A Yellow Fever Epidemic: A New Global Health Emergency?

The worst yellow fever epidemic in Angola since 1986 is rapidly spreading, including the capital, Luanda. In Angola, the epidemic began in December 2015 and the laboratory-confirmed outbreak was reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) on January 21, 2016. Angola has had 2023 suspected cases and 258 deaths as of April 26, 2016. China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya also have reported cases arising from infected travelers from Angola. Namibia and Zambia also share a long border with Angola, with considerable population movement between the countries. Similar to other recent epidemics, quick and effective action to stop the spread of yellow fever is the responsibility of the world’s health community

The Emerging Zika Pandemic: Enhancing Preparedness

The Zika virus (ZIKV), a flavivirus related to yellow fever, dengue, West Nile, and Japanese encephalitis, originated in the Zika forest in Uganda and was discovered in a rhesus monkey in 1947. The disease now has “explosive” pandemic potential, with outbreaks in Africa, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the Americas. Since Brazil reported Zika virus in May 2015, infections have occurred in at least 20 countries in the Americas. Puerto Rico reported the first locally transmitted infection in December 2015, but Zika is likely to spread to the United States. The Aedes species mosquito (an aggressive daytime biter) that transmits Zika virus (as well as dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever) occurs worldwide, posing a high risk for global transmission. Modeling anticipates significant international spread by travelers from Brazil to the rest of the Americas, Europe, and Asia. What steps are required now to shore up preparedness in the Americas and worldwide

Asymptotics of random Betti tables

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we present a conjecture to the effect that the ranks of the syzygy modules of a smooth projective variety become normally distributed as the positivity of the embedding line bundle grows. Then, in an attempt to render the conjecture plausible, we prove a result suggesting that this is in any event the typical behavior from a probabilistic point of view. Specifically, we consider a "random" Betti table with a fixed number of rows, sampled according to a uniform choice of Boij-Soderberg coefficients. We compute the asymptotics of the entries as the length of the table goes to infinity, and show that they become normally distributed with high probability

Ground Water Quality Effects on Domestic Water Utilization

The work upon which this report is based was supported in part by funds (Project A-040-ALAS) provided by the United States Department of the Interior, Office of Water Resources Research, as authorized under the Water Resources Act of 1964, as amended

Treasury’s Forecasting Performance: A Head-to-Head Comparison

Work on assessing Treasury’s forecasting performance to date has focussed on comparisons against consensus forecasts. This study compares Treasury’s GDP and CPI forecast performance against individual private sector forecasters as well as major public sector institutions such as the IMF, OECD and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. The head-to-head comparison makes it possible to assess Treasury’s forecasting performance relative to its peers. When compared across all evaluation periods covering 1996-2005, Treasury’s GDP forecast performance was ranked in the middle at seventh out of 16. The large forecast error for the 1998 year had a material impact on Treasury’s overall forecast performance. Treasury’s CPI forecast performance was not as good, placing tenth out of 12. Large forecast errors for the 1998-2000 period accounted for the poor CPI forecast performance. Treasury’s overall forecast performance was better when evaluating only the current year Budget forecasts, placing fourth for GDP and sixth for CPI. This suggests that Treasury is better at forecasting the current year than the year ahead. Consistent with international studies, no single forecaster consistently outperforms the Consensus, with Treasury beating the Mean 30% of the time for GDP and Consensus 33% of the time for CPI. All forecasters find it difficult to pick recessions and turning points. Large forecasting groups generally have a poorer forecasting record on average.Forecast accuracy; New Zealand

Prevailing Wage Laws and Construction Labor Markets

Prevailing wage laws, which require that construction workers employed by private contractors on public projects be paid at least the wages and benefits that are "prevailing" for similar work in or near the locality in which the project is located, have been the focus of an extensive policy debate. We find that the relative wages of construction workers decline slightly after the repeal of a state prevailing wage law. However, the small overall impact of law repeal masks substantial differences in outcomes for different groups of construction employees. Repeal is associated with a sizeable reduction in the union wage premium and a significant narrowing of the black/nonblack wage differential for construction workers.