Real Collaboration: A Guide for Grantmakers

Looks at the role of the grantmaker in the promotion and support of inter-organizational collaboration. Makes recommendations on how foundation program officers can promote a more effective use of collaboration among grantees

In Search of Strategic Solutions: A Funders Briefing on Nonprofit Strategic Restructuring

Analyzes the options and benefits of nonprofit strategic restructuring. Examines the pressures that lead nonprofits to consider strategic restructuring, and the conditions that lead to, or prevent, successful results. Includes recommendations

Joint Reconstruction of Multi-channel, Spectral CT Data via Constrained Total Nuclear Variation Minimization

We explore the use of the recently proposed "total nuclear variation" (TNV) as a regularizer for reconstructing multi-channel, spectral CT images. This convex penalty is a natural extension of the total variation (TV) to vector-valued images and has the advantage of encouraging common edge locations and a shared gradient direction among image channels. We show how it can be incorporated into a general, data-constrained reconstruction framework and derive update equations based on the first-order, primal-dual algorithm of Chambolle and Pock. Early simulation studies based on the numerical XCAT phantom indicate that the inter-channel coupling introduced by the TNV leads to better preservation of image features at high levels of regularization, compared to independent, channel-by-channel TV reconstructions.Comment: Submitted to Physics in Medicine and Biolog

The Q theory of investment under unit root tests

We test a q investment model for Belgium using a multivariate cointegration approach. The introduccion of the degree of capacity utilization duc, in addition to investment and average q, is necessary to determine the cointegration space. This support the idea that marginal q differs from average q by a factor which is a function of duc, as suggested by Licandro(1992)

On the Golden Rule of capital accumulation under endogenous longevity

This note derives the Golden Rule of capital accumulation in a Chakraborty-type economy, i.e. a two-period OLG economy where longevity is endogenous. It is shown that the capital per worker maximizing steady-state consumption per head is inferior to the Golden Rule capital level prevailing under exogenous longevity. We characterize also the lifetime Golden Rule, that is, the capital per worker maximizing steady-state expected lifetime consumption per head, and show that this tends to exceed the standard Golden Rule capital level.Golden Rule, longevity, OLG models

Underemployment and capital irreversivility in a unionized overlaping generations economy

In a unionized OLG model, it is shown that steady-state underutilization of labour and equipment can be due to the combination of the two following elements: (i) Irreversibility of capital, technology and skill decisions, (ii) Firm specific shocks on productivity. The presence of unions is neither sufficient nor necessary for having unemployment. The result of Devereux and Lockwood (1991) that union power affect positively the capital stock in general equilibrium does not always hold under capital irreversibility

Education and Growth with Endogenous Debt Constraints

When future human capital cannot be alienated, households are allowed to borrow up to the point where it is in their own interest not to default. In such a framework, endogenous borrowing limits arise as the outcome of individual rationality constraint. In a model where education is the engine of growth, we show that endogenous borrowing constraints imply global indeterminacy. Comparing outcomes across the various equilibria we show that the relation between growth and yields is hump-shaped. Maximum growth can arise in an equilibrium with binding borrowing constraints, specially if the elasticity if human capital to education spending is large. Deepening financial markets promotes long-run growth in the case of a poverty trap, but not necessarily otherwise.Financial depth; borrowing constraints; indeterminacy; incentive compatibility

Irreversibility, uncertainty and underemployment equilibria

In a competitive overlapping generation model, underutilization of labor and equipment can be due to the combination of irreversibility of human capital, physical capital and technology with idiosyncratic productivity shocks. Irreversibilities and uncertainty generate an inefficient allocation of resources among sectors, which takes the form of underemployment and underutilization of capacities at the aggregate level and affects the equilibrium path of capital. We provide examples in which this missallocation, called structural "mismatch," can be responsible, a.o., for an "inescapable poverty trap," or for periodic orbits generating endogenous fluctuations in underemployment

Adult longevity and economic take-off: from Malthus to Ben-Porath

We propose four arguments favoring the idea that medical effectiveness, adult longevity and height started to increase in Europe before the industrial revolution. This may have prompted households to increase their investment in human skills as a response to longer lives and initiated the transition from stagnation to growth.life expectancy, height, industrial revolution, human capital, adult mortality.

What happens when interviewers ask repeated questions in forensic interviews with children alleging abuse?

This study was designed to explore 1) the ways in which interviewers refocus alleged victims of abuse on their previous responses and 2) how children responded when they were refocused on their previous responses. Transcripts of 37 forensic interviews conducted by British police officers trained using the best practices spelled out in the Memorandum of Good Practice were examined. The instances in which interviewers asked repeated questions were isolated and coded into categories with respect to the reasons why interviewers needed to ask the repeated question (i.e., there was no apparent reason, to challenge a child’s response, clarification, no answer the first time the question was asked, digression, or compound question). The children’s responses to the repeated questions were further categorised into mutually exclusive categories (i.e., elaboration, repetition, contradiction, or no answer). On average interviewers asked children 8 repeated questions per interview. Most of the time interviewers asked repeated questions to challenge a previous response (62%), but they were also sometimes asked for no apparent reason (20%). Children repeated previous responses or elaborated on a previous response 81% of the time and contradicted themselves 7% of the time when re-asked the same question. We conclude that children did not appear unduly pressured to change their answers, and, more importantly, did not contradict themselves when interviewers attempted to refocus them on particular responses