The Age Pension Means Tests: Contorting Australian Retirement

Most Australian retirees are likely to be subject to the Age Pension assets or income test at some point. Evidence is that many retirees adapt their consumption to increase Age Pension entitlements, but long-term implications are difficult to determine—even if the current rules were to remain in place. This chapter evaluates the current approach to means testing against the principles set out in a Department of Social Services discussion paper on this topic. We evaluate the implied “effective marginal tax rates” (EMTRs) on the assets of part pensioners who are subject to the assets test. We find that depending on a variety of parameters such as assumed future earnings rates, demographic status, drawdown strategy and the base level of assets held, the EMTRs are high enough to explain material distortions to savings decisions of those still in employment, and the spending and investment decisions of retirees. Optimal decisions in this context require contorted retirement strategies that do not appear to be in anyone’s interest. Some possible remedies are suggested, which should include incorporating the value of the principal residence within the assets test. The chapter therefore illustrates the application of principled analysis to policy issues of this sort

The design of retirement schemes: possibilities and imperatives

ABSTRACT South Africa has a sophisticated and developed retirement fund industry and an extensive social security system. While the objective of the latter is wider, both are concerned with financial security: particularly in the face of risks of death, disability and old age. It is widely recognised that there are many gaps in coverage. The chapters in this thesis address these gaps and administrative and benefit structures that could be developed to provide a truly comprehensive social security system. In particular, the thesis discusses the retirement and old age recommendations of the Taylor Committee, on which the author served. The vision is of universal coverage for the current state benefits augmented by mandatory employer based group schemes that offer disability, retirement and orphans' pensions. Means tests, the Road Accident Fund and workers' compensation arrangements would be abolished. The chapters of the thesis are each self-contained, having all been published in – or submitted to – journals, books or conferences. In each, an attempt has been made to review a broader literature than is normally used to discover the impact of some element of the benefit structure, governance or investment policies of retirement schemes on their members. In this context, it is considered to be particularly appropriate to test policies and governance against the standard of justic

The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God: Sex, Salvation, and Damnation in Graham Greene's Early Novels

Greeneland, the name that scholars have given to the world Graham Greene’s characters inhabit, is cold and unforgiving. It’s dark, and there is almost never a character who is without a significant moral flaw. It’s a fantastic landscape for an exploration of humanity and its relationship with God—a topic that fascinated Greene, who was raised the son of an Anglican boarding-school housemaster, and considered himself an agnostic until he converted to Catholicism in 1926 to marry Vivien Dayrell Browning (Sherry, vol. 1, 352). His religion and preoccupation with the relationship between humanity and God influenced his writing for the duration of his career, which spanned most of the 20th century. He wrote 26 novels, along with autobiographical works, screenplays, and short stories. Though most or all of Greene’s novels contain some religious themes, he wrote four in the first half of his career that critics have deemed his “Catholic novels”: Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948), and The End of the Affair (1951). Each novel critically examines Catholic beliefs and practices. More importantly, each produces fierce debates about what does and does not constitute a sin. Along with religious influences, Greene’s novels are also influenced by his personal experiences and places he lived. For instance, The End of the Affair is loosely tied to an affair he had with a woman named Catherine Walston; The Power and the Glory is based on his time spent in Mexico; and The Heart of the Matter is influenced by the time he spent in Sierra Leone as a spy. Greene’s preoccupation with religious themes leads me to entitle my thesis “The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God,” which is a reference to a statement made by an old priest at the end of Brighton Rock. He says to the young and immature Rose: “You can’t conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone the…appalling…strangeness of the mercy of God” (Greene, Brighton 268). As we’ll soon see, God’s mercy isn’t always peaceful—it’s often agonizing. The word “agony” comes from the classical Latin agōn, meaning a contest or struggle (OED). In a sense, these novels are agōns. Each character’s path through life is a struggle—a struggle to find meaning, a struggle to build a relationship with God, and a struggle to answer two central questions: One, what does it mean to be a good Catholic? Two, how does one achieve salvation? Through close analyses of each text and, more specifically, their male protagonists, we’ll attempt to answer these questions.Bachelor of Art

A review of surrogate models and their application to groundwater modeling

The spatially and temporally variable parameters and inputs to complex groundwater models typically result in long runtimes which hinder comprehensive calibration, sensitivity, and uncertainty analysis. Surrogate modeling aims to provide a simpler, and hence faster, model which emulates the specified output of a more complex model in function of its inputs and parameters. In this review paper, we summarize surrogate modeling techniques in three categories: data-driven, projection, and hierarchical-based approaches. Data-driven surrogates approximate a groundwater model through an empirical model that captures the input-output mapping of the original model. Projection-based models reduce the dimensionality of the parameter space by projecting the governing equations onto a basis of orthonormal vectors. In hierarchical or multifidelity methods the surrogate is created by simplifying the representation of the physical system, such as by ignoring certain processes, or reducing the numerical resolution. In discussing the application to groundwater modeling of these methods, we note several imbalances in the existing literature: a large body of work on data-driven approaches seemingly ignores major drawbacks to the methods; only a fraction of the literature focuses on creating surrogates to reproduce outputs of fully distributed groundwater models, despite these being ubiquitous in practice; and a number of the more advanced surrogate modeling methods are yet to be fully applied in a groundwater modeling context

