Labor market policies and unemployment in Morocco : a quantitative analysis

The authors study the impact of labor market policies on unemployment in Morocco. They begin by reviewing the main features of the labor market. Then they present a quantitative framework that captures many of these features-such as a large public sector, high redundancy payments, powerful trade unions, and international labor migration. The authors simulate the impact of a cut in the minimum wage and a reduction in payroll taxation. The results indicate that these policies may have a significant impact in the short term on open unskilled unemployment. But they also show that labor market reforms, to be effective in the long run, may need to be accompanied by offsetting changes in the budget to avoid crowding-out effects on private investment.Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Policies,Labor Markets,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Markets,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Poverty Assessment

On the Empirical Consequences of the AdS/CFT Duality

We provide an analysis of the empirical consequences of the AdS/CFT duality with reference to the application of the duality in a fundamental theory, effective theory and instrumental context. Analysis of the first two contexts is intended to serve as a guide to the potential empirical and ontological status of gauge/gravity dualities as descriptions of actual physics at the Planck scale. The third context is directly connected to the use of AdS/CFT to describe real quark-gluon plasmas. In the latter context, we find that neither of the two duals are confirmed by the empirical data.Comment: 15 pages + abstract, references. Submitted to "Beyond Spacetime" volum

Roads out of poverty? assessing the links between aid, public investment, growth, and poverty reduction

The authors develop a macroeconomic framework that captures links between aid, public investment, growth, and poverty. Public investment is disaggregated into education, infrastructure, and health, and affects both aggregate supply and demand. Dutch disease effects are captured by accounting for changes in the relative price of domestic goods. The authors assess the impact of policy shocks on poverty by linking the model to a household survey. They calibrate the model for Ethiopia and simulate the changes in the allocation of aid and public investment. The authors also calculate the amount by which foreign aid should increase to reach the poverty targets of the Millennium Development Goals.Decentralization,Economic Theory&Research,Labor Policies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Inequality,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Economic Stabilization,Banks&Banking Reform

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Sub-Saharan Africa : a macroeconomic monitoring framework

The authors present an integrated macroeconomic approach to monitoring progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Sub-Saharan Africa. At the heart of their approach is a macroeconomic model that captures key linkages between foreign aid, public investment (disaggregated into education, infrastructure, and health), the supply side, and poverty. The model is linked through cross-section regressions to indicators of malnutrition, infant mortality, life expectancy, and access to safe water. A composite MDG indicator is also calculated. The functioning of the framework is illustrated by simulating the impact of an increase in aid and a debt write-off for Niger at the MDG horizon of 2015, under alternative assumptions about the degree of efficiency of public investment. The authors'approach can serve as the building block of Strategy Papers for Human Development (SPAHD), a more encompassing concept than the current"Poverty Reduction"Strategy Papers.Economic Theory&Research,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Inequality,Investment and Investment Climate,Achieving Shared Growth

Understanding Video Transformers for Segmentation: A Survey of Application and Interpretability

Video segmentation encompasses a wide range of categories of problem formulation, e.g., object, scene, actor-action and multimodal video segmentation, for delineating task-specific scene components with pixel-level masks. Recently, approaches in this research area shifted from concentrating on ConvNet-based to transformer-based models. In addition, various interpretability approaches have appeared for transformer models and video temporal dynamics, motivated by the growing interest in basic scientific understanding, model diagnostics and societal implications of real-world deployment. Previous surveys mainly focused on ConvNet models on a subset of video segmentation tasks or transformers for classification tasks. Moreover, component-wise discussion of transformer-based video segmentation models has not yet received due focus. In addition, previous reviews of interpretability methods focused on transformers for classification, while analysis of video temporal dynamics modelling capabilities of video models received less attention. In this survey, we address the above with a thorough discussion of various categories of video segmentation, a component-wise discussion of the state-of-the-art transformer-based models, and a review of related interpretability methods. We first present an introduction to the different video segmentation task categories, their objectives, specific challenges and benchmark datasets. Next, we provide a component-wise review of recent transformer-based models and document the state of the art on different video segmentation tasks. Subsequently, we discuss post-hoc and ante-hoc interpretability methods for transformer models and interpretability methods for understanding the role of the temporal dimension in video models. Finally, we conclude our discussion with future research directions

Cooled optical filters for Q-band infrared astronomy (15-40 μm)

With a growing interest in mid- and far-infrared astronomy using cooled imaging and spectrometer instruments in high-altitude observatories and spaceflight telescopes, it is becoming increasingly important to characterise and assess the spectral performance of cooled multilayer filters across the Q-band atmospheric window. This region contains spectral features emitted by many astrophysical phenomena and objects fundamental to circumstellar and planetary formation theories. However extending interference filtering to isolate radiation at progressively longer wavelengths and improve photometric accuracy is an area of ongoing and challenging thin-film research. We have successfully fabricated cooled bandpass and edge filters with high durability for operation across the 15-30 µm Q-band region. In this paper we describe the rationale for selection of optical materials and properties of fabricated thin-film coatings for this region, together with FTIR spectral measurements and assessment of environmental durability