inspections of shipping containers for invasive species at U.S. ports of entry are the general absence of economic considerations and the severe uncertainty that surrounds invasive species introductions. In this article, we propose and illustrate a method for determining an inspection monitoring protocol that addresses both issues. An inspection monitoring protocol is developed that is robust in maximizing the set of uncertain outcomes over which an economic performance criterion is achieved. The framework is applied to derive an alternative to Agricultural Quarantine Inspection (AQI) for shipments of fruits and vegetables as currently practiced at ports of entry in the United States.
BumbleBee: \toolnospace: A Refactoring Environment for Spreadsheet Formulas
Creators: name: Felienne Hermans
name: Dig, Danny
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2014
Subjects: subject: 80309 Software Engineering
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: Applied Computer Science

description: Spreadsheets are widely used in industry. It is estimated that end-user programmers outnumber regular programmers by a factor of 5. However, spreadsheets are error-prone: several reports exist of companies that have lost big sums of money due to spreadsheet errors. In previous work, spreadsheet smells have proven to be the cause of some of these errors. To that end, we have developed a tool that can apply refactorings to spreadsheet formulas, implementing our previous work on spreadsheet refactoring, which showed that spreadsheet formula smells are very common and that refactorings for them are widely applicable and that refactoring them with a tool is both quicker and less error-prone. Our new tool Bumblebee is able to execute refactorings originating from both these papers, by means of an extensible syntax, and can furthermore apply refactorings on entire groups of formulas, thus improving upon the existing tool RefBook. Finally, BumbleBee can also execute transformations other than refactorings.
Partial Implementation of COOL: Economic Effects in the U.S. Seafood Industry
Creators: name: Joseph, Siny
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2009

description: Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (MCOOL) was implemented on seafood in the United
States on April 4, 2005. MCOOL exempts the foodservice sector and excludes processed
seafood from labeling. This paper contributes to understanding the economics of the MCOOL
law for seafood by showing that current partial implementation may have unintended
consequences on the domestic supply chain. While labeling satisfies the market demand for
information provision in one market, exemptions in the other market may create incentives for
the diversion of imports, which are assumed to be lower in quality than domestic seafood, to the
non-labeled sector. Analyzing alternate scenarios such as voluntary labeling shows that total
welfare may be greatest under this scenario compared with partial MCOOL. Voluntary origin
labeling of seafood by some U.S. retailers indicates there is no compelling market failure
argument warranting partial MCOOL implementation. This work is therefore a step towards
analyzing the effect of partial MCOOL policy in the seafood industry taking into consideration
the nature of the industry.
BumbleBee: A Refactoring Environment for Spreadsheet Formulas
Creators: name: Felienne Hermans
name: Dig, Danny
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2014
Subjects: subject: 80309 Software Engineering
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: Applied Computer Science

description: Spreadsheets are widely used in industry. It is estimated that end-user programmers outnumber regular programmers by a factor of 5. However, spreadsheets are error-prone: several reports exist of companies that have lost big sums of money due to spreadsheet errors. In previous work, spreadsheet smells have proven to be the cause of some of these errors. To that end, we have developed a tool that can apply refactorings to spreadsheet formulas, implementing our previous work on spreadsheet refactoring, which showed that spreadsheet formula smells are very common and that refactorings for them are widely applicable and that refactoring them with a tool is both quicker and less error-prone. Our new tool Bumblebee is able to execute refactorings originating from both these papers, by means of an extensible syntax, and can furthermore apply refactorings on entire groups of formulas, thus improving upon the existing tool RefBook. Finally, BumbleBee can also execute transformations other than refactorings.
Capital Controls and 21st Century Financial Crises: Evidence from Colombia and Thailand
Creators: name: Coelho, Bruno
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2010

