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Measurement(s) Seismic waveforms (seismograms) • Seismicity (Origin time, location and magnitude of earthquakes) Technology Type(s) Seismic stations (velocity sensors) • SeisComP data acquisition and processing system

The 2013 Castor seismic sequence, offshore Spain, is a rare example of seismicity induced by gas storage operations. Here we show that early seismicity marked the progressive failure of a fault in response to pore pressure diffusion, while later larger earthquakes resulted by the failure of loaded asperities.

Résumé Ce rapport résume l'activité sismique en Suisse et dans les régions limitrophes au cours des années 2017 et 2018. En 2017 et 2018, le Service Sismologique Suisse a détecté et localisé respectivement 1227 et 955 séismes dans la zone considérée. L’événement le plus puissant dans la période analysée fut le séisme d’Urnerboden de magnitude ML 4.6, qui s’est produit le 6 mars 2017 dans la région frontalière des cantons d’Uri, de Glaris et Schwytz. Ce fut le plus grand séisme en Suisse depuis le séisme de magnitude ML 5.0 à Vaz en 1991. Les mouvements du sol associés au séisme d’Urnerboden approchèrent une intensité maximale de VI, et une intensité de IV fut reportée à une distance d’environ 50 km. Les mécanismes au foyer et les relocalisations relatives des hypocentres de répliques rendent compte d’une faille décrochante senestre de direction NNW–SSE. Le séisme d’Urnerboden et la sismicité historique environnante suggèrent l’existence de failles décrochantes sub-parallèles, probablement dans la partie supérieure du socle cristallin à l'extrémité orientale du massif de l'Aar. Une autre séquence remarquable s’est produite près de Château-d'Oex dans les Préalpes romandes en Suisse occidentale. Le plus puissant séisme de cette séquence s’est produit le 1er juillet 2017 avec une magnitude ML de 4.3. Les mécanismes au foyer et les relocalisations relatives de ses précurseurs et répliques permettent de visualiser une faille normale avec un pendage vers le NNE à environ 4 km de profondeur. Deux évènements associés à des failles normales superficielles d’orientation similaires se sont produits en 2017 et 2018, entre les Molasses sub-alpines et les unités structurales des Préalpes, près de Châtel-St-Denis et St. Silvestre. L'ensemble de ces évènements indiquent le long du front alpin, entre le lac Léman à l’ouest et la faille de Fribourg à l’est, un domaine NE–SW où s’opère une transition de déformation entre une région d’extension et une région de transtension. La complexité structurale de cette dernière est révélée par un séisme d’une magnitude ML 2.9 près de Tavel en 2018. Cet évènement décrit un segment de faille NW–SE au sein du socle cristallin, qui pourrait être relié à la zone de faille de Fribourg. Enfin, le séisme de magnitude ML 2.8 à Grenchen en 2017 procure une information rare sur la dynamique active de la partie superficielle de la ceinture de chevauchement du Jura dans l’avant-pays nord-ouest-alpin Suisse.

Sound regional policies are essential for balanced and sustained economic growth. The interaction of federal and regional policies with cross-regional structural differences affects human and physical capital formation, the business climate, private investment, market depth, and competition. This paper summarizes the main elements of Russia’s fiscal federalism, describes the channels through which it operates, and assesses the effectiveness of regional transfers in reducing regional disparities. The results suggest that federal transfers to regions contributed to reducing disparities arising from heterogeneous regional tax bases and fiscal revenues. This allowed regions with initially lower per capita income to increase human and physical capital at higher rates. There is little evidence for transfers contributing to increased cross-regional growth synchronization. The results also suggest that federal transfers did not significantly improve regional fiscal sustainability, a conclusion that is supported by the lack of convergence in per capita real income across Russian regions in the last 15 years.

Abstract A well-functioning monetary transmission mechanism is critical for monetary policy. As the Dominican Republic recently adopted an inflation targeting regime, it is even more relevant to guarantee that changes in the monetary policy rates are quickly and fully reflected in retail rates, to eventually influence aggregate demand and inflation. This paper estimates the interest rate pass-through of the monetary policy rate to retail rates and explores asymmetries in the adjustment. We find evidence of complete pass-through to retail rates, confirming the effectiveness of the monetary policy transmission mechanism. However, our results also suggest a faster pass-through to lending rates than to deposit rates and asymmetric adjustments of short-term rates, as deposit rates respond faster to policy rate cuts and lending rates respond faster to policy rate hikes. Measures to enhance competition in the financial system could help to achieve a symmetric adjustment of retail rates.

Output gap estimates are subject to a wide range of uncertainty owing principally to the difficulty in distinguishing between cycle and trend in real time. We show that country desks tend to overestimate economic slack, especially during recessions, and that uncertainty in initial output gap estimates persists several years. Only a small share of output gap revisions is predictable based on output dynamics, data quality, and policy frameworks. We also show that for a group of Latin American inflation targeters the prescriptions from monetary policy rules are subject to large changes due to revised output gap estimates. These explain a sizable proportion of the deviation of inflation from target, suggesting this information is not accounted for in real-time policy decisions.

The 2011 Tohoku earthquake and the following enormous tsunami caused great disturbances in the ionosphere that were observed in various regions along the Pacific Ocean. In this study, the oblique-incidence ionosonde detection network located in North China was applied to investigate the inland ionospheric disturbances related to the 2011 tsunamigenic earthquake. The ionosonde network consists of five transmitters and 20 receivers and can monitor regional ionosphere disturbances continuously and effectively. Based on the recorded electron density variations along the horizontal plane, the planar middle-scale ionospheric disturbances (MSTIDs) associated with the 2011 Tohoku tsunamigenic earthquake were detected more than 2000 km west of the epicenter about six hours later. The MSTIDs captured by the Digisonde, high-frequency (HF) Doppler measurement, and Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (COSMIC) satellite provided more information about the far-field inland propagation characteristics of the westward propagating gravity waves. The results imply that the ionosonde network has the potential for remote sensing of ionospheric disturbances induced by tsunamigenic earthquakes and provide a perspective for investigating the propagation process of associated gravity waves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]