Transition from U18 to senior basketball in males: A comparison of external and internal game demands

Behavior needs neural variability

BackgroundThe quality of the evidence used in health technology assessment (HTA) agency reports has been considered essential for decision-making processes and their legitimacy. In Brazil, CONITEC is the agency responsible for defining data mandatory for the submission of proposals for the incorporation of new technologies. The objective of this study was to analyse CONITEC recommendation reports, the type of scientific evidence used in them and their compliance with operational procedures.MethodsThis is a descriptive study based on CONITEC official reports from July 2012 through December 2016. Data were collected with a specific extraction form and analysed using descriptive statistics.ResultsWe evaluated 199 CONITEC recommendation reports. The annual number of reports increased during the study period. The absolute annual number of new technologies incorporated in 2013 (n = 24) was similar to that observed for 2014 (n = 24) and 2015 (n = 22), decreasing in 2016 (n = 13). The type of technology most frequently evaluated was ‘drugs’ (68.3%), followed by ‘procedures’ (20.1%). Overall, 117 (58.8%) reports were internal demands, 75 (37.7%) were external demands and 7 (3.5%) were mixed demands. There were differences between internal and external demands in terms of the evidence used in the reports and the decision regarding the recommendation to incorporate the technologies. Among the internal demands, the recommendation to incorporate the new technology was made for 70.9% of the reports, only 9.6% of which included full HTAs. Among the external demands, the incorporation of the new technology was recommended for 17.3% of the reports, 76.9% of which included full HTAs. Of the 101 reports in which incorporation of the new technology was recommended, 88 (87.1%) did not include a full health economic evaluation and ICER calculation. There are compliance difficulties with the recommendations in the CONITEC internal regulations regarding the type and quality of evidence considered in the analysis of recommendation reports.ConclusionsThe characteristics of the evidence used in recommendation reports and those considered to be mandatory were very different, indicating problems in decision-making processes. There is a need to study, with a broader perspective, the factors that influence the type of evidence used in decision-making processes in order to contribute to the development of better practices and policies.

Fatigue is a significant health care problem of interest to professionals in many disciplines. Yet, it is poorly understood. Fatigue, as an indicator of adaptation, is examined in relationship to internal and external environmental demands in women's lives. From a secondary analysis of data collected from a large group of women in a Northwest urban community in the U.S., it was found that internal demands such as depression or anxiety are more significantly related to fatigue and vitality than external demands such as negative life events or employment status.

International norms of what it means to be a state dictate domestic policy within developing and unrecognized states but must co-exist with internal demands. With a mutual dependence between internal and external considerations and, indeed, legitimacy, at the fore of Somaliland’s statebuilding project and its stability, it is a useful study in achieving ‘success’ in statebuilding and in what success can mean in bringing together internal and external demands. This article examines the impact of the hybrid inclusion of traditional authority in the central democratic government as the marriage between internal and external demands. This article argues that the Somaliland state is successful because it is a flexible process rather than a project; a process that reflects the demands and expectations of society, an aspect that is often absent in statebuilding projects.

Effects of mental demands during dispensing on perceived medication safety and employee well-being: A study of workload in pediatric hospital pharmacies

Being a teacher educator (TE) of today is often described as a complex task. TEs have to deal with internal demands from students, colleagues and leaders and with external demands from state authorities when shaping the education programme in which they teach. The present article focuses on TEs in Swedish preschool teacher education and aims to explore how commitment to and demands, inside and outside the higher education system, are handled and reflected upon, specifically the demands on considering student-centred learning. Results from interviews with 10 TEs show a perceived lack of support from the faculty board and its office and how colleagues contribute to tensions but also are perceived as supportive colleagues to learn from. Results also show the TEs’ efforts to overcome less desirable traditions. The combined results show how TEs are part of webs of commitments regarded as related fields and threads dependent on each other rather than separate parts, making the web/teacher education programme fragile. If any part breaks, the whole programme will be damaged. The discussion relates to how to overcome traditions and making actors in the programme shape a future-directed good education together.