description: In the run up to the financial crisis of 2007-2009 many developing nations fell victim to massive inflows of capital, capital that their financial systems found difficult to absorb. One of a number of policy options to respond to such inflows is unremunerated reserve requirements (URR). Two countries, Colombia and Thailand, deployed URR in the second half of the decade. This paper analyses the extent to which those URRs were successful in reducing the overall level and composition of capital inflows, reducing exchange rate appreciation and volatility, stemming asset bubbles, and granting more independence for monetary policy. We find that URRs were modestly successful in Colombia and Thailand, though Thailand was less of a success than Colombia. In Colombia the controls were able to reduce the overall volume of inflows and stem asset bubbles. In Thailand, the URR did reduce the overall volume of flows, and the announcement of the URR caused a sharp drop in asset prices. However, in both cases the controls were linked to exchange rate volatility and in Thailand asset prices recovered their upward trend the day after the announcement. The results in this paper demonstrate that on the there is still a role for capital controls in the 21st century, but such controls should be more sophisticated than in years past.
Falling into the Liquidity Trap: Notes on the Global Economic Crisis
Creators: name: Michl, Thomas R.
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2010

description: This paper examines the underlying structural imbalances leading up to the
Great Recession of 2007-2009 from the vantage point of Hyman Minsky’s
theory of the liquidity trap. The traditional approach to the liquidity trap
focuses on the zero interest rate boundary while Minsky’s theory focuses on
three conditions that make investment spending unresponsive to monetary
policy: low underlying ex post profitability of capital, weak expectations
about future profitability, and uncertainty about prospective yields. The paper
structures an empirical investigation of profitability and accumulation
around these three factors. The Great Recession was preceded by an unbalanced
recovery in which residential investment led demand while business
fixed investment was structurally weak, given the strong ex post profitability
of capital and the low interest rate environment. It is hypothesized that
increased import penetration and concerns about the sustainability of profitability
eroded both expectations and confidence about prospective yields.
The Great Recession appears in this and several other dimensions to be a
crisis of disproportionality.
CO2 evasion and carbon budget of Lake Torneträsk, a large, subarctic lake in northern Sweden (BSc Thesis)
Creators: name: Rocher-Ros, Gerard
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: Environmental Science
subject: Limnology
subject: Hydrology
subject: Ecology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences

description: ABSTRACT Freshwater systems play an important role in the carbon cycle, but there are still large uncertainties, which must be solved in order to make climate change predictions more accurate. This study quantifies the annual flux of CO2 in lake Torneträsk, a large (345 km2) subarctic lake in northern Sweden, an area of a special interest as global warming is expected to be more severe in polar regions. Torneträsk catchment has been very well studied for decades, but until now not a single study focused on the main component of the landscape, lake Torneträsk. The results of this study are relevant in the carbon budget of the region, as the CO2 evasion from lake Torneträsk to the atmosphere is higher than previously considered. Due to its large surface, the amount of carbon released comprises 25% of the total amount of carbon (C) emitted from all lakes in the catchment (3 231 lakes). Temporal high resolution measurements of CO2 in lake surface water also show interesting daily and seasonal patterns, possibly related to water temperature and photosynthetic activity. Furthermore, I elaborate a first attempt of the lake carbon budget, the evasion of CO2 to the atmosphere comprises 16% of C entered from the catchment. The amount of C buried in the sediment is around 14%, and the rest flows downstream, 50% as dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and 20% as dissolved organic carbon (DOC). Torneträsk catchment is a unique environment in order to understand the biogeochemical cycles at a landscape scale, due to its large amount of studies carried out and its situation in a sensible area as the subarctic region. This study contributes unveiling the role of the most important lake in the region, in order to develop an accurate carbon budget for the whole catchment.
Property Rights Reform and Development: A Critique of the Cross-national Regression Literature
Creators: name: Martínez, Osvaldo Gómez
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2010

