Housing markets and independence in old age: expanding the opportunities

This report highlights the benefits of specialised private retirement accommodation and recommends a number of simple policy changes at no cost to the public purse to help increase its supply and address the challenges of housing an ageing population

Light Transmission Through Metallic-Mean Quasiperiodic Stacks with Oblique Incidence

The propagation of s- and p-polarized light through quasiperiodic multilayers, consisting of layers with different refractive indices, is studied by the transfer matrix method. In particular, we focus on the transmission coefficient of the systems in dependency on the incidence angle and on the ratio of the refractive indices. We obtain additional bands with almost complete transmission in the quasiperiodic systems at frequencies in the range of the photonic band gap of a system with a periodic alignment of the two materials for both types of light polarization. With increasing incidence angle these bands bend towards higher frequencies, where the curvature of the transmission bands in the quasiperiodic stack depends on the metallic mean of the construction rule. Additionally, in the quasiperiodic systems for p-polarized light the bands show almost complete transmission near the Brewster's angle in contrast to the results for s-polarized light. Further, we present results for the influence of the refractive indices at the midgap frequency of the periodic stack, where the quasiperiodicity was found to be most effective.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Tunable transmission and bistability in left-handed bandgap structures

We study the defect-induced nonlinear transmission of a periodic structure created by alternating slabs of two materials with positive and negative refractive index. We demonstrate bistable switching and tunable nonlinear transmission in a novel type of bandgap that corresponds to the vanishing average refractive index, and compare the observed effects for two types of the bandgaps.Comment: 3 pages, 5 figures; significant change

Bistable diode action in left-handed periodic structures

We study nonlinear transmission of an asymmetric multilayer structure created by alternating slabs of two materials with positive and negative refractive index. We demonstrate that such a structure exhibits passive spatially nonreciprocal transmission of electromagnetic waves, the analogue of the electronic diode. We study the properties of this left-handed diode and confirm its highly nonreciprocal and bistable transmittance by employing direct simulations.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

The Performance Rights Act: A Lack of Impact on a Transitioning Music Industry

The music industry is in a decline. Music sales are not creating the same profits as before, and rather than change or adapt, record labels are petitioning the legislature to create new modes of revenue. One way the music industry is petitioning the legislature to add a new source of revenue, without changing its archaic business model, is by pushing Congress to pass the Performance Rights Act. This Act proposes that analog radio stations pay musicians and artists royalties to play their songs on the air, just like on digital radio. While the Performance Rights Act looks great on the surface, it is just a quick fix to a much larger, underlying problem‹the record industry in general. As the paradigm of power shifts towards the artists, record labels are stubbornly still trying to make a profit through old business models This comment will discuss the background of music industry contracts and the issues artists face, the proposed Performance Rights Act and what the Act is attempting to change in more detail, changes that have occurred in the industry because of technological advances, and compare the differences between analog and digital radio. The conclusion explains how Congress, by staying silent on this issue and not passing the Performance Rights Act, can provide artists with a more permanent solution to their right for equality in the music industry

The Golden Age of the Economics of Bureaucracy

The economics of bureaucracy (EOB) is a field of research that emerged from the public choice movement in the mid-1960s through to the early 1970s. It entailed applying traditional economic theories and modelling techniques to study decision-making in non-market hierarchies that are often referred to as bureaucracies. The field was pioneered and codified by Gordon Tullock, Anthony Downs, and William Niskanen in what may be called the ‘golden age’ of EOB. Establishing EOB as a bona fide research domain was a challenging intellectual enterprise due to the absence of a pre-existing conceptual framework to readily model bureaucracies within the economics discipline and because the non-market domain was then not usually considered to be a relevant subject for economists to study. Metaphors, analogies, and other rhetorical devices therefore played an especially important role in generating and justifying the nascent economic theories of bureaucracy proposed by the early EOB pioneers. This thesis traces the evolution of EOB during these formative years. A ‘case study’ approach is adopted to reconstruct the unique contributions of the three key EOB pioneers by placing their innovations in historical context, elucidating their key propositions and models, and analysing the rhetoric they employed to advance their theories. The most important contention of the thesis is that the relative success of the different theories presented by the EOB pioneers was, in part, due to the different metaphorical representations of bureaucracy deployed in their works. It is also argued that the overwhelming success of Niskanen’s ‘budget-maximising’ model caused the theoretical insights of the other EOB pioneers to be neglected