Imperfect Instruments Research Articles

Electronic Registration of Collatteral to Improve Integrate Indonesian Land Guarantees

Purpose: This research addresses legal issues related to the need for a transition to electronic registration of Collatteral Rights as a means of perfecting integrated Indonesian land collateral and obstacles in the transition to electronic registration of Collatteral Rights as a means of perfecting integrated Indonesian land law. Methods: The transition of Collatteral Rights registration from conventional to electronic must be responded to through several supporting facilities. This is to minimize transition failures that could affect the legal certainty of Collatteral Rights registration. Results and Conclusion: This research is socio-legal with the research location at the Kendal District Land Office by inventorying primary and secondary data to be processed using a descriptive analytical approach. Research implications: The results of the research are the need for a transition to electronic registration of Collatteral Rights as a means of perfecting integrated Indonesian land law due to the need for a means of digitizing land in Indonesia and a means of ensuring legal certainty of Collatteral Rights. Originality/value: Meanwhile, obstacles in the transition to electronic registration of Collatteral Rights as a means of perfecting integrated Indonesian land law include imperfect instrument constraints and constraints on enthusiasm for policy targets.

Постоперационный контроль нейрохирургических операций у собак

Surgical operations on the spine can be accompanied by a number of complications associated with surgical access, iatrogenic neurological complications, complications associated with wound infection, and imperfect instrumentation. In this regard, not all operations lead to the expected restoration of motor function even in the initial stages of neurological disorders, and identifying the justification for routine postoperative monitoring using visual diagnostic methods (CT/MRI) in patients after spinal surgery is the main goal of this study. A sample of patients was carried out who underwent operations: ventral spondylectomy for disc extrusion, stabilization of the cervical spine for wobbler syndrome, decompression in the thoracolumbar and lumbosacral regions with and without stabilization. Thus, of the patients who underwent a control study, reoperation was required for ventral spondylectomy in 10,3 % of cases, stabilization of the cervical spine – 13,04 %, stabilization of C1-C2 – 4,1 %, hemilyaminectomy/ minihemilaminectomy in the thoracolumbar spine department – 3,5 %, hemilyaminectomy/ minihemilaminectomy in the thoracolumbar region with stabilization – 13,6 %, dorsal laminectomy L7-S1 without stabilization – 0 %, dorsal laminectomy L7-S1 with stabilization – 15,2 %.

Combining Observational and Experimental Data to Improve Efficiency Using Imperfect Instruments

The paper studies how to combine experimental and observational data using imperfect instruments—variables that satisfy the first-stage relevance condition, but violate the exclusion restrictions.

"That imperfect instrument": Galton's whistle, Bierce's damned thing, and the phenomenon of superior nonhuman sensory range.

When the Galton whistle was introduced in the 1870s, it was the first demonstration many had encountered of the phenomenon that nonhumans sometimes exceed humans in sensory range, for example perceiving ultraviolet light and ultrasonic signals. While some empirical research had explored this possibility beforehand, this area of perceptual research progressed slowly. A horror short story by Ambrose Bierce in 1893, "The Damned Thing," used the concept of superior nonhuman sensory range as a twist ending, seemingly anticipating scientific discoveries to come or at least understanding the implications of the early findings well in advance of the field. This article analyzes Bierce's possible sources, with Bierce representing the general educated nonscientist and providing insights into the spread of this concept into public and scientific awareness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The challenges of time for studies on the population effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on perinatal outcomes.

The challenges of time for studies on the population effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on perinatal outcomes.

Epistemology Normalized

We offer a general framework for theorizing about the structure of knowledge and belief in terms of the comparative normality of situations compatible with one’s evidence. The guiding idea is that, if a possibility is sufficiently less normal than one’s actual situation, then one can know that that possibility does not obtain. This explains how people can have inductive knowledge that goes beyond what is strictly entailed by their evidence. We motivate the framework by showing how it illuminates knowledge about the future, knowledge of lawful regularities, knowledge about parameters measured using imperfect instruments, the connection between knowledge, belief, and probability, and the dynamics of knowledge and belief in response to new evidence.

Struggling with Imperfect Instruments: A Brief History of Experimental Traumatic Brain Injury.

Struggling with Imperfect Instruments: A Brief History of Experimental Traumatic Brain Injury.

