Monetary dynamics: a market approach

The behaviour of the short-run responses implied by the identification of a long-run money demand relationship is examined. These responses have recently been interpreted as representing the policy stance of the monetary authority. However, as movements in the monetary aggregate reflect both demand and supply adjustments, estimating the short-run dynamics solely within the money demand relationship may produce biased results. In order to address this issue, the paper explicitly acknowledges the importance of the supply of money function by including the function alongside the demand for money function. While the interaction of the two equations continues to produce the long-run quantity theory result, the additional detail provides more accurate estimates of the individual short-run adjustments within the two equations.     

建筑结构安全度设计思考的探究

目前,我国建筑结构安全度的设计问题进一步得到相关设计人员的高度重视,本文从建筑结构设计安全度的概念入手,进一步分析了安全度设计过程中经常遇见的一些问题,并提出了相应的解决措施,以期本文能为结构安全度方面的进一步研究提供微薄之力。     

论高层建筑剪力墙中连梁设计的几个问题

剪力墙是一种抵抗侧向力的单元,它可以组成完全由剪力墙抵抗侧力的剪力墙结构,也可以和框架组成框架-剪力墙结构。文章对高层建筑中的剪力墙截面设计以及构造作了简单介绍。     

浅谈结构选型与建筑使用功能、经济造价的关系

结构选型与建筑使用功能、经济造价有很大的关系,有时结构选型受建筑使用功能的影响,有时结构选型决定经济造价。在业主对建筑使用功能的要求下进行结构选型,经济造价提高是解决不了的矛盾,最优的结构型选及其设计应是结构设计人员必上的一课。     

社会结构的实践演变模式——理解中国与国际体系互动的另一种思路

关于中国与国际体系关系所涉及的学理问题,特别是结构与施动者如何互动进而推动国际体系演变的问题,现有研究只是侧重在对结构作用的分析上,忽视了结构的进程性以及这一动态演变过程的作用机制。通过转换研究视角,作者认为,从"自上而下"转向"自下而上"的视角,即从关注体系结构转向关注行为体和行为体的实践,突出了"实践"概念的本体地位。作为社会实践进程的国际体系结构演变,它受到惯习和危机这两种作用机制的影响,而这两种机制使得体系结构呈现出稳定中有变革、变革中有稳定的动态演变过程。在此期间,实践者发挥着巨大的能动作用。     

An Evaluation of Marketing Practices in Banks in Ghana

ABSTRACT

This study ascertains the extent to which the marketing concept has been adopted and implemented by banks in Ghana. It addresses a gap in an area that is currently under researched and provides insight into the banking services industry in a developing country. All sixteen licensed banks in Ghana were included in this study. The data was collected through in-depth interviews and self completed questionnaires. The results suggest that marketing departments in the banks are organised mainly within headquarters and headed by marketing and advertising/public relations managers. The marketing activities in the banks are associated with the stage where marketing orientation is perceived as advertising and public relations. There is a partial lack of marketing culture in the banks. The total and formal acceptance and understanding of the marketing concept is at an embryonic stage in the evolutionary process.     

Do Monetary Unions Make Economic Sense? Evidence from the Scandinavian Currency Union, 1873–1913

Popular propositions as to what constitutes a successful single currency area are examined by looking at the Scandinavian Currency Union (1873–1913) formed by Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Applying a frequently used indicator of the desirability of monetary union, we study the symmetry of country-specific structural shocks (measured net of the non-Scandinavian influence) in these three countries. It is found that country-specific shocks are not highly symmetric. This conclusion is also supported by the absence of clear-cut differences between the pattern of structural shocks in Belgium and structural shocks in the Scandinavian countries. This suggests that the three Scandinavian countries did not form an optimum currency area during the period 1873–1913.
JEL classification : F 15; F 33; N 13     

A methodology for the choice of the best fitting continuous-time stochastic models of crude oil price

The crude oil price is generally considered as the fundamental factor in the valuation of undeveloped reserves but it is not the unique one. Undeveloped field value also depends on the uncertainty relating to the convenience yield and the risk-free interest rate. The purpose of this paper is to decide on the best continuous-time stochastic models for these risk factors. The Generalized Method of Moments and the Maximum Likelihood Estimation are implemented to fit the parameters of continuous-time stochastic processes. The results of unit root tests without breaks reveal a mean reversion in convenience yield series. Multiple structural change tests show that the risk-free interest rate can be considered constant. The simulation of continuous-time stochastic processes and the mean error between the simulated prices and the market ones show that the Geometric Brownian Motion with jumps is the best model for the oil price compared to the other commonly used processes.     

Conceptual Knowledge Markup Language: An introduction

Conceptual Knowledge Markup Language (CKML) is an application of XML. Earlier versions of CKML followed rather exclusively the philosophy of Conceptual Knowledge Processing (CKP), a principled approach to knowledge representation and data analysis that “advocates methods and instruments of conceptual knowledge processing which support people in their rational thinking, judgment and acting and promote critical discussion”. The new version of CKML continues to follow this approach, but also incorporates various principles, insights and techniques from Information Flow (IF), the logical design of distributed systems. Among other things, this allows diverse communities of discourse to compare their own information structures, as coded in logical theories, with that of other communities that share a common generic ontology. CKML incorporates the CKP ideas of concept lattice and formal context, along with the IF ideas of classification (= formal context), infomorphism, theory, interpretation and local logic. Ontology Markup Language (OML), a subset of CKML that is a self-sufficient markup language in its own right, follows the principles and ideas of Conceptual Graphs (CG). OML is used for structuring the specifications and axiomatics of metadata into ontologies. OML incorporates the CG ideas of concept, conceptual relation, conceptual graph, conceptual context, participants and ontology. The link from OML to CKML is the process of conceptual scaling, which is the interpretive transformation of ontologically structured knowledge to conceptual structured knowledge. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.