Praktisk-Teologiske Seminar

ABSTRACT I exploit the exogenous component of a formula‐based allocation of government funds across banks in Argentina to test for financial constraints and underinvestment by local banks. Banks are found to expand lending by $0.66 in response to an additional dollar of external financing. Using novel data to measure risk and return on marginal lending, I show that the profitability of lending does not decline and total borrower debt increases during lending expansions, holding investment opportunities constant. Overall, financial shocks to constrained banks are found to have a quick, persistent, and amplified effect on the aggregate supply of credit.

A finite number of sellers (n) compete in schedules to supply an elastic demand. The cost of each seller is random, with common and private value components, and the seller receives a private signal about it. A Bayesian supply function equilibrium is characterized: The equilibrium is privately revealing and the incentives to rely on private signals are preserved. Supply functions are steeper with higher correlation among the cost parameters. For high (positive) correlation, supply functions are downward sloping, price is above the Cournot level, and as we approach the common value case, price tends to the collusive level. As correlation becomes maximally negative, we approach the competitive outcome. With positive correlation, private information coupled with strategic behavior induces additional distortionary market power above full information levels. Efficiency can be restored with appropriate subsidy schemes or with a precise enough public signal about the common value component. As the market grows large with the number of sellers, the equilibrium becomes price-taking, bid shading is on the order of 1/n, and the order of magnitude of welfare losses is 1/n2. The results extend to inelastic demand, demand uncertainty, and demand schedule competition. A range of applications in product and financial markets is presented.

This paper explores how the wage and career consequences of motherhood differ by skill and timing. Past work has often found smaller or even negligible effects from childbearing for high-skill women, but we find the opposite. Wage trajectories diverge sharply for high scoring women after, but not before, they have children, while there is little change for low-skill women. It appears that the lifetime costs of childbearing, especially early childbearing, are particularly high for skilled women. These differential costs of childbearing may account for the far greater tendency of high-skill women to delay or avoid childbearing altogether.

Unemployment insurance exists to provide protection against the hardship that would otherwise be caused by unemployment. Unfortunately, it also distorts incentives in ways that cause inefficient increases in total unemployment. In this paper we analyze empirically a modification of the traditional unemployment insurance system. We show that this alternative, based on individual savings accounts, can substantially reduce the adverse incentive effects of the existing unemployment insurance system without any decrease in the protection of those who become unemployed.

ABSTRACT In this paper, I identify shocks to interest rates resulting from two administrative details in adjustable‐rate mortgage contract terms: the choice of financial index and the choice of lookback period. I find that a 1 percentage point increase in interest rate at the time of adjustable‐rate mortgage (ARM) reset results in a 2.5 percentage increase in the probability of foreclosure in the following year, and that each foreclosure filing leads to an additional 0.3 to 0.6 completed foreclosures within a 0.10‐mile radius. In explaining this result, I emphasize price effects, bank‐supply responses, and borrower responses arising from peer effects.

ABSTRACT We focus on public‐market investor participation to analyze the firm's decision to stay public or go private. The liquidity of public ownership is both a blessing and a curse: It lowers the cost of capital, but also introduces volatility in a firm's shareholder base, exposing management to uncertainty regarding shareholder intervention in management decisions, thereby affecting the manager's perceived decision‐making autonomy and curtailing managerial inputs. We extract predictions about how investor participation affects stock price level and volatility and the public firm's incentives to go private, providing a link between investor participation and firm participation in public markets.

We present a finite element method for the numerical solution of diffusion problems on rough surfaces. The problem is transformed to an elliptic homogenization problem in a two dimensional parameter domain with a rapidly oscillating diffusion tensor and source term. The finite element method is based on the heterogeneous multiscale methods of E and Engquist [Commun. Math. Sci., 1 (2003), pp. 87--132]. For periodic surface roughness of scale $\varepsilon$ and amplitude $O(\varepsilon)$, the method converges at a robust rate, i.e., independent of $\varepsilon$, to the homogenized solution.

This paper considers issues related to identification, inference, and computation in linearized dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. We first provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the local identification of the structural parameters based on the (first and) second order properties of the process. The condition allows for arbitrary relations between the number of observed endogenous variables and structural shocks, and is simple to verify. The extensions, including identification through a subset of frequencies, partial identification, conditional identification, and identification under general nonlinear constraints, are also studied. When lack of identification is detected, the method can be further used to trace out nonidentification curves. For estimation, restricting our attention to nonsingular systems, we consider a frequency domain quasi-maximum likelihood estimator and present its asymptotic properties. The limiting distribution of the estimator can be different from results in the related literature due to the structure of the DSGE model. Finally, we discuss a quasi-Bayesian procedure for estimation and inference. The procedure can be used to incorporate relevant prior distributions and is computationally attractive.

