3,665 research outputs found
Retirement Savings Investment Strategy: Member Choices and Performance
Three crucial ingredients influence how much individuals will have to fund retirement income needs: how much they contribute to savings, how long they save for, and the performance of these savings. This paper focuses on the issue of performance, and how individuals perform when they are given the choice of making their own investment strategy for their retirement savings contributions. An empirical examination using a large sample gathered from four Australian superannuation funds is utilised and finds that on average members underperform their own funds default option both in raw returns and on a risk-adjusted basis. For trustees and regulators charged with the responsibility of looking after the interests of members an important result identifies significant differences in performance based on how members are allowed to construct their investment strategy.Retirement savings, Superannuation, Asset allocation, Investment performance Acknowledgements: The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the four funds who supported this research. We would also like to thank Jacqui Whale for her efforts in making sense of four databases. Paul Gerrans would also like to thank Susquehanna University for the time in writing the paper.
Wages, Skills, and Technology in the United States and Canada
Wages for more- and less-educated workers have followed strikingly different paths in the U.S. and Canada. During the 1980's and 1990's, the ratio of earnings of university graduates to high school graduates increased sharply in the U.S. but fell slightly in Canada. Katz and Murphy (1992) found that for the U.S. a simple supply-demand model fit the pattern of variation in the premium over time. We find that the same model and parameter estimates explain the variation between the U.S. and Canada. In both instances, the relative demand for more-educated labor shifts out at the same, consistent rate. Both over time and between countries, the variation in rate of growth of relative wages can be explained by variation in the relative supply of more-educated workers. Many economists suspect that technological change is causing the steady increases in the relative demand for more-educated labor. If so, these data provide independent evidence on the spatial and temporal variation in the pattern of technological change. Whatever is causing this increased demand for skill, the evidence from Canada suggest that increases in educational attainment and skills can reduce the rate at which relative wages diverge.
Coordinating International Standards: The Formation of the ISO
In the article on âStandardizationâ in the 14th edition of the EncyclopĂŠdia Britannica,
Paul Gough Agnew, the long-time Secretary of the American Standards Association (ASA),
argued:
In the flow of products from farm, forest, mine, and sea through processing and
fabricating plants, and through wholesale and retail markets to the ultimate consumer,
most difficulties are met at the transition pointsââpoints at which the product passes
from department to department within a company, or is sold by one company to
another or to an individual. The main function of standards is to facilitate the flow of
products through these transition points. Standards are thus both facilitators and
integrators. In smoothing out points of difficulty, or âbottlenecks,â they provide the
evolutionary adjustments which are necessary for industry to keep pace with technical
advances. They do this in the individual plant, in particular industries, and in industry
at large. They are all the more effective as integrators in that they proceed by simple
evolutionary steps, albeit inconspicuously.2
Albeit inconspicuous, standard setting has been among the nuts and bolts of globalizing
industrial capitalism since its beginning, assuring that things needing to work together fit
from product to product, industry to industry, and country to country. The foci of the first
two of the now 229 âtechnical committeesâ of the non-specialized international standards
organizations that emerged after the two world warsâthe interwar International Standards
Association [ISA] and the post-World War II International Organization for Standardization
[ISO]âare iconic: âScrew Threadsâ and âBolts, Nuts and Accessories.â Over the past two
decades, voluntary standardization processes, invented by turn-of-the-twentieth-century
engineers working in national and international technical committees, have increasingly been
1 We would like to thank Madame Beatrice Frey at ISO for her help in providing us access to original
documents from UNSCC and ISO, and Stacy Leistner at ANSI for his help in providing access to the minutes
from AESC and ASA meetings.
2 Quoted as epigraph of Dickson Reck, ed., National Standards in a Modern Economy, (New York, 1956), v.
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applied to issues that have little in common with those of fitting one mechanical part to
another, such as work processes (ISO 9000), environmental pollution (ISO 14,000), and
human rights (SA 8000 and the planned ISO 26000)
Brief 9: UNDP: Reviving a Practical Human Development Organization
Constant reform has characterized the UN Development Programme (UNDP) throughout its existence, say the authors of two recent books on UNDP. Change bespeaks an organization ready to adapt but also fundamentally uncertain about its proper role. It teeters between two sets of tensionsâas coordinator of and competitor within the UN development system, and as exerting priorities from the center while seeking to be flexible in its program countries. These tensions should be resolved, and enable UNDP to be the UNâs sustainable human development organization
Generation and delivery device for ozone gas and ozone dissolved in water
The present invention provides an ozone generation and delivery system that lends itself to small scale applications and requires very low maintenance. The system preferably includes an anode reservoir and a cathode phase separator each having a hydrophobic membrane to allow phase separation of produced gases from water. The hydrogen gas, ozone gas and water containing ozone may be delivered under pressure
Generation and delivery device for ozone gas
The present invention provides an ozone generation and delivery system that lends itself to small scale applications and requires very low maintenance. The system preferably includes an anode reservoir and a cathode phase separator each having a hydrophobic membrane to allow phase separation of produced gases from water. The hydrogen gas, ozone gas and water containing ozone may be delivered under pressure
Method for vacuum pressing electrochemical cell components
Assembling electrochemical cell components using a bonding agent comprising aligning components of the electrochemical cell, applying a bonding agent between the components to bond the components together, placing the components within a container that is essentially a pliable bag, and drawing a vacuum within the bag, wherein the bag conforms to the shape of the components from the pressure outside the bag, thereby holding the components securely in place. The vacuum is passively maintained until the adhesive has cured and the components are securely bonded. The bonding agent used to bond the components of the electrochemical cell may be distributed to the bonding surface from distribution channels in the components. To prevent contamination with bonding agent, some areas may be treated to produce regions of preferred adhesive distribution and protected regions. Treatments may include polishing, etching, coating and providing protective grooves between the bonding surfaces and the protected regions
Generation and delivery device for ozone gas and ozone dissolved in water
The present invention provides an ozone generation and delivery system that lends itself to small scale applications and requires very low maintenance. The system includes an anode reservoir and a cathode phase separator each having a hydrophobic membrane to allow phase separation of produced gases from water. The system may be configured to operate passively with no moving parts or in a self-pressurizing manner with the inclusion of a pressure controlling device or valve in the gas outlet of the anode reservoir. The hydrogen gas, ozone gas and water containing ozone may be delivered under pressure
Coping with Interruptions in Computer-Mediated Environments: The Role of Computer Self-Efficacy
Since technostress has been linked to tremendous productivity losses for U.S. organizations, this research-in-progress examines whether computer self-efficacy (CSE) can help individuals cope (i.e., deal) with such technological stressors as technology-mediated (T-M) interruptions (e.g., instant messages). Investigating the role of CSE in this context sheds light on the ways in which employees can maintain a positive well-being despite the presence of technological stressors. More specifically, we tried to understand the complex relationships between technology, stress, and information systems-related individual differences to provide businesses with an understanding of the conditions under which employees can work effectively. Drawing from the cognitive psychology and the technostress bodies of literature, we hypothesize that CSE moderates the link between the frequency with which such T-M interruptions as instant messages appear and stress. This paper proposes a laboratory experiment to test our model and concludes with an overview of its expected contributions
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