Deficit financing,liquidity, and the government budget constraint

This article presents a macroeconomic model in which government deficits are bond financed and the stock of bonds may affect both expected income and liquidity. If either of these effects exists, then comparative statics analysis requires the government budget to be balanced. Temporary divergences from a balanced budget and changes in the maturity structure of the government debt may be analyzed in terms of changes in the stock of bonds. It is shown that traditional fiscal and monetary policies may have a perverse effect; that to ensure effective policy, deficit financing and open market operations should be avoided; and that only policies involving a balanced budget or the financing of deficits or surpluses through changes in the stock of money should be undertaken.     

Measuring market response to regulation of the cable TV industry

During the 1988–1990 period, the cable television industry was subject to a number of regulatory events. These centered on possible reregulation of rates for basic service and reduction of entry barriers for potential competitors. Using the event study methodology on a portfolio of cable firms, we find evidence that news of no reregulation caused significant positive abnormal returns. News of reregulation caused insignificant negative abnormal returns. These findings provide some support for the traditional consumer protection theory of regulation. News related to entry barriers generally had no significant effect on returns, which suggests that elements of natural monopoly may exist in the industry.     

Some comparative-statics results for nonlinear input-output models of a multisectored economy,and related results for nonlinear price-demand relations

For a nonlinear version of the linear input-output model of Leontief, we consider the effect, on the vector x of total gross outputs, of changes in the components of the final-demand vector c. For example, it is shown that, for a certain important class of models, the “large-change elasticity” of any component of x, with respect to any component of c, is less than or equal to unity. Some similar results are proved concerning properties of nonlinear price-demand relations for the case in which all goods are weak gross substitutes. Unlike earlier work in this general area, we do not introduce hypotheses concerning the indecomposability or homogeneity of certain mappings. For that reason, the results are valid for the price-demand relation for a single firm, or for any collection of firms.     

Contrast enhancement of the gastrointestinal tract on MR images using intravenous gadolinium-DTPA

Gadopentetate dimeglumine was administered intravenously to 16 patients undergoing abdominal magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. T1-weighted and fat-suppressed T1-weighted images were acquired before and after intravenous administration of 0.1 mmol/kg gadopentetate dimeglumine. The stomach, small bowel, and colon were analyzed regarding the presence and relative intensity of contrast enhancement. Diffuse enhancement of the gastrointestinal tract wall was observed in all patients following contrast material administration. Such enhancement was most conspicuous on fat-suppressed T1-weighted images. Quantitative measurements indicated that the wall of the gastrointestinal tract enhanced approximately 100% with gadopentetate dimeglumine. This study demonstrates that enhancement of the normal gastrointestinal tract occurs routinely when intravenous gadopentetate dimeglumine is administered, and such enhancement should not be considered indicative of gastrointestinal pathology. Furthermore, it suggests the potential utility for using intravenous rather than orally administered contrast agents to provide enhancement of the gastrointestinal tract on MR images.     

An application of the extended cross impact method to generating scenarios of social change in Japan

Scenarios of Japanese society in 2000 are obtained by applying an extended correlational cross impact analysis. Since the scope of the scenarios is extensive, a procedure is developed to generate the scenarios that consists of a preprocessing of the events of interest and a step-by-step application of a cross impact method. Three scenarios are described, based on a workshop where the procedure was applied.