Automatic Fiscal Stabilizers in Sweden 1998-2009

In this note, I examine how the responsiveness of the Swedish public budget to business-cycle conditions has developed between 1998 and 2009. I document substantial changes in three components behind the budget elasticity: (i) the average level of personal income taxes has fallen substantially, (ii) the progressivity of personal income taxation has increased, and (iii) spending on unemployment compensation has fallen. The first two changes have opposing effects on the budget elasticity, and I find that the higher progressivity has had a marginally larger impact on the elasticity than the tax cuts. Also allowing for the lower unemployment compensations, the three effects add up to a small and non-substantial fall in the budget elasticity. Considering that most of the components behind the budget elasticity are imprecisely estimated, there is no clear evidence that the Swedish budget elasticity has changed during the last decade.Automatic stabilizers; budget elasticity; fiscal policy; stabilization policy

Vintage Capital and Expectations Driven Business Cycles

This paper demonstrates that increased optimism about future productivity can generate an immediate economic expansion in a neoclassical model with vintage capital and variable capacity utilization. Previous research has documented that standard neoclassical models cannot generate a simultaneous increase in consumption, investment, and hours in response to news shocks, and that optimism in these models tends to reduce investment and hours. When technology is vintage specific, however, expectations of higher future productivity raise the demand for new vintages of capital relative to old capital. Capital depreciates faster when utilization is high, but this depreciation only affects installed capital. The cost of high depreciation therefore falls when the value of installed capital falls. It is demonstrated here that with standard parameter values, more optimism raises utilization, consumption, investment, hours, and output.Expectations; News; Business cycles; Vintage capital; Capital-embodied technological change

Labor Supply and Saving under Uncertainty

This paper examines how variations in labor supply can be used to self-insure against wage uncertainty, and the impact of such self-insurance on precautionary saving. The analytical framework is a two-period model with saving and labor-supply decisions where preferences are consistent with balanced growth. The main findings are that (i) labor-supply flexibility raises precautionary saving when future wages are uncertain, and (ii) uncertainty about future wages raises current labor supply and reduces future labor supply.precautionary saving; prudence; labor supply

Aggregate Savings When Individual Income Varies

This paper examines aggregate savings in a general equilibrium model where infinitely lived households face volatile (and possibly uncertain) income paths, hold a risk-free asset, and face a liquidity constraint. I first show that the equilibrium capital stock in an economy without uncertainty, but where individual income varies, can be larger than in an economy where each household's income is constant. When income is stochastic, the equilibrium capital stock is always larger than when income is constant. This additional capital accumulation has sometimes been interpreted as precautionary savings, but I demonstrate that it is mostly generated by permanent-income motives.equilibrium interest rate; aggregate savings; precautionary saving; infinite horizon; general equilibrium

The labor-supply elasticity and borrowing constraints: Why estimates are biased

The labor-supply elasticity is a central element in many macroeconomic models. We argue that assumptions underlying previous econometric estimates of the intertemporal labor supply elasticity are inconsistent with incomplete markets economies. In particular, if the econometrician ignores borrowing constraints, the elasticity will be biased downwards. Within our model, the bias may be up to 50 percent. We find a similar bias in PSID data.labor supply elasticity; intertemporal substitution; liquidity constraints

Inequality Trends in Sweden 1978-2004

We document a clear increase in Swedish earnings inequality in the early 1990s. Inequality in disposable income and earnings net of taxes and transfers also increased, but much less than the increased inequality in pre-government earnings. These different developments are most likely explained by the generous Swedish welfare system. Consistent with these observations, we see no clear trend in consumption inequality. We also estimate stochastic processes for household earnings. A simple random-walk process captures much of the life-cycle dynamics. But we find clear evidence that the true earnings process is not a random walk. We demonstrate that some estimation methods result in severe upward bias in the estimated volatility of permanent shocks if serial correlation in temporary shocks is ignored. Our estimation results show that the increase in earnings inequality is almost entirely driven by an increase in residual earnings inequality. Moreover, this increase was mostly generated by an increased volatility of persistent shocks.income inequality; consumption inequality; stochastic earnings process

The Effectiveness of Government Debt and Transfers as Insurance

No abstract.

