The twilight of science-Last of the ‘gods’

That technology is the world's dominant religion and science its theology, is a theme which I have developed over two decades. Once linguistic hurdles are cleared, this thesis appears self-evident, even trite. The newer proposition in this paper is that just as with all other religions, the public which will no doubt continue to want the fruits (and pay the price) of the techno-religion is not at all sure about the value of the science-theology. We are definitely witnessing the beginning of the end for the first universal theology and its god, science.     

Stochastic structure of alternative measures of velocity

In this paper, the author reexamines previous work on the stochastic structure of velocity by analyzing velocity over varying degrees of time aggregation and implements the augmented Dickey-Fuller tests to differentiate between trend versus difference stationary processes. It is found for both monthly and quarterly data that the four velocity measures analyzed follow a difference stationary process. The appropriate ARIMA representation to the respective velocity measures were estimated for three periods: (1) 1959 to 1990, (2) 1959 to 1979, and (3) 1979 to 1990. All the monthly velocity measures were found to follow different ARIMA representations across the three periods analyzed. However, for the quarterly velocity measures analyzed, only velocity measures based upon M1 and M2 differ across the three periods. Thus, there is some evidence that the stochastic structure of velocity has changed over time.     

Optimal stationary consumption with stochastic production and resources

Uncertainty about technology and resources is represented in terms of uncertainty about an (exogenous) environment whose successive states form a stationary stochastic process, with probabilities that are unaffected by economic decisions. The successive states of the economy depend both on the environment and on the decisions taken with regard to production and consumption. It is shown that, under conditions that are natural extensions of “neoclassical” conditions in the case of certainty, (1) Capital saturation is possible, i.e., an optimal stationary stochastic program exists, and (2) An optimal program can be sustained by a price system that takes the form of a stationary stochastic process of price vectors. In other words, an optimal stationary program can be sustained by a stochastic “equilibrium,” in which at each date the optimal production decisions maximize expected intertemporal profit, and the optimal aggregate consumption vector has minimum cost among all aggregate consumption vectors yielding no less (social) utility.     

The paper‐bill spread and real output: what matters more,a change in the paper rate or a change in the bill rate?

This paper adds to the literature on the information content of the paper-bill spread by explicitly taking into account the two sources of wider spreads, rises in the paper rate and declines in the bill rate. Results from impulse response analysis and variance decompositions suggest that decreases in real output are greater and last longer when a widening of the paper-bill spread comes from an increase in the paper rate rather than from an equivalent decrease in the bill rate. This is consistent with the idea that changes in the commercial paper rate have greater information content about future business cycles than do changes in the Treasury bill rate.     

Model assisted survey sampling strategy in two phases

Postulating a super-population regression model connecting a size variable, a cheaply measurable variable and an expensively observable variable of interest, an asymptotically optimal double sampling strategy to estimate the survey population total of the third variable is specified. To render it practicable, unknown model-parameters in the optimal estimator are replaced by appropriate statistics. The resulting generalized regression estimator is then shown to have a model-cum-asymptotic design based expected square error equal to that of the asymptotically optimum estimator itself. An estimator for design variance of the estimator is also proposed.     

International trade warfare: Economic and political strategic considerations

An actor government may seek to change a policy of a target state by exerting an economic toll. Trade warfare can only impose high economic costs on the target if the actor can withhold noncompetitive exports or irreplaceable markets. Economic damage may not be sufficient. Decision-makers in the target will be more concerned with their own benefits and costs than with those of the national economy. Governments seem likely to continue to use economic warfare, despite its weak record of identifiable success, because the measures are valuable as signals to domestic constituencies, the target government and third nations.     

FOMC VOTING BEHAVIOR AND ELECTORAL CYCLES: PARTISAN IDEOLOGY AND PARTISAN LOYALTY

The influence of partisan and electoral considerations on the monetary policy voting behavior of Federal Reserve Governors is investigated in the context of a model permitting the estimation of reaction functions on the basis of FOMC voting records. The results suggest that once we have controlled for the state of the economy and for the prevailing stance of monetary policy, both partisan ideologies and partisan loyalties appear to play an important role in the Governors'voting calculus.