February 1985–July 1985: Part I

Washington University Record, February 7, 1985

Economic Review. Quarter I 1985

Beauty and the Bulls: The Investment Characteristics of Paintings . . . . . . . . . . 2 T h e rate of increase in fine paintings prices was large when compared with many other investments during the 1970s and was extraordinarily large from 1977 to 1980. One prominent explanation for the behavior of fine painting prices over this period is the ability of this asset to hedge against uncertain inf...

Exact renormalization group and applications to disordered problems : part I February 1 , 2008

We develop a systematic multi-local expansion of the Polchinski-Wilson exact renormalization group (ERG) equation. Integrating out explicitly the non local interactions, we reduce the ERG equation obeyed by the full interaction functional to a flow equation for a function, its local part. This is done perturbatively around fixed points, but exactly to any given order in the local part. It is th...

Part] I I

Part I : Part Ii : Part Iii : Part Iv

The theory of stick-slip is developed, based on the concept of a static and dynamic coefficient of friction. The dynamic coefficient is assumed to be independent of displacement and to depend wholly on normal stress across the surface. It is also assumed to be velocity-independent. The theory predicts that the stress drop during stick-slip is independent of machine stiffness. The displacement d...