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Interest Rate Uncertainty as a Policy Tool -- by Fabio Ghironi, G. Kemal Ozhan

We study a novel policy tool—interest rate uncertainty—that can be used to discourage inefficient capital inflows and to adjust the composition of external accounts between short-term securities and foreign direct investment (FDI). We identify the trade-offs faced in navigating between external balance and price stability. The interest rate uncertainty policy discourages short-term inflows mainly through portfolio risk and precautionary saving channels. A markup channel generates net FDI inflows under imperfect exchange rate pass-through. We further investigate new channels under different assumptions about the irreversibility of FDI, the currency of export invoicing, risk aversion of outside agents, and effective lower bound in the rest of the world. Under every scenario, uncertainty policy is inflationary.




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Wuhan Awakes: A Visit to Coronavirus Ground Zero

The Chinese metropolis of Wuhan spent weeks in complete lockdown to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus. Now, it is reopening its shops and restaurants. But the people remain fearful and cautious.




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Steering Incentives of Platforms: Evidence from the Telecommunications Industry -- by Brian McManus, Aviv Nevo, Zachary Nolan, Jonathan W. Williams

We study the trade-offs faced by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that serve as platforms through which consumers access both television and internet services. As online streaming video improves, these providers may respond by attempting to steer consumers away from streaming video toward their own TV services, or by attempting to capture surplus from this improved internet content. We augment the standard mixed bundling model to demonstrate the trade-offs the ISP faces when dealing with streaming video, and we show how these trade-offs change with the pricing options available to the ISP. Next, we use unique household-level panel data and the introduction of usage-based pricing (UBP) in a subset of markets to measure consumers' responses and to evaluate quantitatively the ISP's trade-offs. We find that the introduction of UBP led consumers to upgrade their internet service plans and lower overall internet usage. Our findings suggest that while steering consumers towards TV services is possible, it is likely costly for the ISP and therefore unlikely to be profitable. This is especially true if the ISP can offer rich pricing menus that allow it to capture some of the surplus generated by a better internet service. The results suggest that policies like UBP can increase ISPs' incentive to maintain open access to new internet content.




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Changes in Black-White Inequality: Evidence from the Boll Weevil -- by Karen Clay, Ethan J. Schmick, Werner Troesken

This paper investigates the effect of a large negative agricultural shock, the boll weevil, on black-white inequality in the first half of the twentieth century. To do this we use complete count census data to generate a linked sample of fathers and their sons. We find that the boll weevil induced enormous labor market and social disruption as more than half of black and white fathers moved to other counties following the arrival of the weevil. The shock impacted black and white sons differently. We compare sons whose fathers initially resided in the same county and find that white sons born after the boll weevil had similar wages and schooling outcomes to white sons born prior to its arrival. In contrast, black sons born after the boll weevil had significantly higher wages and years of schooling, narrowing the black-white wage and schooling gaps. This decrease appears to have been driven by relative improvements in early life conditions and access to schooling both for sons of black fathers that migrated out of the South and sons of black fathers that stayed in the South.




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Dropouts Need Not Apply? The Minimum Wage and Skill Upgrading -- by Jeffrey Clemens, Lisa B. Kahn, Jonathan Meer

We explore whether minimum wage increases result in substitution from lower-skilled to slightly higher-skilled labor. Using 2011-2016 American Community Survey data (ACS), we show that workers employed in low-wage occupations are older and more likely to have a high school diploma following recent statutory minimum wage increases. To better understand the role of firms, we examine the Burning Glass vacancy data. We find increases in a high school diploma requirement following minimum wage hikes, consistent with our ACS evidence on stocks of employed workers. We see substantial adjustments to requirements both within and across firms.




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Incentivizing Behavioral Change: The Role of Time Preferences -- by Shilpa Aggarwal, Rebecca Dizon-Ross, Ariel D. Zucker

How should the design of incentives vary with agent time preferences? We develop two predictions. First, “bundling” the payment function over time – specifically by making the payment for future effort increase in current effort – is more effective if individuals are impatient over effort. Second, increasing the frequency of payment is more effective if individuals are impatient over payment. We test the efficacy of time-bundling and payment frequency, and their interactions with impatience, using a randomized evaluation of an incentive program for exercise among diabetics in India. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, bundling payments over time meaningfully increases effort among the impatient relative to the patient. In contrast, increasing payment frequency has limited efficacy, suggesting limited impatience over payments. On average, incentives increase daily steps by 1,266 (13 minutes of brisk walking) and improve health.




