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Daily Archives: June 14, 2014

Market Impact of Macroeconomic Announcements: Do Surprises Matter?

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Nadler, Daniel and Schmidt, Anatoly B., Market Impact of Macroeconomic Announcements: Do Surprises Matter? (June 11, 2014). Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2449796

“Current research of market impact caused by macroeconomic announcements is based on regressing asset returns on macroeconomic surprises, S(t) ~ A(t) – E(t), where A(t) and E(t) are actual and expected (consensus) values of macroeconomic indicators at time t. We found that regressing returns of SPDR ETF SPY on actual change, AC(t) ~ A(t) – A(t-1), and expected change, EC(t) ~ E(t) – A(t-1), yield statistically significant indicators similar to those for S(t). These indicators somewhat vary for the periods 2004-2008 and 2009-2013. The advantage of AC(t) is that it is not based on the subjective nature of consensus. As for EC(t), it does not have a look-ahead bias since E(t) are published prior to A(t). Hence CE(t) can be used for short-term forecasting. We show that with proper fitting, AC-, EC-, and S-based indexes can be used for modeling the SPY price dynamics.”

Growth, inequality, and social welfare: cross-country evidence

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Report Link via author Aart Kraay: “Social welfare functions that assign weights to individuals based on their income levels can be used to document the relative importance of growth and inequality changes for changes in social welfare. In a large panel of industrial and developing countries over the past 40 years, most of the cross-country… Continue Reading

WSJ – Canadians Have a Right to Online Anonymity, Nation’s Top Court Rules

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Jacob Gershman – “A month after the Europe Union’ top court endorsed the right to be forgotten online, another landmark Internet privacy ruling has come down — this time from the highest court in Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada on Friday said Internet users there have a reasonable expectation of anonymity, ruling that telecommunications companies may not hand… Continue Reading

Tor Is For Everyone: Why You Should Use Tor – EFF

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“EFF recently kicked off our second Tor Challenge, an initiative to strengthen the Tor network for online anonymity and improve one of the best free privacy tools in existence. The campaign—which we’ve launched with partners at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Tor Project, and the Free Software Foundation—is already off to a great start.… Continue Reading

Generic drug firms deter entry by lowering price

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FTC – “In a recently published article, we discuss our finding that generic drug companies successfully use low-pricing strategies to discourage entry by new competitors in certain circumstances. We identify the effect of potential competition using a unique feature of a federal law that regulates drug competition, commonly referred to as the “Hatch-Waxman Act.” Under certain… Continue Reading

EFF – Judge Orders DOJ to Turn Over Secret Legal Opinions for Court to Review

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“A federal judge [on June 13, 2014] ordered the Department of Justice to hand over key opinions by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (also known as the “FISA court”) so the judge can directly review whether information about mass surveillance was improperly withheld from the public. The order is another victory in EFF’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit… Continue Reading

New code exposes hidden changes to Supreme Court opinions

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Jeff John Roberts via Gigaom: “David Zvenyach is general counsel to the Council of the District of Columbia and, in his spare time, likes to experiment with computer code. Upon learning of Adam Liptak’s [New York Times article addressing changes to Supreme court opinions, which was based on a study by Harvard law professor Richard Lazurus, he decided to… Continue Reading

New Mapping Tool from EPA

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Via e360Digest: “The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently launched a mapping system that allows users to explore the landscape of energy sources and power plant distribution across the nation. Among the most striking visualizations is this map showing the widespread distribution of natural gas power plants, marking the fossil fuel’s growing use as an energy source.… Continue Reading

After the Fall: Lessons for Policy Cooperation from the Global Crisis

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IMF – June 10, 2014 – Tamim Bayoumi “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and nowhere is this truer than in the arena of international economic policy cooperation. With the world facing the largest and most synchronized plunge in output of the postwar era, policy makers banded together to find solutions. This paper looks… Continue Reading

The FCC just launched its peering investigation with a call for data

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Gigaom: “The Federal Communication Commission has finally acted on the allegations that certain ISPs are intentionally throttling traffic from providers such as Netflix as a way to charge content providers additional fees. Chairman Tom Wheeler issued a statement on Friday noting that the agency has asked for documentation about peering, and it currently has the terms of the agreements… Continue Reading