The law of one price and the role of market structure

This paper examines the role of market structure on the persistence of price deviations from the LOP using monthly actual product prices of 47 items collected from three different types of markets in Istanbul over 1993:01-2008:12. After showing the importance of market structure on the distribution of relative prices, we implement threshold autoregressive models. We find significant differences in average threshold estimates across markets which we explain referring to differing menu costs in each market. Yet, we find no differences in average half-life estimates across markets. We argue that this is due to low search costs in Istanbul. Robustness checks verify our findings

Probabilistic facial feature extraction using joint distribution of location and texture information

In this work, we propose a method which can extract critical points on a face using both location and texture information. This new approach can automatically learn feature information from training data. It finds the best facial feature locations by maximizing the joint distribution of location and texture parameters. We first introduce an independence assumption. Then, we improve upon this model by assuming dependence of location parameters but independence of texture parameters.We model combined location parameters with a multivariate Gaussian for computational reasons. The texture parameters are modeled with a Gaussian mixture model. It is shown that the new method outperforms active appearance models for the same experimental setup

On the "group non-bossiness" property

We extend the concept of non-bossiness to groups of agents and say that a mechanism is group non-bossy if no group of agents can change the assignment of someone else while theirs being unaffected by misreporting their preferences. First, we show that they are not equivalent properties. We, then, prove that group strategy-proofness is sufficient for group non-bossiness. While this result implies that the top trading cycles mechanism is group non-bossy, it also provides a characterization of the market structures in which the deferred acceptance algorithm is group non-bossy

Nonlinear impact of inflation on relative price variability

Using a half-a-century long disaggregated price data for 22 food products collected from 19 cities, we show that the association between inflation and price variability is nonlinear with respect to changes in inflation rate. We obtain similar results for expected and unexpected inflation

Fictitious students creation incentives in school choice problems

We address the question of whether schools can manipulate the student-optimal stable mechanism by creating fictitious students in school choice problems. To this end, we introduce two different manipulation concepts, where one of them is stronger. We first demonstrate that the student-optimal stable mechanism is not even weakly fictitious student-proof under general priority structures. Then, we investigate the same question under acyclic priority structures. We prove that, while the student-optimal stable mechanism is not strongly fictitious student-proof even under the acyclicity condition, weak fictitious student-proofness is achieved under acyclicity. This paper, hence, shows a way to avoid the welfare detrimental fictitious students creation (in the weak sense) in terms of priority structures

(1+1)-Dirac bound states in one-dimension; position-dependent Fermi velocity and mass

We extend Panella and Roy's [13] work on one-dimensional heterostructure for massless Dirac particles with position-dependent (PD) velocity. We consider Dirac particles where both the mass and velocity are position-dependent. Bound states in the continuum (BIC)-like and discrete bound state solutions are reported. It is observed that BIC-like solutions are not only feasible for the ultra-relativistic (massless) Dirac particles but also for Dirac particles with PD-mass and PD-velocity that satisfy the condition m(x)v(x)v(x)=A, where A is constant. (1+1)-Dirac Poschl-Teller and harmonic oscillator models are also reported.Comment: 8 page