The Side Effects of Safe Asset Creation

We present an incomplete markets model to understand the costs and benefits of increasing government debt when an increased demand for safety pushes the natural rate of interest below zero. A higher demand for safe assets causes the ZLB to bind, increasing unemployment. Higher government debt satiates the demand for safe assets, raising the natural rate, and restoring full employment. However, this entails permanently lower investment, which reduces welfare, since our economy is dynamically efficient even when the natural rate is negative. Despite this, increasing debt until the ZLB no longer binds raises welfare when alternative instruments are unavailable. Higher inflation targets instead allow for negative real interest rates and achieve full employment without reducing investment.

Rate of infant carrying impacts infant spontaneous motor tempo

Rhythm production is a critical component of human interaction, not least forming the basis of our musicality. Infants demonstrate a spontaneous motor tempo (SMT), or natural rate of rhythmic movement. Here, we ask whether infant SMT is influenced by the rate of locomotion infants experience when being carried. Ten-month-old, non-walking infants were tested using a free drumming procedure before and after 10 min of being carried by an experimenter walking at a slower (98 BPM) or faster (138 BPM) than average tempo. We find that infant SMT is differentially impacted by carrying experience dependent on the tempo at which they were carried: infants in the slow-walked group exhibited a slower SMT from pre-test to post-test, while infants in the fast-walked group showed a faster SMT from pre-test to post-test. Heart rate data suggest that this effect is not due to a general change in the state of arousal. We argue that being carried during caregiver locomotion is a predominant experience for infants throughout the first years of life, and as a source of regular, vestibular, information, may at least partially form the basis of their sense of rhythm.

The Case against the New "Secular Stagnation Hypothesis"

The new “secular stagnation hypothesis” developed by Lawrence H. Summers attempts to justify why the demand stimulus applied in the aftermath of the global financial crisis failed to revive growth in a satisfactory manner. Building on previous ideas of Keynes, Hansen, and Bernanke, Summers claims that excess savings together with feeble investment drove the natural rate of interest down to zero and advanced economies into stagnation. As the US monetary policy rate is not allowed to fall below the zero bound, Summers calls for “quantitative easing” and more expansionary fiscal policy to spur investment demand. This paper refutes Summers’s hypothesis by revealing its internal inconsistencies and presenting both theoretical arguments and empirical evidence on the long-term evolution of savings, investment, productivity, and capital stock. It also estimates the natural rate of interest following the approach of Salerno (2020), which is further refined based on Rothbard’s “pure interest rate” theory. The calculation shows that the natural interest rate did not drop to zero after the global financial crisis, but has actually remained consistently and significantly above the federal funds rate and the bank loan prime rate. This not only invalidates Summers’s central claim, but confirms once more the explanatory power of the Austrian business cycle theory in relation to the main trigger of the global financial crisis and its subsequent unfinished recovery.

Call rate in Common Cuckoos does not predict body size and responses to conspecific playbacks

The brood parasitic Common Cuckoo Cuculus canorus is best known for its two-note “cu-coo” call which is almost continuously uttered by male during the breeding season and can be heard across long distances in the field. Although the informative value of the cuckoo call was intensively investigated recently, it is still not clear whether call characteristic(s) indicate any of the phenotypic traits of the respective vocalising individuals. To fill this gap, we studied whether the call rate of male cuckoos (i.e., the number of calls uttered per unit of time) provides information on their body size, which might be a relevant trait during intrasexual territorial conflicts. We captured free-living male cuckoos and measured their body size parameters (mass, wing, tail and tarsus lengths). Each subject was then radio-tagged, released, and its individual “cu-coo” calls were recorded soon after that in the field. The results showed that none of the body size parameters covaried statistically with the call rates of individual male Common Cuckoos. In addition, we experimentally tested whether the “cu-coo” call rates affect behavioural responses of cuckoos using playbacks of either a quicker or a slower paced call than the calls with natural rates. Cuckoos responded similarly to both types of experimental playback treatments by approaching the speaker with statistically similar levels of responses as when presented with calls at the natural rate. We conclude that male Common Cuckoos do not advertise reliable information acoustically regarding their body size, and so, cuckoo calls are neither useful to characterize cuckoos’ phenotypic traits directly nor to indicate environmental quality indirectly.

The Four Equation New Keynesian Model

This paper develops a New Keynesian model featuring financial intermediation, short- and long-term bonds, credit shocks, and scope for unconventional monetary policy. The log-linearized model reduces to four equations – Phillips and IS curves as well as policy rules for the short-term interest rate and the central bank's long-bond portfolio (QE). Credit shocks and QE appear in both the IS and Phillips curves. In equilibrium, optimal monetary policy entails adjusting the short-term interest rate to offset natural rate shocks, but using QE to offset credit market disruptions. Use of QE significantly mitigates the costs of a binding zero lower bound.

Effects of the pandemic on the natural rate of unemployment in Russia

The article examines unemployment and the impact on the unemployment rate of coronavirus and quarantine restrictions, as well as ways to maintain the unemployment rate no higher than "natural." As well as the peculiarities of employment and unemployment in Russia in 2020-2021. and the following measures to reduce it.

Optimum Building Design Variables in a Warm Saharan Mediterranean Climate Zone

This research contributes to making residential buildings more efficient in the city of Azraq, Jordan, which is located in a warm climate zone in the Saharan Mediterranean region (classified as a hot desert climate according to the Köppen climate classification). It involved the optimisation of several envelope parameters with the aim of reducing the usage of energy within a normal structure occupying an area of 186 m2 without the occupants’ involvement in saving energy in the building to solely measure the building envelope’s thermal performance. The DesignBuilder software was used for the sensitivity analysis using 12 design variables, which enabled their significance for both cooling and heating loads. The selected variables were separated into two categories based on their level of significance: a group with higher importance (window to wall %, local type of shading, ground floor building, natural rate of ventilation, rate of infiltration, kind of glazing, and flat roof structure) as well as a group with lower importance (partition construction, site position, construction of outside walls, kind of window blinds, and window shade control timetable); these variables will save a significant amount of heating and cooling energy.