Household liquidity and incremental financing decisions:theory and evidence

In this paper we develop a stochastic model for household liquidity. In the model, the optimal liquidity policy takes the form of a liquidity range. Subsequently, we use the model to calibrate the upper bound of the predicted liquidity range. Equipped with knowledge about the relevant control barriers, we run a series of empirical tests on a panel data set of Dutch households covering the period 1992-2007. The results broadly validate our theoretical predictions that households (i) exhaust most of their short-term liquid assets prior to increasing net debt, and (ii) reduce outstanding net debt at the optimally selected upper liquidity barrier. However, a small minority of households appear to act sub-optimally. Poor and vulnerable households rely too frequently on expensive forms of credit (such as overdrafts) hereby incurring substantial amounts of fees and fixed borrowing costs. Elderly households and people on social benefits tend to accumulate too much liquidity. Finally, some households take on expensive short-term credit while having substantial amounts of low-yielding liquid assets

Asteroseismic Theory of Rapidly Oscillating Ap Stars

This paper reviews some of the important advances made over the last decade concerning theory of roAp stars.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

Exodus, or an imagined political community: the landless workers movement and internal migration in the work of Sebastião Salgado

The objective of this essay is to analyse the photographic production of Sebastião Salgado of the Landless Workers Movement, aiming at understanding the relationships between the photographic medium and the levels of movement revealed by the images. It investigates how such images portray a “nation”, fragmented and heterogeneous, from the representation of a migrant community. Refusing to migrate to Brazil’s big cities, the Landless Movement accentuates its peripheral nature. Such aspect of resistance from this group is the focus of Salgado’s photographs. Nevertheless, as it is argued throughout the essay, there is a definite tension between “being represented” and “representing itself”: the Landless Movement, because of its political essence, reinforces the importance of photography in the art of “making history”