Inflation and Welfare in Latin America

This paper follows Bailey (J Polit Econ 64:93–110, 1956) and Lucas (Econometrica 68:247–274, 2000) and estimates the welfare cost of inflation for 17 Latin American economies. We use annual data, from 1955 to 2000, and recent advances in the field of applied econometrics to estimate the inflation rate elasticity of money demand and report significantly high and differential welfare cost estimates for these economies.     

Defect Detection Using Unanimous Vote Among Mahalanobis Classifiers for Each Color Component

In manufacturing industries, product inspection is automated and the use of image data is increasingly being employed for defect detection. A manufacturing company in Japan produces an item and inspects the produced products using image data. Reducing the error rate is important in product inspection because poor inspection of products might lead to the delivery of defective products to consumers (consumer’s risk) and strict inspection increases production cost (producer’s risk). To reduce the error rate, we highlighted fault points using a two-dimensional moving range filter and discriminated defect production through a unanimous vote among Mahalanobis classifiers for each color component. For results, we achieved a lower error rate than the current system. This research is an empirical study of how to use image data in defect detection.     

Broadband Demand Analysis for Network Building

An increase of broadband demand is forecasted by transitional methods that consider the effect of this increase through many factors, such as customer requirement diversification, and new service introduction and deployment under competition. Broadband demand forecasting has become important for closing the digital divide, promoting regional developments, and constructing networks economically; therefore, a demand forecast model that considers the mechanisms of market structure is necessary. In this paper, a demand analysis method for broadband access combining macro- and micro-data mining is proposed, and the service choice behaviour of customers is introduced as a customer model not only to express the macro trend of market structure, but also to consider area marketing. The proposed method can estimate the potential demand, determine the point at which broadband demand growth peaks in a specified area, and support a decision for ultra high-speed broadband access facility installation.     

News shocks or parametric indeterminacy? An observational equivalence result in linear rational expectations models

This paper studies identification in linear rational expectations models with news shocks. We show that news-driven models and indeterminate equilibrium economies with i.i.d. fundamentals are observationally equivalent. This finding calls for carefully designing empirical investigations of news shocks in estimated DSGE models.