A case study of a currency crisis: the Russian default of 1998

This paper uses a currency crisis framework to analyze the currency devaluation and debt default of post-Soviet Russia in August 1998. The authors show that even though the Russian economy recorded positive growth immediately preceding the default, the atmosphere was reflective of an impending crisis. The authors then consider the symptoms of a currency crisis—specifically public and private debt responsibilities, devaluation expectations, and contractionary monetary policy—and show that they were present in Russia at that time. Three generations of currency crisis models are reviewed, followed by speculation that the Russian default was a product not only of fiscal deficits but also of a fragile financial system and contractionary monetary policy. The authors address the possibility that the usual prescription for a currency crisis, that is, increasing interest rates, may have accelerated the default and that a case-by-case prescription may afford a better solution than a blanket policy of increasing interest rates in the face of devaluation.Financial crises - Russia ; Russia

Putting off retirement: the rise of the 401(k)

Pensions ; Retirement

Financial aid and college choice

Education - Economic aspects

Symmetric inflation risk

Inflation (Finance)

Subject to revision

Gross domestic product

Is Horticultural Therapy a Safe and Effective Treatment in Reducing Agitation for Dementia Patients in Nursing Homes?

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this selective EBM review is to determine whether or not horticultural therapy is a safe and effective treatment in reducing agitation for dementia patients in nursing homes. STUDY DESIGN: Review of three English language primary studies published between 2008 and 2010. DATA SOURCES: Two randomized control trials and a case series, which compare horticultural therapy to the use of traditional therapy methods. OUTCOMES MEASURED: The primary outcome measured in all three studies focus on the level of agitation in dementia patients. Secondary outcomes also included efficacy of sleep as well as level of cognition. RESULTS: In the case series study by Lee et al, horticultural therapy was found to significantly improve level of agitation, cognition and certain aspects of sleep such as wake after sleep onset, nap duration, and nocturnal sleep time and efficiency. There was no improvement in sleep onset, wake-up time, or total sleep time. The two randomized control trials, indicated that no significant improvement in agitation after horticultural therapy based on corresponding p-values. In Jarrot et al, anxiety/agitation was not significantly decreased (p = 0.932) after the AARS was converted with the Mann-Whitney test. Luk at el demonstrated lack of significant improvement in the CMAI score for control and therapy groups post-intervention; p = 0.115 and p = 0.249, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The results of two randomized control trials demonstrated that horticultural therapy was not effective at reducing agitation in dementia patients, while the case series study indicated a possible decrease in agitation for the therapy group. Overall consistency was not provided and the data was inconclusive. All trials were limited due to small sample size and lack of follow-up studies

Isolating LCDs at end-of-life using active disassembly technology: A feasibility study

The European Union draft Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive calls for the removal and separate treatment of liquid crystal displays (LCD). This aspect of the legislation will potentially have an important impact upon the future `End of Life' (EoL) processing of much WEEE. Active Disassembly using Smart Materials (ADSM) has been proven to have applicability in self-dismantling, nondestructive and rapid disassembly of small electronic products. This paper investigates the technical feasibility of removing LCD screens from IT communication products using ASDM technology. In this paper an option is suggested to cleanly separate LCD screens from printed circuit boards, utilizing an LCD bracket made from `shape memory polymer'. The case study products employed are Nokia Japanese J-Phones. Demonstration experiments with initial results are presented, and future developments discussed. SMB glass transformation temperatures (Tg) and time efficiency in disassembly are considered

Tailoring electronic and optical properties of TiO2: nanostructuring, doping and molecular-oxide interactions

Titanium dioxide is one of the most widely investigated oxides. This is due to its broad range of applications, from catalysis to photocatalysis to photovoltaics. Despite this large interest, many of its bulk properties have been sparsely investigated using either experimental techniques or ab initio theory. Further, some of TiO2's most important properties, such as its electronic band gap, the localized character of excitons, and the localized nature of states induced by oxygen vacancies, are still under debate. We present a unified description of the properties of rutile and anatase phases, obtained from ab initio state of the art methods, ranging from density functional theory (DFT) to many body perturbation theory (MBPT) derived techniques. In so doing, we show how advanced computational techniques can be used to quantitatively describe the structural, electronic, and optical properties of TiO2 nanostructures, an area of fundamental importance in applied research. Indeed, we address one of the main challenges to TiO2-photocatalysis, namely band gap narrowing, by showing how to combine nanostructural changes with doping. With this aim we compare TiO2's electronic properties for 0D clusters, 1D nanorods, 2D layers, and 3D bulks using different approximations within DFT and MBPT calculations. While quantum confinement effects lead to a widening of the energy gap, it has been shown that substitutional doping with boron or nitrogen gives rise to (meta-)stable structures and the introduction of dopant and mid-gap states which effectively reduce the band gap. Finally, we report how ab initio methods can be applied to understand the important role of TiO2 as electron-acceptor in dye-sensitized solar cells. This task is made more difficult by the hybrid organic-oxide structure of the involved systems.Comment: 32 pages, 8 figure

