Independence Day for the “Old Lady? A Natural Experiment on the Implications of Central Bank Independence

Central bank independence is widely thought be a sine qua non of a credible commitment to price stability. The surprise decision by the UK government to grant operational independence to the Bank of England in 1997 affords us a natural experiment with which to gauge the impact on the yield curve from the adoption of central bank independence. We document the extent to which the decision to grant independence was ‘news?and illustrate that the reduction in medium and long term nominal interest rates was some 50 basis points, which we show to be consistent with a sharp increase in policymaker’s aversion to inflation deviations from target. We suggest therefore central bank independence represents one of the clearest signals available to elected politicians about their preferences on the control of inflation.Central bank independence; preferences; yield curve.

Unions in common cause: the New Zealand Federation of Labour 1937–88

Unions in Common Cause is the first detailed study of the history of the New Zealand Federation of Labour (1937-88). Based on a conference held in 2007, this book includes chapters by four of our leading labour historians and contributions by past and present activists. It is richly illustrated. The FOL’s enduring legacy was to create a national voice for workers, a central organisation to represent their collective interests. In bad times, as well as good, that voice has continued to be heard.NZ Work & Labour Market Institute at Auckland University of Technology, the Labour History Project, the NZ Council of Trade Unions, the NZ Amalgamated Engineering Printing & Manufacturing Union, the NZ Dairy Workers Union Te Runanga Wai U, the Maritime Union of NZ, the NZ Meat Workers & Related Trades Union, the National Distribution Union, the Rail & Maritime Transport Union and the Service & Food Workers Union Nga Ringa Tot

Lagrangian Data-Driven Reduced Order Modeling of Finite Time Lyapunov Exponents

There are two main strategies for improving the projection-based reduced order model (ROM) accuracy: (i) improving the ROM, i.e., adding new terms to the standard ROM; and (ii) improving the ROM basis, i.e., constructing ROM bases that yield more accurate ROMs. In this paper, we use the latter. We propose new Lagrangian inner products that we use together with Eulerian and Lagrangian data to construct new Lagrangian ROMs. We show that the new Lagrangian ROMs are orders of magnitude more accurate than the standard Eulerian ROMs, i.e., ROMs that use standard Eulerian inner product and data to construct the ROM basis. Specifically, for the quasi-geostrophic equations, we show that the new Lagrangian ROMs are more accurate than the standard Eulerian ROMs in approximating not only Lagrangian fields (e.g., the finite time Lyapunov exponent (FTLE)), but also Eulerian fields (e.g., the streamfunction). We emphasize that the new Lagrangian ROMs do not employ any closure modeling to model the effect of discarded modes (which is standard procedure for low-dimensional ROMs of complex nonlinear systems). Thus, the dramatic increase in the new Lagrangian ROMs' accuracy is entirely due to the novel Lagrangian inner products used to build the Lagrangian ROM basis

GPU Kernels for High-Speed 4-Bit Astrophysical Data Processing

Interferometric radio telescopes often rely on computationally expensive O(N^2) correlation calculations; fortunately these computations map well to massively parallel accelerators such as low-cost GPUs. This paper describes the OpenCL kernels developed for the GPU based X-engine of a new hybrid FX correlator. Channelized data from the F-engine is supplied to the GPUs as 4-bit, offset-encoded real and imaginary integers. Because of the low bit width of the data, two values may be packed into a 32-bit register, allowing multiplication and addition of more than one value with a single fused multiply-add instruction. With this data and calculation packing scheme, as many as 5.6 effective tera-operations per second (TOPS) can be executed on a 4.3 TOPS GPU. The kernel design allows correlations to scale to large numbers of input elements, limited only by maximum buffer sizes on the GPU. This code is currently working on-sky with the CHIME Pathfinder Correlator in BC, Canada.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to IEEE ASAP 2015 Conferenc

Evaluating the genetic progress of wheat in NSW, 1992-2009

Intellectual Property Regimes (IPRs) have been justified on the basis that they promote innovation, but it is not always clear that they do so. Empirical studies of IPRs in an Australian context have been limited. Plant variety protection is one form of IPR. The passing of the Australian Plant Breeder’s Rights Act of 1994 has been followed by significant commercialisation of the wheat breeding industry. The purpose of this paper is to consider whether this commercialisation has benefited wheat productivity through varietal improvement. We estimate a linear crop production function, using a random effects Hausman Taylor estimator to evaluate differences in genetic contributions to productivity between public and private wheat varieties commercially released in NSW over the period 1992-2009 using crop varietal data. Results from the Hausman Taylor estimator show that private varieties, on average, have outperformed public varieties over the period, suggesting that Plant Breeder’s Rights has promoted productive innovation in wheat. However, when we consider the best performing genetics of the varieties, public varieties have, in some years, outperformed privately bred varieties.genetic change, technical change, innovation, wheat breeding, intellectual property, Crop Production/Industries, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Anesthesia Preoperative Clinic Referral for Elevated Hba1c Reduces Complication Rate in Diabetic Patients Undergoing Total Joint Arthroplasty

Background: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is risk factor for complications after orthopedic surgery. Objectives: We tested the hypothesis that anesthesia preoperative clinic (APC) referral for elevated glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) reduces complication rate after total joint arthroplasty (TJA). Patients and Methods: Patients (n = 203) with and without DM were chosen from 1,237 patients undergoing TJA during 2006 - 12. Patients evaluated in the APC had surgery in 2006 - 8 regardless of HbA1c (uncontrolled). Those evaluated between in subsequent two-year intervals were referred to primary care for HbA1c ≥ 10% and ≥ 8%, respectively, to improve DM control before surgery. Complications and mortality were quantified postoperatively and at three, six, and twelve months. Length of stay (LOS) and patients requiring a prolonged LOS (\u3e 5 days) were recorded. Results: Patients (197 men, 6 women) underwent 71, 131, and 1 total hip, knee, and shoulder replacements, respectively. Patients undergoing TJA with uncontrolled HbA1c and those with HbA1c \u3c 10%, but not those with HbA1c \u3c 8%, had a higher incidence of coronary disease and hypercholesterolemia than patients without DM. An increase in complication rate was observed in DM patients with uncontrolled HbA1c versus patients without DM (P \u3c 0.001); the complication rate progressively decreased with tighter HbA1c control. More DM patients with preoperative HbA1c that was uncontrolled or ≥ 10% required prolonged LOS versus those without DM (P \u3c 0.001 and P = 0.0404, respectively). Conclusions: APC referral for elevated HbA1c reduces complication rate and the incidence of prolonged hospitalization during the first year after surgery in diabetics undergoing TJA