Alignment uncertainty, regressive alignment and large scale deployment

A multiple sequence alignment (MSA) provides a description of the relationship between biological sequences where columns represent a shared ancestry through an implied set of evolutionary events. The majority of research in the field has focused on improving the accuracy of alignments within the progressive alignment framework and has allowed for powerful inferences including phylogenetic reconstruction, homology modelling and disease prediction. Notwithstanding this, when applied to modern genomics datasets - often comprising tens of thousands of sequences - new challenges arise in the construction of accurate MSA. These issues can be generalised to form three basic problems. Foremost, as the number of sequences increases, progressive alignment methodologies exhibit a dramatic decrease in alignment accuracy. Additionally, for any given dataset many possible MSA solutions exist, a problem which is exacerbated with an increasing number of sequences due to alignment uncertainty. Finally, technical difficulties hamper the deployment of such genomic analysis workflows - especially in a reproducible manner - often presenting a high barrier for even skilled practitioners. This work aims to address this trifecta of problems through a web server for fast homology extension based MSA, two new methods for improved phylogenetic bootstrap supports incorporating alignment uncertainty, a novel alignment procedure that improves large scale alignments termed regressive MSA and finally a workflow framework that enables the deployment of large scale reproducible analyses across clusters and clouds titled Nextflow. Together, this work can be seen to provide both conceptual and technical advances which deliver substantial improvements to existing MSA methods and the resulting inferences.Un alineament de seqüència múltiple (MSA) proporciona una descripció de la relació entre seqüències biològiques on les columnes representen una ascendència compartida a través d'un conjunt implicat d'esdeveniments evolutius. La majoria de la investigació en el camp s'ha centrat a millorar la precisió dels alineaments dins del marc d'alineació progressiva i ha permès inferències poderoses, incloent-hi la reconstrucció filogenètica, el modelatge d'homologia i la predicció de malalties. Malgrat això, quan s'aplica als conjunts de dades de genòmica moderns, que sovint comprenen desenes de milers de seqüències, sorgeixen nous reptes en la construcció d'un MSA precís. Aquests problemes es poden generalitzar per formar tres problemes bàsics. En primer lloc, a mesura que augmenta el nombre de seqüències, les metodologies d'alineació progressiva presenten una disminució espectacular de la precisió de l'alineació. A més, per a un conjunt de dades, existeixen molts MSA com a possibles solucions un problema que s'agreuja amb un nombre creixent de seqüències a causa de la incertesa d'alineació. Finalment, les dificultats tècniques obstaculitzen el desplegament d'aquests fluxos de treball d'anàlisi genòmica, especialment de manera reproduïble, sovint presenten una gran barrera per als professionals fins i tot qualificats. Aquest treball té com a objectiu abordar aquesta trifecta de problemes a través d'un servidor web per a l'extensió ràpida d'homologia basada en MSA, dos nous mètodes per a la millora de l'arrencada filogenètica permeten incorporar incertesa d'alineació, un nou procediment d'alineació que millora els alineaments a gran escala anomenat MSA regressivu i, finalment, un marc de flux de treball permet el desplegament d'anàlisis reproduïbles a gran escala a través de clústers i computació al núvol anomenat Nextflow. En conjunt, es pot veure que aquest treball proporciona tant avanços conceptuals com tècniques que proporcionen millores substancials als mètodes MSA existents i les conseqüències resultants

Development and assessment of a structured data-recording (SDR) technique for classroom observation

The major purpose of this study was to modify and assess the efficacy of a structured data-recording technique. The Structured Data-Recording (SDR) with practice technique is used to assist evaluators to capture classroom observation data, analyze the data, and make decisions regarding teacher performance. In addition, the study examined the effect of gender on classroom observation and analysis skills. A modified pretest/posttest control group design was used. The data for this study were gathered from 77 teacher evaluators in the Des Moines Independent Community School District, Des Moines, Iowa during the 1985-1986 school year. Five instruments were used to collect pretest and posttest data;The experimental group teacher evaluators received the one and one-half days of the SDR training in Des Moines, Iowa and then practiced the technique in the field for approximately six weeks. At the end of the six-week period, teacher evaluators in both experimental and control groups participated in the posttest. Pretest/posttest data were analyzed using the analysis of variance technique;The study yielded the following findings: (a) Evaluators were significantly better able to identify teacher performance strengths following the SDR training; (b) Training did not have a significant effect on evaluators\u27 ability to identify teacher targets for growth; (c) Female evaluators were significantly better able to identify teacher targets for growth than male evaluators; (d) Gender did not have a significant effect on evaluators\u27 ability to identify teacher performance strengths; (e) Neither training nor gender had a significant effect on evaluators\u27 ability to record specific data; (f) Neither training nor gender had a significant effect on evaluators\u27 level of confidence in data collection and data analysis skills. The findings of this study clearly support the need for additional research to improve the training process and to examine the characteristics of the evaluators

A Mad Time in the Philippines

Poster created by students in the 2017 IWU Freeman Asia Internship Program