Challenges to the natural rate framework

By most estimates, the U.S. unemployment rate is currently below its "natural rate." The implication is the economy is operating at an unsustainably high level of resource utilization. Capacity levels are being strained, tending to put upward pressure on wages and prices. In anticipation of these rising inflationary pressures, the Federal Reserve has firmed monetary policy several times over the past year.> A majority of mainstream economists appear comfortable with the natural rate framework, in part because it has tracked inflation successfully over the past 35 years. Despite its excellent record, however, the natural rate framework has not been without critics. In the past year, nonbelievers have advanced a number of arguments for why mounting inflationary pressures should not be a concern at this time. These arguments have focused on the heightened globalization of the marketplace, the weak bargaining position of the labor force, widespread productivity gains, and the absence to date of an unambiguous rise in inflation.> In this article, adapted from presentations made to the National Economists Club and the Congressional Budget Office in February 1995, Weiner considers the arguments against the natural rate framework. He offers some counterarguments and concludes that concerns about future inflationary pressures are well founded.Inflation (Finance) ; Unemployment

Electronic payments in the U.S. economy : an overview

Business publications are filled these days with stories about the digital or electronic economy. One routinely reads about e-commerce, e-business, and e-banking. Terms such as e-mail and e-tickets have entered the common lexicon. Some analysts have gone so far as to proclaim that the U.S. economy is being fundamentally transformed and is entering a "new age" of unparalleled growth and opportunity.> While such a view is open to debate, clearly some major, potentially far-ranging, changes are under way. The most visible and most dramatic involve e-commerce. A growing amount of economic activity is taking place on the Internet, directly or indirectly impacting households and businesses throughout the economy. Less visible, but also significant, are changes involving "e-payments." Although the U.S. payments system continues to rely heavily on paper-based methods, cash and checks, for conducting transactions, electronic payments are steadily gaining a greater presence.> Weiner provides an overview of e-payments as they currently exist in the United States. He shows that the U.S. payments system is becoming more electronic, principally through traditional means. While new instruments are beginning to emerge, it is the traditional e-payment types--credit cards, debit cards, and ACH transactions--that are driving the U.S. payments system forward.Payment systems

Taking Heisenberg's Potentia Seriously

It is argued that quantum theory is best understood as requiring an ontological duality of res extensa and res potentia, where the latter is understood per Heisenberg's original proposal, and the former is roughly equivalent to Descartes' 'extended substance.' However, this is not a dualism of mutually exclusive substances in the classical Cartesian sense, and therefore does not inherit the infamous 'mind-body' problem. Rather, res potentia and res extensa are proposed as mutually implicative ontological extants that serve to explain the key conceptual challenges of quantum theory; in particular, nonlocality, entanglement, null measurements, and wave function collapse. It is shown that a natural account of these quantum perplexities emerges, along with a need to reassess our usual ontological commitments involving the nature of space and time.Comment: Final version, to appear in International Journal of Quantum Foundation

Interchange fees in various countries : developments and determinants

Debit cards ; Credit cards

Reference image selection for difference imaging analysis

Difference image analysis (DIA) is an effective technique for obtaining photometry in crowded fields, relative to a chosen reference image. As yet, however, optimal reference image selection is an unsolved problem. We examine how this selection depends on the combination of seeing, background and detector pixel size. Our tests use a combination of simulated data and quality indicators from DIA of well-sampled optical data and under-sampled near-infrared data from the OGLE and VVV surveys, respectively. We search for a figure-of-merit (FoM) which could be used to select reference images for each survey. While we do not find a universally applicable FoM, survey-specific measures indicate that the effect of spatial under-sampling may require a change in strategy from the standard DIA approach, even though seeing remains the primary criterion. We find that background is not an important criterion for reference selection, at least for the dynamic range in the images we test. For our analysis of VVV data in particular, we find that spatial under-sampling is best handled by reversing the standard DIA procedure and convolving target images to a better-sampled (poor seeing) reference image.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in MNRA

Compound Perfect Squared Squares of the Order Twenties

P. J. Federico used the term low-order for perfect squared squares with at most 28 squares in their dissection. In 2010 low-order compound perfect squared squares (CPSSs) were completely enumerated. Up to symmetries of the square and its squared subrectangles there are 208 low-order CPSSs in orders 24 to 28. In 2012 the CPSSs of order 29 were completely enumerated, giving a total of 620 CPSSs up to order 29.Comment: 44 pages, 10 figures. For associated pdf illustrations of enumerated compound perfect squared squares up to order 29, see http://squaring.net/downloads/downloads.html#cps