Forty Acres and Unfulfilled Promises

As part of the English 101.003 Writing Seminar taught by Dr. Anne Porter in Fall 2015 at Providence College, this essay was written in response to an assignment to articulate a central question about slavery reparations. The essay explores the question from various angles and makes reference to Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? by Michael J. Sandel, “The Case for Reparations” from The Atlantic (June 2014) by Ta-Nehisi Coates, as well as at least one additional, scholarly source. The essay is written for college-age readers, who are interested in the issue and asking the same questions. Abstract: In response to escalating racial tensions in American society, this essay analyzes the feasibility of reparations for racial injustices. As evidenced by historic orders like ³Forty Acres and a Mule², the government has failed to fulfill its promises to pay, only further perpetuating inequality. There is controversy as to whether reparations are still due and how they can be quantified. This essay evaluates the present-day value of these historic unfulfilled promises and assesses if this valuation could be used as a solution to the reparations debate. If America is able to quantify the value of reparations, the question remains whether it is the duty of modern-day American citizens to right the wrongs of the past

Testing the altruism hypothesis with italian cohort data

In this paper I follow Abel and Kotlikoff 1994 non-parametric approach based on consumption cohort data to test for intergenerational altruism among Italian households. The Italian socio-economic framework represents an interesting ground to test for the Barro’s 1974 model given the stronger family linkages usually present among Italian households. All tests reject altruism. Further, I evaluate how restrictive is the assumption of a zero correlation between the clan’s Euler errors and the demographic structure of the clan. I find no evidence of any major role played by the age composition of the clan and conclude that the zero correlation assumption is reasonable.Altruism; Intergenerational transfers, Italy

Nonlocal homogenization theory in metamaterials: effective electromagnetic spatial dispersion and artificial chirality

We develop, from first principles, a general and compact formalism for predicting the electromagnetic response of a metamaterial with non-magnetic inclusions in the long wavelength limit, including spatial dispersion up to the second order. Specifically, by resorting to a suitable multiscale technique, we show that medium effective permittivity tensor and the first and second order tensors describing spatial dispersion can be evaluated by averaging suitable spatially rapidly-varying fields each satysifing electrostatic-like equations within the metamaterial unit cell. For metamaterials with negligible second-order spatial dispersion, we exploit the equivalence of first-order spatial dispersion and reciprocal bianisotropic electromagnetic response to deduce a simple expression for the metamaterial chirality tensor. Such an expression allows us to systematically analyze the effect of the composite spatial symmetry properties on electromagnetic chirality. We find that even if a metamaterial is geometrically achiral, i.e. it is indistinguishable from its mirror image, it shows pseudo-chiral-omega electromagnetic chirality if the rotation needed to restore the dielectric profile after the reflection is either a $0^\circ$ or $90^\circ$ rotation around an axis orthogonal to the reflection plane. These two symmetric situations encompass two-dimensional and one-dimensional metamaterials with chiral response. As an example admitting full analytical description, we discuss one-dimensional metamaterials whose single chirality parameter is shown to be directly related to the metamaterial dielectric profile by quadratures.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figur

Unexpected changes in tax revenues and the stabilisation function of fiscal policy. Evidence for EU

This paper analyzes the size and the determinants of unexpected changes in EU countries' tax revenues and their impact on the ability of EU governments to use fiscal policy as a macroeconomic stabilisation device. We make use of information taken from the Stability and Convergence Programmes (SCP) setting countries' medium-term fiscal plans and focus on the period preceding the 2008/2009 global financial crisis. Tax revenue surprises are found to have fluctuated widely, alternating periods of sizeable windfalls and periods of substantial shortfalls.When analysing this, we find that GDP growth surprises and, in some cases (i.e. Ireland, Spain the UK and Finland) asset prices fluctuations have exerted the most significant influence. In the sequel we provide evidence on the incidence of these unexpected changes in governments' tax revenues on the ability of governments to conduct counter-cyclical fiscal policies, which are desirable from a macroeconomic perspective.We find that countries that have experienced the largest tax revenue windfalls in the run-up to the 2008/2009 crisis have also tended to run more pro-cyclical fiscal policies although these results vary depending on the use of ex-post vs. real-time data and on the method used to calculate the cyclical position of the economy. Put differently, these results tend to indicate that while tax revenue windfalls may be good for the public purse during favourable times they may also (paradoxically) dwindle the ability of the countries concerned to run counter-cyclical fiscal policies when cyclical conditions revert.european union eu tax revenues windfalls shortfalls business cycles fiscal policy stabilisation barrios rizza

Temporary measures in Italy: buying or losing time?