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Worse than Lehman: Coronavirus Tightens Its Grip on the Economy

It is an unprecedented crisis: The coronavirus pandemic is crippling entire economies, while governments and central banks are deploying all means available to prevent a systemic collapse. How long can we hold out?




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Lufthansa CEO on How Coronavirus Has Radically Upended the Aviation Industry

The coronavirus pandemic has inflicted massive damage on the aviation industry. But Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr says that the German flag carrier is in a good position to survive, even if it will take several years for the industry to recover.




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Stephan Seabury: Teachers must get involved in the legislative process




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Republican candidates for governor say they want to change Utah’s election law




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Carmen Valdez: This era is not the ‘great equalizer.’ But it is the time for great change.




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Drive-in entertainment series coming this summer thanks to Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Enterprises

This new entertainment series should get the motor running for movie and music fans.




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Lufthansa seeks €9 billion bailout amid political talks

Lufthansa is negotiating a €9 billion bailout with Germany's economic stabilisation fund to ensure its future, the airline said, confirming an earlier Reuters report.




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Taking government money? Disclose your political spending: Companies should opt for transparency now more than ever

With increasing reports of large public companies and politically connected ones receiving COVID-19 rescue aid and the Trump administration blocking proper oversight, business leaders can act on their own to protect the integrity of the government aid effort and of companies themselves. They can do that by disclosing their companies’ political spending to show that political influence is not a factor in who gets help.




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Former ABA commissioner Mike Storen, dad of ESPN’s Hannah Storm, dies at 84

Known for his hearty laugh and creative mind, Storen rose to executive spots in basketball, football, baseball and tennis during a four-decade career in sports.




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Ex-NBA player Shannon Brown arrested for shooting at people he thought were breaking into his home

Former NBA guard Shannon Brown was arrested recently after shooting a rifle in a mixup at his home.




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Office Visits Preventing Emergency Room Visits: Evidence From the Flint Water Switch -- by Shooshan Danagoulian, Daniel S. Grossman, David Slusky

Emergency department visits are costly to providers and to patients. We use the Flint water crisis to test if an increase in office visits reduced avoidable emergency room visits. In September 2015, the city of Flint issued a lead advisory to its residents, alerting them of increased lead levels in their drinking water, resulting from the switch in water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River. Using Medicaid claims for 2013-2016, we find that this information shock increased the share of enrollees who had lead tests performed by 1.7 percentage points. Additionally, it increased office visits immediately following the information shock and led to a reduction of 4.9 preventable, non-emergent, and primary-care-treatable emergency room visits per 1000 eligible children (8.2%). This decrease is present in shifts from emergency room visits to office visits across several common conditions. Our analysis suggest that children were more likely to receive care from the same clinic following lead tests and that establishing care reduced the likelihood parents would take their children to emergency rooms for conditions treatable in an office setting. Our results are potentially applicable to any situation in which individuals are induced to seek more care in an office visit setting.




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Stephen, Tabitha King plan changes to iconic Maine home

The authors want to transform the home where they raised their children in Bangor, Maine, into the location for Stephen King’s personal archives. A guest house they own next door would host writers in residence.




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Hanover card kicks off German racing's return

Majestic Colt landed the first Listed prize of the German season as racing sparked back to life at Hanover on Thursday.




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Ferdinand fears Premier League faces thankless task

Former Manchester United and England defender Rio Ferdinand believes there is no viable resolution to the resumption of the 2019-20 season that will satisfy all 20 Premier League clubs.




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Immigration, Innovation, and Growth -- by Konrad B. Burchardi, Thomas Chaney, Tarek Alexander Hassan, Lisa Tarquinio, Stephen J. Terry

We show a causal impact of immigration on innovation and dynamism in US counties. To identify the causal impact of immigration, we use 130 years of detailed data on migrations from foreign countries to US counties to isolate quasi-random variation in the ancestry composition of US counties that results purely from the interaction of two historical forces: (i) changes over time in the relative attractiveness of different destinations within the US to the average migrant arriving at the time and (ii) the staggered timing of the arrival of migrants from different origin countries. We then use this plausibly exogenous variation in ancestry composition to predict the total number of migrants flowing into each US county in recent decades. We show four main results. First, immigration has a positive impact on innovation, measured by the patenting of local firms. Second, immigration has a positive impact on measures of local economic dynamism. Third, the positive impact of immigration on innovation percolates over space, but spatial spillovers quickly die out with distance. Fourth, the impact of immigration on innovation is stronger for more educated migrants.




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Brooklyn teen accused of swiping more than $1 million from dozens of victims in cryptocurrency scam

Yousef Selassie, 19, pleaded not guilty to first-degree grand larceny, identity theft and other charges at his Manhattan Supreme Court appearance for the lucrative scheme that operated from January through May this past year.




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New York ‘ready’ to snuff coronavirus when it lands thanks to training, technology and ‘secret shoppers'

New York health agencies says they're prepared for the coronavirus.




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Knife-wielding straphanger slashes face of woman whose child vomited on Brooklyn bus

A Brooklyn woman was slashed in the face with a knife by an enraged passenger after her child threw up on a city bus.




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After legendary 53-year career, Brooklyn Federal Judge Jack Weinstein hangs up his robe at age 98

Judge Jack Weinstein on Monday moved to inactive status, closing out a 53-year career. A highlight of his law career was working with Thurgood Marshall on the legal arguments that led the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in Brown v. Board of Education that school segregation was illegal. He was named a federal judge in 1967, and on his retirement was the last appointee of President Lyndon Johnson still on the bench.




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Caring New Yorkers increasingly lend a helping hand to neighbors in need as war against coronavirus gets local

While the COVID-19 pandemic keeps New Yorkers separated by face masks and social distancing and self-quarantine, a growing number of city residents are connecting through local mutual aid groups now sprouting across the shuttered boroughs.




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Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez says coronavirus crisis has shifted his focus to releasing inmates, rather than locking them up

The fourth-year DA told the Daily News in an interview that his focus has shifted dramatically during the crisis, as trials and grand juries have been put on hold across the state.




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NYC schools chancellor slams critics over abrupt ending to Queens school town hall, calling it a ‘set up’

Critics have slammed the chancellor for making an early exit from a town hall in Bayside last week after two furious parents stood up mid-meeting to demand answers from the schools chief about alleged assaults their middle school children suffered at M.S. 158




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NYC Education Dept. due for shortage of more than 1,000 seats for preschoolers with disabilities: analysis

Advocates have long protested the lack of special education pre-K classes for 3- and 4-year-olds, which is federally mandated, even as the city invests millions in universal pre-K.




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NYC pays out more than $1 million in settlements to employees who accused Queens high school principal of racism

The hefty payout comes after the federal Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the city Education Department in 2016 for allowing a “pattern and practice of discrimination” to flourish at Pan American High School during the 2012-13 school year.




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NYC schools Chancellor apologizes to Queens parents, promises meeting

Carranza made an early exit from a community meeting in Bayside last week after two parents demanded answers about violent incidents at Marie Curie Middle School. “I in no way want to show disrespect to any parent that wants to be heard, and I apologize because as a parent myself, I can only imagine the pain parents are feeling when their children have been hurt,” he said.




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Fewer than 8,000 NYC kids in foster care, an all-time low: officials

The results from the city’s annual foster care census showed a precipitous decline from the 1990s, when there were 50,000 kids in foster care, and a continued improvement from 2010, when there were 17,000.




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NYC schools Chancellor Richard Carranza beefs up security after threats to his safety

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, whose outspoken style and aggressive proposals on school diversity have made him a lightning rod in charged city schools debates, is traveling with two body guards after receiving menacing messages.




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Two NYC teens handcuffed and held by NYPD for 30 hours after scuffle with school safety officers

The teen and a pal stayed there for roughly 30 hours, most of which time they spent handcuffed to a bench in a Queens police precinct without food or water. “I still can’t sleep at home, because it’s always running through my mind,” 16-year-old Haily D’Souza told the Daily News.




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NYC Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza tells teachers to stop using Zoom for remote learning due to security concerns

Many teachers have been relying on the videoconferencing platform to chat with students during remote learning.




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Happy Thanksgiving from RSS Ground service!

Dear RSS Ground Users!
 
RSS Ground team would like to thank all community members for being the live engine of the service all this long. We hope it is the same pleasure for you to use our RSS tools as it is pleasure for us to develop them.
 
We would like to use the opportunity of a Thanksgiving holiday to express our gratitude of being with us all that long by adding two new generators to our RSS ...

The post Happy Thanksgiving from RSS Ground service! appeared first on RSS Feed Converter.




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Maughan in favour of club over county if games go ahead

The Offaly football manager John Maughan says he has cannot see the inter-county Championship being played this year.








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RSS Ground Changelog January 2020

Winter is outside, but it is pretty hot in our labs.  We have prepared several good updates for you this January. Please enjoy and get ready for more!
Content Recycle

As you know, the main idea of RSS Ground posting services is gradual updates with unique content. Our posting campaigns functionality is built to ensure your blogs and social network accounts are constantly updated with fresh content. But sometimes, re-posting already posted content may have a rationale.
According ...

The post RSS Ground Changelog January 2020 appeared first on RSSground.com.




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RSS Ground Changelog February 2020

Time flies fast, especially when you are busy doing something you like and care about. This time we have added a improved image posting to Facebook pages and groups, additional options for feed editing and a bit more clear error notifications in feeds Preview.
Improved image posting to Facebook

Click to enlarge
Before, when you made a post to your Facebook, only one image (photo) was attached to it. But now, if there are several images associated ...

The post RSS Ground Changelog February 2020 appeared first on RSSground.com.




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RSS Ground Changelog March 2020

RSS Ground team now works from home. But we are still efficient and productive. Here is what we did for you in March plus some of our plans for the future.
YouTube Feeds Now require API key

Click to enlarge
Because of the new limitations at Google developers platform, search requests for YouTube videos now have to be signed with a personal user key.
You need to obtain your own Google API key in order to resume ...

The post RSS Ground Changelog March 2020 appeared first on RSSground.com.




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RSS Ground Changelog April 2020

Epidemic situation in the World has influenced all of us a lot. Many businesses started paying more attention to their online presence as many people started to look for more opportunities to make additional money online. Affiliate marketing is what comes to mind in such a situation. Following this trend we decided to enrich our arsenal of tools with new affiliate feeds generators. Here is what was done in April of 2020.
Best Buy Feeds generator

Best Buy ...

The post RSS Ground Changelog April 2020 appeared first on RSSground.com.




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Dissecting Mechanisms of Financial Crises: Intermediation and Sentiment -- by Arvind Krishnamurthy, Wenhao Li

We develop a model of financial crises with both a financial amplification mechanism, via frictional intermediation, and a role for sentiment, via time-varying beliefs about an illiquidity state. We confront the model with data on credit spreads, equity prices, credit, and output across the financial crisis cycle. In particular, we ask the model to match data on the frothy pre-crisis behavior of asset markets and credit, the sharp transition to a crisis where asset values fall, disintermediation occurs and output falls, and the post-crisis period characterized by a slow recovery in output. We find that a pure amplification mechanism quantitatively matches the crisis and aftermath period but fails to match the pre-crisis evidence. Mixing sentiment and amplification allows the model to additionally match the pre-crisis evidence. We consider two versions of sentiment, a Bayesian belief updating process and one that overweighs recent observations. We find that both models match the crisis patterns qualitatively, generating froth pre-crisis, non-linear behavior in the crisis, and slow recovery. The non-Bayesian model improves quantitatively on the Bayesian model in matching the extent of the pre-crisis froth.




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West German Chancellor Willy Brandt Resigns (1974)

Brandt fled his native Germany for Norway after the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s. Returning after the war, he became involved in politics and, in 1969, was elected chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. As chancellor, he greatly improved relations with East Germany, the Soviet Union, and Poland, and in 1971 he received the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1974, he was forced to resign after an embarrassing scandal in which one of his close aides was exposed as what?




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A more uncertain world than ever for sporting retirees

My retirement came at the very start of the season so it felt like things had dragged on for quite a while for me before I could attempt to cut ties because I had already kicked off the season with the current group.




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Lenihan: Difficult year ahead for IRFU

Former Ireland captain and team manager Donal Lenihan believes the nature of rugby means it will be one of the last contact sports to resume and that spells trouble for the IRFU.




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The physics of freezing soap bubbles is cooler than you’d think

Freezing soap bubbles look like snow globes. This whimsical effect could help us improve biological freezing techniques—and is incredibly fun to watch.