Progress in the Amendment of Section 60a of the Bankruptcy Act

En Wienermodell är en olinjär struktur som består av ett linjärt dynamiskt system, följt av en dynamisk olinjäritet. Vi presenterar en metod för identifiering av Wienermodeller, genom numerisk sökning efter maximum likelihoodskattningen av parametrarna. För att undvika problem med lokala minima föreslås en initialisering baserad på en minsta kvadratskattning

Economic Importance of Air Transport and Airport Activities in Belgium. NBB Working Papers. No. 158, 10 March 2009

This study is a publication issued by the Microeconomic Analysis service of the National Bank of Belgium, in partnership with the Department of Transport and Regional Economics of the University of Antwerp (UA). It is the outcome of a first research project on the Belgian airport and air transport sector. The former relates to the economic activities within the airports of Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi, Kortrijk, Liège and Ostend, while the latter concentrates on the air transport business as a whole. In the past few years, the logistics business has come to play a significant part in income creation in our country, whose economy is to a large extent driven by services. Air transport and airports in particular are driving forces in this context, not only in terms of business generated within the air transport cluster, but also in terms of airports' attractiveness. On world scale an overall growth of cargo and passengers could be observed in the last ten years. However, the air transport sector has undergone a major crisis during the 2001-2003 period, when passenger traffic numbers first fell sharply and then stagnated. Only after 2003 this activity has picked up again and this until the third quarter of 2008. Cargo traffic on its part recovered already in 2002. In Belgium, a similar evolution can be observed. It should be stressed however that between 1997 and 2007 cargo volumes grew much faster than passenger traffic did. The rankings of European airports underline the importance of cargo traffic for Belgium: In 2006 Brussels, Liège and Ostend-Bruges respectively occupy ranks 6, 8, and 20 in the European cargo airport top 20, while for passenger airports, Brussels can only be found at the end of the top 20. In this study, a sectoral approach has been followed by focusing, for every airport, on two major economic activity components: the air transport cluster on the one hand and other airport-related sectors on the other hand. In that respect, annual accounts data from the Central Balance Sheet Office were used for the calculation of direct effects, the social balance sheet analysis and the study of financial ratios. Due to an inevitable time lag in the data provision, the analysis was limited to 2006. Like in other sectoral studies published by the Bank, indirect effects have also been estimated on the basis of data from the National Accounts Institute. In 2006, the total activities under review –direct and indirect, inside and outside airports- accounted for roughly 6.2 billion euro, i.e. 2 p.c. of Belgium's GDP and domestic employment. Considering the direct effects only, these percentages both amounted to 0.8 p.c. The three major airports, i.e. Brussels, Charleroi and Liège, alone account for 95.2 p.c. of the direct value added generated by the six airports under review. They represent 0.5 p.c. of Belgian GDP and, taking account of the indirect effects, 1.1 p.c. of the national income. Furthermore, it has to be pointed out that most Belgian airports are specialised. While the airports of Liège and Ostend focus on air cargo, Charleroi Airport deals mostly with low-cost passenger transport. Moreover, the smaller regional airports like Antwerp and Kortrijk focus on business travel