This paper focuses on joint production/inventory optimization in single and multiple horizons, respectively, within a complicated supply network (CSN) consisting of firm nodes with coupled demands and firm nodes with coupled demands. We first formulate the single-epoch joint optimal output model by allowing the production of extra quantity for stock underage, considering the fixed costs incurred by having inventory over demand and shortfalls. Then, the multi-temporal dynamic joint production model is further investigated to deal with stochastic demand fluctuations among CSN nodes by constructing a dynamic input–output model. The K-convexity defined in Rn space is proved to obtain the optimal control strategy. According to physical flow links, all demands associated to the nodes of CSN are categorized into the inter-node demand inside CSN (intermediate demand) and external demand outside CSN (final demand). We exploit the meliorated input–output matrix to describe demand relations, building dynamic input–output models where demand fluctuates randomly in single-cycle CSN and finite multi-cycle CSN. The novel monocyclic and multicyclic dynamic models have been developed to minimize system-wide operational costs. Unlike existent literature, we consider fixed costs incurred by overdemand and underdemand inventory into system operational cost functions and then demonstrate the convexity of objective functions. The cost function with two fixed penalty costs due to excess and shortage of inventory is developed in a multicycle model, and the K-convexity defined in Rn is proved to find out the optimal strategy for joint dynamic production of CSNs in the case of multi-products and multicycles.

Since China's reform and opening-up in 1978, its international trade has experienced rapid growth, with a long-term trade surplus becoming a prominent feature against the backdrop of sustained economic expansion. In particular, its bilateral trade with the United States has consistently been in a trade surplus. This paper examines the relationship between the trade surplus and China's economic growth through a literature review, aiming to systematically analyse the dual effects of the trade surplus. The research findings indicate a positive correlation between the trade surplus and China's economic growth. The trade surplus drives economic growth by boosting external and internal demand, accumulating foreign exchange reserves (enhancing the ability to stabilise exchange rates and ensure import security), and strengthening government investment in infrastructure, human capital, and strategic industries. However, trade surpluses also pose risks, including resource misallocation leading to industrial imbalances, increased vulnerability to global shocks due to overreliance on external demand, and pressure on the renminbi to appreciate, which weakens export competitiveness.

(1) Background: The use of advanced technology to study the energy demands of sport participants during actual sport competition is an important current research direction. The purpose of this study was to identify the physiological, internal, and external demands placed on basketball referees using ultra-wideband (UWB) technology, in relation to the period of the game. (2) Methods: The sample was comprised of nine international referees, and the data collection took place during the Women’s EuroBasket Sub-16 championship. Internal and external load were assessed through the inertial device WIMU PROTM, using UWB technology in order to quantify the effort exerted by each referee. The internal load was examined in relation to each individual’s heart rate (HR). The external load included the kinematic variables accelerations (Acc), decelerations (Dec), Acc/min, Dec/min, distance covered, steps, maximum speed (Vmax), average speed (Vavg), and speed zones, as well as the neuromuscular variables impacts (Imp), PlayerLoadTM (PLTM), PLTM/min, Metabolic Power (PMet), and PMet/min. (3) Results: The results exposed that referees work around 62% HRmax and spend more than 80% of the match at intensities between 0–12 km/h. The first period was the period in which the greatest work demand was experienced in relation to these neuromuscular outcomes (11.92 PL; 3.61 Met; 277 Impacts). The results revealed a diminishment of internal and external demands on the referees over the course of the game. (4) Conclusions: The results highlight the importance of monitoring and quantifying the workload of basketball officials, because doing so would allow for the establishment of individualized performance profiles that could be designed with the purpose of benefiting referee performance during games. The use of inertial devices allows for the objective quantification of referee workload under competitive circumstances.

