Social sector expenditures and rainy-day funds

Gonzalez and Paqueo examine the effects of budget stabilization funds--often called rainy-day funds--on the volatility of social spending and, for contrast, on nonsocial sector spending. They analyze the rainy-day funds of U.S. states. The authors find that rainy-day funds are ineffective in reducing the volatility of nonsocial sector expenditures but are effective in reducing the volatility of social sector expenditures. The authors also find that states that have stringent deposit and withdrawal rules have higher rainy-day fund balances, and thus are more effective in reducing the volatility of social sector expenditures. Finally, for long-term effectiveness, stabilization funds depend obviously on sustained economic growth.Urban Governance and Management,Environmental Economics&Policies,Regional Governance,Infrastructure Finance,Public Sector Economics&Finance,National Governance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Infrastructure Finance,Infrastructure Finance,Public Sector Economics&Finance

Bargaining for a new fiscal pact in Mexico

The authors consider the malaise with the present set-up of fiscal federalism in Mexico from the points of view of the main players-the federal government, the states, the municipalities, and the citizen voters-in order to identify the areas of potential common interest as well as the direct conflicts. There is a zero-sum game on some issues, like the size of aggregate transfers, but not on others, likeraising tax collection and improving accountability for service delivery. The authors consider bargain packages that combine mutually beneficial changes and thus might obtain broad enough political support. They analyze the bargaining packages in two main tracks-one concerning tax assignments, revenue sharing, and tax administration, and another concerning the conjunction of earmarked transfers and accountability for service provision. An important result is that almost all states would find it fiscally attractive to impose a sales tax that replaced part of the federal value-added tax (VAT), even if the federal government reduced revenue sharing enough to cover half the cost of reducing the VAT rate to make room for the state tax.National Governance,Urban Governance and Management,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Regional Governance,National Governance,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Regional Governance

Economic analysis of health care utilization and perceived illness ; ethnicity and other factors

Paqueo and Gonzalez look at the determinants of health-seeking behavior of the Mexican population and within this context focus on the effect of ethnicity. They address the following questions: To what extent are the indigenous people at a disadvantage health care-wise and in what particular health services are they disadvantaged? Is the health care gap due to indigenous cultures by itself as opposed to the impact of socioeconomic differences? What policy instruments can be used to reduce the gap? The authors find that contrary to expectations, the indigenouspeople in Mexico tend to have a positive behavior toward modern preventive care compared with the nonindigenous population, holding socioeconomic factors constant. Apparently, there is no cultural barrier in regard to these services. But ethnicity remains negatively associated with the use of inpatient hospital care and medical and dental consultations. Insurance has a significant and positive effect on health care use. Therefore, it appears to be an effective instrument for addressing the health care disadvantages faced by the indigenous population in regard to inpatient care and the use of outpatient services of doctors, nurses, and dentists.Early Child and Children's Health,Health Systems Development&Reform,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Public Health Promotion,Health Economics&Finance,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Health Systems Development&Reform,Health Economics&Finance,Housing&Human Habitats,Gender and Health

Non-renormalization of two and three Point Correlators of N=4 SYM in N=1 Superspace

Certain two and three point functions of gauge invariant primary operators of ${\cal N}=4$ SYM are computed in ${\cal N}=1$ superspace keeping all the $\th$-components. This allows one to read off many component descendent correlators. Our results show the only possible $g^2_{YM}$ corrections to the free field correlators are contact terms. Therefore they vanish for operators at separate points, verifying the known non-renormalization theorems. This also implies the results are consistent with ${\cal N}=4$ supersymmetry even though the Lagrangian we use has only ${\cal N}=1$ manifest supersymmetry. We repeat some of the calculations using supersymmetric Landau gauge and obtain, as expected, the same results as those of supersymmetric Feynman gauge.Comment: 10 pages, 20 eps figures, references adde

Stabilizing intergovernmental transfers in Latin America : a complement to national/subnational fiscal rules?

The traditional theory of fiscal federalism assigns the role of macroeconomic stabilization to the federal government. In addition to this long-standing theoretical result, there is empirical observation that federal governments in developing countries typically have cheaper and more stable access to capital markets, relative to subnational governments. Drawing on the recent experience of four large federal countries in Latin America-Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico--the authors examine how intergovernmental transfers affect the division of the burden of stabilization across the levels of government, when the nation as a whole faces economic fluctuations. Imposing stabilizing rules on federal transfers that protect subnational governments from fluctuations in the business cycle can serve two purposes. During boom periods, stabilizing rules prevent subnational governments'tendency to increase inflexible expenditures. And during downturns, stabilizing rules place the burden of borrowing at the federal level-the level most appropriate for macroeconomic stabilization and often the level with superior access to credit. Despite the logic of these rules, recent experience of the four countries reveals that these rules can be risky, particularly inthe face of high GDP volatility. Protection against falling revenues in the downturn constitutes a contingent liability for the central government. Argentina's stabilizing rule contributed to fiscal and political tensions during its ongoing crisis. Colombia is beginning to implement similar rules. Meanwhile, Brazilian and Mexican transfers do not implement such rules and fiscal and economic results do not appear to have fared any worse for this absence. The authors draw on the country experience to establish that certain conditions should be in place before establishing a stabilization rule to federal-to-subnational fiscal transfers-in particular the elimination of long-term structural fiscal imbalances, either within levels of government or across levels of government.Municipal Financial Management,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Public&Municipal Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Urban Economics,Banks&Banking Reform,National Governance,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Municipal Financial Management,Urban Economics

Excitons in coupled InAs/InP self-assembled quantum wires

Optical transitions in coupled InAs/InP self-assembled quantum wires are studied within the single-band effective mass approximation including effects due to strain. Both vertically and horizontally coupled quantum wires are investigated and the ground state, excited states and the photoluminescence peak energies are calculated. Where possible we compare with available photo-luminescence data from which it was possible to determine the height of the quantum wires. An anti-crossing of the energy of excited states is found for vertically coupled wires signaling a change of symmetry of the exciton wavefunction. This crossing is the signature of two different coupling regimes.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures. To appear in Physical Review

Fixing the U-band photometry of Type Ia supernovae

We present previously unpublished photometry of supernovae 2003gs and 2003hv. Using spectroscopically-derived corrections to the U-band photometry, we reconcile U-band light curves made from imagery with the Cerro Tololo 0.9-m, 1.3-m and Las Campanas 1-m telescopes. Previously, such light curves showed a 0.4 mag spread at one month after maximum light. This gives us hope that a set of corrected ultraviolet light curves of nearby objects can contribute to the full utilization of rest frame U-band data of supernovae at redshift ~0.3 to 0.8. As pointed out recently by Kessler et al. in the context of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey supernova search, if we take the published U-band photometry of nearby Type Ia supernovae at face value, there is a 0.12 mag U-band anomaly in the distance moduli of higher redshift objects. This anomaly led the Sloan survey to eliminate from their analyses all photometry obtained in the rest frame U-band. The Supernova Legacy Survey eliminated observer frame U-band photometry, which is to say nearby objects observed in the U-band, but they used photometry of high redshift objects no matter in which band the photons were emitted.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journa