Better prepared for retirement? Using panel data to improve wealth estimates of ELSA respondents

We compare the key assumptions underpinning estimates of the pension wealth of ELSA respondents to outcomes over the period from 2002–03 to 2004–05. We find that many of these assumptions have, on average, proved cautious or reasonable. Improving pension wealth calculations using this new evidence makes little difference to the distribution of pension wealth. Previous estimates of retirement resources also considered net financial, physical and housing wealth. Particularly cautious, ex-post, was the assumption that net housing wealth would remain constant in real terms. We find that average housing wealth has risen by almost 40% in nominal terms over just two years, which is in line with growth in the Nationwide House Price Index. This large increase in house prices boosts estimates of total wealth across the entire distribution of wealth. Previous research showed that once half of current net housing wealth was included as a retirement resource 12.6% of employees approaching retirement were estimated to have resources below the Pensions Commission’s definition of adequacy. We show that taking into account the high growth in house prices between 2002–03 and 2004–05 reduces this to 10.9%, and that it would fall by a further 1.2 percentage points if house prices were to grow by 2½% a year in real terms in the future

Estimating pension wealth of ELSA respondents

This paper explains the methodology used for calculating pensionwealth for all individuals in the first wave of the EnglishLongitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). We focus on the pensionwealth of individuals aged between 50 and the state pension age.Both state and private pension wealth has been calculated and eachhas been calculated both on the basis of immediate retirement in2002 and on the basis of retirement at the state pension age.Sensitivity analysis of our assumptions is also presented, whichshows that the distribution of pension wealth is sensitive to ourassumptions about the discount rate and contracting out historiesbut insensitive to assumptions about future earnings growth, futureannuity rates and future asset returns

CT-duality as a local property of the world-sheet

In the present article, we study the local features of the world-sheet in the case when probe bosonic string moves in antisymmetric background field. We generalize the geometry of surfaces embedded in space-time to the case when the torsion is present. We define the mean extrinsic curvature for spaces with Minkowski signature and introduce the concept of mean torsion. Its orthogonal projection defines the dual mean extrinsic curvature. In this language, the field equation is just the equality of mean extrinsic curvature and extrinsic mean torsion, which we call CT-duality. To the world-sheet described by this relation we will refer as CT-dual surface.Comment: Latex, 15 pages, 2 Figure

The chiral supereigenvalue model

A supereigenvalue model with purely positive bosonic eigenvalues is presented and solved by considering its superloop equations. This model represents the supersymmetric generalization of the complex one-matrix model, in analogy to the relation between the supereigenvalue and the Hermitian one-matrix model. Closed expressions for all planar multi-superloop correlation functions are found. Moreover an iterative scheme allows the calculation of higher genus contributions to the free energy and the correlators. Explicit results for genus one are given

Effects of drop and film viscosity on drop impacts onto thin films

While drop-film impacts have been studied extensively in the past, little thought has been given towards separating the effects of the drop fluid properties from those of the film. Distinguishing between the behaviors resulting from characteristics of each independently could provide insight into the underlying physical phenomena with a clarity that is unavailable when the drop and the film consist of identical liquids. In this study, the viscosity is the central parameter varied in both drop and film liquid. Using water, aqueous glycerol mixtures, and Fluoroinert FC-72, a range of kinematic viscosity covering 3 orders of magnitude (4 × 10-7 - 6.5 × 10 -4 m2/s) is examined; a smaller range of surface tension (0.024-0.072 N/m) is covered, as well. Drop impacts occur over a range of Weber numbers from 20 to 3000 and Reynolds numbers from 20 to 14000. Impact outcomes categorized are both formation of a crown and splashing from the crown. Criteria for each impact outcome are presented in light of both film and drop properties; certain outcomes are found to depend more strongly on either the properties of the drop or the film individually. Crown formation appears to relate more strongly to the film's properties, whereas crown splashing has some dependence on the drop properties. Existing splashing correlations are examined in light of the separation of properties. © 2013 by Begell House, Inc

