Setting the market free: deregulation of the bus industry. 4th Smeed Memorial Lecture, 29th October 1987.

[FIRST PARAGRAPH]Though he was not himself an economist, Reuben Smeed is well known to transport economists as the chairman of a committee which, in the early sixties, examined the use of congestion charges to obtain a rational use of scarce urban road capacity. (1) The Smeed report showed that in the absence of a proper road congestion pricing system there would be an excessive use of the private car, and, by implication, a sub optimum level of use of public transport. Although, to the best of my knowledge, Reuben never turned his mind to the issues of public transport regulation, the ready acceptance of public transport regulation and subsidy as second best proxies for road pricing in the late sixties and seventies was, I believe, founded on the Smeed logic

The complex plank problem

It is shown that if $(v_{j})$ is a sequence of norm $1$ in a complex Hilbert space and $(t_{j})$ is a sequence of nonnegative numbers satisfying $\sum t_{j}^{2}=1$ then there is a unit vector z for which $|\langle v_{j}, z \rangle|\geq t_{j} for every j. The result is a strong, complex analogue of the author's real plank theorem

Struvite (MgNH4PO4.6H2O) solubility and its application to a piggery effluent problem

Struvite (MgNH4P04• 6H20) solution chemistry was studied in order to understand a struvite scaling problem which exists in the pipe network of a series of 4 effluent lagoons at a piggery. Struvite deposits frequently occur in piping from the final effluent pond intended for irrigation purposes, causing severe scaling of the pipe, making irrigation or other end uses of the effluent impossible. The conditional solubility constant (P. = SMg .SNH3-N•SPO.-P, equilibrium S values (M) was determined over the range of pH values (6.8-8.5) and solution concentrations of Mg, NHa-N and P04-P close to field conditions, and at a temperature of 30°C. A comparison of field and laboratory data indicates struvite precipitates from the second lagoon onwards. The solubility data obtained also indicate potential for precipitation as a method of nutrient removal from wastewaters

Density functionals, with an option-pricing application

We present a method of estimating density-related functionals, without prior knowledge of the density’s functional form. The approach revolves around the specification of an explicit formula for a new class of distributions that encompasses many of the known cases in statistics, including the normal, gamma, inverse gamma, and mixtures thereof. The functionals are based on a couple of hypergeometric functions. Their parameters can be estimated, and the estimates then reveal both the functional form of the density and the parameters that determine centering, scaling, etc. The function to be estimated always leads to a valid density, by design, namely, one that is nonnegative everywhere and integrates to 1. Unlike fully nonparametric methods, our approach can be applied to small datasets. To illustrate our methodology, we apply it to finding risk-neutral densities associated with different types of financial options. We show how our approach fits the data uniformly very well. We also find that our estimated densities’ functional forms vary over the dataset, so that existing parametric methods will not do uniformly well

The joint moment generating function of quadratic forms in multivariate autoregressive series - The case with deterministic components

Let {X-t} follow a discrete Gaussian vector autoregression with deterministic components. We derive the exact finite-sample joint moment generating function (MGF) of the quadratic forms that form the basis for the sufficient statistic. The formula is then specialized to the limiting MGF of functionals involving multivariate and univariate Ornstein–Uhlenbeck processes, drifts, and time trends. Such processes arise asymptotically from more general non-Gaussian processes and also from the Gaussian {X-t} and have also been used in areas other than time series,such as the “goodness of fit” literature

Care services for frail older people in South Korea

This paper examines the changed social circumstances of older people in South Korea and specifically the increased need for formal health and social services for those who are frail and have no informal carers. The article begins with a summary account of the country's exceptionally rapid demographic, economic and social transformations, which demonstrates a widening gap between the population's expectations and needs, and health and social service provision. It then examines the recently initiated and now burgeoning welfare programmes, with particular attention to health and social services for sick and frail older people. Most extant care services are accessed mainly by two minorities: the very poor and the rich. The dominant policy influence of physicians and a history of conflict between traditional and western medicine probably underlies the low current priority for ‘care’ as opposed to ‘cure’, as also for the management of chronic conditions and rehabilitation. Neither long-term care services nor personal social services are well developed. There is a marked disparity between the acute services, which are predominantly provided by private sector organisations in a highly competitive market and broadly achieve high standards, and public primary care and rudimentary residential services. The latter are weakly regulated and there are many instances of low standards of care

Bus Deregulation: Reports of a Seminar Held on 20 June 1986

The purpose of the seminar was to provide a forum for the discussion of the emerging arrangements for deregulation of the stage bus industry. The seminar was chaired by Professor K M Gwilliam and Mr P J Mackie of the Institute for Transport Studies. Each of the four sessions was introduced by a speaker currently invovled in operating the new regime. It was agreed that a note of the discussions would be circulated to all participants. This note fulfills that obligation