Despite the growing popularity of Ultimate Frisbee (UF) across sexes, the game demands imposed on players have been predominately examined in males. This study aimed to compare the internal and external demands of UF game-play in males and females. Male (N.=10) and female (N.=10) recreational UF players competed in separate sex-specific, indoor UF games. Internal responses (blood lactate concentration [BLa-], rating of perceived exertion [RPE], and heart rate [HR]) and external responses (direction-specific and total relative PlayerLoad™ [PL], and estimated equivalent distance [EED]) were measured. Data were analyzed using mixed ANOVAs with Cohen's effect sizes (d). During male game-play, significantly (P<0.01) higher BLa- (d=1.30, large), HR (d=0.40, small), PL (d=0.80-1.24, moderate-large), and EED (d=0.93, moderate) were apparent during the first half compared to the second half in males. During female game-play, a significantly (P<0.001) larger RPE (d=0.93, moderate) was evident during the second compared to the first half. In addition, females exhibited significantly (P<0.05) lower BLa- (d=1.43, large) in the first half and higher medio-lateral PL (d=1.10, moderate) in the second half compared to males. While similar global responses were observed between sexes across UF game-play, males experienced greater declines in physiological intensity and multi-directional activity than females. These data indicate overlap in game demands and training recommendations across sexes, with activity maintenance a focus, particularly in males.

The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of space and number of players manipulation on the external and internal load demands of youth futsal athletes. Forty-two male U17 players (age = 15.62 ± 0.58 years) from three futsal teams participated in the study. In this cross-sectional study that lasted 8-week, the player's sample practiced six futsal tasks (T1-T6) and a futsal game played under the official rules (T7). From T1-T6, two task constraints were manipulated: (i) the number of players and, (ii) the space of play. The WIMU PRO™ Ultra-Wideband (UWB) tracking system was used to measure the external and internal load during the futsal tasks. External load was quantified using kinematic and mechanical variables extracted from positional data and, the internal load was quantified using Heart rate (HR) and rating of perceived exertion (RPE). Repeated measures ANOVA was used for comparison purposes. In general, the results showed high external (total distance, distance 18.1-21, above 21 Km/h, and high intensity acceleration and deceleration, p < 0.001) and internal load (heart rate average and rating of perceived exertion, p < 0.001) in the tasks with low number of players and high area. In relation to the match, the tasks with small relative area per player (GK + 2 vs. 2 + GK and GK + 3 vs. 3 + GK in 20 × 20 m) promoted low external load. It was concluded that increasing the relative area by reducing the number of players involved in the tasks in the form of small-sided games (GK + 2 vs. 2 + GK and GK + 3 vs. 3 + GK), in relation to the futsal game (GK + 4 vs. 4 + GK), can be considered a pedagogical strategy to increase the external and internal load demands of young futsal players.

