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Subcutaneous fat necrosis of the newborn is a rare lobular panniculitis. It is characteristic of term or post-term neonates with a history of perinatal compromise or maternal gestational pathology. The cutaneous manifestations consist of erythematous and indurated subcutaneous plaques and nodules located over the dorsal region and the shoulders. Diagnosis is clinical and pathological. Histopathological findings include lobular panniculitis with a lymphohistiocytic inflammatory infiltrate with few neutrophils, fatty necrosis, deposition of radial needle-shaped crystals in the adipocytes, and possible calcification and hemorrhage. The cutaneous ultrasound shows hyperechoic and avascular subcutaneous cellular tissue and acoustic shadows may appear corresponding to calcifications. The clinical differential diagnosis includes sclerema neonatorum and post-corticosteroid panniculitis. Histologically crystal-forming panniculitis conditions are in the differential diagnosis. The disease is usually self-limited but complications such as hypercalcemia, hypoglycemia, hypertriglyceridemia, thrombocytopenia, and anemia may occur. Complications should be ruled out and treated at diagnosis and during follow-up. The most important complication is hypercalcemia.La necrosis grasa subcutanea neonatal es una paniculitis lobulillar infrecuente. Es caracteristica de neonatos a termino o postermino con antecedentes de sufrimiento perinatal o patologia gestacional materna. Las manifestaciones cutaneas consisten en placas y nodulos subcutaneos eritematosos e indurados localizados preferentemente en la region dorsal y los hombros. El diagnostico es clinicopatologico. Los hallazgos histopatologicos comprenden una paniculitis lobulillar con un infiltrado inflamatorio linfohistiocitario con escasos neutrofilos, necrosis grasa, deposito de cristales radiados en los adipocitos y posibles focos de calcificacion y hemorragia. En la ecografia cutanea se observa hiperecogenicidad y avascularizacion del tejido celular subcutaneo y pueden aparecer sombras acusticas posteriores que se correspondencon calcificaciones. El diagnostico diferencial clinico se debe realizar con el escleredema neonatorum y la paniculitis postesteroidea, e histologicamente con las paniculitis con formacion de cristales. La enfermedad suele ser autolimitada pero pueden aparecer complicaciones como la hipercalcemia, la hipoglucemia, la hipertrigliceridemia, latrombocitopenia y la anemia. Las complicaciones deben ser descartadas y tratadas en el diagnostico y durante el seguimiento. La complicacion masimportante es la hipercalcemia.

In this work we observe the role of public and human capital through an extended version of the Solow model,and we test its main implication that in the long run growth is only drived by technological progress which is exogenous.We estimate a panel data with fixed effects and we obtain several interesting results.First, we obtain favourable conclusions about the predictive capacity of the Solow model for the Spanish regions and that the main restriction of the model holds.However,we find evidence against the other basic prediction of the Solow model that the long run growth rate is only determined by technological progress that is exogenous.The prin- cipal reason is the observed strong correlation between the growth rates of the labour force and production per worker.We also obtain a relevant role of human capital. Second,we elaborate a measure of the rate of growth of the Total Factor Productivity (TFP)using the Divisia-Tornqvist index and we find that it is independent of the investment in private capital and the growth rate of labour force.Its only appear weakly significant the investment in human and public capital variables.This result could be consistent with the prediction of the Solow model.

This paper proposes an extended version of the basic New Keynesian monetary (NKM) model which contemplates revision processes of output and inflation data in order to assess the importance of data revisions on the estimated monetary policy rule parameters and the transmission of policy shocks. Our empirical evidence based on a structural econometric approach suggests that although the initial announcements of output and inflation are not rational forecasts of revised output and inflation data, ignoring the presence of non well-behaved revision processes may not be a serious drawback in the analysis of monetary policy in this framework. However, the transmission of inflation-push shocks is largely affected by considering data revisions. The latter being especially true when the nominal stickiness parameter is estimated taking into account data revision processes.

This paper uses a structural approach based on the indirect inference principle to estimate a standard version of the new Keynesian monetary (NKM) model augmented with term structure using both revised and real-time data. The estimation results show that the term spread and policy inertia are both important determinants of the U.S. estimated monetary policy rule whereas the persistence of shocks plays a small but significant role when revised and real-time data of output and inflation are both considered. More importantly, the relative importance of term spread and persistent shocks in the policy rule and the shock transmission mechanism drastically change when it is taken into account that real-time data are not well behaved.