A Pyramid Scheme for Particle Physics

We introduce a new model, the Pyramid Scheme, of direct mediation of SUSY breaking, which is compatible with the idea of Cosmological SUSY Breaking (CSB). It uses the trinification scheme of grand unification and avoids problems with Landau poles in standard model gauge couplings. It also avoids problems, which have recently come to light, associated with rapid stellar cooling due to emission of the pseudo Nambu-Goldstone Boson (PNGB) of spontaneously broken hidden sector baryon number. With a certain pattern of R-symmetry breaking masses, a pattern more or less required by CSB, the Pyramid Scheme leads to a dark matter candidate that decays predominantly into leptons, with cross sections compatible with a variety of recent observations. The dark matter particle is not a thermal WIMP but a particle with new strong interactions, produced in the late decay of some other scalar, perhaps the superpartner of the QCD axion, with a reheat temperature in the TeV range. This is compatible with a variety of scenarios for baryogenesis, including some novel ones which exploit specific features of the Pyramid Scheme.Comment: JHEP Latex, 32 pages, 1 figur

Black Holes with a Massive Dilaton

The modifications of dilaton black holes which result when the dilaton acquires a mass are investigated. We derive some general constraints on the number of horizons of the black hole and argue that if the product of the black hole charge $Q$ and the dilaton mass $m$ satisfies $Q m < O(1)$ then the black hole has only one horizon. We also argue that for $Q m > O(1)$ there may exist solutions with three horizons and we discuss the causal structure of such solutions. We also investigate the possible structures of extremal solutions and the related problem of two-dimensional dilaton gravity with a massive dilaton.Comment: 36 pages with 5 figures (as uuencoded compressed tar file) (revised version has one major change in bound on mass for extremal solution and minor typos fixed), harvma

Numerical studies of identification in nonlinear distributed parameter systems

An abstract approximation framework and convergence theory for the identification of first and second order nonlinear distributed parameter systems developed previously by the authors and reported on in detail elsewhere are summarized and discussed. The theory is based upon results for systems whose dynamics can be described by monotone operators in Hilbert space and an abstract approximation theorem for the resulting nonlinear evolution system. The application of the theory together with numerical evidence demonstrating the feasibility of the general approach are discussed in the context of the identification of a first order quasi-linear parabolic model for one dimensional heat conduction/mass transport and the identification of a nonlinear dissipation mechanism (i.e., damping) in a second order one dimensional wave equation. Computational and implementational considerations, in particular, with regard to supercomputing, are addressed

Entropy of gravitating systems: scaling laws versus radial profiles

Through the consideration of spherically symmetric gravitating systems consisting of perfect fluids with linear equation of state constrained to be in a finite volume, an account is given of the properties of entropy at conditions in which it is no longer an extensive quantity (it does not scale with system's size). To accomplish this, the methods introduced by Oppenheim [1] to characterize non-extensivity are used, suitably generalized to the case of gravitating systems subject to an external pressure. In particular when, far from the system's Schwarzschild limit, both area scaling for conventional entropy and inverse radius law for the temperature set in (i.e. the same properties of the corresponding black hole thermodynamical quantities), the entropy profile is found to behave like 1/r, being r the area radius inside the system. In such circumstances thus entropy heavily resides in internal layers, in opposition to what happens when area scaling is gained while approaching the Schwarzschild mass, in which case conventional entropy lies at the surface of the system. The information content of these systems, even if it globally scales like the area, is then stored in the whole volume, instead of packed on the boundary.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures. v2: addition of some references; the stability of equilibrium configurations is readdresse

Black Hole Remnants and the Information Puzzle

Magnetically charged dilatonic black holes have a perturbatively infinite ground state degeneracy associated with an infinite volume throat region of the geometry. A simple argument based on causality is given that these states do not have a description as ordinary massive particles in a low-energy effective field theory. Pair production of magnetic black holes in a weak magnetic field is estimated in a weakly-coupled semiclassical expansion about an instanton and found to be finite, despite the infinite degeneracy of states. This suggests that these states may store the information apparently lost in black hole scattering processes.Comment: 16 pages, revision has 5 figures uuencode