Confiscated Growth Département des diagnostics de l'OFCE In 1986 both the price of oil and the exchange rate of the dollar have come back to levels more in line with market equilibrium. But these have not had the expected stimulating effects. The improvements in the terms of trade — particularly large in Europe and Japan -- have slowed down the growth of general government and corporate net debt at a time when many developing countries have been forced to adopt severe financial measures. The flow of capital to the OECD countries has been balanced by a sharp reduction of the demand from the rest of the world, while important losses of market shares were conceded to the newly-industrialising countries. The recovery of private consumption has been significant, but not enough to stimulate investment. An important portion of corporate resources has continued to flow to the financial markets, contributing to keeping real interest rates high. In 1987 and early 1988 the slackening of demand in the United States and then its contraction, will dominate the international environment. In such a context the persistence of the American external deficit will aggravate monetary, trade and financial tensions. Faced with increased external competition and weak world demand, Japan and above all Europe will suffer seriously from any additional drop of the dollar. In France the likelihood of significant growth appears limited. Household consumption growth will slow down because of low wage increases, not fully compensated by a strong growth in non-wage income. The recovery of private investment will accelerate but its pace will remain slower than the improvement in profits. The growth of final domestic demand will tend to benefit foreign more than French suppliers, who are facing hightened competition in domestic and world markets from the South-East Asian countries. The trade balance could turn negative. A 1.7 per cent GDP growth in 1987 will not be enough to stop unemployment from rising. A more expansionist economic policy could curb this upward trend, but there is a continuing risk of any surge in demand being captured largely by foreign competitors. expected slowdown of household consumption, the near-stagnation of investment, and the weakness of exports. Destocking following involuntary stockbuilding in the second quarter of 1986 is expected to depress activity in the first part of this year, notwithstanding some strengthening of final demand. A modest pick-up is therefore not likely until the second quarter, led by investment and exports. Household consumption is likely to recover only moderately, given the weak growth of real incomes. The slowdown in the growth of world demand, projected for around the end of this year, will again limit growth in 1988. Overall, GNP seems likely to grow by 1.7 per cent in 1987 and 1.3 per cent in 1988. As a result only part of the considerable increase in profits in 1985-86 seems likely to be used for productive investment. The risk of an upturn in inflation in France in the coming quarters seems small. The policy of strict control of public sector salaries, combined with rising unemployment, seems likely to lead to moderation in the overall growth of incomes : hourly wage rates are likely to increase by a modest 2.8 per cent in 1987 and 2.4 per cent in 1988. Output prices seem likely to stop growing faster than unit costs, except in the tertiary sector, which has not yet restored its margins to the levels of the 1970s. On the assumption that the price of oil will stabilize around $ 16 per barrel at the end of the second quarter, the growth of the consumer price index will be around 2.7 per cent in 1987 and 2.4 per cent in 1988. Under the assumption of a progressive increase in the oil price to $20 by the end of 1988, inflation could be around 3 per cent both this year and next. In either case disinflation, as measured by the GNP deflator, will continue, with inflation falling from 5 per cent in 1986 to 3 per cent in 1987 and 2.5 per cent in 1988. Despite the modest growth of domestic demand and inflation, the external surplus of goods and services recorded in 1986 (around FF 21 billion) seems likely to be smaller this year because of a reduction in the manufactures balance of FF 15 billion. The decline in international competitiveness, due to the fall of the dollar since 1985, could be expected to result in some loss of market share. Nevertheless this is likely to be limited to 1.5 points in 1987 and 1 point in 1988, compared with 3 points over the course of the last two years. The slow growth of employment in the market sector seen in 1986 risks being interrupted because of modest growth of production and the perverse effect of the youth employment scheme "Emploi des Jeunes". It seems that a number of people were taken into employment in 1986 in anticipation of an exemption from social charges. Despite the recent new measures in respect of long-term unemployed, unemployment will continue to grow significantly. The number of unemployed could reach 2.8 million in the spring of 1988. The pick-up of investment in industry in 1984-1985 seems likely to continue in the next two years (6.5 per cent in 1987 and 5.4 per cent in 1988 in 1970 prices for the total of non-financial enterprises). Is this likely to be sufficient ? It would seem to be so if compared with the likely growth of internal and external demand, but not if considered in relation to the now considerable capacity to finance productive investment out of retained earnings. The study reported in the last part of this article suggests that the reduction of corporation tax would probably not be effective in sparking off a significant increase in investment. For given budgetary cost a direct subsidy to productive investment in the form of a tax credit would be ten times as effective. But the benefits would be realised only over the medium term.

Estimating external loads and internal demands by positioning systems and innovative data processing approaches during intermittent running activities in team and racquet sports