Economic Importance of Air Transport and Airport Activities in Belgium

This study is a publication issued by the Microeconomic Analysis service of the National Bank of Belgium, in partnership with the Department of Transport and Regional Economics of the University of Antwerp (UA). It is the outcome of a first research project on the Belgian airport and air transport sector. The former relates to the economic activities within the airports of Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi, Kortrijk, Liège and Ostend, while the latter concentrates on the air transport business as a whole. In the past few years, the logistics business has come to play a significant part in income creation in our country, whose economy is to a large extent driven by services1. Air transport and airports in particular are driving forces in this context, not only in terms of business generated within the air transport cluster, but also in terms of airports' attractiveness. On world scale an overall growth of cargo and passengers could be observed in the last ten years. However, the air transport sector has undergone a major crisis during the 2001-2003 period, when passenger traffic numbers first fell sharply and then stagnated. Only after 2003 this activity has picked up again and this until the third quarter of 2008. Cargo traffic on its part recovered already in 2002. In Belgium, a similar evolution can be observed. It should be stressed however that between 1997 and 2007 cargo volumes grew much faster than passenger traffic did. The rankings of European airports underline the importance of cargo traffic for Belgium: In 2006 Brussels, Liège and Ostend-Bruges respectively occupy ranks 6, 8, and 20 in the European cargo airport top 20, while for passenger airports, Brussels can only be found at the end of the top 20. In this study, a sectoral approach has been followed by focusing, for every airport, on two major economic activity components: the air transport cluster on the one hand and other airport-related sectors on the other hand. In that respect, annual accounts data from the Central Balance Sheet Office were used for the calculation of direct effects, the social balance sheet analysis and the study of financial ratios. Due to an inevitable time lag in the data provision, the analysis was limited to 2006. Like in other sectoral studies published by the Bank, indirect effects have also been estimated on the basis of data from the National Accounts Institute. In 2006, the total activities under review –direct and indirect, inside and outside airports- accounted for roughly 6.2 billion euro, i.e. 2 p.c. of Belgium's GDP and domestic employment. Considering the direct effects only, these percentages both amounted to 0.8 p.c. The three major airports, i.e. Brussels, Charleroi and Liège, alone account for 95.2 p.c. of the direct value added generated by the six airports under review. They represent 0.5 p.c. of Belgian GDP and, taking account of the indirect effects, 1.1 p.c. of the national income. Furthermore, it has to be pointed out that most Belgian airports are specialised. While the airports of Liège and Ostend focus on air cargo, Charleroi Airport deals mostly with low-cost passenger transport. Moreover, the smaller regional airports like Antwerp and Kortrijk focus on business travel. The analysis was completed in December 2008air transport, airport activities, sector analysis, indirect effect, public investments UA,

HD 49798: Its History of Binary Interaction and Future Evolution

The bright subdwarf-O star (sdO), HD 49798, is in a 1.55 day orbit with a compact companion that is spinning at 13.2 seconds. Using the measurements of the effective temperature ($T_{\rm eff}$), surface gravity ($\log g$), and surface abundances of the sdO, we construct models to study the evolution of this binary system using Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics ($\texttt{MESA}$). Previous studies of the compact companion have disagreed on whether it is a white dwarf (WD) or a neutron star (NS). From the published measurements of the companion's spin and spin-up rate, we agree with Mereghetti and collaborators that a NS companion is more likely. However, since there remains the possibility of a WD companion, we use our constructed $\texttt{MESA}$ models to run simulations with both WD and NS companions that help us constrain the past and future evolution of this system. If it presently contains a NS, the immediate mass transfer evolution upon Roche lobe (RL) filling will lead to mass transfer rates comparable to that implied in ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs). Depending on the rate of angular momentum extraction via a wind, the fate of this system is either a wide ($P_{\rm orb}{\approx} 3$ day) intermediate mass binary pulsar (IMPB) with a relatively rapidly spinning NS (${\approx} 0.3$ s) and a high mass WD (${\approx} 0.9 M_\odot$), or a solitary millisecond pulsar (MSP).Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Preventing Suicide in Colorado: Progress Achieved & Goals for the Future

This 2009 report, issued jointly by Mental Health America of Colorado and The Colorado Trust, updates both the state's 1998 Suicide Prevention and Intervention Plan to address Colorado's historically high suicide rate, as well as The Trust's 2002 report Suicide in Colorado, which documented the problem of suicide across the state and identified suicide-prevention resources. This report details key facts and figures about the suicide rate in Colorado, many of the prevention achievements in the past 10 years, and recommendations to strengthen suicide prevention and awareness efforts into the future

Performance-sensitive government bonds - A new proposal for sustainable sovereign debt management

We argue that current sovereign debt management lacks important incentives for governments and politicians to fulfill it in a sustainable and long-term orientated way. This paper outlines that the mechanisms to solve sovereign debt problems within the EMU are not only missing the right incentives but also setting the wrong ones. In contrast to current policy, we argue that only an instrument which is sufficiently sensitive to the performance of a country (i.e. its debt level) will motivate the players to engage in sustainable debt management. Specifically, we propose performance-sensitive government bonds (PSGB) where coupon payments are closely linked to debt policy, giving strong incentives to limit debt levels and to timely restructure the economy.Sovereign debt management, government bonds, incentives, EMU, debt crisis