Tax Smoothing Implications of the Federal Debt Paydown

Tax, Tax Smoothing Implications, Federal Debt, Federal Debt Paydown, macroeconomics

A Large Along-Track Baseline Approach for Ground Moving Target Indication Using TanDEM-X

In the paper a new method for ground moving target indication (GMTI) using two satellites (i.e. the TerraSAR-X and the TanDEM-X satellite) together is presented. The along-track baseline between the satellites is chosen to be in the order of several kilometres, so that each satellite observes the same moving vehicles at different times in the order of one to several seconds. The proposed method allows the estimation of the ground velocity of the moving targets as well as the estimation of the broadside positions without the need of complex bistatic processing techniques

The stories clinicians tell

Unbelievably, it has been more than 15 years since I last visited Palacký during the inaugural year of its Clinic. So, in preparation for today’s talk, I thought I should go back to my files to refresh my memory of events a decade-and-a-half ago.  As I reviewed those documents, it struck me how the events of that time were much more complicated than I initially remembered.  In fact, I saw how my retelling of the events reflected in those papers could be constructed – with appropriate spin -- into different stories -- some of which could be dramatically divergent from others

The Effect of Clinical Education on Law Student Reasoning: An Empirical Study

During the past thirty years, clinical legal education has become an important component of most law school curricula. In clinics, students, typically in their second or third year of law school, represent clients in actual cases in a legal aid office at the law school, pursuant to a court approved student practice order. \u27 Under the supervision of faculty members, students interview and counsel clients, investigate facts, research legal rules, negotiate with opposing parties, draft documents, and try and argue cases in court. Proponents of clinical education have urged the development and expansion of clinical programs to train students in the skills necessary to apply legal doctrine in practice. While few have argued that the traditional law school curriculum be replaced with an entirely clinical curriculum, many have suggested the introduction of courses using clinical methods during the first year and increased clinical offerings in the last two years. Just recently, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching published a major study of legal education lauding clinical education as one of the law school\u27s primary means of teaching students how to connect the abstract thinking formed by legal categories and procedures with fuller human contexts. And in the recent report, Best Practices for Legal Education, which professes to present a vision and road map for legal education, the authors argue that contextualized learning, such as clinical training, is the most effective and efficient way for students to develop professional competence. While the proponents of clinical education identify a number of virtues for this pedagogy, much of the literature on the subject focuses on one major benefit: teaching modes of planning and analysis for problem solving in unstructured situations. Advocates of clinical education argue that traditional legal education has focused too narrowly on legal rules and doctrinal analysis. In his seminal article on the purposes of clinical legal education, Anthony Amsterdam complained that traditional legal education taught students only three kinds of analytic thinking: case reading and interpretation; doctrinal analysis and application; and logical conceptualization and criticism, while ignoring other modes of analysis that are essential for the practice of law. These neglected modes of analysis include: (1) ends-means thinking; (2) hypothesis formulation and testing in information acquisition; and (3) decision making in situations where options involve differing and often uncertain degrees of risk and promises of different sorts

Statutory Retirement Age and Lifelong Learning

The employability of an aging population in a world of continuous technical change is top of the political agenda. Due to endogenous human capital depreciation, the effective retirement age is often below statutory retirement age resulting in unemployment among older workers. We analyze this phenomenon in a putty-putty human capital vintage model and focus on education and the speed of human capital depreciation. Introducing a two-stage education system with initial schooling and lifelong learning, not even lifelong learning turns out to be capable of aligning economic and statutory retirement. However, lifelong learning can increase the number of people reaching statutory retirement age and hence reduce the problem of old age unemployment in an aging society.lifelong learning, retirement, unemployment, education system

Wie hat sich die intragenerationale Umverteilung in der staatlichen Säule des Rentensystems verändert? Ein internationaler Vergleich auf Basis von LIS-Daten

Die vorliegende empirische Analyse beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, ob sich die Bedeutung der intragenerationalen Umverteilung in der staatlichen Säule der Rentensysteme von 20 OECD-Ländern seit den 1980er Jahren systematisch verändert hat und ob es zu einer internationalen Konvergenz des Umverteilungsgrads – gemessen anhand des Bismarckfaktors – gekommen ist. Auf Basis von Mikrodaten der Luxembourg Income Study kann ein genereller Trend zu stärker individualisierten, d.h. an den eigenen Beitragszahlungen orientierten, Rentenleistungen sowie eine Angleichung der nationalen Rentensysteme gezeigt werden. Die Verringerung der internationalen Variation der Rentensysteme (Sigma-Konvergenz) lässt sich dabei vor allem auf ein Aufschließen der stärker intragenerational umverteilenden Länder zurückführen (Beta-Konvergenz). Summary We empirically investigate whether the significance of intragenerational redistribution in the public pillar of pension systems in 20 OECD countries has changed systematically since the 1980s and whether international convergence of the degree of intragenerational redistribution in terms of the Bismarckian factor can be observed. Based on microdata from the Luxembourg Income Study, we find both, a trend towards pension systems with a tighter link between individual earnings and benefits, and a convergence of pension systems. The reduced variation of pension systems (sigma convergence) is driven by countries with a high degree of intragenerational redistribution catching up to more traditional Bismarckian countries (beta convergence).

Teaching Problem-Solving Lawyering: An Exchange of Ideas

In the last issue of the Clinical Law Review, StefanKrieger argues that clinical law teachers who emphasize problem-solving approaches to lawyering incorrectly downplay as a necessary prerequisite to learning effective legal practice the significance of domain knowledge, which he mainly identifies as knowledge about legal doctrine(FN1) Among the writings on clinical law teaching criticized by Krieger are those of Mark Aaronson, who has articulated as a teaching goal helping students learn how to improve their practical judgment in lawyering, which he describes as a process of deliberation whose most prominent features are a contextual tailoring of knowledge, a dialogic form of reasoning that accounts for plural perspectives, an ability to be empathetic and detached at the same time an intertwining of intellectual and moral concerns, an instrumental and equitable interest in human affairs, and a heavy reliance on learning from cumulative experience.(FN2) Krieger stresses the foundational importance for law students of acquiring substantive legal knowledge; Aaronson focuses on developing the ability of students to think critically and appropriately in role as a lawyer. In this brief exchange of ideas, Aaronson comments on Krieger\u27s critique of problem-solving teaching in law schools, to which Krieger then responds

Accessing Law: An Empirical Study Exploring the Influence of Legal Research Medium

The legal profession is presently engaged in an uncontrolled experiment. Attorneys now locate and access legal authorities primarily through electronic means. Although this shift to an electronic research medium radically changes how attorneys discover and encounter law, little empirical work investigates impacts from the shift to an electronic medium. This Article presents the results of one of the most robust empirical studies conducted to date comparing research processes using print and electronic sources. While the study presented in this Article was modest in scope, the extent and type of the differences that it reveals are notable. Some of the observed differences between print and electronic research processes confirm predictions offered, but never before confirmed, about how the research medium changes the research process. This Article strongly supports calls for the legal profession and legal academy to be more attentive to the implications of the shift to electronic research