Headline EU: Internal and external demand will remain very weak

Previous articleNext article FreeCommentOlivier BlanchardOlivier BlanchardPeterson Institute of International Economics and NBER Search for more articles by this author Peterson Institute of International Economics and NBERPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThis is an extremely ambitious paper. The Greek drama is one of the most complex macroeconomic developments of the last 10 years. Before I read the paper, my tight prior was that DSGE models were not at a stage where they could handle the relevant complexity. After reading the paper, my posterior is substantially more favorable. In the right hands, DSGE models can shed light even on such complex developments and, while they may not deliver definitive answers, they can lead to a much more interesting discussion. I have learned a lot from the paper.I have organized my discussion as follows. First, I go through the many mechanisms at work when a country confronts the end of a boom under fixed exchange rates (here, a common currency). My purpose is to show the many dimensions of the adjustment process. Then, I examine how close the DSGE model captures the relevant mechanisms, what the model tells us about Greece, and whether we should believe its conclusions.The End of Booms under Fixed Exchange RatesBy the end of a boom, a country operating under fixed exchange rates typically suffers from three related imbalances. The first is overvaluation, the second is a large current account deficit, and the third is high debt. Debt may be private or public. Households may have borrowed too much to buy houses or simply to increase consumption; firms may have borrowed too much to finance investment; and the government may have gone on a spending spree, leading to large deficits and a large increase in public debt.All three imbalances were very much present in Greece at the start of the crisis. Average output growth from 1996 to 2008 was a high 4%. Average inflation (measured by the CPI) was also 4%, so 2% above the average euro inflation rate, leading to steady real appreciation. In 2008, the current account deficit was equal to 14% of GDP. The fiscal deficit was 14.5% of GDP, and public debt stood at 108% of GDP.Booms Come to an End in Two WaysFirst, They Can Die of Old AgeWhile the country can still borrow abroad, the factors behind the boom fade or reverse. The high real exchange rate implies low external demand, and internal demand slows down or even decreases. This may be because reality takes over and expectations of a bright future are revised downward, leading to lower demand. Or, the accelerator effect behind the housing boom or the increase in durable goods comes to an end. Or, the government embarks on fiscal consolidation. All of these lead to a slump and an increase in unemployment.This starts a typically painful process of adjustment. Relative prices have to adjust, competitiveness has to be restored, and the current account deficit has to be reduced. Under fixed exchange rates, this has to happen through a decrease in domestic prices relative to those of competitor countries. Consider the steps in turn:The best adjustment path, if it can be achieved, is to reestablish competitiveness through higher productivity growth. Thus, the frequent call for structural reforms by the European commission or the IMF. The political room for major structural reforms in the middle of a slump is, however, limited. De facto, most of the adjustment process has to happen through the adjustment of nominal wages.Short of social pacts, which are nearly never seen, and short of a coordinated decrease in wages and prices, unemployment is what puts downward pressure on nominal wages; how strong the pressure is depends on the degree of nominal and real wage rigidities, reflected not only in the strength of the response of nominal wages to unemployment, but also the relevance of the zero lower bound on wage decreases.The decrease in wages has then to pass through to prices. The passthrough depends on the market structure, for example, on whether exporting firms are price takers or price makers in foreign markets. One of the surprising features of adjustment within the Eurozone has been the limited pass-through from unit labor costs to prices. An interesting hypothesis is that firms, squeezed for profits because of the decrease in output, and more financially constrained because of tight credit supply, have decided to increase current profits at the expense of future profits. Whatever the reason, incomplete pass-through has slowed down the improvement in competitiveness and the improvement in external demand.The improvement in relative prices then leads to an increase in external demand. Here again, many elements are at play. The size of the export sector is clearly crucial: the more closed the economy, the smaller the effect. The nature of exports is also essential: the elasticity of demand for tourism or for olive oil may be quite different from the elasticity of demand for cars.Even if external demand improves, internal demand may be adversely affected by the adjustment process. Lower inflation—or even deflation in the current context—leads to higher real interest rates and thus lower spending. Deflation also increases the value of the debt. In the context of high debt to start with, this may slow or even derail the adjustment. The improvement in external demand may be more than offset by a decrease in internal demand.Why did I go through all these steps? To make the point that, even if there had not been a sudden stop in Greece, there was a need for a large adjustment process, and that process would likely have been long and painful. Given that there was a sudden stop, we do not know what would have happened, but we can look at the case of Portugal. Portugal’s boom ended in 2001, and, six years later, by the time the financial crisis started, little adjustment had taken place. Unemployment had increased from 4% in 2001 to 7.7% in 2007; average productivity growth over the period was less than 0.2%. Unit labor costs had further increased relative to the euro by 13%, and the current account deficit had further increased, from 5% to 10%. Many of the structural characteristics of Portugal are shared by Greece, among them a narrow export base and a slow adjustment of nominal wages. There is little reason to think that, absent the sudden stop, things would have turned out much better in Greece than they did in Portugal in the first half of the first decade of the twenty-first century.The Other Way in Which Booms End Is with a Sudden StopCreditors start having doubts about the solvency of some of the debtors. They ask for large spreads, or they cut lending altogether. Not all sudden stops are the same. The nature of the debtor matters:The sudden stop may affect the governmentWhat combination of public debt and deficits trigger doubts is hard to predict: debt sustainability is a probabilistic concept, and probability is typically hard to assess. The possibility of self-fulfilling liquidity runs makes it even harder to predict whether and when investors will be reluctant to roll over debt and ask for higher spreads. When the doubts are triggered and spreads rise, what was a difficult fiscal situation becomes intractable. What happens next varies depending on restructuring and on outside help. If the country is on its own, wants to maintain parity, and does not want to restructure its debt, the outcome is an extreme fiscal consolidation, with its predictable adverse effects on output. If creditors agree to a debt restructuring, the pressure to adjust is smaller. And if the country gets into a program with the IMF or other official creditors, outside funds can help smooth the adjustment. In most cases, the outcome is likely to be a strong fiscal consolidation, with its attendant effects on output.This discussion is clearly relevant for Greece. Worries about public debt sustainability led to an increase in interest rates, and by May 2010, the starting date of the first Troika program, the 10-year yield had reached 9%. By January 2012, the yield reached a peak of 35%. It would be wrong, however, to assume that the high rates on the secondary market were the main driver of fiscal policy. From May 2010 on, Greece had access to official financing at much lower rates, and rates on the secondary market were de facto irrelevant. What determined the adjustment of fiscal policy was the amount of financing provided by the program. While very large, namely 110 billion euros for the first program in 2010 and another 130 billion euros for the second program in 2012 (relative to a GDP of about 200 billion euros), it still required a very dramatic fiscal consolidation.Debt restructuring was delayed, taking place only in 2012, leading to a haircut of about 50%, and reducing the debt by about 100 billion euros. One issue is how costly this delay was to Greece, and how much it worsened the adjustment. The answer depends very much on the cost of public debt overhang on private demand. This is another dimension of adjustment that is important, but poorly understood.The Sudden Stop May Affect BanksHere again, solvency and liquidity issues are likely to combine. The slump decreases the value of the assets. Worries about solvency lead depositors and other creditors to take out their funds. Again, the possibility of self-fulfilling liquidity runs introduces substantial uncertainty as to whether and when banks will survive. Even if they do, lower capital lead to a sharp contraction of credit. To the extent that banks hold sovereign bonds, and investors believe that the state will bail out the banks, “doom loops,” interactions between doubts about public debt sustainability and doubts about bank solvency, can slow or derail the adjustment.The decrease in liabilities of Greek banks was more of a slow stop than a sudden stop. Demand deposits did not decrease much until 2011, although deposits with maturity up to a year did. When currency risk became more acute, and demand deposits starting decreasing, it was more like a walk than like a run. Also, foreign banks did not withdraw funds to their Greek subsidiaries; indeed, they initially increased them. And when Greek banks needed to borrow, they were able to get funds first from the ECB, and then, when eligible collateral became scarce, from the Greek central bank through ELA. Just as for the government, the rates at which Greek banks could borrow were not the market rates, but rather the low rates charged by the ECB, and the slightly higher rates charged by the Greek central bank. Nevertheless, increasing non-performing loans due to slump, and the resulting decrease in capital, led to a sharp contraction in credit supply.Finally, the sudden stop may come from doubts about the peg, or in the case of a common currency, the perception of a positive probability of exit and depreciation. Even if foreign creditors, official or private, continue to lend at low rates in terms of foreign currency, the implicit interest rate facing borrowers can increase substantially. National deposit insurance, which offers protection against losses in domestic currency, does not offer