New evidence on taxes and portfolio choice

Identifying the effect of differential taxation on portfolio allocation requires exogenous variation in marginal tax rates. Marginal tax rates vary with income, but income surely affects portfolio choice directly. In systems of individual taxation – like Canada’s – couples with the same household income can face different effective tax rates on capital income when labor income is distributed differently within households. Using this source of variation we find statistically significant but economically modest responses to taxation. In a “placebo” test, using data from the U.S. (which has joint taxation), we find no effect of the intra-household distribution of labor income on portfolios

Leptinotarsa decemlineata (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) Observed Feeding on Chamaesaracha sp. in Eastern Colorado.

Egg, larval, and adult life stages of Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata (Say), were observed feeding on or attached to a previously undocumented host plant belonging to the genus Chamaesaracha in eastern Colorado on July 2017. At one site, L. decemlineata were more abundant on Chamaesaracha sp. than the accepted ancestral host plant, Solanum rostratum (Dunal). While future studies should confirm the ancestral status of the observed L. decemlineata and suitability of Chamaesaracha sp. for completion of development, our observations suggest a need for further characterization of the ancestral host range of L. decemlineata

The ‘troubled’ case of Rotherham

In March 2015, David Cameron announced that social workers may face up to five years' imprisonment if they 'wilfully neglect' child abuse. This announcement was made following the release of an independent inquiry report into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham. The author of this report was Louise Casey, Director General of the Troubled Families programme. Casey's findings not only raised a number of concerns about the way in which child sexual exploitation was handled by Rotherham, but also led to the potential criminalisation of social workers. In this article, we use a critical discourse analysis approach and Lukes's three-dimensional power framework to examine the inspection report. Our findings suggest that although approaches towards child sexual exploitation do need to improve, Casey's report may in fact prevent us from understanding what actually did happen in Rotherham, why it happened and what is required to minimise the chances of it happening again

Short-lived Radio Bursts from the Crab Pulsar

Our high-time-resolution observations reveal that individual main pulses from the Crab pulsar contain one or more short-lived microbursts. Both the energy and duration of bursts measured above 1 GHz can vary dramatically in less than a millisecond. These fluctuations are too rapid to be caused by propagation through turbulence in the Crab Nebula or the interstellar medium; they must be intrinsic to the radio emission process in the pulsar. The mean duration of a burst varies with frequency as $\nu^{-2}$, significantly different from the broadening caused by interstellar scattering. We compare the properties of the bursts to some simple models of microstructure in the radio emission region.Comment: 34 pages, 10 figures; accepted for publication in Ap

Keeping afloat with a Research Pool

In light of today’s competitive economy, flexibility has become increasingly important to our research and enterprise activity and we needed to be able to respond to peaks and troughs in demand. As our current permanent academic staffing base did not have the capacity to provide support to research activity, and to avoid lengthy recruitment processes when research funding is granted and immediate start-up of projects is required, we established a Research Pool (RP) to maintain a consistent resource of research assistance so that we could be reactive to the research and consultancy opportunities that were available to us. The RP has been in place since March 2012, successfully providing support to over 50 projects with a total of 7500 hours worked. They work alongside academic researchers to deliver support to a variety of client groups; analysing data, interpreting results, performing and transcribing individual and focus group interviews, literature reviews, data collection, design of databases and providing general research assistant support to projects. The RP can be drawn on for quick/short-term and long-term input to projects. This poster outlines how the RP was established and how it has provided essential support over a three year period. Key messages: How: To establish a Research Pool; A Research Pool operates; The Research Pool contributes to research activity

Counting the cost of a fragmented school system: issues for the reform and leadership of the middle tier

This was a joint RIG meeting between the Structural Reform Group and the Leadership Preparation and Development RIG, to hear presentations from Dr Sara Bubb, Jonathan Crossley-Holland, and Dr Susan Cousin, from their research into ‘The Middle Tier’. We found that the middle tier oversight functions cost £1,212.8m in 2016/17. The functions for academies cost 44% more than the LA system – academy middle tier costs in 2016/17 totalled £687.4m or £167.05 per pupil compared to £525.4m or £115.17 per pupil for the LA system. These presentations were very well-received, and you can access the Power Point here. The full published document is available to access here: http://sarabubb.com/middle-tier/4594671314 There followed a very animated afternoon of discussion around changes to the system with contributions from head teachers; system leaders; academics; and research students

Do consumers gamble to convexify?

