Significance of Employing a Multilateral Index Formula for Interstate Comparisons: A Case Study of the Australian Farm Sector

The paper demonstrates the drawbacks on using official data and binary indices when attempting an interstate comparison of output and productivity growth. The use of official data in one’s national currency still requires a numerary currency due to price variations across states. Even with the use of index number formulas, some indices have shown to fail the transitivity property when more than 2 states are concerned. Hence the paper aims to demonstrate the significance of using a multilateral index formula like the Geary-Khamis (GK) method, EKS method and CCD method for derivation of appropriate currency converters or purchasing power parities (PPPs) to enable proper quantification of real output at the multilateral level. Subsequently, the paper demonstrates the variations in results between official aggregates and multilateral aggregates based on the GK method.

Efficiency of Research Performance of Australian Universities: A Reappraisal using a Bootstrap Truncated Regression Approach

The motivation of the study stems from the results reported in the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) 2010 report. The report showed that only 12 universities performed research at or above international standards, of which, the Group of Eight (G8) universities filled the top eight spots. While performance of universities was based on number of research outputs, total amount of research income and other quantitative indicators, the measure of efficiency or productivity was not considered. The objectives of paper are twofold. First, to provide a review of the research performance of 37 Australian universities using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) bootstrap approach of Simar and Wilson (J Econ, 136:31–64, 2007). Second, to determine sources of productivity drivers by regressing the efficiency scores against a set of environmental variables.Data envelopment analysis, efficiency, universities, bootstrap truncated regression, environmental variables.

Efficiency, technology and productivity change in Australian universities, 1998-2003

In this study, productivity growth in thirty-five Australian universities is investigated using nonparametric frontier techniques over the period 1998 to 2003. The inputs included in the analysis are full-time equivalent academic and non-academic staff, non-labour expenditure and undergraduate and postgraduate student load and the outputs are undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD completions, national competitive and industry grants and publications. Using Malmquist indices, productivity growth is decomposed into technical efficiency and technological change. The results indicate that annual productivity growth averaged 3.3 percent across all universities, with a range between -1.8 percent and 13.0 percent, and was largely attributable to technological progress. However, separate analyses of research-only and teaching-only productivity indicate that most of this gain was attributable to improvements in research-only productivity associated with pure technical and some scale efficiency improvements. While teaching-only productivity also contributed, the largest source of gain in that instance was technological progress offset by a slight fall in technical efficiency.Productivity; technical and scale efficiency; technological progress; Malmquist indices; universities.

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationDespite the burgeoning interest in mindfulness and its applications, relatively few mindfulness research studies have been conducted with children and adolescents, particularly in regard to those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and comorbid internalizing symptoms. Moreover, there is a lack of peer-reviewed, published studies regarding the effectiveness of the Mindful Schools curricula. Therefore, the current study evaluated implementation feasibility and effectiveness of an adapted Mindful Schools intervention taught to adolescents with ASD in an outpatient clinical setting. In total, 14 adolescents from the Intermountain West consented to participation in the study. A single-subject, multiple-baseline design across three groups was used to assess intervention feasibility and effectiveness. Dependent variables included: participant retention and group completion; treatment integrity; intervention acceptability; and adolescent anxiety, rigidity, and mindfulness, as measured by both self- and parent-reports. Results showed that it is feasible to implement the adapted Mindful Schools intervention with adolescents diagnosed with ASD in an outpatient clinical setting over a nine-week period. This is evidenced by a high rate of participant group completion, strong group leader adherence to the treatment protocol, and favorable satisfaction ratings from both adolescents and parents. Ratings on pre- and posttreatment measures, however, showed minimal impact on adolescent anxiety, rigidity, and mindfulness following the nine-week intervention. Specifically, Tau-U calculations showed limited to no overall intervention effect (Tau-U = -.09) on daily ratings of anxiety, despite all adolescents self-reporting symptoms of anxiety prior to intervention. Responses to the study-developed rigidity rating scale indicated that six out of 10 adolescents and parents observed a slight decrease in adolescent rigidity following intervention, although responses were highly variable both within and across groups. Finally, after eliminating an outlier, results showed little change, on average, in personal mindfulness following intervention, despite reports of practicing mindfulness. This study demonstrated that it is feasible to deliver an adapted mindfulness intervention to adolescents with ASD; however, effects on anxiety, rigidity, and mindfulness were minimal following the nine-week intervention. Future studies should aim to identify factors that impact response to mindfulness-based treatment for adolescents with ASD, as well as the development of sensitive and specific research measures

