Pompeu Fabra University

About: Pompeu Fabra University is a education organization based out in Barcelona, Spain. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 8093 authors who have published 23570 publications receiving 858431 citations. The organization is also known as: Universitat Pompeu Fabra & UPF.

Natural language processing of lyrics

Abstract: We report experiments on the use of standard natural language processing (NLP) tools for the analysis of music lyrics. A significant amount of music audio has lyrics. Lyrics encode an important part of the semantics of a song, therefore their analysis complements that of acoustic and cultural metadata and is fundamental for the development of complete music information retrieval systems. Moreover, a textual analysis of a song can generate ground truth data that can be used to validate results from purely acoustic methods. Preliminary results on language identification, structure extraction, categorization and similarity searches suggests that a lot of profit can be gained from the analysis of lyrics.

Micro-Loans, Insecticide-Treated Bednets and Malaria: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial in Orissa (India)

Abstract: We describe findings from the first large-scale cluster randomized controlled trial in a developing country that evaluates the uptake of a health-protecting technology, insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs), through micro-consumer loans, as compared to free distribution and control conditions. Despite a relatively high price, 52 percent of sample households purchased ITNs, highlighting the role of liquidity constraints in explaining earlier low adoption rates. We find mixed evidence of improvements in malaria indices. We interpret the results and their implications within the debate about cost sharing, sustainability and liquidity constraints in public health initiatives in developing countries.

Interbank Market Integration Under Asymmetric Information

Abstract: While domestic interbank markets are often considered to work in an efficient way, cross-country bank lending appears to be subject to market imperfections leading to persistent interest rate differentials. In a model where banks need to cope with liquidity shocks by borrowing or by liquidating assets, we study the scope for international interbank market integration with unsecured lending when cross-country information is noisy. We find that an equilibrium with integrated markets need not always exist, and that it coexists with one characterized by segmentation. A repo market reduces interest rate spreads and improves upon the segmentation equilibrium. However, it may destroy the unsecured integrated equilibrium, since it reduces the liquidity imbalances and thus the gains from unsecured market integration. The introduction of other transnational institutional arrangements, such as multinational banking, correspondent banking and the existence of "too-big-to-fail" banks may reduce cross country interest spreads and provide more insurance against country wide liquidity shocks. Still, multinational banking, as the introduction of repos, may threaten the integrated interbank market equilibrium.

The Role of Interbank Markets in Monetary Policy: A Model with Rationing

Abstract: The empirical research on monetary transmission has reported a number of puzzles challenging extant theoretical models of the transmission mechanism. In this paper we argue that asymmetric information in the interbank market may be important to have a better understanding of the mechanisms at work in the transmission process. We show that asymmetric information may induce an equilibrium with rationing. This, in turn, has two major implications: first, it reconciles the apparent irresponsiveness of business investment to the user cost of capital with the large impact of monetary policy (magnitude puzzle) and, second, it shows that this impact will not be limited to short term credit supply but will also affect long term lending even if the corresponding interest rate is unaffected (composition puzzle).