En este artículo se presentan algunas de las prácticas docentes que han sido llevadas a cabo dentro de la experiencia piloto preparatoria para el Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior (EEES) en la Facultad de Economía y Empresa de la Universidad de Murcia. La implantación del nuevo EEES hace cada vez más difícil que el profesor o tutor se centre en un solo manual para el aprendizaje de alumnos, resultando cada vez más necesario el uso de multitud de materiales adicionales (apuntes, información económica de actualidad, bases de datos online, seminarios inter-disciplinares, …) que fomenten las diferentes competencias establecidas en los diferentes Grados en los que se imparten asignaturas de teoría económica. Aquí se presentan algunas reflexiones en base a los métodos utilizados y los resultados obtenidos los últimos años en dicha experiencia.

This paper estimates a standard version of the New Keynesian monetary (NKM) model under alternative specifications of the monetary policy rule using U.S. and Eurozone data. The estimation procedure implemented is a classical method based on the indirect inference principle. An unrestricted VAR is considered as the auxiliary model. On the one hand, the estimation method proposed overcomes some of the shortcomings of using a structural VAR as the auxiliary model in order to identify the impulse response that defines the minimum distance estimator implemented in the literature. On the other hand, by following a classical approach we can further assess the estimation results found in recent papers that follow a maximum-likelihood Bayesian approach. The estimation results show that some structural parameter estimates are quite sensitive to the specification of monetary policy. Moreover, the estimation results in the U.S. show that the fit of the NKM under an optimal monetary plan is much worse than the fit of the NKM model assuming a forward-looking Taylor rule. In contrast to the U.S. case, in the Eurozone the best fit is obtained assuming a backward-looking Taylor rule, but the improvement is rather small with respect to assuming either a forward-looking Taylor rule or an optimal plan. Financial support from Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología and Universidad del País Vasco (Spain) through projects SEJ2004-04811/ECON and 9/UPV00035.321-13511/2001, respectively, is gratefully acknowledged.

Published as article in: Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control (2008), 32(May), pp. 1466-1488. This paper analyzes the performance of alternative versions of the New Keynesian monetary (NKM) model in order to replicate the comovement observed between output and inflation during the Greenspan era. Following Den Haan (2000), we analyze that comovement by computing the correlations of VAR forecast errors of the two variables at different forecast horizons. The empirical correlations obtained show a weak comovement. A simple NKM model under a standard parametrization provides a high negative comovement at any forecast horizon. However, a generalized version including habit formation and a forward-looking Taylor rule is able to mimic the observed weak comovement. The good performance of this generalized version also extends to the case in which the policymaker is committed to following an optimal contingent plan under certain parametrizations. Financial support from Fundación BBVA, Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología and Universidad del País Vasco (Spain) through projects 1/BBVA00044.321-15466, SEJ2004-04811/ECON and 9/UPV00035.321- 13511/2001, respectively, is gratefully acknowledged.

This Paper derives optimal monetary policy rules in setups where certainty equivalence does not hold because either central bank preferences are not quadratic, and/or the aggregate supply relation is non-linear. Analytical results show that these features lead to sign and size asymmetries, and non-linearities in the policy rule. Reduced-form estimates indicate that US monetary policy can be characterized by a non-linear policy rule after 1983, but not before 1979. This finding is consistent with the view that the Fed’s inflation preferences during the Volcker-Greenspan regime differ considerably from the ones during the Burns-Miller regime.

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This paper investigates the possible existence of asymmetric effects in the response of four central banks to inflation and output gaps as regards the 'sign' and 'size' of those gaps. The evidence obtained both through the estimation of a generalized Taylor rule and an ordered probit model points out that most central banks show a stronger reaction to inflation upswings relative to downswings. However, except for the Federal Reserve, no asymmetric behaviour with respect to the output gap is found.