Abstract This paper studies the role of monetary policy in a small open economy that experiences Dutch disease effects as a result of capital inflows, and examines the issue of whether such a policy should seek to address these effects from a welfare perspective. I find that Dutch disease effects occur under a fixed nominal exchange rate regime. However, a monetary policy regime characterized by generalized Taylor interest rate rules featuring either the real exchange rate or the nominal exchange rate avert Dutch disease effects. Welfare results reveal that the optimal rule is a generalized Taylor rule consistent with nominal exchange rate flexibility.

OBJECTIVE: Comorbidity is the rule and not the exception among veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Examining comorbidities in a veteran population allows us to better understand veterans' symptoms and recognize when mental health treatment may need to be tailored to other co-occurring issues. This article evaluates comorbid mood and anxiety disorders and PTSD symptom severity in a large sample of veterans from multiple eras of service, including the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. METHOD: The current study used data from veterans who sought treatment for PTSD at a VA PTSD Clinical Team from 2005 to 2013. Veterans were assessed for PTSD, mood, and anxiety disorders using a structured clinical interview and completed self-report symptom measures as part of the PTSD clinic intake procedure. A total of 2,460 veterans were evaluated, and 867 met diagnostic criteria for PTSD. RESULTS: Veterans with PTSD were significantly more likely than those without PTSD to be diagnosed with social anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, but significantly less likely to be diagnosed with depression. In addition, veterans who had at least one comorbid diagnosis in addition to PTSD reported significantly higher PTSD symptom severity than veterans with PTSD alone. PTSD symptom severity also varied by era of service. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that among veterans seeking treatment for PTSD, comorbid mood and anxiety disorders may be associated with greater severity of PTSD symptoms. Future work is needed to determine the impact of specific comorbidities on trauma-focused treatment outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

We analyze in classical L q (R n)-spaces, n = 2 or n = 3, 1 <q<∞, a singular integral operator arising from the linearization of a hydrodynamical problem with a rotating obstacle. The corresponding system of partial differential equations of second order involves an angular derivative which is not subordinate to the Laplacian. The main tools are Littlewood–Paley theory and a decomposition of the singular kernel in Fourier space.

Dinoflagellate cysts were recovered throughout the Paleogene succession of Hole 647A, which contains an almost complete deep-water record of early Eocene through early late Oligocene sedimentation in the Labrador Sea. Dinofla gellate cyst biostratigraphy is in general accord with that provided by other microfossil groups and is consistent with a lower Eocene age, as determined by nannofossils, for basal sediments in Hole 647A. These sediments overlie oceanic crust of Chron 24 age.

This paper develops a model of unemployment rate dynamics that provides an explanation of persistent cyclical unemployment that does not involve persistent expectational errors or other nonoptimizing behavior. Our results are based on the interaction of search dynamics and inventory adjustments. An important element in these dynamics appears to be heterogeneity in the labor force which can be characterized as consisting of a relatively small group of high turnover individuals who comprise the bulk of normal unemployment and a larger group of low turnover individuals who dominate movements in cyclical unemployment. Our empirical results provide support for this theory as we demonstrate that the appropriately measured probability of becoming employed during a recovery falls relative to normal because of the unusually high proportion of low turnover individuals who have lost "permanent" jobs. As a result, recovery is much slower than is indicated by normal relationships although each individual is searching optimally.

We document and discuss a dramatic change in the cyclical behavior of aggregate skilled hours since the mid‐1980s. Using CPS data for 1979:1–2003:4, we find that the volatility of skilled hours relative to the volatility of GDP has nearly tripled since 1984. In contrast, the cyclical properties of unskilled hours have remained essentially unchanged. We evaluate whether a simple supply/demand model for skilled and unskilled labor with capital‐skill complementarity in production can help explain this stylized fact. Our model accounts for about 60% of the observed increase in the relative volatility of skilled labor.

Private property in the industry of the Third Reich is often considered a mere nominal provision without much substance. However, that is not correct, because firms, despite the rationing and licensing activities of the state, still had ample scope to devise their own production and investment profiles. Even regarding war-related projects, freedom of contract was generally respected; instead of using power, the state offered firms a number of contract options to choose from. There were several motives behind this attitude of the regime, among them the conviction that private property provided important incentives for increasing efficiency.