description: The legal protection of property rights is increasingly viewed as a crucial, if not the crucial, condition for economic growth and pro-poor development. Empirical support is generally based on cross-national correlations between measures of secure property rights and good development outcomes in the long-run. However, whether these associations hold in the short- and medium-run has, to our knowledge, not been studied. In this paper, we evaluate the relationship between the protection of property rights and growth using three property rights indices from the Heritage Foundation, Fraser Institute and World Economic Forum covering the experience of 162 countries between 1995 and 2005. While we find a strong correlation between the level of country property rights protections scores and economic growth, when we evaluate the change and improvement in country ranking scores of property rights, this positive association disappears. These findings could be interpreted as indicating either that there is i) no causal relationship between property rights and growth (at least in the short-run), or that ii) the property rights indices have poor validity.
title: Nichtigkeit privatrechtlicher Zusatzverträge verbeamteter Hochschullehrer in der baden-württembergischen Universitätsmedizin?
Creators: name: Wertheimer, Frank
Publisher: name: Fachinformationsdienst für internationale und interdisziplinäre Rechtsforschung
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Deutschland
subject: 344

description: Ordnung der Wissenschaft, no. 4, p. 267
title: Gefesselt vom Kosmos der Universität: Ein fiktiver Dialog mit Peter-André Alt über sein Buch 'Exzellent!? Zur Lage der deutschen Universität'
Creators: name: :None
Publisher: name: Fachinformationsdienst für internationale und interdisziplinäre Rechtsforschung
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Deutschland
subject: 344

description: Ordnung der Wissenschaft, no. 4, p. 225
title: Befangenheit im Berufungsverfahren
Creators: name: Neukirchen, Mathias
name: Emmrich, Etienne
name: Büggeln, Hendrik
Publisher: name: Fachinformationsdienst für internationale und interdisziplinäre Rechtsforschung
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Deutschland
subject: 344

description: Ordnung der Wissenschaft, no. 4, p. 235
title: Der fakultative Aufsichtsrat einer zu Forschungszwecken gegründeten GmbH
Creators: name: Gergen, Thomas
Publisher: name: Fachinformationsdienst für internationale und interdisziplinäre Rechtsforschung
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Deutschland
subject: 344

description: Ordnung der Wissenschaft, no. 4, p. 255
title: Die Behandlung eines Täuschungsverdachts in Zeiten von Open-book-Prüfungen: Eine Analyse des Beschlusses des Sächsischen Oberverwaltungsgerichts vom 16. Februar 2022
Creators: name: Morgenroth, Carsten
Publisher: name: Fachinformationsdienst für internationale und interdisziplinäre Rechtsforschung
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Deutschland
subject: 344

description: Ordnung der Wissenschaft, no. 4, p. 273
Renormalization of the valley Hall conductivity due to interparticle interaction
Creators: name: Eliseev, D. S.
name: Parafilo, A. V.
name: Kovalev, V. M.
name: Kibis, O. V.
name: Savenko, I. G.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We develop a theory of Coulomb interaction-mediated contribution to valley Hall effect (VHE) in two-dimensional non-centrosymmetric gapped Dirac materials. We assume that the bare valley Hall current occurs in the system due to the presence of disorder caused by impurities and is determined by the valley-selective anisotropic skew scattering. Applying the Boltzmann transport equation to describe the electron and hole transport in the material, we calculate the renormalized VHE conductivity due to electron-electron and electron-hole scattering processes, considering two regimes: (i) an $n$-doped monolayer hosting a degenerate electron gas, and (ii) an intrinsic semiconductor with the Boltzmann statistics of electron and hole gases. In both regimes, the dominant mechanism of interparticle scattering is due to particles residing in different valleys. Moreover, in case (ii), in addition to direct scattering, electron-hole annihilation starts to play a role with the increase in temperature. It might even become the dominant mechanism of the Coulomb interaction-mediated VHE.
description: Published version
title: Zum Qualifizierungserfordernis nach § 2 Abs. 1 WissZeitVG: Anmerkung zu BAG, Urteil vom 2.02.2022 - 7 AZR 573/20
Creators: name: Stalberg, Johannes
Publisher: name: Fachinformationsdienst für internationale und interdisziplinäre Rechtsforschung
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Deutschland
subject: 344

description: Ordnung der Wissenschaft, no. 4, p. 277
title: Gibt es eine angemessene Aufsicht für Wissenschaftseinrichtungen?: Bericht über die Tagung des Vereins zur Förderung des deutschen und internationalen Wissenschaftsrechts e.V. am 5./6.5.2022
Creators: name: Haake, Karoline
Publisher: name: Fachinformationsdienst für internationale und interdisziplinäre Rechtsforschung
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Deutschland
subject: 344

description: Ordnung der Wissenschaft, no. 4, p. 281
title: What was the theme of this year’s Summer Academy, “Using History in Law”, all about?
Creators: name: Woods, Alexandra
Publisher: name: Fachinformationsdienst für internationale und interdisziplinäre Rechtsforschung
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: concept of law, using history in law, summer academy, South African legal history
subject: 340

description: This year’s Summer Academy for Legal History took place from 4 – 15 July 2022 and was oriented around the theme “Using History in Law”. The participants dealt with this topic from various perspectives and in a number of sessions throughout the two weeks. So, what was it all about?
description: Legal History Insights
Exploring abstract, virtual, override, and sealed to Implement Polymorphism in Csharp
Creators: name: Filho, Nagib
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: polymorphism
C#
abstract
virtual
override
sealed

description: The article discusses the concept of polymorphism in C#, a pillar of object-oriented programming, allowing methods with the same name to behave differently in different classes. It explores the use of the keywords `abstract`, `virtual`, `override`, and `sealed` to implement polymorphism, illustrating with practical examples.
title: What Have the Recent UN Attempts to Regulate Lethal Autonomous Weapons Brought?
Creators: name: Macedo, Gustavo
name: Fernandes Barbosa, Lutiana Valadares
Publisher: name: Fachinformationsdienst für internationale und interdisziplinäre Rechtsforschung
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: 341

description: Völkerrechtsblog
Economic Inequality and Environmental Quality: Evidence of Pollution Shifting in Russia
Creators: name: Vornovytskyy., Marina S.
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2010

description: This paper utilizes the Russian Statistical Agency's data on air pollution in Russia to analyze the impact of economic inequalities among Russia's regions on environmental degradation. Controlling for the absolute level of income, we find that regions with lower incomes relative to those of neighboring regions have more uncontrolled air pollution. Differences in uncontrolled pollution do not appear to be attributable to differences in spending on pollution control, suggesting that facility siting provides the dominant explanation. In addition, we find that greater within-region inequalities in income and in the provision of public goods are associated with greater uncontrolled air pollution.
Is There a Case for Formal Inflation Targeting in Sub-Saharan Africa?
Creators: name: Heintz, James
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2010

description: This paper examines the question of whether inflation targeting monetary policy is an
appropriate framework for sub-Saharan African countries. The paper presents an
overview of inflation targeting, reviews the justification for the regime, and summarizes
some major critiques. Monetary policy responses to inflation depend on the source of
inflationary pressures. Therefore, the determinants of inflation in African countries are
investigated, using dynamic panel data, and the implications for inflation targeting are
discussed. These issues are examined in greater detail for the two African countries
which have formally adopted inflation targeting, South Africa and Ghana. The analysis is
placed in the context of the global economic crisis. The paper concludes with a
discussion of alternative approaches to monetary policies and the institutional constraints
that would need to be addressed to allow central banks to play a stronger developmental
role in sub-Saharan African countries.
Generating Jobs through State Employer Tax Credits: Is there a Better Way?
Creators: name: Thompson, Jeff
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2010

description: The Governors of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and several other states have recently proposed employer tax credits as measures to fight high unemployment in their states. Such policies are also being consid-ered at the federal level. The authors find that such policies, in fact, do little to increase aggregate de-mand, and instead only modestly reduce the after-tax cost of labor in an economy with high unemployment, falling wages, and weak demand They suggest a more effective approach to creating jobs in the states: increasing spending in labor-intensive sectors and programs that are matched by federal funds, such as Medicaid. These expenditures would be particularly effective if they were financed through temporary high-income tax increases.
The International Circuit of Key Currencies and the Global Crisis: Is there Scope for Reform?
Creators: name: Costabile, Lilia
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2010

description: The causes of the global crisis are still hotly debated among economists, and for a good reason: the remedy crucially depends upon the diagnosis, and we still need a recipe to exit this crisis, which, in spite of early optimism, is still plaguing the world and Europe, with its sequel of financial disorder, sovereign risks and, above all, mass unemployment . Even more importantly, we need to devise methods by which global crises may be avoided in the future. This paper contributes to this debate by exploring a possible causal link running from our international monetary system to global imbalances, and from these to the crisis.
title: Zwischen normativem Anspruch und prozessualer Wirklichkeit: Teil I
Creators: name: Gruber, Franziska
name: Bülte, Nicolai
name: Vasovic, Stefan
Publisher: name: Fachinformationsdienst für internationale und interdisziplinäre Rechtsforschung
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: 341

description: Völkerrechtsblog
Impurity contribution to ultraviolet absorption of saturated fatty acids
Creators: name: Saito, Shota
name: Numadate, Naoki
name: Teraoka, Hidemasa
name: Enami, Shinichi
name: Kobayashi, Hirokazu
name: Hama, Tetsuya
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Saturated fatty acids are abundant organic compounds in oceans and sea sprays. Their photochemical reactions induced by solar radiation have recently been discovered as an abiotic source of volatile organic compounds, which serve as precursors of secondary organic aerosols. However, photoabsorption of wavelengths longer than 250 nm in liquid saturated fatty acids remains unexplained, despite being first reported in 1931. Here we demonstrate that the previously reported absorption of wavelengths longer than 250 nm by liquid nonanoic acid [CH3(CH2)7COOH)] originates from traces of impurities (0.1% at most) intrinsically contained in nonanoic acid reagents. Absorption cross sections of nonanoic acid newly obtained here indicate that the upper limit of its photolysis rate is three-to-five orders of magnitude smaller than those for atmospherically relevant carbonyl compounds.
The Troubling Economics and Politics of Paying Interest on Bank Reserves: A Critique of the Federal Reserve’s Exit Strategy
Creators: name: Palley, Thomas I.
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2010

description: The Federal Reserve has recently activated its newly acquired powers to pay interest on reserves of depository institutions. The Fed maintains its new policy increases economic efficiency and intends it to play a lead role in the exit from quantitative easing. This paper argues it is a bad policy that (1) has a deflationary bias; (2) is costly to taxpayers and that cost will increase as normal conditions return; and (3) establishes institutional lock-in that obstructs desirable changes to regulatory policy. The paper recommends repealing the Fed’s power to pay interest on bank reserves. Second, the Fed should repeal regulation Q that prohibits payment of interest on demand deposits. Third, the Fed should immediately implement an alternative system of asset based reserve requirements (liquidity ratios) that will improve monetary control and can help exit quantitative easing at no cost to the public purse. Now is the optimal time for this change. Lastly, the paper argues the new policy of paying interest on reserves reveals the troubling political economy governing the actions of the Federal Reserve and policy recommendations of the economics profession.
title: Zwischen normativem Anspruch und prozessualer Wirklichkeit: Teil II
Creators: name: Gruber, Franziska
name: Bülte, Nicolai
name: Vasovic, Stefan
Publisher: name: Fachinformationsdienst für internationale und interdisziplinäre Rechtsforschung
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: 341

description: Völkerrechtsblog
The Effect of Public Health Expenditure on Infant Mortality: Evidence from a Panel of Indian States, 1983-84 to 2011-12
Creators: name: Barenberg, Andrew J.
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2015

description: 



Using a panel data set of Indian states between 1983–84 and 2011–12, this paper studies the impact of public health expenditure on the infant mortality rate (IMR), after controlling for other relevant covariates like per capita income, female literacy, and urbanization. We find that public expenditure on health care reduces IMR. Our baseline specification shows that an increase in public health expenditure by 1 percent of state-level GDP is associated with a reduction in the IMR by about 8 infant deaths per 1000 live births. We also find that female literacy and urbanization reduces the IMR.
Measuring Environmental Inequality
Creators: name: Boyce, James K.
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2015

description: 