The combination of credit constraints and indivisible consumption goods may induce some risk-averse individuals to gamble to have a chance of crossing a purchasing threshold. This idea has been demonstrated theoretically, but not explored empirically. We test this idea by focusing on a key implication: income effects for individuals who choose to gamble are likely to be larger than for the general population. Using UK data on gambling wins, other windfalls and durable goods purchases, we show that winners display higher income effects than non-winners but only amongst those likely to be credit-constrained. This is consistent with credit-constrained, risk-averse agents gambling to convexify their budget set.This work was supported in part by the ESRC-funded Centre for Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (grant number RES-544-28-5001.)This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2016.07.02

Saving on a Rainy Day, Borrowing for a Rainy Day

The aim of this paper is to understand what a recession means for individual consumers, and to model in a life-cycle framework how individuals respond to recessions. Our focus is on the sharp increase in savings rates that have been observed in the current and recent recessions. We show empirically that these saving spikes were short-lived and common to all working age groups. We then study life-cycle models in which recessions involve one or more of: (i) an aggregate permanent negative shock to individual income; (ii) an increase in the variance of idiosyncratic permanent shocks; (iii) a tightening of credit constraints; (iv) asset market crashes. In simulations and in the data we aggregate explicitly from individual behavior. We model credit tightening as a constraint on new borrowing and this generates an option value of borrowing in good times. We show that the rise in the aggregate savings ratio is driven by increases in uncertainty, rather than tightening of credit; temporary shocks to the supply of credit generate increases in saving only among younger agents

Text-based recall and extra-textual generations resulting from simplified and authentic texts

This study uses a moving windows self-paced reading task to assess text comprehension of beginning and intermediate-level simplified texts and authentic texts by L2 learners engaged in a text-retelling task. Linear mixed effects (LME) models revealed statistically significant main effects for reading proficiency and text level on the number of text-based propositions recalled: More proficient readers recalled more propositions. However, text level was a stronger predictor of propositional recall than reading proficiency. LME models also revealed main effects for language proficiency and text level on the number of extra-textual propositions produced. Text level, however, emerged as a stronger predictor than language proficiency. Post-hoc analyses indicated that there were more irrelevant elaborations for authentic texts and intermediate and authentic texts led to a greater number of relevant elaborations compared to beginning texts

Responsibility, resilience and symbolic power

The reciprocal nature of the relationship between the concepts of responsibilisation and resilience appears, in policy and political circles at least, almost natural. Whilst both concepts have been subjected to sustained academic critique for their presentation as largely individual or familial qualities, and their negation of social and structural pressures, there has been more limited attention paid to the potential of the concepts if they were put to work in a different way. This article attempts to sketch out ways in which the fundamentally relational aspects of the concepts of responsibility and resilience can be brought to the fore. In doing so, it builds on Rose and Lentzos’s argument that we should perhaps ‘argue not against responsibility and resilience but on the territory of responsibilities and resiliencies’ and sets out the case for engaging with, rather than withdrawing from or resisting discussions of the meanings and uses of these concepts, in tandem. Extending the work of Bourdieu and Wacquant, it argues for the need to turn the lens on the structures and mechanisms of power which promote and maintain inequality and divisive complex social relations, which undermine the possibility of collective ‘resilience’. The article advocates our collective ‘responsibility’ as engaging in processes that challenge and redefine these practices and structures to enable resistance and progressive action