In this paper we examine the effects of temporary measures on the Italian budget in the period 1997-2006 and assess their appropriateness. We also analyse the role of extraordinary operations which reduced the level of public debt in the same time frame while leaving the net worth of the public sector broadly unchanged. Our analysis suggests that temporary measures and extraordinary operations were used mainly to comply formally with EU fiscal rules without incurring the economic and political costs of more structural adjustment. Policy-makers bought time in a worsening cyclical context, expecting the recovery to be imminent. Ex post information reveals that the timing of this strategy was wrong. In a broader temporal perspective, the use of extraordinary operations has made it possible to postpone more permanent actions which would have improved the sustainability of Italian public finances. It is difficult not to conclude that precious time has been lost designing an equitable distribution across generations of the expected costs of the upcoming demographic transition.temporary measures, economic cycle, budgetary policies.

Transmissivity directional hysteresis of a nonlinear metamaterial slab with very small linear permittivity

We investigate propagation of a transverse magnetic field through a nonlinear metamaterial slab of sub-wavelength thickness and with a very small and negative linear dielectric permittivity. We prove that, for a given input intensity, the output intensity is a multi-valued function of the field incidence angle so that the transmissivity exhibits angular multi-stability and a pronounced directional hysteresis behavior. The predicted directional hysteresis is a consequence of the fact that the linear and nonlinear contributions to the overall dielectric response can be comparable so that the electromagnetic matching conditions at the output slab boundary allow more than one field configurations within the slab to be compatible with the transmitted field.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

All-optical modulation in wavelength-sized epsilon-near-zero media

We investigate the interaction of two pulses (pump and probe) scattered by a nonlinear epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) slab whose thickness is comparable with the ENZ wavelength. We show that when the probe has a narrow spectrum localized around the ENZ wavelength its transmission is dramatically affected by the intensity of the pump. Conversely, if the probe is not in the ENZ regime, its propagation is not noticeably affected by the pump. Such all-optical modulation is due to the oversensitive character of the ENZ regime and it is so efficient to even occur in a wavelength thick slab.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Separable metamaterials: analytical ab-initio homogenization and chirality

We investigate the ab-initio homogenization of separable metamaterials with factorized dielectric permittivity profile which can be achieved through suitable grey-scale permittivity design techniques. Separability allows such metamaterials to be physically regarded as the superposition of three fictitious 1D generating media. We prove that, in the long-wavelength limit, separable metamaterials admit simple and analytical description of their electromagnetic bi-anisotropic response which can be reconstructed from the properties of the 1D generating media. Our approach provides a strategy which allows the full ab-initio and flexible design of a complex bianisotropic response by using 1D metamaterials as basic building blocks.Comment: 5 pages, 2 fgure

Gain assisted nanocomposite multilayers with near zero permittivity modulus at visible frequencies

We have fabricated a layered nano-composite by alternating metal and gain medium layers, the gain dielectric consisting of a polymer incorporating optically pumped dye molecules. Exploiting an improved version of the effective medium theory, we have chosen the layers thicknesses for achieving a very small value of the real part of the permittivity epsilon_\| (parallel to the layers plane) at a prescribed visible wavelength. From standard reflection-transmission experiments on the optically pumped sample we show that, at a visible wavelength, both the real and the imaginary parts of the permittivity epsilon_\ attain very small values and we measure | \epsilon_\| | = 0.04 at lambda = 604 nm, amounting to a 21.5-percent decrease of the minimum | \epsilon_\| | in the absence of optical pumping. Our investigation thus proves that a medium with a dielectric permittivity with very small modulus, a key condition which should provide efficient subwavelength optical steering, can be actually synthesized.Comment: Submitted for publication on Applied Physics Letter