In this paper we provide empirical evidence on the determinants of the monetary policy stance by the Bank of Spain over the period 1984-1998, by means of modelling a marked point process explaining the probability of an intervention at each point in time (events) and the size of these interventions (marks) conditional on the decision to intervene. Interventions are measured by changes in the marginal interest rate of the Spanish daily interbank market. We test for and find evidence in favour of the existence of asymmetries in the response of the central bank to the evolution of various macroeconomic variables and for the presence of 'duration' effects.

In this paper, we provide empirical evidence for the Spanish economy, over the period 1977-97, on whether monetary policy shocks have had different effects on real output growth depending on the state of the business cycle. To do so, we adopt an extension of Hamilton's (1989) Markov Switching Model, as recently proposed by García and Schaller (1995), where shocks to an interest rate policy rule followed by the Bank of Spain are allowed to affect both the growth rate of output and the transition probabilities of moving from one phase to another. The analysis is carried out both at the aggregate level and the sectorial level, with the aim of addressing the following questions: (i) Does monetary policy have the same effect regardless of the current phase of economic fluctuations?, (ii) Does monetary policy only have an incremental effect on output growth rate within a given state or does it also affect the probability of state switch, and, (iii) How do the aggregate and sectorial results compare?

Recientemente han aparecido una serie de estudios en la literatura que utilizan modelos basados en procesos de puntos marcados y análisis de supervivencia para analizar aspectos de economía monetaria y financiera; véase p.ej, Engle and Russell (1995, 1997), Engle and Lange (1997) y Jordá (1998). En este trabajo, haciendo uso de un planteamiento similar, se tratará de analizar los principales determinantes de una regla de control basada en un tipo de intervención, así como el papel desempeilado por el mismo dentro de la política monetaria en España durante el período 1984-1998. En primer lugar, se procede a realizar un estudio de las principales magnitudes macroeconómicas relevantes a la hora de llevar a cabo las intervenciones el banco central (sucesos), mediante un modelo probit, pasando posteriormente a considerar los cambios en el instrumento monetario de control (marcas) mediante un modelo probit ordenado. Asimismo, se realiza un análisis conjunto de sucesos y marcas mediante un modelo probit secuencial para las intervenciones del banco central. Por último, se observa la posibilidad de existencia de efectos asimétricos en la forma de actuación del banco central ante cambios en el comportamiento de magnitudes macroeconómicas relevantes, obteniéndose envidencia a favor de los mismos.

En este trabajo se obtiene evidencia empírica sobre la posible existencia de efectos asimétricos en las actuaciones de la política monetaria sobre la producción en España durante el período 1977-1996. El estudio de dichos efectos se centra en el modo en que perturbaciones monetarias aleatorias, obtenidas a partir de una ecuación de instrumentación de política monetaria del Banco de España, divididas en perturbaciones positivas y negativas (para el estudio de asimetrías de tipo keynesiano), grandes y pequeñas (para el estudio de asimetrías tipo menu cost) y posibles combinaciones de ellas afectan a la actividad real, mediante su introducción en una ecuación de demanda agregada. Empleando dos procedimientos distintos de estimación, se obtiene evidencia a favor de la asimetría de corte keynesiano, de lo cual se deriva que las perturbaciones monetarias negativas, producidas por una política monetaria contractiva, tienen efectos reales en la economía española.

En este trabajo se analiza si la política monetaria tiene efectos asimétricos sobre la producción en las distintas fases del ciclo económico en España, tal como sugieren diferentes modelos en los que se analizan las implicaciones derivadas de la existencia de precios fijos o restricciones de carácter financiero. Según estos modelos las variaciones en el instrumento monetario de control tendrán un mayor efecto en las fases de recesión del ciclo económico que en las fases de expansión. Asimismo, estas variaciones pueden dar lugar a un incremento en la probabilidad de cambio de una fase a otra del ciclo. Mediante el empleo de la metodología de series temporales sujetas a cambio de régimen propuesta por Hamilton (1989), oportunamente modificada para permitir la presencia de variables explicativas, se intenta responder a las siguientes preguntas: (i) ¿.Produce la política monetaria un efecto distinto en las fases del ciclo económico?, (ii) ¿Facilitan las disminuciones de tipos de interés la salida de una fase de recesión? y (iii) ¿Es mayor el efecto de la poI ítica monetaria en aquellos períodos en los que se produce un cambio de fase del ciclo económico o dentro de una determinada fase del ciclo?.