This study presents alternative measures of environmental inequality in the 50 U.S. states for exposure to industrial air pollution. We examine three methodological issues. First, to what extent are environmental inequality measures sensitive to spatial scale and population weighting? Second, how do sensitivities to different segments of the overall distribution affect rankings by these measures? Third, how do vertical and horizontal (inter-group) inequality measures relate to each other? We find substantive differences in rankings by different measures and conclude that no single indicator is sufficient for addressing the entire range of equity concerns that are relevant to environmental policy; instead multiple measures are needed.
The Effects of Increasing the Minimum Wage on Prices: Analyzing the Incidence of Policy Design and Context
Creators: name: MacDonald, Daniel
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2016

description: 



We analyze the price pass-through effect of the minimum wage and use the results to provide insight into the competitive structure of low-wage labor markets. Using monthly price series, we find that the pass-through effect is entirely concentrated on the month that the minimum wage change goes into effect, and is much smaller than what the canonical literature has found. We then discuss why our results differ from that literature, noting the impact of series interpolation in generating most of the previous results. We then use the variation in the size of the minimum wage change to evaluate the competitive nature of low-wage labor markets. Finally, we exploit the rich variation in minimum wage policy of the last 10 to 15 years— including the rise of state- and city-level minimum wage changes and the increased use of indexation—to investigate how the extent of price pass-through varies by policy context. This paper contributes to the literature by clarifying our understanding of the dynamics and magnitude of the pass-through effect and enriching the discussion of how different policies may impact that effect.
Financing for Gender Equality in the Context of SDGs
Creators: name: Seguino, Stephanie
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2016

description: 



This paper identifies a series of macro-level tools to create a supportive environment and the resources to promote SDGs related to gender equality. A key argument is that financing for gender equality can be self-sustaining because of the feedback effects from gender equality to economy-wide well-being. Among the tools related to targeted government spending are demand-stimulating macroeconomic policies to promote full employment and public investment. Two types of public investment are explored. Physical infrastructure investment, such as spending on clean water, sanitation, and health clinics, can reduce women’s unpaid care burden. Social infrastructure investment, defined as investment in people’s capabilities, refers to the fundamental social, intellectual, and emotional skills and health of individuals— or level of human development—a country relies on for its economy to function. Both types have a public goods quality in that they generate positive spillover effects on economy-wide productivity. Financing for gender equality in these areas is more properly seen as an investment that yields an income stream in the future, as a result of the beneficial development and growth effects. As a result, both physical and social infrastructure spending have the ability to create fiscal space. Additional sources of financing for gender equality are discussed, including taxation of the financial sector.


Monetary policy can also be harnessed to promote gender equality. A much wider range of policy tools are available to central banks than are now used. These include capital management techniques, asset-based reserve requirements, and loan guarantees in order to overcome women’s lack of legal title to assets. The review of monetary policy tools here also suggests that emphasis on low inflation via the policy interest rate is problematic on two counts. First, higher interest rates dampen aggregate demand and thus employment. Second, the policy interest rate failures to address the underlying causes of inflationary pressures in many countries. Those pressures are often best dealt with through targeted fiscal policies in education, health care, and investment in strategic sectors, such as agriculture and infrastructure.