Malmquist Indices of Pre and Post-Deregulation Productivity, Efficiency and Technological Change in the Singaporean Banking Sector

By the end of the 1990s, the Singaporean government had recognised the need to open up its banking sector so as to remain competitive in the global economy. The Monetary Authority of Singapore thus began deregulation of the banking sector in 1999 to strengthening the competitiveness of local banks relative to their foreign competition through mergers. This paper employs a nonparametric Malmquist productivity index to provide measure of productivity, technological change and efficiency gains over the period 1995-2005. The findings reveal some total factor productivity growth associated with deregulation and scale efficiency improvement largely from mergers amongst the local banks.Efficiency, productivity; deregulation; Malmquist indices; banking

Propagation and organization in lattice random media

We show that a signal can propagate in a particular direction through a model random medium regardless of the precise state of the medium. As a prototype, we consider a point particle moving on a one-dimensional lattice whose sites are occupied by scatterers with the following properties: (i) the state of each site is defined by its spin (up or down); (ii) the particle arriving at a site is scattered forward (backward) if the spin is up (down); (iii) the state of the site is modified by the passage of the particle, i.e. the spin of the site where a scattering has taken place, flips ($\uparrow \Leftrightarrow \downarrow$). We consider one dimensional and triangular lattices, for which we give a microscopic description of the dynamics, prove the propagation of a particle through the scatterers, and compute analytically its statistical properties. In particular we prove that, in one dimension, the average propagation velocity is $= 1/(3-2q)$, with $q$ the probability that a site has a spin $\uparrow$, and, in the triangular lattice, the average propagation velocity is independent of the scatterers distribution: $= 1/8$. In both cases, the origin of the propagation is a blocking mechanism, restricting the motion of the particle in the direction opposite to the ultimate propagation direction, and there is a specific re-organization of the spins after the passage of the particle. A detailed mathematical analysis of this phenomenon is, to the best of our knowledge, presented here for the first time.Comment: 30 pages, 15 separate figures (in PostScript); submitted to J. Stat. Phy

De Natuurschoonwet: Borger van Nederlands natuurschoon?

De Natuurschoonwet (NSW) biedt voor landgoederen in Nederland diverse fiscale voordelen. De NSW stelt geen eisen aan de kwaliteit van het natuurschoon, wel aan de omvang van het landgoed (namelijk minstens 5 ha groot). Wat is de invloed van deze wet op landgoederen. Dat is nagegaan in een studentenonderzoek (Schuurman) door drie landgoederen onder de loep te nemen en tevens bij 23 landgoederen de toekomstmogelijkheden na te gaan, en wel in Overijssel en Gelderlan

The XMM Newton and INTEGRAL observations of the supergiant fast X-ray transient IGR J16328-4726

The accretion mechanism producing the short flares observed from the Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXT) is still highly debated and forms a major part in our attempts to place these X-ray binaries in the wider context of the High Mass X-ray Binaries. We report on a 216 ks INTEGRAL observation of the SFXT IGR J16328-4726 (August 24-27, 2014) simultaneous with two fixed-time observations with XMM Newton (33ks and 20ks) performed around the putative periastron passage, in order to investigate the accretion regime and the wind properties during this orbital phase. During these observations, the source has shown luminosity variations, from 4x10^{34} erg/s to 10^{36} erg/s, linked to spectral properties changes. The soft X-ray continuum is well modeled by a power law with a photon index varying from 1.2 up to 1.7 and with high values of the column density in the range 2-4x10^{23}/cm^2. We report on the presence of iron lines at 6.8-7.1 keV suggesting that the X-ray flux is produced by accretion of matter from the companion wind characterized by density and temperature inhomogeneities