Pension Reform through Voluntary Opt-Out: The Czech Case

The importance of long-term public finance sustainability in the context of current financial crisis is still seen as one of the basic factors of economic stability. Demographic development resulting in higher percentage of people in retirement age versus economically active people is one of the main risks. There is a growing pressure on expenditures of age-related systems. For this reason the pension scheme reforms are major issue in advanced countries. While some countries have chosen strictly regulated approach towards pension reform, some have given its citizens a choice whether to stay in the old system, or whether to switch to a new one. Such a decision is very complex and whenever the choice was implemented, many more workers switched to a new system than was expected. In this paper, the authors present a micro-based simulation model for the Czech Republic that allows them to model the individuals’ switching decision using several economic and behavioral factors within an old (PAYG DB) and new (FDC) systems. It allows them to estimate the proportion of people who would opt-out to a funded pillar. The authors´ results indicate that under the assumption of rationality and long run predictability of most parameters, only a small fraction of population would choose the multi-pillar scheme. However, this conclusion holds only under a full rationality. Once the authors relax this assumption, a wide range of switching strategies become viable. Therefore, the expectations that the switch will be popular cannot be based only on economic factors, but must also incorporate behavioral aspects, such as the risk of aversion.pension system reform, opt-out, pension fund

Advances in the RXTE Proportional Counter Array Calibration: Nearing the Statistical Limit

During its 16 years of service the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) mission has provided an extensive archive of data, which will serve as a primary source of high cadence observations of variable X-ray sources for fast timing studies. It is, therefore, very important to have the most reliable calibration of RXTE instruments. The Proportional Counter Array (PCA) is the primary instrument on-board RXTE which provides data in 3-50 keV energy range with sub-millisecond time resolution in up to 256 energy channels. In 2009 the RXTE team revised the response residual minimization method used to derive the parameters of the PCA physical model. The procedure is based on the residual minimization between the model spectrum for Crab nebula emission and a calibration data set consisting of a number of spectra from the Crab and the on-board Am241 calibration source, uniformly covering the whole RXTE mission operation period. The new method led to a much more effective model convergence and allowed for better understanding of the PCA energy-to-channel relationship. It greatly improved the response matrix performance. We describe the new version of the RXTE/PCA response generator PCARMF v11.7 (HEASOFT Release 6.7) along with the corresponding energy-to-channel conversion table (verson e05v04) and their difference from the previous releases of PCA calibration. The new PCA response adequately represents the spectrum of the calibration sources and successfully predicts the energy of the narrow iron emission line in Cas-A throughout the RXTE mission.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Interpersonal sources of conflict in young people with and without mild to moderate intellectual disabilities at transition from adolescence to adulthood

<p><b>Background:</b> Interpersonal conflict is a source of stress and contributes to poor mental health in people with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities. Understanding the contexts in which conflict typically occurs can better equip services to help people with such difficulties. However, existing studies into the contexts of conflict have included participants with wide-ranging ages and may not reflect the experiences of young adults in particular.</p> <p><b>Materials and Methods:</b> Twenty-six young adults (16-20 years) with intellectual disabilities and 20 non-disabled young adults completed a semi-structured interview about a recent experience of interpersonal conflict. Participants were asked to describe their beliefs and feelings about the event and their subsequent response.</p> <p><b>Results:</b> Participants with intellectual disabilities were more likely to encounter conflict with strangers or peers outside their friendship group and to describe incidents of aggression than non-disabled participants. They were also more likely to characterize the other person globally as 'bad' and to perceive the other's actions as being personally directed at them. Young women with intellectual disabilities were less likely to describe responding aggressively to incidents.</p> <p><b>Conclusions:</b> Findings suggest that young adults with intellectual disabilities are often the target of overt aggression from those outside their inner social sphere, while their non-disabled peers are more likely to experience conflict with people close to them. Young adults with intellectual disabilities may also be more likely to feel victimized by interpersonal conflict. Implications of these findings and limitations of the study are discussed.</p&gt

ON THE MEASUREMENT OF A COSMOLOGICAL DIPOLE IN THE PHOTON NUMBER COUNTS OF GAMMA-RAY BURSTS

If gamma-ray bursts are cosmological or in a halo distribution their properties are expected to be isotropic (at least to 1st order). However, our motion with respect to the burst parent population (whose proper frame is expected to be that of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), or that of a static halo) will cause a dipole effect in the distribution of bursts and in their photon number counts (together termed a Compton-Getting effect). We argue that the photon number count information is necessary to distinguish a genuine Compton-Getting effect from some other anisotropy and to fully test the proper frame isotropy of the bursts. Using the 2B burst catalogue and the dipole determined from the CMB, we find the surprising result that although the number weighted distribution is consistent with isotropy, the fluence weighted dipole has a correlation with the CMB dipole that has a probability of occuring only 10% of the time for an isotropic photon distribution. Furthermore, the photon and number dipoles are inconsistent under the hypothesis of isotropy, at the 2-sigma level. This could be an indication that a non-negligible fraction of gamma-ray bursts originate in the local, anisotropic universe. (shortened Abstract)Comment: Accepted by ApJ. Self-unpacking (use csh), uuencoded, compressed Postscript, 16 pages + 4 Figures (5 files

The structure of galactic HI in directions of low total column density

A detailed 21 cm study of areas of that have the smallest known amount of HI in the northern sky was performed. These observations were corrected for stray radiation. The region of main interest, around alpha = 10(h)45(m), delta = 57 deg 20', has a minimium N(HI) of 4.5 x 10 to the 19th power/sq cm. Spectra taken at 21' resolution over a field 4 x 3 deg in this direction show up to four HI line components. Two, near 0 and -50 km/s, are ubiquitous. There is also a narrow component at -10 km/s attributable to a diffuse cloud covering half of the field, and scattered patches of HI at v -100 km/s. the low and intermediate velocity components have a broad line width and are so smoothly distributed across the region that it is unlikely that they contain significant unresolved angular structure. Eight other low column density directions were also observed. Their spectra typically have several components, but the total column density is always 7 x 10 to the 19th power/sq cm and changes smoothly along a 2 deg strip. Half of the directions show narrow lines arising from weak diffuse HI clouds that contain 0.5 to 3.0 x 10 to the 19th power/sq cm

Small scale H I structure and the soft X-ray background

The observed anticorrelation between diffuse soft X-ray flux and H I column density has been explained as absorption of soft X-rays produced in a hot galactic halo, assuming that the neutral interstellar material is sufficiently clumped to reduce the soft X-ray absorption cross section by a factor of two to three. A 21 cm emission line study of H I column density variations at intermediate and high galactic latitudes to 10' spatial resolution has been done. The results confirm conclusions from preliminary work at coarser resolution, and in combination with other data appear to rule out the hypothesis that clumping of neutral interstellar matter on any angular scale significantly reduces X-ray absorption cross sections in the 0.13 - 0.28 keV energy range. It is concluded therefore that the observed anticorrelation is not primarily a consequence of absorption of soft X-rays produced in a hot galactic halo