"The Case Against Intergenerational Accounting: The Accounting Campaign Against Social Security and Medicare"

The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) has proposed subjecting the entire federal budget to "intergenerational accounting"--which purports to calculate the debt burden our generation will leave for future generations--and is soliciting comments on the recommendations of its two "exposure drafts." The authors of this brief find that intergenerational accounting is a deeply flawed and unsound concept that should play no role in federal government budgeting, and that arguments based on this concept do not support a case for cutting Social Security or Medicare. The FASAB exposure drafts have not made a persuasive argument about basic matters of accounting, say the authors. Federal budget accounting should not follow the same procedures adopted by households or business firms because the government operates in the public interest, with the power to tax and issue money. There is no evidence, nor any economic theory, behind the proposition that government spending needs to match receipts. Social Security and Medicare spending need not be politically constrained by tax receipts--there cannot be any "underfunding." What matters is the overall fiscal stance of the government, not the stance attributed to one part of the budget.

Multidimensional indices and orders of diversity

This paper presents several indices to describe multivariate diversity and evenness. Multivariate generalizations of the Gini-Simpson index and the Rosenbluth index are proposed tomeasure diversity. A multivariate Gini ratio is also presented to measure evenness. These indices extend the usual univariate measures; they reflect not only the diversity of marginal distributions but also the dependence structure of abundance. The indices fulfill desirable measurement properties and are consistent with certain orderings of multivariate distributions. An order of concentration surfaces and a majorization order are also surveyed shortly

Behavioural factors for improved after-use cleaning habit of shared latrines in Kampala slums, Uganda

Access to clean shared facilities fundamental to health and social well-being to millions of people living in urban slums in most developing countries. This study assessed behavioural factors (risks, attitudes, norms, ability and self-regulation) for improved after-use cleaning habit of shared latrines in Kampala slums. A before-and-after study was conducted between 2012 and 2013 in three slums in Kampala, in which shared latrine user’s cleaning habit and the behavioural influencing factors were assessed. The findings after testing behavioural interventions consisting of discussions and commitment showed that there was an improvement in individuals’ after-use shared latrine cleaning habit from in the discussions (Mean difference = 0.26) and discussions plus commitment (Mean difference = 0.35) compared to the control population (Mean difference = 0.17). The improvement in cleaning habit was through individuals’ awareness of their vulnerability to getting diseases, involvement of latrine sharing families in cleaning, personal cleaning norm and commitment

School-based self-management intervention using theatre to improve asthma control in adolescents: a pilot cluster-randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Children with poorly controlled asthma have higher rates of unplanned healthcare use and school absences, as well as lower rates of medication adherence and knowledge. They also feel less comfortable using their medication at school, due to social fears and bullying. In this study, this was addressed through two school-based self-management interventions piloted to determine which one to use in a full trial. METHODS: We sought to assess the feasibility and acceptability of two school-based self-management intervention aimed at improving asthma control. Schools in London were randomised to (i) a theatre workshop for the whole year group aimed at raising awareness of asthma in schools, followed by self-management workshops for children (full intervention), (ii) theatre workshop alone (theatre only), or (iii) usual care (controls). Opt-out consent was obtained from parents. The study was a cluster randomised pilot trial, using London schools as the unit of allocation. Our primary aim was to assess the feasibility of delivering a self-management intervention in schools aimed at improving the asthma control test (ACT) score at 6 months. Secondary outcomes included acceptability of the school-based interventions, suitability of the theatre intervention and the full intervention with the self-management workshops, and generation of randomised data to inform future power calculations. Data were analysed by generalised mixed-effect models. RESULTS: The recruitment strategy for this trial was effective. Five schools were randomised to full intervention (189 children), four to theatre only (103 children), and six to controls (83 children). Asthma control test (ACT) score at baseline and 6 months was obtained from 178/358 participating children. Compared with the controls, there were no large differences found in ACT score with the full intervention; knowledge and perception of asthma improved though. GP and hospital visits increased in the full intervention group. Compared with controls, ACT score was unchanged in the theatre only group. CONCLUSION: The asthma self-management intervention trial in schools is feasible and acceptable. The full intervention consisting of both theatre and self-management workshop for asthmatics tended to be better suited to improve outcomes than the theatre intervention on its own. This full intervention should be the one carried forward into a main trial if funding for further research was sought. Further work is needed to understand why there was evidence that unscheduled visits to healthcare professionals increased with the full intervention. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study was registered on the clinical trials database on 14th May 2018 (ID NCT03536416 )

