More Inequality, Less Social Mobility

We investigate the relationship between inequality and intergenerational mobility. Proxying fathers’ earnings with using detailed occupational data, we find that sons who grew up in countries that were more unequal in the 1970s were less likely to have experienced social mobility by the late-1990s.intergenerational mobility, income distribution, equality of opportunity

Do Rising Top Incomes Lift All Boats?

Pooling data for 1905 to 2000, we find no systematic relationship between top income shares and economic growth in a panel of 12 developed nations observed for between 22 and 85 years. After 1960, however, a one percentage point rise in the top decile’s income share is associated with a statistically significant 0.12 point rise in GDP growth during the following year. This relationship is not driven by changes in either educational attainment or top tax rates. If the increase in inequality is permanent, the increase in growth appears to be permanent. However, our estimates imply that it would take 13 years for the cumulative positive effect of faster growth on the mean income of the bottom nine deciles to offset the negative effect of reducing their share of total income.inequality, growth, income distribution, national income

Do Rising Top Incomes Lift All Boats?

Pooling data for 1905 to 2000, we find no systematic relationship between top income shares and economic growth in a panel of 12 developed nations observed for between 22 and 85 years. After 1960, however, a one percentage point rise in the top decile's income share is associated with a statistically significant 0.12 point rise in GDP growth during the following year. This relationship is not driven by changes in either educational attainment or top tax rates. If the increase in inequality is permanent, the increase in growth appears to be permanent. However, our estimates imply that it would take 13 years for the cumulative positive effect of faster growth on the mean income of the bottom nine deciles to offset the negative effect of reducing their share of total income.inequality, growth, income distribution, national income

Ptolemy: An instrument aboard the Rosetta lander Philae, to unlock the secrets of the solar system

Ptolemy is a miniature chemical analysis suite currently on board the ESA Rosetta comet lander Philae. This poster describes the operation of the instrument, and presents data generated thus far during a comprehensive ground testing programme

Macroeconomic Volatility and Terms of Trade Shocks

This paper explores the effect of terms of trade volatility on macroeconomic volatility using a panel of 71 countries from 1971–2005. It finds that terms of trade volatility has a statistically significant and positive impact on the volatility of output growth and inflation, although the magnitudes of these effects depend on the policy framework and the structure of markets. Specifically, adopting a more flexible exchange rate tends to ameliorate the effect of terms of trade shocks on macroeconomic volatility. The paper also finds some evidence that a monetary policy regime that focuses on low inflation helps to moderate the volatility of output and inflation in the face of a volatile terms of trade. The same is true of financial market development in the case of output volatility. Using data on the expenditure components of GDP, the channels through which terms of trade shocks affect output are examined. The results suggest that terms of trade volatility has its largest effect on the volatility of consumption, exports and imports. There is evidence to suggest that greater financial market development helps to mitigate the effect of terms of trade volatility on consumption volatility, while monetary policy that focuses on low inflation is associated with lower volatility of imports.terms of trade shocks; growth; inflation; structural reform

City Sizes, Housing Costs, and Wealth

Australia’s household sector appears to hold a greater proportion of its wealth in dwellings than do households in other countries. Average dwelling prices in Australia also appear to be high relative to household income, but dwellings in Australia are not noticeably higher in quality than those in comparable countries. This concentration of wealth in housing also does not seem attributable to government policies that encourage dwelling investment in Australia to a greater extent than is true overseas. A possible reconciliation of this pattern may be the unusual concentration of Australia’s population in two large cities. Average housing prices tend to be higher in larger cities than smaller ones. Therefore, the expensive cities in Australia drag up the average level of dwelling prices more than in other countries, resulting in a higher share of wealth concentrated in housing. The increasing importance of dwelling wealth in Australia over recent years largely reflects the consequences of disinflation and financial deregulation. This is most likely a transitional effect, and the ratio of dwelling wealth to income should stabilise, or begin to grow more slowly, in the future.dwelling prices; rank-size rule; Zipf’s Law

Neighbourhood effects and community spillovers in the Australian youth labour market

Neighbourhood effects refer to the situation whereby residential location impacts on the social outcomes of individuals, above and beyond what would be expected from their personal and family characteristics. A number of theories of neighbourhood effects exist. These can be broadly classified as theories of collective socialisation theories; contagion-based or \u27epidemic\u27 theories; and information network theories. Existing Australian research has focused mainly on the impact of neighbourhoods on youth education decisions. In contrast, this study models the probability of unemployment as a function of personal characteristics, family structure and neighbourhood composition. [Executive summary, ed

The best versus the rest: divergence across firms during the global productivity slowdown

We document that labor productivity of the globally most productive firms – the “frontier” – has diverged from all other firms – the “rest” – throughout the 2000s. This divergence remains after controlling for capital intensity and markups, and is strongest in ICT services, indicative of “winnertakes-all” dynamics. We also find weakening catch-up and market selection below the frontier, which can explain why this divergence at the firm level is linked to weaker aggregate productivity. The divergence is found to be stronger in industries where product market regulations are less competition friendly, highlighting the need for regulatory policy to improve the contestability of markets

An Overview of the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) Mission

A critical goal to both science and exploration is to understand the form and location of lunar polar volatiles. The lateral and vertical distributions of these volatiles inform us of the processes that control the emplacement and retention of these volatiles, as well as helping to formulate in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) architectures. While significant progress has been made from orbital observations, measurements at a range of scales from centimeters to kilometers across the lunar surface are needed to generate adequate "volatile mineral models" for use in evaluating the resource potential of volatiles at the Moon. VIPER is a solar and battery powered rover mission designed to operate over multiple lunar days, traversing several kilometers as it continuously monitors for subsurface hydrogen and other surface volatiles. In specific thermal terrain types, including permanently shadowed terrain and locales that permit near-surface ice stability, subsurface samples will be examined for volatile content using a one-meter drill. This talk will provide an overview of the VIPER mission which is scheduled for flight to the Lunar South Pole in December 2022

Creation of vortices in a Bose-Einstein condensate by a Raman technique

We propose a method for taking a Bose-Einstein condensate in the ground trap state simultaneously to a different atomic hyperfine state and to a vortex trap state. This can be accomplished through a Raman scheme in which one of the two copropagating laser beams has a higher-order Laguerre-Gaussian mode profile. Coefficients relating the beam waist, pulse area, and trap potentials for a complete transfer to the m = 1 vortex are calculated for a condensate in the non-interacting and strongly interacting regimes.Comment: RevTex, 4 pages, 2 PostScript figure