Nonlinear Hedonics and the Search for School District Quality

Since the pioneering work of Tiebout (1956), economists have recognized that the quality of public services, especially schools, influence house prices. Many empirical studies have attempted to discern the extent to which the quality of public education affects house prices. Initially, researchers estimated hedonic pricing equations (Rosen, 1974). In a simple hedonic pricing model, a house's value depends on its comparable neighborhood and school district characteristics. A house's comparable characteristics include aspects such as the number of bedrooms, square feet, etc. Neighborhood characteristics typically include the distance to the nearest major downtown area, racial composition, and median household income. Education quality may be proxied by variables such as per-pupil spending, pupil/teacher ratio, and property taxes, which are usually available at the school district level, or it may be measured directly by state or local standardized tests scores, which are usually available at the school level. In an influential study, Black (1999) argues that past research estimating hedonic pricing functions (see Rosen, 1974) may introduce an upward bias due to neighborhood quality effects that are unaccounted for in the data. Specifically, she notes that better schools may be associated with better neighborhoods, which could independently contribute to higher house prices. Black circumvents this problem by estimating a linear hedonic pricing function using data only from houses which border the school attendance zone boundaries. She rationalizes that, while test scores make a discrete jump at attendance boundaries, changes in neighborhoods are more smooth. Black's linear specification presupposes that the marginal valuation of worse-than-average schools is equal to the valuation of better-than-average schools and results in a constant premium on school quality. Moreover, if school quality is normalized (i.e., expressed in terms of deviations from the mean), the linear capitalization term implies a penalty (increasing as quality decreases) for houses in attendance zones of schools performing below average. Thus, a linear model implies there exists a substantive pecuniary penalty for a really bad school compared to just a bad school. In this paper, we formulate a simple housing search model that yields a theoretical nonlinear pricing function. The nonlinearity in our model reflects two aspects of the market for public education via housing. First, alternative schooling arrangements (e.g., private school, home schooling, magnet schools, etc) can provide home buyers with high quality education even if they choose to live in below average school districts. The existence of these options underlies our belief that an increasing penalty for below average quality school attendance zones may be theoretically unappealing. Second, if buyers have positive valuations for education, they may concentrate their efforts among the highest quality attendance zones, yielding an increasing market tightness as school quality increases. Thus, buyers may face incresed competition for the highest quality schools and a rapidly increasing premium for houses in those attendance zones. Motivated by our theoretical specification, we extend Black's analysis and examine the relationship between school quality and house prices in the St. Louis, Missouri metropolitan area. A previous study by Ridker and Henning (1967) found no evidence of education capitalization in St. Louis house prices. While their main concern was to determine the negative effect of air pollution on housing prices, they included a dummy variable which indicated residents' attitudes about the quality of the schools (above average, average, and below average). Our goal is to determine the degree of education capitalization in the St. Louis MSA. We first measure education capitalization employing Black's methodology of considering only houses near attendance zone boundaries to control for neighborhood quality. This allows us to determine the extent to which Black's results extend to the St. Louis metro area. Then, we advance Black's methodology by considering the possibility that education capitalization affects house prices nonlinearly, as indicated by our theoretical framework. Black, Sandra E. "Do Better Schools Matter? Parental Valuation of Elementary Education," Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 1999, 114(2), pp. 577-599. Ridker, Ronald G. and Henning, John A. "The Determinants of Residential Property Values with Special Reference to Air Pollution," Review of Economics and Statistics, May 1967, 49(2), pp. 246-257. Rosen, Sherwin. "Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Product Differentiation in Pure Competition," Journal of Political Economy, January-February 1974, 82(1), pp. 34-55. Tiebout, Charles M. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, October 1956, 64(5), pp. 416-424.education, captialization, hedonic pricing, search