Reading Is, Like, You Know, Sooooo Gross!

“Huge Decline in Book Reading” ran one headline. “Cultural Atrophy!” read another. “Study Links Drop in Test Scores to a Decline Spent in Reading” ran one for the “Duh!” award. “Americans are Closing the Book on Reading” said one, vying for the pun-acious trophy

Stop the Presses!

Last month a new study commissioned by the British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) issued one of those “Duh!” reports. The new study (available here http://www. bl.uk/news/pdf/googlegen.pdf) found that the “Google Generation,” or those brought up by computer wolves, is not very Web-literate

Market-induced Asset Specificity: Redefining the Hold-up Problem

In a standard hold-up problem, individuals are vulnerable to hold-up because it is impossible to write complete contracts to cover the lifespan of relationship-specific investments. Hold-up occurs only when investments are to some degree nongeneric, and the extent of the problem increases with the time-span over which an investment must pay off, since long-term contracts are more difficult to write than short-term contracts. This result appears inconsistent with the real life experience of contract suppliers in two respects. First, suppliers often consider themselves "vulnerable" to hold-up even when investments are generic. Second, such a sense of vulnerability is often greatest precisely when assets are short-lived rather than long-lived. This paper provides a model that solves this apparent paradox by looking beyond the isolated problem of bilateral monopoly to the market context in which contracting takes place. We then find that the very meaning of asset specificity comes into question

On the generic strategic stability of nash equilibria if voting is costly

We prove that for generic plurality games with positive cost of voting, the number of Nash equilibria is finite. Furthermore all the equilibria are regular, hence stable sets as singletons

A simple variance estimator for unequal probability sampling without replacement

Survey sampling textbooks often refer to the Sen-Yates-Grundy variance estimator for use with without replacement unequal probability designs. This estimator is rarely implemented, because of the complexity of determining joint inclusion probabilities. In practice, the variance is usually estimated by simpler variance estimators such as the Hansen-Hurwitz with replacement variance estimator; which often leads to overestimation of the variance for large sampling fraction that are common in business surveys. We will consider an alternative estimator: the Hájek (1964) variance estimator that depends on the first-order inclusion probabilities only and is usually more accurate than the Hansen-Hurwitz estimator. We review this estimator and show its practical value. We propose a simple alternative expression; which is as simple as the Hansen-Hurwitz estimator. We also show how the Hájek estimator can be easily implemented with standard statistical packages

The Finnish Development Cooperation in the Water Sector

This report evaluates Finland's participation in the water and sanitation sector from 1995 through 2009. Drawing from previous assessments as well as original research, the authors evaluate the country's performance in the water sector of its partner countries Ethiopia, Kenya, Nepal and Vietnam through an evaluation matrix. Most of the projects in these countries are water and sanitation for rural and small towns, though a few more recent projects in Ethiopia and Nepal focus on water resource management. The evaluation urges the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland (MFA) to better globally disseminate information on a few of its projects that they consider to be "jewels in the crown", particularly Community Development Funds in Ethiopia and Rural Water Supply and Sanitation (Support) Programme in Nepal. Scaling up and replication present important challenges

Some Fiscal Implications of Monetary Policy

We study the implications of alternative monetary targeting procedures for real interest rates and economic activity. We find that countercyclical monetary policy rules lead to higher real interest rates, higher average tax rates, lower output but lower variability of tax rates and consumption relative to procyclical rules. For a country with a high level of public debt (e.g. Italy), the adoption of a counter cyclical proceedure such as interest rate pegging may conceivably raise public debt servicing costs by more than half a percentage point of GNP. Our analysis suggests that the current debate on the targeting proceedures of the European Central Bank ought to be broadened to include a discussion of the fiscal implications of monetary policy.