Impairment of Assets or Impairment of Financial Information?

This paper begins with overviews of the Statements of Financial Accounting Standards (SFAS) No. 144 and No. 142 as they pertain to impairments. Subsequent to the overviews, a conceptual evaluation considers how the impairment standards are related to various components of the conceptual framework, including reliability, relevance, and various components within and related to these two characteristics. Incorporated into the discussion is SFAS No. 157 and current fair value measurements in accounting. Controversies surrounding SFAS No. 144 and No. 142 are discussed and companies that have incurred impairment losses or conduct impairment testing on a regular basis are presented. All components of this paper are directed to an analysis of the costs and benefits of impairment testing and the possible result of the trade-off

Introduction: GDH and related topics

The formulation of the Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn sum rule is revisited, showing its connection with other sum rules occurring in electron scattering and discussing the problem of its saturation, both from the theoretical and experimental point of v iew. The generalisation to other nuclear targets is also reported.Comment: 9 pages, talk given at GDH2002 conferenc

Systematic study of longitudinal and transverse helicity amplitudes in the hypercentral Constituent Quark Model

The predictions of the hypercentral Consituent Quark Model for the nucleon helicity amplitudes are briefly reported. Some future perspectives are also discussed

Accumulation and Distribution of Human Capital: The Interaction between Individual and Aggregate Variables

The paper analyzes the joint evolution of accumulation and distribution of human capital in an OLG framework. Dynamics arises from the interplay between human capital distribution and individual variables - inherited human capital and inborn ability. Such interaction drives individual investment in human capital and accumulation in the economy. According to the initial distribution the model provides different dynamical behaviours linking growth and inequality; in general economies with a more equal initial distribution grow faster but other cases are possible. Moreover, since the model provides an endogenous threshold for investing in human capital, the distribution is characterized by multi- modalityHuman Capital Bargaining Inequality Poverty-trap

Job Search Mechanism and Individual Behaviour.

This paper modelles job search mechanism at individual level by a determinstic-stochastic approach in a economy with perfect competion and rational agents. Each single unit, firm or worker, is analyzed over time; aggregate dynamics comes directly from the micro-structure of the economy. We show that the unemployment as well as vacancy rate converge in the long run to an ergodic distribution whose average value lies on the Beverdige curve. Transitional paths are not-monotone and depending on initial conditions. The micro-model is exploited to assess the relationship between job search and social networks (neighborhood effects); results show that, when the network is endogenous, such spillovers affect both transitional paths and steady state in several way, not last in a negative way.job-search, human capital, local effects

Human Capital and Income Distribution Dynamics

The paper assumes a continuum of two period-lived agents; agents are identical except for the inherited income. Young agents optimally allocate their inherited income between consumption and investment in human capital in a stochastic environment. In the second period they receive a wage proportional to the accumulated human capital and invest in offspring. Two main results are provided: a low earning per unit of human capital leads the economy to converge to a stationary income distribution whatever the initial distribution. Viceversa, for a sufficently high wage an endogenous growth is at work and the income distribution dynamics depends on the initial conditions. In this case several redistributive policies are analized.Human Capital Accumulation Personal Income Distribution Diffusion Processes

Education and Job Market Signalling: A Comment.

In this paper the Signalling approach to the explanation of wage differentials is analyzed both under a microeconomic and a macroeconomic viewpoint. Departuring from the classical Spence's model, the introduction of inequalities in accessing to education leads to redistributive effects among workers and firms. Moreover the existence of factors related both to local and to parental externalities greately reduce the informative power of education about individual ability.Signalling Earnings distribution Entropy