Government and central banks cannot adequately pursue these goals without changing their composition. The lens for identifying appropriate public investment projects and credit targets needs to be gendered and ethnically representative, underscoring the important role of affirmative action in private and public decision-making bodies.
Distributional Issues in Climate Policy: Air Quality Co-benefits and Carbon Rent
Creators: name: Boyce, James K.
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2016

description: 



The case for climate policy typically is made on grounds of inter-generational equity, with a presumed tradeoff between the environmental interests of future generations and the economic interests of the present generation. This framing of the problem neglects the scope for designing policies that not only mitigate climate change but also yield net benefits for all or most people who are alive today. This chapter considers two avenues by which climate policy can bring substantial immediate gains to the present generation, via (i) air quality co-benefits from reduced use of fossil fuels; and (ii) recycling of rent created by carbon pricing. Both avenues pose important issues of equity within the present generation.
Assessing the Jobs-Environment Relationship with Matched Data from US EEOC and US EPA
Creators: name: Ash, Michael
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2016

description: 

Using matched facility-level data from the US EPA Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission EEO-1 database, we assess (1) the trade-off between jobs and environmental quality and (2) the extent to which the distribution of the benefits of employment in industrial production mirrors the distribution of the costs of exposure to hazardous byproducts of industrial activity in the dimension of race and ethnicity. We find no evidence that facilities that create higher pollution risk for surrounding communities provide more jobs in aggregate. The share of pollution risk accruing to ethnic or racial minority groups typically exceeds the share of employment and substantially exceeds the share of good jobs held by members of those groups.
Wheels within Wheels within Wheels: The Importance of Capital Inflows in the Origin of the Spanish Financial Crisis
Creators: name: Fernandez, Rafael
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2016

description: 



With the creation of the Euro, the Spanish economy established an exchange rate regime similar to that adopted by many emerging economies during the 1990s. At the same time, the Eurozone as a whole adopted a currency system with features similar to the U.S. currency regime. In emerging economies, as in the U.S. economy, the adoption of these models was accompanied by strong growth in capital inflows, as well as severe financial (mostly banking) and/or macroeconomic (mostly trade) imbalances. Several authors have linked capital inflows with imbalances as cause and effect. This work uses some of those arguments, along with statistical data on the characteristics and evolution of capital inflows registered by the Spanish economy, and by the Eurozone as a whole, in order to propose a causal link between post-Euro exchange rate regimes adopted in Spain, capital inflows, and the imbalances that preceded the financial crisis of 2008.
Do Minimum Wages Lead to Job Losses? Evidence from OECD Countries on Low-Skilled and Youth Employment
Creators: name: Sturn, Simon
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2016

description: 



This paper investigates the impact of minimum wages on low-skilled and female low-skilled employment, and reassesses their effect on youth employment. The sample consists of 19 OECD countries from 1997-2013 for low-skilled, and 1983-2013 for young workers. Several different estimation approaches are applied, such as two-way fixed effects, a data-driven approach (LASSO) to pick relevant covariates, an instrumental variable approach to address the potential endogeneity of the minimum wage variable, dynamic difference and system GMM, and a specification in first differences. I present three versions of these estimates, controlling for up to quadratic country- specific time trends. I further investigate long-run effects, institutional complementarities, and whether effects of minimum wages depend on the phase of the business cycle or the level of minimum wages. The findings consistently suggest that there is little evidence for substantial disemployment effects, neither for low-skilled, female low-skilled, nor young workers. The estimated employment elasticities are mostly small, and always statistically indistinguishable from zero. I finally assess why my results on youth employment differ from those of Neumark and Wascher (2004), and show that they overstate precision and that small changes in their specifications lead to minimum wage effects close to zero. I also confirm the absence of significant disemployment effects for a larger sample of 24 countries from 1970-2013.
Inequality and Growth in Neo-Kaleckian and Cambridge Growth Theory
Creators: name: Palley, Thomas I.
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2016

description: 



This paper examines the relationship between inequality and growth in the neo-Kaleckian and Cambridge growth models. The paper explores the channels whereby functional and personal income distribution impact growth. The growth – inequality relationship can be negative or positive, depending on the economy’s characteristics. Contrary to widespread claims, inequality per se does not impact growth. Instead, both growth and inequality are impacted by changes in the underlying forms and pattern of income payments. However, inequality is critical at the microeconomic level as it explains differences in household propensities to consume which are at the foundation of neo-Kaleckian and Cambridge growth theory.