Not Separate, Not Equal: Poverty and Inequality in Post-Apartheid South Africa

As South Africa conducts a review of the first ten years of its new democracy, the question remains as to whether the economic inequalities of the apartheid era are beginning to fade. Using new, comparable consumption aggregates for 1995 and 2000, this paper finds that real per capita household expenditures declined for those at the bottom end of the expenditure distribution during this period of low GDP growth. As a result, poverty, especially extreme poverty, increased. Inequality also increased, mainly due to a jump in inequality among the African population. Even among subgroups of the population that experienced healthy consumption growth, such as the Coloureds, the rate of poverty reduction was low because the distributional shifts were not pro-poor.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40125/3/wp739.pd

Not Separate, Not Equal: Poverty and Inequality in Post-Apartheid South Africa

As South Africa conducts a review of the first ten years of its new democracy, the question remains as to whether the economic inequalities of the apartheid era are beginning to fade. Using new, comparable consumption aggregates for 1995 and 2000, this paper finds that real per capita household expenditures declined for those at the bottom end of the expenditure distribution during this period of low GDP growth. As a result, poverty, especially extreme poverty, increased. Inequality also increased, mainly due to a jump in inequality among the African population. Even among subgroups of the population that experienced healthy consumption growth, such as the Coloureds, the rate of poverty reduction was low because the distributional shifts were not pro-poor.Poverty, Inequality, South Africa

Is the yield curve a useful Information variable for the Eurosystem?

The focus of this paper is on the use of the yield curve in monetary policy making. Theoretical arguments and a multi-country empirical analysis with an explicit focus on the euro area suggest the need for caution in case the Eurosystem uses the yield curve as an information variable for monetary policy, because multiple theoretical explanations exist for an observed movement in the yield curve, suggesting that policy reactions cannot be prescribed unambiguously. In addition, the empirical analysis shows that, in contrast with earlier findings of, for example, Hardouvelis (1994) and Bernard and Gerlach (1996), the information content of the yield curve is fairly limited. For the individual European countries participating in the Eurosystem as well as for the euro area as a whole, the yield spread possesses only very limited information relating to future movements in the inflation rate and output growth, over-and-above the information contained in the history of the latter variables. JEL Classification: E43, E52

On pricing of perishable assets with menu costs

Cataloged from PDF version of article.We consider dynamic pricing of perishable assets in the presence of price-sensitive renewal demand processes. Unlike the existing works in the literature, we explicitly incorporate non-negligible price change costs which reflects the revenue management practice more realistically. These costs are also known as menu costs in the economic literature. The objective is to maximize the discounted expected profit for an initial inventory of Q items by determining the selling prices dynamically. We employ a dynamic programming approach and formulate a model that captures the price– demand relationship. We establish some theoretical results on the properties of the problem at hand. Specifically, we establish the sufficient conditions under which the within-period profit is concave in the selling price and in the remaining shelf life and, furthermore, show the structure of the myopically and asymptotically optimal pricing policy. In a numerical study, we investigate the impact of various system parameters and, in particular, the existence of menu costs, on pricing decisions. We observe that ignoring menu costs may be significantly misleading for the implementation of revenue management. We also propose four implementable policy heuristics and examine their performances. Our findings support some results previously obtained in settings with continuous pricing and negligible price change costs; and, contradict some others. & 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V

The Role of Relapse Prevention and Goal Setting in Training Transfer Enhancement

This article reviews the effect of two post-training transfer interventions (relapse prevention [RP] and goal setting [GS]) on trainees’ ability to apply skills gained in a training context to the workplace. Through a review of post-training transfer interventions literature, the article identifies a number of key issues that remain unresolved or underexplored, for example, the inconsistent results on the impact of RP on transfer of training, the lack of agreement on which GS types are more efficient to improve transfer performance, the lack of clarity about the distinction between RP and GS, and the underlying process through which these two post-training transfer interventions influence transfer of training. We offer some recommendations to overcome these problems and also provide guidance for future research on transfer of training

A comparison of neuroimaging abnormalities in multiple sclerosis, major depression and chronic fatigue syndrome (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis): is there a common cause?

There is copious evidence of abnormalities in resting-state functional network connectivity states, grey and white matter pathology and impaired cerebral perfusion in patients afforded a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, major depression or chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) (myalgic encephalomyelitis). Systemic inflammation may well be a major element explaining such findings. Inter-patient and inter-illness variations in neuroimaging findings may arise at least in part from regional genetic, epigenetic and environmental variations in the functions of microglia and astrocytes. Regional differences in neuronal resistance to oxidative and inflammatory insults and in the performance of antioxidant defences in the central nervous system may also play a role. Importantly, replicated experimental findings suggest that the use of high-resolution SPECT imaging may have the capacity to differentiate patients afforded a diagnosis of CFS from those with a diagnosis of depression. Further research involving this form of neuroimaging appears warranted in an attempt to overcome the problem of aetiologically heterogeneous cohorts which probably explain conflicting findings produced by investigative teams active in this field. However, the ionising radiation and relative lack of sensitivity involved probably preclude its use as a routine diagnostic tool

Construct validity of the Experiences of Therapy Questionnaire (ETQ)

ObjectiveThe Experiences of Therapy Questionnaire (ETQ) is a reliable measure of adverse effects associated with psychotherapy. The measure has not been subject to validity analyses. This study sought to examine the validity of the ETQ by comparison against a measure of therapist satisfaction.MethodsParticipants were recruited from the Black Dog Institute¿s website and completed all measures online, at two time points (two weeks apart). Correlational analyses compared scale scores on the ETQ with related constructs of the Therapist Satisfaction Scale (TSS). To exclude any impact of current depression on ratings, we examined correlations between salient ETQ and TSS scales after controlling for depression severity.ResultsForty-six participants completed all the measures at both time points. Hypothesised associations between the ETQ and TSS scales were supported, irrespective of current depression severity.ConclusionsThe validity of the ETQ is supported; however limitations of the study are noted, including generalizability due to sample characteristics

On-board processing for future satellite communications systems: Satellite-Routed FDMA

A frequency division multiple access (FDMA) 30/20 GHz satellite communications architecture without on-board baseband processing is investigated. Conceptual system designs are suggested for domestic traffic models totaling 4 Gb/s of customer premises service (CPS) traffic and 6 Gb/s of trunking traffic. Emphasis is given to the CPS portion of the system which includes thousands of earth terminals with digital traffic ranging from a single 64 kb/s voice channel to hundreds of channels of voice, data, and video with an aggregate data rate of 33 Mb/s. A unique regional design concept that effectively smooths the non-uniform traffic distribution and greatly simplifies the satellite design is employed. The satellite antenna system forms thirty-two 0.33 deg beam on both the uplinks and the downlinks in one design. In another design matched to a traffic model with more dispersed users, there are twenty-four 0.33 deg beams and twenty-one 0.7 deg beams. Detailed system design techniques show that a single satellite producing approximately 5 kW of dc power is capable of handling at least 75% of the postulated traffic. A detailed cost model of the ground segment and estimated system costs based on current information from manufacturers are presented