Protecting Vulnerable Consumers in the Digital Single Market

The article argues that in a digital environment there is a need for a paradigm shift which includes reversing the expectations placed on consumers by EU law to be the arbiter of markets, to behave as ‘average’ consumers with additional protection granted for those deemed ‘vulnerable’. This is because we ought to expect vulnerability to be the norm rather than the exception. The information paradigm prevalent in EU consumer law also needs to be altered to solve the systemic vulnerability problems rife in digital markets. It should no longer be about consumers defending themselves (using rather imperfect instruments in the process), but about businesses behaving fairly and skilled enforcers ensuring obligations are fulfilled. Fairness in digital markets should be by design and not something that is offered to consumer simply as a remedy after the damage has already occurred. Vulnerable consumers, EU consumer law, fairness, unfair commercial practices, dark patterns, Digital Services Act, Digital Market Act, General Product Safety Regulation, Artificial Intelligence Act, Consumer Credits Directive

Causal inference with imperfect instrumental variables

Abstract Instrumental variables allow for quantification of cause and effect relationships even in the absence of interventions. To achieve this, a number of causal assumptions must be met, the most important of which is the independence assumption, which states that the instrument and any confounding factor must be independent. However, if this independence condition is not met, can we still work with imperfect instrumental variables? Imperfect instruments can manifest themselves by violations of the instrumental inequalities that constrain the set of correlations in the scenario. In this article, we establish a quantitative relationship between such violations of instrumental inequalities and the minimal amount of measurement dependence required to explain them for the case of discrete observed variables. As a result, we provide adapted inequalities that are valid in the presence of a relaxed measurement dependence assumption in the instrumental scenario. This allows for the adaptation of existing and new lower bounds on the average causal effect for instrumental scenarios with binary outcomes. Finally, we discuss our findings in the context of quantum mechanics.

Beyond marginal: Estimating the demand for water quality

Using micro-level data across Wisconsin covering over 100 inland lakes, we recover first- and second-stage hedonic welfare estimates for non-marginal changes in water quality. We overcome longstanding endogeneity concerns with Rosen (1974)’s second stage hedonic framework and recover slope estimates for water quality demand using instruments based on sorting behavior. For near lake Wisconsin households, we find the slope of their water quality demand function is bounded by − 2087 when imperfect instruments are employed, which is significantly more price inelastic than the naïve OLS estimate of − 895. Applying these estimates to a hypothetical policy scenario where water quality reduces by 24.2% due to a 30-year continuation of current trends, we find welfare losses of at least $7554 per household. These losses are 22% ($1658) more than what is predicted from marginal willingness to pay estimates recovered from the first-stage hedonic. For policymakers, our results highlight the importance of recovering underlying demand functions when evaluating non-marginal water quality improvements.

Corrective Regulation with Imperfect Instruments

Corrective Regulation with Imperfect Instruments

Corrective Regulation with Imperfect Instruments

Corrective Regulation with Imperfect Instruments

Corrective Regulation with Imperfect Instruments

Corrective Regulation with Imperfect Instruments

Nonparametric bounds on treatment effects with imperfect instruments

Summary This paper extends the identification results in Nevo and Rosen (2012) to nonparametric models. We derive nonparametric bounds on the average treatment effect when an imperfect instrument is available. As in Nevo and Rosen (2012), we assume that the correlation between the imperfect instrument and the unobserved latent variables has the same sign as the correlation between the endogenous variable and the latent variables. We show that the monotone treatment selection and monotone instrumental variable restrictions, introduced by Manski and Pepper (2000; 2009), jointly imply this assumption. Moreover, we show how the monotone treatment response assumption can help tighten the bounds. The identified set can be written in the form of intersection bounds, which is more conducive to inference. We illustrate our methodology using the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Men data to estimate returns to schooling.