Abstract Suburban space provides a useful window onto contemporary class practices in Africa, where it is difficult to identify social classes on the basis of income or occupation. In this article I argue that the middle classes and the suburbs are mutually constitutive in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam. Using interviews with residents and local government officials in the city's northern suburbs, I discuss the material and representational practices of middle‐class boundary work in relation to land and landscape. If the middle classes do not presently constitute a coherent political‐economic force, they are nevertheless transforming the city's former northern peri‐urban zones into desirable suburban residential neighbourhoods.

ABSTRACT We decompose the returns of five well‐known anomalies into cash flow and discount rate news. Common patterns emerge across the five factor portfolios and their mean‐variance efficient (MVE) combination. Whereas discount rate news predominates in market returns, systematic cash flow news drives the returns of anomaly portfolios and their MVE combination with the market portfolio. Anomaly cash flow and discount rate shocks are largely uncorrelated with market cash flow and discount rate shocks and with business cycle fluctuations. These rich empirical patterns restrict the joint dynamics of firm cash flows and the pricing kernel, thereby informing models of stocks' expected returns.

Cet article envisage les pratiques de la transcription du point de vue de leurs conséquences théoriques. Il procède pour cela en analysant des extraits de transcription de différents auteurs et de leurs conventions, en se focalisant sur un problème central pour la linguistique de l’oral : le découpage, l’identification, la définition des unités pertinentes de la langue parlée. A travers la façon dont celles-ci sont visualisées, spatialisées, représentées par écrit, l’analyse montre que la transcription matérialise des segmentations très différentes des unités de l’interaction, ainsi que des catégorisations variables des formes linguistiques ou paralinguistique ou des formes pouvant être conçues comme appartenant à une langue ou à une autre. Les enjeux épistémologiques de la transcription reposent précisément sur cette « incorporation » de présupposés théoriques dans les modes de représentation de l’oral.

Whether rationality of economic behavior increases with expected payoffs and decreases with the cognitive cost it takes to formulate an optimal strategy remains an open question. We explore these issues with field data, using individual bids from sealed‐bid auctions in which we sold nearly $10,000 worth of sports cards. Our results indicate that stakes do indeed matter, as high‐priced ($70) cards produced more of the theoretically predicted strategic behavior than did lower‐priced ($3) cards. We find additional evidence consistent with the importance of cognitive costs, as subjects more experienced with sports card auctions exhibited a greater tendency to behave strategically than did less experienced bidders.

Preventing wound infection and the development of resistant bacteria are important concerns in wound management. To determine if noncontact, nonthermal, low-frequency ultrasound therapy is effective in controlling wound bacterial colony counts, a series of four related experiments was conducted. First, ultrasound penetration in both wounded and intact skin was assessed in vitro. Compared to sham, noncontact ultrasound penetrated farther into both wounded (3 mm to 3.5 mm versus 0.35 mm to 0.50 mm) and intact (2.0 mm to 2.5 mm versus 0.05 mm to 0.07 mm, respectively) pig skin. Second, using an in vitro model to stain and count live/dead bacteria, 0% of sham treated and 33% of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, 40% of Escherichia coli and 27% of Enterococcus faecalis were dead after one ultrasound application. Minimal effects on methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and S. aureus were observed. Third, using an in vivo model, after 1 week, while differences between different bacterial species were observed, overall bacterial quantity decreased with ultrasound treatment (from 7.2 +/- 0.79 to 6.7 +/- 0.91 colony forming units per gram of tissue [CFU/g]) and silver antimicrobial dressings (from 7.2 +/- 0.79 to 5.7 +/- 0.6 CFU/g) but increased to 8.6 +/- 0.15 CFU/g for sham and 8.6 +/- 0.06 CFU/g for water-moistened gauze. Fourth, 11 patients (average age 60 years) with pressure ulcers containing bacterial counts >10(5) CFU/g of tissue received 2 weeks of noncontact ultrasound therapy. The quantities of seven bacterial organisms were reduced substantially from baseline to 2 weeks post treatment. None of the wounds exhibited signs of a clinical infection during the treatment period and no adverse events were observed. Taken together, these four studies indicate that noncontact ultrasound can be used to reduce bacterial quantity. Controlled clinical studies are warranted to ascertain the efficacy of this treatment and to further elucidate its effects on various Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria.