Existing empirical literature on political business cycles focused primarily on developed economies before it began considering a basket of both developed and developing economies. This study seeks to expand the existing literature by pursuing two objectives using Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) as locations of the study. The first objective is to examine the presence (lack thereof) of political business cycles in the BRICS trading block for the period 1994 to 2014. The second objective of this study is to examine the effect that political business cycles (if present) have on the sovereign credit ratings that the BRICS countries receive from credit rating agencies. Credit rating agencies make use of a combination of political, social and economic factors to determine the ratings assigned to various countries. The credit ratings assigned to countries by these agencies play an important role to international lenders as they use these ratings to make decisions on the interest rates they charge to different sovereigns. Based on the first objective, the findings from this study show that there is weak evidence of electorally timed interventions in BRICS economies over the period of 1994 to 2014. These findings are inconsistent with the predictions of political business cycle theory which suggests that incumbent politicians take advantage of the information gap between them and voters by implementing economic changes closer to an election year in order to exude competence and to increase their chances of reelection. However, further analysis based on the second objective shows that elections in BRICS countries are not viewed negatively by credit rating agencies. Hence, unlike in other developing countries, the BRICS countries are not likely to be downgraded during or after election years. Consequent to these findings, this study supports the notion that the government’s influence on the fiscal and monetary policy variables across BRICS is not concentrated nor overly exerted around election periods and that the BRICS countries’ institutions are regarded by rating agencies as independent and up to relevant international standards.

This dissertation finds significant differences in the micro-level household consumption behavior between emerging and developed economies, disentangles multiple possible explanations for these differences, and evaluates their macroeconomic implication on business cycles. The first chapter estimates the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) out of transitory income shocks using micro data for an emerging economy. To this end, I employ a nationally representative Peruvian household survey. Two striking differences emerge when the Peruvian MPC estimates are compared with U.S. MPC estimates obtained by the same method. First, the mean MPC of Peruvian income deciles is much higher than that of U.S. deciles. Second, within-country MPC heterogeneity over the deciles is substantially stronger in Peru than in the U.S. The second chapter studies the driving factor for the MPC differences between Peru and the U.S. I begin by exploring three possible explanations for the stronger MPC heterogeneity in Peru through the lens of a standard precautionary saving model: liquidity constraints, consumption front-loading behavior, and heterogeneous interest rates. Then, I disentangle these possible explanations by examining relevant data patterns appearing in the micro data. Specifically, participation rates in borrowing activities and consumption growth rate patterns of the income deciles suggest that liquidity constraints drive the stronger MPC heterogeneity in Peru. Then, I decompose the cross-country MPC gap into the component driven by liquidity constraints and the component caused by factors unrelated to liquidity constraints. To this end, I delineate a top income group unaffected by liquidity constraints in each country by conducting an MPC homogeneity test and evaluate its MPC. I find that liquidity constraints are also important for explaining the higher mean MPC in Peru. The third chapter makes a first attempt to study emerging market business cycles in a heterogeneous-agent open economy model. A central question in open economy macroeconomics is how to explain excess consumption volatility in emerging economies. This chapter argues that to understand this phenomenon, it is important to take into account households' idiosyncratic income risk, precautionary saving, and MPCs. Financial frictions determining asset liquidity in the model are calibrated such that MPCs are as high as empirical estimates from Peruvian micro data, which are substantially greater than the U.S. MPC estimates. I then estimate the model using macro data and Bayesian methods. The model captures the observed excess consumption volatility well. To highlight the importance of high-MPC households in driving this result, I show that excess consumption volatility disappears when households are counterfactually replaced with those exhibiting U.S. MPCs. High-MPC households contribute to consumption volatility through i) their strong consumption response to resource fluctuations and ii) large consumption reduction when assets become more illiquid. The transmission mechanisms of trend shocks and interest rate variations that previous studies use to explain excess consumption volatility are dampened because households significantly deviate from the permanent income hypothesis, on which these mechanisms crucially depend.

The topic that I have been studying for this thesis concerns the locomotion of quadruped animals. More specifically, my goal was to study how quadrupeds, such as canines or felines, move and then compare that movement to individuals of the same species, except adding in a factor such as a limp or the removal of an entire limb. I wanted to see how that affected their balance and their gait among other things. Luckily, there are plenty of resources out there for me to study the differences. Between videos online, living with dogs and cats at home, and semi-regularly volunteering at an animal rescue sanctuary, I have been able to amass a sizeable amount of data to determine both how these animals move regularly, and how injuries or the complete loss of a limb affects their movement. I have studied four different types of quadruped walk-cycles and then further studied them to see how various limb injuries affect how they get from point a to point b. Afterwards, I applied what I learned by animating a cycles that capture how the quadruped normally moves and then also animating a cycle where the quadruped has limited ability with one of its limbs.

<p>A gravel pit west of Galt exposed about 6m of shallow braided outwash gravels which overlie deposits of unknown origin with eroded topography. The outwash shows two cycles of coarse sediment deposition with a relatively quiet period between. The lower cycle fines upwards from coarse gravel, through cross-bedded pebbly sand, to silty ripple-drift. The upper cycle erodes the silty sand and coarsens upwards from pebbly sand cross-beds to cobble gravel of longitudinal bars. These bars can be shown by their internal sandy horizons and stoss side sandy deposits to have grown by deposition at their upstream end. </p><p>The two major depositional cycles are related to north-westward flowing meltwater from the glacier as it stood at the Paris and Galt moraines respectively with the quiet period representing the time of retreat between the moraines. Subsequent melting to the north initiated an ice-contact spillway which ended the outwash deposition west or Galt. </p> / Thesis / Bachelor of Science (BSc)

Note: Note: p. 61 missing.

Recent results of string theory have shown that while the traditional cycles studied in Calabi-Yau 4-manifolds preserve half the spacetime supersymmetry, the more general class of Cayley cycles are novel in that they preserve only one quarter of it. Moreover, Cayley cycles play a crucial role in understanding mirror symmetry on Calabi-Yau 4-manifolds and Spin manifolds. Nonetheless, only very few nontrivial examples of Cayley cycles are known. In particular, it would be very useful to know interesting examples of Cayley cycles on the complex 4-torus. This thesis will develop key techniques for finding and constructing lattice periodic Cayley manifolds in Euclidean 8-space. These manifolds will project down to the complex 4-torus, yielding nontrivial Cayley cycles.

Résumé / Abstract

Mémoire (M.Ress.Renouv.)-- Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, 1993. / Document électronique également accessible en format PDF. CaQCU

Dissertation (D.M.A.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2010. / Directed by Carla LeFevre; submitted to the School of Music. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Jul. 14, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 29-30).

Thesis (P H.D.)--University of Penneylvania, 1933. / Published also without thesis note.