Retrieval of atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> vertical profiles from ground-based near-infrared spectra

Abstract. We evaluate vertical profile retrievals of CO2 from 0.02 cm−1 resolution ground-based near-infrared solar absorption spectra with the GFIT2 algorithm, using improved spectroscopic line lists and line shapes. With these improvements, CO2 profiles were obtained from sequential retrievals in five spectral windows with different vertical sensitivities using synthetic and real spectra. A sensitivity study using synthetic spectra shows that the leading source of uncertainty in the retrieved CO2 profiles is the error in the a priori temperature profile, even with 3-hourly reanalysis a priori profiles. A 2 ∘C error in the temperature profile in the lower troposphere between 0.6 and 0.85 atm causes deviations in the retrieved CO2 profiles that are larger than the typical vertical variations of CO2. To distinguish the effect of errors in the a priori meteorology and trace gas concentration profiles from those in the instrument alignment and spectroscopic parameters, we retrieve CO2 profiles from atmospheric spectra while using an a priori profile built from coincident AirCore, radiosonde, and surface in situ measurements at the Lamont, Oklahoma (USA), Total Carbon Column Observing Network station. In those cases, the deviations in retrieved CO2 profiles are also larger than typical vertical variations of CO2, suggesting that remaining errors in the forward model limit the accuracy of the retrieved profiles. Implementing a temperature retrieval or correction and quantifying and modeling an imperfect instrument alignment are critical to improve CO2 profile retrievals. Without significant advances in modeling imperfect instrument alignment, and improvements in the accuracy of the temperature profile, the CO2 profile retrieval with GFIT2 presents no clear advantage over scaling retrievals for the purpose of ascertaining the total column.

Policy conflict, coordination, and leadership in a monetary union under imperfect instrument substitutability

This paper investigates the implications of strategic fiscal-monetary policy interactions on the policy mix and coordination in a monetary union under imperfect policy instrument substitutability. We develop a model that incorporates the key features of the New-Keynesian framework augmented by a cost channel of monetary policy. Both policy instruments can directly affect inflation, hence having supply-side effects, too. We consider alternative strategic and fiscal regimes. We show that relative policy effectiveness and the cost-channel effect together define policy-mix outcomes, policies’ cyclicality, and coordination problems. The cost channel limits union-wide demand shocks’ stabilization, the monetary authority can no longer manage the cycle, and cooperation and commitment irrelevance do not hold anymore. The lead authority reacts to the follower authority's reaction parameter, hence to the follower's preference parameter, while it might choose not to trade-off its objectives. In the leadership strategic regimes for demand-side policy instruments, the leader reacts positively/negatively to the follower's preference parameter, if its instrument is more/less effective in stabilizing inflation (relative to aggregate demand) than the follower's policy instrument.

Corrective Regulation with Imperfect Instruments

Corrective Regulation with Imperfect Instruments

Corrective Regulation with Imperfect Instruments

This paper studies the optimal design of second-best corrective regulation, when some agents or activities cannot be perfectly regulated. We show that policy elasticities and Pigouvian wedges are sufficient statistics to characterize the marginal welfare impact of regulatory policies in a large class of environments. We show that the optimal second-best policy is determined by a subset of policy elasticities: leakage elasticities, and characterize the marginal value of relaxing regulatory constraints. We apply our results to scenarios with unregulated agents/activities and with uniform regulation across agents/activities. We illustrate our results in applications to shadow banking, scale-invariant regulation, asset substitution, and fire sales.

On a limitation of Zeeman polarimetry and imperfect instrumentation in representing solar magnetic fields with weaker polarization signal.

Full disk vector magnetic fields are used widely for developing better understanding of large-scale structure, morphology, and patterns of the solar magnetic field. The data are also important for modeling various solar phenomena. However, observations of vector magnetic fields have one important limitation that may affect the determination of the true magnetic field orientation. This limitation stems from our ability to interpret the differing character of the Zeeman polarization signals which arise from the photospheric line-of-sight vs. the transverse components of the solar vector magnetic field, and is likely exacerbated by unresolved structure (non-unity fill fraction) as well as the disambiguation of the 180° degeneracy in the transverse-field azimuth. Here we provide a description of this phenomenon, and discuss issues, which require additional investigation.

Nonparametric Bounds on Treatment Effects with Imperfect Instruments

This paper extends the identification results in Nevo and Rosen (2012) to nonparametric models. We derive nonparametric bounds on the average treatment effect when an imperfect instrument is available. As in Nevo and Rosen (2012), we assume that the correlation between the imperfect instrument and the unobserved latent variables has the same sign as the correlation between the endogenous variable and the latent variables. We show that the monotone treatment selection and monotone instrumental variable restrictions, introduced by Manski and Pepper (2000, 2009), jointly imply this assumption. Moreover, we show how the monotone treatment response assumption can help tighten the bounds. The identified set can be written in the form of intersection bounds, which is more conducive to inference. We illustrate our methodology using the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Men data to estimate returns to schooling.