protection against a depreciation, so depositors have an incentive to run. Beyond interest rate effects, the option value of waiting increases and is likely to lead to lower investment. The adjustment process can again be derailed.Whenever the adjustment leads to a large decline in output, the perceived probability that the country will give up the peg increases. Indeed, this has been the case in Greece. Both in 2012, and then again after the election of Tsipras in 2015, the perceived probability of Grexit increased. Anecdotal evidence (I do not know of formal empirical work on it) suggests that the effects on activity were substantial. Withdrawals of bank deposits accelerated. Investment decreased further. As the paper rightly emphasizes, perhaps the most striking number of the Greek crisis is the decrease in the ratio of investment to GDP, from a peak of 26% in 2007 to 9% in 2015.Greece and the DSGE ModelI insisted intentionally on the complexity of the adjustment mechanism. The purpose of a model, even a DSGE model, is not, however, to capture all the intricate details, but the essential features of the mechanisms at work and to focus on a few central questions. In the case of Greece, I see three central questions: 1. From 2008 to 2015, output decreased by about 18%. What was the role of fiscal consolidation, a question that has been at the center of the main controversies?2. What other factors played a role in explaining the decline in output?3. Given the situation Greece was in at the start of the crisis, how bad did the adjustment have to be anyway? Does the DSGE model presented in the paper convincingly answer these three questions? My answer is “not yet.” But it yields a rich discussion and a structure to build on. Let me develop these arguments, starting with a discussion of the specification and estimation of the model.There is no question that the specification of the model represents major progress. The model has the essential features needed to answer the questions above. It has two goods, domestic and foreign, so we can think about relative price adjustment. It has nominal rigidities, so the adjustment is slow. Rather than being a representative agent model, it has savers and borrowers, so one can think about financial intermediation. It has intermediation by banks. It allows for endogenous default risk, for the government, for banks, for firms, and for households. It has rich interactions between the different default risks, and captures various “doom loops”: For example, higher default risk for firms leads to lower investment, which leads to lower output, which leads to higher default risk for the government. From a methodological viewpoint, it is an impressive achievement. Those who are religious about strict microfoundations may object to a number of shortcuts taken in formalizing the behavior of banks and the determination of the various spreads, but the shortcuts strike me as reasonable and a fully microbased treatment is probably beyond reach at this point.The authors, however, face a major specification issue: their model is not a model of a country with a Troika program. Much of what happened in Greece from 2010 on has been determined by the two programs, rather than by decisions of the Greek government or the Greek banks. The authors make the choice of ignoring this aspect. This may well be the right choice in showing what a model with default risk can do, but it creates problems of interpretation when applied to Greece, problems that I will return to below.They capture the stance of fiscal policy by a rule determining the deficit as a function of debt, of the cost of borrowing measured by the spread on Greek sovereign bonds, and of a fiscal shock. But, in fact, the stance of fiscal policy has been mostly determined by the amount of funding given by the Troika, and the interest rate at which the government has obtained this funding has been much lower than the rate on the secondary market for Greek government bonds. This makes the interpretation of “fiscal shocks,” estimated as residuals from a nonexistent rule, rather difficult.A related problem concerns banks. In the model, the rate at which banks can borrow depends on their default risk and on a funding shock (which the authors also call a sudden stop shock). The banks pass that cost on to their customers, so the rate at which banks can borrow determines the rate at which people and firms can borrow, adjusted for their own default risk. In the estimated model, much of the increase in the rate at which people and firms can borrow is interpreted as coming from an increase in the funding rate of banks. But, in fact, as we saw earlier, Greek banks have been able to borrow at low rates throughout, either from the ECB or from the Greek central bank. The implication is that the increase in spreads on lending to firms and households does not reflect a funding shock, but rather something else in the banking sector, probably the effects of losses on capital and in turn on credit supply. This makes the interpretation of the estimated funding shock difficult. It may capture the effect of a probability of euro exit, but in this case, it would affect other variables in the model, from the cost of borrowing by the government to investment.Turning to calibration and estimation, I have the same negative reaction I have to similar calibrations and estimations in other DSGEs. It is again an impressive technological tour de force. But, it is nearly impossible for the reader (at least for this reader) to get a good sense of the plausibility of the estimated/calibrated parameters, and, by