Cubic fourfolds containing a plane and a quintic del Pezzo surface

We isolate a class of smooth rational cubic fourfolds X containing a plane whose associated quadric surface bundle does not have a rational section. This is equivalent to the nontriviality of the Brauer class of the even Clifford algebra over the K3 surface S of degree 2 arising from X. Specifically, we show that in the moduli space of cubic fourfolds, the intersection of divisors C_8 and C_14 has five irreducible components. In the component corresponding to the existence of a tangent conic to the sextic degeneration curve of the quadric bundle, we prove that the general member is both pfaffian and has nontrivial Brauer class. Such cubic fourfolds also provide twisted derived equivalences between K3 surfaces of degree 2 and 14, hence further corroboration of Kuznetsov's derived categorical conjecture on the rationality of cubic fourfolds.Comment: 13 pages, minor revision, final versio

A Numerical Study on the Pool Boiling with Foam Surface Enhancement Using Different Refrigerants

The pool boiling process can be observed in several energy conversion processes including commercial and industrial refrigeration, industrial air-cooling operations, and power generation. The process becomes more involved when pool boiling in a tube bundle is considered. In the current study, a numerical model is developed to predict the key performance parameters of a flooded evaporator while considering a range of working fluids. A kettle reboiler configuration was considered, and a performance model was developed to account for boiling on individual tubes, merging of vapor bubbles, and movement under gravity. A volume of fluid (VOF) model was used to deal with the different phases in the simulation. Various fluids were considered in this study including HFE-7000, HFE-7300, and water. The trajectories of the bubbles were tracked, and the resulting information has been summarized in physical measurable quantities

A bricolage-style exploratory scenario analysis to manage uncertainty in socio-environmental systems modeling: investigating integrated water management options

Exploratory analysis, while useful in assessing the implications of model assumptions under large uncertainty, is considered at best a semi-structured activity. There is no algorithmic way for performing exploratory analysis and the existing canonical techniques have their own limitations. To overcome this, we advocate a bricolage-style exploratory scenario analysis, which can be crafted by pragmatically and strategically combining different methods and practices. Our argument is illustrated using a case study in integrated water management in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. Scenario ensembles are generated to investigate potential policy innovations, climate and crop market conditions, as well as the effects of uncertainties in model components and parameters. Visualizations, regression trees and marginal effect analyses are exploited to make sense of the ensemble of scenarios. The analysis includes identifying patterns within a scenario ensemble, by visualizing initial hypotheses that are informed by prior knowledge, as well as by visualizing new hypotheses based on identified influential variables. Context-specific relationships are explored by analyzing which values of drivers and management options influence outcomes. Synthesis is achieved by identifying context-specific solutions to consider as part of policy design. The process of analysis is cast as a process of finding patterns and formulating questions within the ensemble of scenarios that merit further examination, allowing end-users to make the decision as to what underlying assumptions should be accepted, and whether uncertainties have been sufficiently explored. This approach is especially advantageous when the precise intentions of management are still subject to deliberations. By describing the reasoning and steps behind a bricolage-style exploratory analysis, we hope to raise awareness of the value of sharing this kind of (common but not often documented) analysis process, and motivate further work to improve sharing of know-how about bricolage in practice.This work was funded by the Australian National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT), and the MDBA-NCGRT Partnership. Joseph Guillaume was supported by the Academy of Finland WASCO water scarcity atlas project (grant number 305471

Process Variation-Aware Compact Model of Strip Waveguides for Photonic Circuit Simulation

We report a novel process variation-aware compact model of strip waveguides that is suitable for circuit-level simulation of waveguide-based process design kit (PDK) elements. The model is shown to describe both loss and -- using a novel expression for the thermo-optic effect in high index contrast materials -- the thermo-optic behavior of strip waveguides. A novel group extraction method enables modeling the effective index's ($n_{\mathrm{eff}}$) sensitivity to local process variations without the presumption of variation source. Use of Euler-bend Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZIs) fabricated in a 300~mm wafer run allow model parameter extraction at widths up to 2.5~$\mu$m (highly multi-mode) with strong suppression of higher-order mode excitation. Experimental results prove the reported model can self-consistently describe waveguide phase, loss, and thermo-optic behavior across all measured devices over an unprecedented range of optical bandwidth, waveguide widths, and temperatures

Discerning Applicants\u27 Interests in Rural Medicine: A Textual Analysis of Admission Essays

BACKGROUND: Despite efforts to construct targeted medical school admission processes using applicant-level correlates of future practice location, accurately gauging applicants\u27 interests in rural medicine remains an imperfect science. This study explores the usefulness of textual analysis to identify rural-oriented themes and values underlying applicants\u27 open-ended responses to admission essays. METHODS: The study population consisted of 75 applicants to the Rural Physician Leadership Program (RPLP) at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. Using WordStat, a proprietary text analysis program, applicants\u27 American Medical College Application Service personal statement and an admission essay written at the time of interview were searched for predefined keywords and phrases reflecting rural medical values. From these text searches, derived scores were then examined relative to interviewers\u27 subjective ratings of applicants\u27 overall acceptability for admission to the RPLP program and likelihood of practicing in a rural area. RESULTS: The two interviewer-assigned ratings of likelihood of rural practice and overall acceptability were significantly related. A statistically significant relationship was also found between the rural medical values scores and estimated likelihood of rural practice. However, there was no association between rural medical values scores and subjective ratings of applicant acceptability. CONCLUSIONS: That applicants\u27 rural values in admission essays were not related to interviewers\u27 overall acceptability ratings indicates that other factors played a role in the interviewers\u27 assessments of applicants\u27 acceptability for admission