229 research outputs found
Semiempirical Shell Model Masses with Magic Number Z = 126 for Superheavy Elements
A semiempirical shell model mass equation applicable to superheavy elements
up to Z = 126 is presented and shown to have a high predictive power. The
equation is applied to the recently discovered superheavy nuclei Z = 118, A =
293 and Z = 114, A = 289 and their decay products.Comment: 7 pages, including 2 figures and 2 table
Social Security Money's Worth
This paper describes how three money's worth measures the benefit-to-tax ratio, the internal rate of return, and the net present value are calculated and used in analyses of social security reforms, including systems with privately managed individual accounts invested in equities. Declining returns from the U.S. social security system prove to be the inevitable result of having instituted an unfunded (pay-as-you-go) retirement system that delivered 1.8 trillion to people born between 1918 and 1937. But young and future workers cannot necessarily do better by investing their payroll taxes in capital markets. If the old system were closed down, massive unfunded liabilities of 800 billion less than the constant benefit calculation we propose as the benchmark. Using this benchmark in a world with no uncertainty, we show that privatization without prefunding would not increase returns at all, net of the new taxes needed to pay for unfunded liabilities. These new taxes would amount to 3.6 percent of payroll, or about 29 percent of social security contributions. Prefunding, implemented by reducing accrued benefits or by raising taxes, would eventually increase money's worth for later generations, but at the cost of lower money's worth for today's workers and/or retirees. Computing money's worth when there is uncertainty is much more difficult unless four conditions hold prices into stocks and out of bonds has no effect whatsoever on money's worth when it i adjusted for risk: a dollar of stock is worth no more than a dollar of bonds. diversification can raise welfare for constrained households, but the exact money's worth must depend on specific assumptions about household attitudes toward risk. Calculations lik the Social Security Advisory Council that attribute over 1 shifted from bonds to stocks completely overlook the disutility of risk. By estimate that a 2 percent of payroll equity fund carved out of social security w present value by about 59 cents per dollar of bonds switched into equities When the likely reductions in income and longevity insurance are factored in privatization and diversification is substantially less than popularly perceived
Would a Privatized Social Security System Really Pay a Higher Rate of Return
Many advocates of social security privatization argue that rates of return under a defined contribution individual account system would be much higher for all than they are under the current social security system. This claim is false. The mistake comes from ignoring accrued benefits already promised based on past payroll taxes, and from underestimating the riskiness of stock investments. Confusion arises because three distinct reforms are muddled. By privatization we mean creating individual accounts (which could, for example, be invested exclusively in bonds). By diversification we mean investing in stocks, and perhaps other assets, as well as bonds; diversification might be undertaken either by individuals in their private social security accounts, or by the social security trust fund. By prefunding we mean closing the gap between social security benefits promised to date and the assets on hand to pay for them. Any one of these reforms could be implemented without the other two. If the system were completely privatized, with no prefunding or diversification, the social security system would need to raise taxes and/or issue new debt in order to pay benefits already accrued. If the burden were spread evenly across all future generations via a constant proportional tax, the added taxes would completely eliminate any rate of return advantage on the individual accounts. We estimate that the required new taxes would amount to about 3 percent of payroll, or about a quarter of all social security contributions, in perpetuity. Unlike privatization, prefunding would raise rates of return for later generations, but at the cost of lower returns for today's workers. For households able to invest in the stock market on their own, diversification would not raise rates of return, correctly adjusted to recognize risk. Households that are constrained from holding stock, due to lack of wealth outside of social security or to fixed costs from holding stocks, would gain higher risk-adjusted returns and would benefit from diversification. If this group is large, diversification would raise stock values, thus helping current stockholders, but it would lower future stock returns, thus hurting young unconstrained households. Overall, since the number of truly constrained households is probably not that large, privatization and diversification would have a much smaller effect on returns than reformers typically claim.
