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CBDC Settlement: Implications for Money Creation and Maturity Transformation
No full textThis paper analyzes the implications of different models of intermediation, clearing, and settlement of central bank digital currency (CBDC) for the ability of the financial system to create money and, through it, to possibly affect financial stability. Only two models have the potential to limit the private sectors’ ability to create money: a model where the central bank directly opens accounts with the public and a model where the central bank allows intermediaries to perform only custodial activities in CBDC. Under any other intermediation model, money can be created inside the financial system by the intermediaries providing payment services associated with CBDC holdings. However, the creation of inside money does not necessarily affect financial stability per se; it does so indirectly by facilitating activities linked to maturity transformation
Introduction: The Power of Timbre in Religion
No full textHow might attending to timbre shift the boundaries of the experiences and practices that come under the analytical purview of religion? What timbral qualities render prayer efficacious and invite divine encounter? What cosmological claims and social relations are forwarded through sounds invoked in religious rituals and gatherings? How do marginalized voices and instruments shape worshipping communities? On the other hand, how are dominant identities and attendant structures reified through religiously marked timbre? Such questions about the character of sounds and their implications for religion animate this issue of the Yale Journal of Music & Religion
Estimating How Much Children Work: Questionnaires Versus Time Use Diaries
No full textCurrent estimates of child labour often rely on questions such as, “How many hours did you work last week?” While biases in adult self-reports are well-documented in high-income countries, there is limited evidence on the accuracy of children’s responses in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Using data from nine LMICs, including China and India, this paper shows that time diaries report more than twice as many work hours as standard questionnaires. This discrepancy suggests that current estimates may significantly understate child labour. Moreover, certain forms of work—such as collecting water or firewood—appear to contribute to these measurement gaps
Offline Contextual Bandits in the Presence of New Actions
No full textAutomated decision-making algorithms drive applications in domains such as recommendation systems and search engines. These algorithms often rely on off-policy contextual bandits or off-policy learning (OPL). Conventionally, OPL selects actions that maximize the expected reward within an existing action set. However, in many real-world scenarios, actions—such as news articles or video content—change continuously, and the action space evolves over time compared to when the logged data was collected. We define actions introduced after deploying the logging policy as new actions and focus on the problem of OPL with new actions. Existing OPL methods cannot learn and select new actions because no relevant data are logged. To address this limitation, we propose a new OPL method that leverages action features. In particular, we first introduce the Local Combination PseudoInverse (LCPI) estimator for the policy gradient, generalizing the PseudoInverse estimator initially proposed for off-policy evaluation of slate bandits. LCPI controls the trade-off between reward-modeling condition and the condition for data collection regarding the action features, capturing the interaction effects among different dimensions of action features. Furthermore, we propose a generalized algorithm called Policy Optimization for Effective New Actions (PONA), which integrates LCPI, a component specialized for new action selection, with Doubly Robust (DR), which excels at learning within existing actions. We define PONA as a weighted sum of the LCPI and DR estimators, optimizing both the selection of existing and new actions, and allowing the proportion of new action selections to be adjusted by controlling the weight parameter
Stressing the Stress Tests
No full textIn the spring of 2023, Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank failed, owing to predictable rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. It’s clear from these recent events that the current US stress-testing system is ill-suited to mitigate risk associated with the banking system, especially when looking at smaller regional banks that aren’t subjugated to annual stress testing. Stress testing as a regulatory tool is also exposed to significant legal risks following recent Supreme Court jurisprudence that draws into question the viability of the status quo. Today, regulators and other interested parties must change tacks to craft a stress testing regime that is fit for purpose. This article seeks to inform that debate by laying out key features of a successful stress testing program against which we assess the current regime in the United States. We make four recommendations: (1) using multiple scenarios to allow exploration of a wider set of risks; (2) disclosing (stressed) fair value for the assessment of all securities held on banks’ balance sheets; (3) stress testing of funding and liquidity risk; and (4) subjecting more banks to the stress tests. Taken together, these reforms would usefully improve the dynamism of the financial regulatory regime
Worker Rights in Collective Bargaining