Multivariate risks and depth-trimmed regions

We describe a general framework for measuring risks, where the risk measure takes values in an abstract cone. It is shown that this approach naturally includes the classical risk measures and set-valued risk measures and yields a natural definition of vector-valued risk measures. Several main constructions of risk measures are described in this abstract axiomatic framework. It is shown that the concept of depth-trimmed (or central) regions from the multivariate statistics is closely related to the definition of risk measures. In particular, the halfspace trimming corresponds to the Value-at-Risk, while the zonoid trimming yields the expected shortfall. In the abstract framework, it is shown how to establish a both-ways correspondence between risk measures and depth-trimmed regions. It is also demonstrated how the lattice structure of the space of risk values influences this relationship.Comment: 26 pages. Substantially revised version with a number of new results adde

The UK's Global Health Respiratory Network: Improving respiratory health of the world's poorest through research collaborations.

Respiratory disorders are responsible for considerable morbidity, health care utilisation, societal costs and approximately one in five deaths worldwide [1-4]. Yet, despite this substantial health and societal burden – which particularly affects the world’s poorest populations and as such is a major contributor to global health inequalities – respiratory disorders have historically not received the policy priority they warrant. For example, despite causing an estimated 1000 deaths per day, less than half of the world’s countries collect data on asthma prevalence (http://www.globalasthmareport.org/). This is true for both communicable and non-communicable respiratory disorders, many of which are either amenable to treatment or preventable

Centerpoints: a link between optimization and convex geometry

We introduce a concept that generalizes several different notions of a “centerpoint” in the literature. We develop an oracle-based algorithm for convex mixed-integer optimization based on centerpoints. Further, we show that algorithms based on centerpoints are “best possible” in a certain sense. Motivated by this, we establish several structural results about this concept and provide efficient algorithms for computing these points

Where do Kampala’s poor “go”? - Urban sanitation conditions in Kampala’s low-income areas

Results of a representative survey conducted with 1’500 poor households in Uganda’s capital during November 2010 show that the majority of Kampala’s urban poor have access to on-site sanitation facilities. Despite the widespread accessibility to sanitation, the conditions of many facilities are unsatisfactory due to the generally large number of users per stance. This leads to low hygienic standards and waiting times for toilet users. As a result, “flying toilets” is (at least occasionally) still a common practice among the urban poor, and many toilets are abandoned after a relatively short time - thus questioning the true level of sanitation access in Kampala’s low-income areas. Household investment in good-quality on-site facilities is discouraged by the lack of property rights and high prices, often exceeding the average annual per capita income in Kampala’s poor settlements

Capital Control Reconsidered: Financialisation and Economic Policy

We consider capital controls and their impact on selected countries, providing a critique of IMF policy. We show how the warning signs of the 1970s were ignored and the consequences became apparent during the ensuing period of neoliberal hegemony. We contend that promoting increased capital mobility is counterproductive as it reduces macroeconomic ‘policy space’. We introduce a development of the international policy ‘trilemma’ in the form of a variant of the idea of the ‘quadrilemma’. We suggest that, in most cases, the key policy driving economic growth is fiscal policy but it may be that its unconstrained use (and that of monetary policy) is not possible either under fixed exchange rates or when free capital mobility exists; a nation may face a ‘demi-quadrilemma’. We contend that, in practice, a country can only adopt ‘two from four’; if it chooses to retain free use of monetary and fiscal policy, it must sacrifice both fixed exchange rates and capital mobility. We advocate the rejection of fixed exchange rates and free capital mobility allowing the retention of requisite monetary and fiscal policy space, and that a multinational approach to the capital control policy would effectively contribute to a growth and development strategy