Social Security Money\u27s Worth
This paper describes how three moneyâs worth measures â the beneïŹt-to-tax ratio, the internal rate of return, and the net present value â are calculated and used in analyses of social security reforms, including systems with privately managed individual accounts invested in equities. Declining returns from the U.S. social security system prove to be the inevitable result of having instituted an unfunded (pay-as-you-go) retirement system that delivered 1.8 trillion to people born between 1918 and 1937. But young and future workers cannot necessarily do better by investing their payroll taxes in capital markets. If the old system were closed down, massive unfunded liabilities of 800 billion less than the constant beneïŹt calculation we propose as the benchmark. Using this benchmark in a world with no uncertainty, we show that privatization without prefunding would not increase returns at all, net of the new taxes needed to pay for unfunded liabilities. These new taxes would amount to 3.6 percent of payroll, or about 29 percent of social security contributions. Prefunding implemented by reducing accrued beneïŹts or by raising taxes, would eventually increase moneyâs worth for later generations, but at the cost of lower moneyâs worth for todayâs workers and/or retirees. Computing moneyâs worth when there is uncertainty is much more diïŹicult unless four conditions hold, namely optimization, time homogeneity, stable prices, and spanning. Under these conditions, the diversiïŹcation of social security investments into stocks and out of bonds has no eïŹect whatsoever on moneyâs worth when it is properly adjusted for risk: a dollar of stock is worth no more than a dollar of bonds. When spanning fails, diversiïŹcation can raise welfare for constrained households, but the exact moneyâs worth must depend on speciïŹc assumptions about household attitudes toward risk. Calculations like those of the Social Security Advisory Council that attribute over 1 shifted from bonds to stocks completely overlook the disutility of risk. By contrast, we estimate that a 2 percent of payroll equity fund carved out of social security would increase net present value by about 59 cents per dollar of bonds switched into equities, instead of $2.85. When the likely reductions in income and longevity insurance are factored in, the net advantage of privatization and diversiïŹcation is substantially less than popularly perceived
Microscopic structure of fundamental excitations in N=Z nuclei
Excitation energies of the =1 states in even-even as well as =0 and
=1 states in odd-odd = nuclei are calculated within the mean-field
approach. It is shown that the underlying structure of these states can be
determined in a consistent manner only when both isoscalar and isovector
pairing collectivity as well as isospin projection, treated within the
iso-cranking approximation, are taken into account. In particular, in odd-odd
= nuclei, the interplay between quasiparticle excitations (relevant for
the case of =0 states) and iso-rotations (relevant for the case of =1
states) explains the near-degeneracy of these fundamental excitations.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Semiempirical Shell Model Masses with Magic Number Z=126 for Translead Elements with N smaller or equal to 126
A semiempirical shell model mass equation based on magic number Z=126 and
applicable to translead elements with N smaller or equal to 126 is presented.
For alpha decay energies the equation is shown to have a high predictive power
and an rms deviation from the data of about 100 keV. The rms deviations for
masses and other mass differences are between about 200 and 300 keV.Comment: 8 pages including 3 figures and 3 table
PRIVATE SAVINGS IN TRANSITION ECONOMIES: ARE THERE TERMS OF TRADE SHOCKS?
The paper examines the impact of terms of trade shocks on private savings in the transition economies after accounting for the effect of other determinants. Economic agents in the transition economies are subject to tight credit constraints which are more pronounced during bad state of nature. Thus, adverse shocks to commodity prices in the world market can force them to reduce savings by a larger amount than they would otherwise have. Empirical analysis using a dynamic panel model and data from twenty one transition economies confirm that most of the determinants of savings identified in the literature also apply to the transition economies. Favorable movements in both the permanent and transitory components of the terms of trade have a significant positive impact on private savings with transitory movements having a larger impact than the permanent component. This reflects the lack of access to foreign borrowing that many of the transition economies have faced during the last decade. Although the impact of terms of trade shocks are found to be asymmetric, the magnitude of the impact appears to be small. The results are robust for alternative estimators, determinants, and country groupings.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39958/3/wp572.pd
Proton drip-line nuclei in relativistic mean-field theory
The position of the two-proton drip line has been calculated for even-even
nuclei with in the framework of the relativistic mean-field
(RMF) theory. The current model uses the NL3 effective interaction in the
mean-field Lagrangian and describes pairing correlations in the
Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) formalism. The predictions of the RMF theory
are compared with those of the Hartree-Fock+BCS approach (with effective force
Skyrme SIII) and the finite-range droplet model (FRDM) and with the available
experimental information.Comment: 18 pages, RevTeX, 2 p.s figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
An Algebraic Pairing Model with Sp(4) Symmetry and its Deformation
A fermion realization of the compact symplectic sp(4) algebra provides a
natural framework for studying isovector pairing correlations in nuclei. While
these correlations manifest themselves most clearly in the binding energies of
0^+ ground states, they also have a large effect on the energies of excited
states, including especially excited 0^+ states. In this article we consider
non-deformed as well as deformed algebraic descriptions of pairing through the
reductions of sp_{(q)}(4) to different realizations of u_{(q)}(2) for single-j
and multi-j orbitals. The model yields a classification scheme for completely
paired 0^{+} states of even-even and odd-odd nuclei in the 1d_{3/2}, 1f_{7/2},
and 1f_{5/2}2p_{1/2}2p_{3/2}1g_{9/2} shells. Phenomenological non-deformed and
deformed isospin-breaking Hamiltonians are expressed in terms of the generators
of the dynamical symmetry groups Sp(4) and Sp_{q}(4). These Hamiltonians are
related to the most general microscopic pairing problem, including isovector
pairing and isoscalar proton-neutron interaction along with non-linear
interaction in the deformed extension. In both the non-deformed and deformed
cases the eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian are fit to the relevant Coulomb
corrected experimental 0^{+} energies and this, in turn, allows us to estimate
the interaction strength parameters, to investigate isovector-pairing
properties and symmetries breaking, and to predict the corresponding energies.
While the non-deformed theory yields results that are comparable to other
theories for light nuclei, the deformed extension, which takes into account
higher-order interactions between the particles, gives a better fit to the
data. The multi-shell applications of the model provide for reasonable
predictions of energies of exotic nuclei.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures minor changes; improvements to achieve a better
and clearer presentation of our messages and idea
Estimating the Effect of Student Aid on College Enrollment: Evidence from a Government Grant Policy Reform
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