No full textCollective bargaining agreements (CBAs) specify the contractual rights of unionized workers, but their full legal content has not yet been analyzed by economists. This paper develops novel natural language methods to analyze the empirical determinants and economic value of these rights using a new collection of 30,000 CBAs from Canada in the period 1986-2015. We parse legally binding rights (e.g., “workers shall receive. . . ”) and obligations (e.g., “the employer shall provide. . . ”) from contract text, and validate our measures through evaluation of clause pairs and comparison to firm surveys on HR practices. Using timevarying province-level variation in labor income tax rates, we find that higher taxes increase the share of worker-rights clauses while reducing pre-tax wages in unionized firms, consistent with a substitution effect away from taxed wages toward untaxed rights. Further, an exogenous increase in the value of outside options (from a leave-one-out instrument for labor demand) increases the share of worker rights clauses in CBAs. Combining the regression estimates, we infer that a one-standard-deviation increase in worker rights is valued at about 5.7% of wages
Efficient Difference-in-Differences and Event Study Estimators
No full textThis paper investigates efficient Difference-in-Differences (DiD) and Event Study (ES) estimation using short panel data sets within the heterogeneous treatment effect framework, free from parametric functional form assumptions and allowing for variation in treatment timing. We provide an equivalent characterization of the DiD potential outcome model using sequential conditional moment restrictions on observables, which shows that the DiD identification assumptions typically imply nonparametric overidentification restrictions. We derive the semiparametric efficient influence function (EIF) in closed form for DiD and ES causal parameters under commonly imposed parallel trends assumptions. The EIF is automatically Neyman orthogonal and yields the smallest variance among all asymptotically normal, regular estimators of the DiD and ES parameters. Leveraging the EIF, we propose simple-to-compute efficient estimators. Our results highlight how to optimally explore different pre-treatment periods and comparison groups to obtain the tightest (asymptotic) confidence intervals, offering practical tools for improving inference in modern DiD and ES applications even in small samples. Calibrated simulations and an empirical application demonstrate substantial precision gains of our efficient estimators in finite samples
Enrolled Deeds as Records and Archives in Jamaica
No full textThis paper examines the history of the enrolled deeds record series in Jamaica, from its creation in the mid-seventeenth century through to the present day. It is a critical examination of a single record series through colonialism and independence. It examines the purpose of deeds and the context in which deeds registries were created before examining the history of the series through the periods of slavery and emancipation. It examines in close detail the late nineteenth century, when the Island Record Office—which has custody of the enrolled deeds—was created and several other important changes happened. It situates the enrolled deeds as archives of growing interest during the twentieth century as Jamaica’s archival infrastructure grew. It looks at how historians have used the enrolled deeds, and how they have been treated since the 1990s, when major changes were introduced in the Island Record Office’s parent agency, the Registrar General’s Department. Finally, it looks towards the future and the changes on the horizon for the enrolled deeds series, emphasizing questions of preservation and access
Olivier Messiaen’s Première Communion de la Vierge and the Translation of Religious Meaning
No full textThis study creates a rich exegesis of “Première Communion de la Vierge” from Olivier Messiaen’s (1908–1992) piano cycle Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus (1944) to show how Messiaen attempted to translate musical symbolism into religious meaning. The first two sections provide background and context on the work, revise previous scholarship, and show how this piece (no XI) functions as a theological hinge in the cycle. The genesis and sources of the Vingt Regards, using previously unavailable archival material, are examined to provide new insight into both the cycle and the “Première Communion.” The aesthetic scaffolding of this piece is then detailed through the relationship between Messiaen’s music and the theology of Dom Columba Marmion, Messiaen’s idealist relationship with his mother, the poetess Cécile Sauvage (1883–1927), and surrealism.
The next three sections provide a hermeneutic analysis of the work. They examine how Messiaen employed his radical musical language to create ‘views’ [regards] of the interiority, joy, ecstasy, and intimacy of Mary’s relationship with her unborn child. This study brings the sources above and musical analysis into productive engagement to reveal how Messiaen created a unique refreshment of Marian iconography. It uses this Première Communion as a litmus test of the ways in which Messiaen engaged with but sought to exceed the conceptual scaffolding that inspired it. This study questions how symbolism becomes religious reality for the viewer/listener, and it reveals how Messiaen attempted to overcome this barrier between portrayal and experience and use music to create an experience or knowledge of faith
U.S. Infrastructure: 1929-2023
Full text linkThis paper examines the history of U.S. infrastructure since 1929 and in the process reports an interesting fact about the U.S. economy. Infrastructure stock as a percent of GDP began a steady decline around 1970, and the government budget deficit became positive and large at roughly the same time. The infrastructure pattern in other countries does not mirror that in the United States, so the United States appears to be a special case. The overall results suggest that the United States became less future oriented beginning around 1970, an increase in the social discount rate. This change has persisted. This is the interesting fact. The paper contains speculation on possible causes