Interchange fees : antitrust and regulatory perspectives : panel remarks

Debit cards ; Credit cards

Interchange fees : antitrust and regulatory perspectives : general discussion

Debit cards ; Credit cards

Mobile phones for development: How have women in the informal sector used their mobile phones to enhance themselves and their business?

The research looked into how women in the informal sector made use of mobile phones to enhance their wellbeing and their businesses. The study was carried out within the discourse of information technology for development where it is argued that information technologies have the potential to improve on people's lives. This research sought to examine the possibility for development and growth through the conceptual framework of social inclusion and inclusive growth. This was used as a lens to analyse the data on mobile phone use by women in the informal sector. Qualitative research was conducted in three townships in Cape Town, through purposive sampling of five female respondents. Two respondents were in the hairdressing industry, two were in the meat selling industry and one respondent owned a shebeen. The women were running micro enterprises in the informal sector, as they had no other means to provide for themselves and their families. Mobile phones were incorporated into the daily running of business. The functions of the mobile phone mainly used were voice, text and Internet access through social media and instant messaging. Four resources were identified as crucial for the promotion of social inclusion and growth that would enhance the economic and social participation of individuals. These were physical, digital, human and social resources. All of the respondents had the physical resource of mobile phones that varied in functions. Digital resources showed information exchange crucial to the businesses and for the women. Human resources were the skills that that the women had that would allow for utilization of mobile phones. The social resources referred to social capital present that enabled use of mobile phones. Social inclusion and Inclusive growth through use of mobile phones was possible in the social context in which the women were based. Whilst costly mobile phone credit was a limitation directly linked to mobile phone use, women faced structural challenges beyond the functions of the mobile phone. Women in this study harnessed the potential of mobile phones;; together with the resources they already had to improve on their business, impacting on the quality of their lives

Race and Home Ownership from the End of the Civil War to the Present

We present new estimates of home ownership for black and white households from 1870 to 2007. Black ownership increased by 46 percentage points, whereas white ownership increased by 20 points. Remarkably, 25 of the 26 point narrowing occurred between 1870 and 1910. Part of this early convergence is accounted for by falling white ownership due to movement out of agriculture, but most is accounted for by post-emancipation gains among blacks. After 1910, white and black households increased ownership, but the racial gap barely changed. We discuss the influence of residential segregation, public policy, and permanent income on the ownership gap.

The Noncommutative Quadratic Stark Effect For The H-Atom

Using both the second order correction of perturbation theory and the exact computation due to Dalgarno-Lewis, we compute the second order noncommutative Stark effect,i.e., shifts in the ground state energy of the hydrogen atom in the noncommutative space in an external electric field. As a side result we also obtain a sum rule for the mean oscillator strength. The energy shift at the lowest order is quadratic in both the electric field and the noncommutative parameter $\theta$. As a result of noncommutative effects the total polarizability of the ground state is no longer diagonal.Comment: 7 pages, no figure

Granite united way annual report 2011

Granite State United Way 2011 annual report on programs and services, including financial statement