Costs of Reproduction and Terminal Investment by Females in a Semelparous Marsupial

Evolutionary explanations for life history diversity are based on the idea of costs of reproduction, particularly on the concept of a trade-off between age-specific reproduction and parental survival, and between expenditure on current and future offspring. Such trade-offs are often difficult to detect in population studies of wild mammals. Terminal investment theory predicts that reproductive effort by older parents should increase, because individual offspring become more valuable to parents as the conflict between current versus potential future offspring declines with age. In order to demonstrate this phenomenon in females, there must be an increase in maternal expenditure on offspring with age, imposing a fitness cost on the mother. Clear evidence of both the expenditure and fitness cost components has rarely been found. In this study, we quantify costs of reproduction throughout the lifespan of female antechinuses. Antechinuses are nocturnal, insectivorous, forest-dwelling small (20–40 g) marsupials, which nest in tree hollows. They have a single synchronized mating season of around three weeks, which occurs on predictable dates each year in a population. Females produce only one litter per year. Unlike almost all other mammals, all males, and in the smaller species, most females are semelparous. We show that increased allocation to current reproduction reduces maternal survival, and that offspring growth and survival in the first breeding season is traded-off with performance of the second litter in iteroparous females. In iteroparous females, increased allocation to second litters is associated with severe weight loss in late lactation and post-lactation death of mothers, but increased offspring growth in late lactation and survival to weaning. These findings are consistent with terminal investment. Iteroparity did not increase lifetime reproductive success, indicating that terminal investment in the first breeding season at the expense of maternal survival (i.e. semelparity) is likely to be advantageous for females

Prevalence and Socio-behavioral Influence of Early Childhood Caries, ECC, and Feeding Habits among 6-36 Months Old Children in Uganda and Tanzania.

Early childhood caries (ECC) is a serious problem that has remained unexplored in sub-Saharan Africa. This study aimed to identify possible socio-behavioral correlates of ECC focusing 6-36 months old children and their caretakers.\ud Cross sectional studies were conducted in a high fluoride rural area, Manyara, Tanzania and a low fluoride urban area, Kampala, Uganda. Totals of 1221 and 816 child - caretaker pairs attending health care facilities for growth monitoring were recruited in Manyara and Kampala, respectively. All caretakers completed face to face interviews at the health care facility. Children underwent oral clinical examination whereby ECC and Enamel hypoplasia were recorded using the dmft (WHO 1997) and the DDE index (FDI 1992). The prevalence of ECC was 3.7% in Manyara and 17.6% in Kampala. According to multiple logistic regression analyses, received oral health information from health worker was the strongest determinant of ECC in Manyara, adjusted OR 0.3, 95% CI 0.09 - 0.93. In Kampala, visible plaque, high sugar intake and presence of enamel hypoplasia associated with ECC, adjusted ORs 2.8 (95% CI 1.61- 4.95), 3.0 (95% CI 1.39 - 6.34) and 2.3 (95% CI 1.36 - 3.95). Oral health education aimed at caretakers of 6-36 months, including health care workers' information regarding the detrimental consequences for oral health of frequent sugar consumption and poor oral hygiene is important for prevention of ECC in Tanzania and Uganda

Evaluation of macroeconomic models for financial stability analysis

As financial stability has gained focus in economic policymaking, the demand for analyses of financial stability and the consequences of economic policy has increased. Alternative macroeconomic models are available for policy analyses, and this paper evaluates the usefulness of some models from the perspective of financial stability. Financial stability analyses are complicated by the lack of a clear and consensus definition of 'financial stability', and the paper concludes that operational definitions of this term must be expected to vary across alternative models. Furthermore, since assessment of financial stability in general is based on a wide range of risk factors, one can not expect one single model to satisfactorily capture all the risk factors. Rather, a suite of models is needed. This is in particular true for the evaluation of risk factors originating and developing inside and outside the financial system respectivel

Testing the New Keynesian Phillips Curve Through Vector Autoregressive Models: Results from the Euro Area

This paper addresses the issue of testing the 'hybrid' New Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) through vector autoregressive (VAR) systems and likelihood methods, giving special emphasis to the case where the variables are non-stationary. The idea is to use a VAR for both the inflation rate and the explanatory variable(s) to approximate the dynamics of the system and derive testable restrictions. Attention is focused on the 'inexact' formulation of the NKPC. Empirical results over the period 1971-98 show that the NKPC is far from providing a 'good first approximation' of inflation dynamics in the Euro area. Copyright 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the Department of Economics, University of Oxford.

DEMAND FOR MONEY AND EXPENDITURE COMPONENTS IN SOUTH AFRICA: ASSESSMENT FROM UNRESTRICTED ERROR-CORRECTION MODELS

The main aim of this study is to examine empirically the long-run relationship of money demand and its determinants in South Africa. In contrast with existing studies on the subject, the present study considers various components of real income as determinants. The disaggregated components are final consumption expenditure, expenditure on investment goods and exports. The other determinants are domestic interest rate, yield on government bonds and the exchange rate. The results confirm that the different components of real income have different impacts on the demand for money in South Africa. The presence of long-run equilibrium relationships between the demand for real M1, M2 and M3 and their determinants is confirmed based on the results of bounds testing. Copyright (c) 2007 The Author; Journal compilation (c) 2007 Economic Society of South Africa.

Supply, Factor Shares and Inflation Persistence: Re-Examining Euro-Area New-Keynesian Phillips Curves

Using euro-area data, we re-examine the empirical success of New-Keynesian Phillips curves (NKPCs). We re-estimate with a suitably specified optimizing supply side (which attempts to treat non-stationarity in factor income shares and mark-ups) that allows us to derive estimates of technology parameters, marginal costs and 'price gaps'. Our resulting estimates of the euro-area NKPCs are robust, provide reasonable estimates for fixed-price durations and discount rates and embody plausible dynamic properties. Our method for identifying the underlying determinants of NKPCs has general applicability to a wide set of countries as well as of use for sectoral studies

Prices, Productivity and Wage Bargaining in Open Economies

According to the standard union bargaining model, unemployment benefits should have big effects on wages, but product-market prices and productivity should play no role in the wage bargain. We formulate an alternative strategic bargaining model, where labour and product-market conditions together determine wages. A wage equation is derived and estimated on aggregate data for four Nordic countries. Wages are found to depend not only on unemployment and the replacement ratio, but also on productivity, international prices and exchange rates. There is evidence of considerable nominal wage rigidity. Exchange rate changes have large and persistent effects on competitiveness. Copyright � The editors of the "Scandinavian Journal of Economics" 2008 .