implication, of the estimated shocks. Getting a sense of the various choices, be it which parameters are calibrated and which ones are estimated, which variables are chosen to be used for the estimation of shocks and which are left aside, and how robust the results are to assumptions, is difficult. I understand that it would take a much longer paper (or a very long appendix) to discuss and defend the various choices, but it makes it difficult to assess the results. Some of the choices strike me as debatable. To take a few examples: It cannot be right to use the same Calvo specification for wages in every country (or maybe for any country). The best way to find out what the fiscal multipliers were in Greece since 2007 cannot be to estimate the full DSGE model. Some implications of the calibration seem implausible. The elasticity of investment with respect to interest rates seems too large: A 60 basis point increase in the rate appears to decrease investment by 8% and output by 3%. This plays an important role in the results. I believe that general equilibrium Bayesian estimation just asks too much of the data, and is too much of a black box. From both a communication viewpoint and from a robustness viewpoint, I believe that much of the needed evidence must be collected through careful partial equilibrium, equation by equation, estimation, before we can run DSGEs with enough comfort. (I think it can be done. Indeed, an IV approach to estimation was followed by one of the authors [Martin and Philippon 2015] in a related paper.)Let me now go back to the three questions about Greece posed earlier. What does the model tell us?Take the role of fiscal policy, both in the boom and in the bust. Figure 18 presents the decomposition of movements in output as a result of the underlying shocks. And, on the face of it, it yields a surprising conclusion. While much of the pre-crisis increase in output is attributed to positive fiscal spending shocks, relatively little of the fall in output since then is attributed to negative fiscal shocks. Why is this? The authors explain it well. Shocks are defined as deviations of spending from the (postulated) fiscal rule. And given that the rule makes spending depend on the rate on sovereign bonds, it implies that, even in the absence of fiscal shocks, the large increase in spreads would have implied a large fiscal consolidation. The logic is fine, but the conclusion is potentially misleading. If we defined the fiscal spending shocks instead as the change in the cyclically adjusted primary surplus imposed by the Troika programs, they would account for much more of the decline in output. (One other aspect of the decomposition also puzzles me. The buildup in debt from 2010 to today is attributed nearly fully to positive spending shocks, which took place before the crisis. I find the long lags difficult to believe.)Take the role of other shocks. Particularly interesting is the role of markup shocks. As discussed earlier, one of the puzzling features of the adjustment has been the limited pass-through of wages to prices, slowing the competitiveness adjustment. Surprisingly (and with a slight tension between text and figure 18), markup shocks play a limited role in accounting for the decline in output. (The model allows for an effect of financial conditions on marginal cost through the use of working capital in production. Higher spreads imply higher costs, and thus an increase in prices relative to wages. This is an interesting angle, but will need to be documented at more directly). However, negative markup shocks, that is, incomplete pass-through of increases in wages into prices, play a substantial role in the pre-crisis buildup in output. This is a new angle in the discussion and worth exploring further.Finally, given where Greece was when the crisis started, how painful would the adjustment have been absent further shocks? I asked the authors to see what the model implied, by setting all the shocks equal to zero from 2010 on, so the dynamics from then on only depend on the state variables in 2009. They kindly did it, and the results are shown in the attached figure 1. The conclusion is that, despite the buildup of debt and the initial overvaluation, the contraction in output would have been substantially smaller. The mechanism behind the result, however, is suspicious. One would have expected that, in the absence of sovereign risk shocks and fiscal spending shocks the adjustment of government spending would be smaller, leading to a smaller output contraction. This, however, is not the main mechanism at play. Government spending without shocks is nearly the same as with shocks. The main difference is in the behavior of investment, which falls much less than in the presence of shocks. This in turn is due to turning off the funding cost shock, and the large elasticity of investment to the funding cost; as discussed earlier, I am skeptical about the interpretation of the funding cost shock, and the elasticity of investment, and thus skeptical about the conclusion.Fig. 1. Counterfactual simulation, no shocks after 2010Note: Eight series: GDP, Investment, Net Exports/GDP, Govt. Spending, Funding Cost, NPL, Govt. Yield, and my too me what I at the The model in this paper is not at the stage where it will about what behind the Greek But it has an extremely rich structure, which can be on and lead to a much more interesting discussion of what has happened in Greece in the last of and of the financial if see and the and the in the in Previous articleNext article by NBER by the National of by the National of All no articles this