Asymmetric Price Response to Supply: Evidence from Singapore

Prices in the Asian residential property markets have skyrocketed over the past decade. A high rate of economic growth is one of the major reasons for the price spiral. Most Asian residential property markets are, however,concentrated and national in nature. Maintaining an artificially high price level through coordination amongst producers is not impossible and would be the natural choice of oligopolistic behavior (Scherer and Ross, 1990). This study examines price responses to changes in economic determinants in Singapore. The focus is on supply. Cointegration and error-correction techniques are employed to test if upward and downward adjustment speeds are similar. The results verify the impact of GDP growth, but also show that price response to the supply of housing units is significantly downward rigid. This is not inconsistent with the hypothesis of collusive price setting by property developers.Property price rigidity, Singapore, Oligopoly

Workshop proceedings: Information Systems for Space Astrophysics in the 21st Century, volume 1

The Astrophysical Information Systems Workshop was one of the three Integrated Technology Planning workshops. Its objectives were to develop an understanding of future mission requirements for information systems, the potential role of technology in meeting these requirements, and the areas in which NASA investment might have the greatest impact. Workshop participants were briefed on the astrophysical mission set with an emphasis on those missions that drive information systems technology, the existing NASA space-science operations infrastructure, and the ongoing and planned NASA information systems technology programs. Program plans and recommendations were prepared in five technical areas: Mission Planning and Operations; Space-Borne Data Processing; Space-to-Earth Communications; Science Data Systems; and Data Analysis, Integration, and Visualization

Investing in Real Estate: Mortgage Financing Practices and Optimal Holding Period

Real estate investments are typically characterized by high degrees of leverage and long-loan tenures. In perfect capital markets, leverage has no impact on the investment decision apart from tax considerations. However, the mortgage financing market is imperfect in many countries. In the presence of market imperfections, an optimal holding period exists for real property investments. We provide a simple rule to calculate the optimal holding period to compare the required rate of return with the leveraged rate of return on equity.

Investing in Real Estate : Mortgage Financing Practices and Optimal Holding Period

Real estate investments are typically characterized by high degrees of leverage and long loan tenures. In perfect capital markets, leverage has no impact on the investment decision apart from tax considerations. However, the mortgage financing market is imperfect in many countries. In the presence of market imperfections, an optimal holding period exists for real property investments. We provide a simple rule to calculate the optimal holding period is to compare the required rate of return with the leveraged rate of return on equity.mortgage financing, real estate, financial leverage, optimal holding period

Implementation of the conjugate heat transfer code in KIVA-4

KIVA is an open Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) source code that is capable to compute the transient two and three-dimensional chemically reactive fluid flows with spray. The latest version in the family of KIVA codes is the KIVA-4 which is capable of handling the unstructured mesh. This project focuses on the implementation of the Conjugate Heat Transfer code (CHT) in KIVA-4. The previous version of KIVA code with conjugate heat transfer code has been developed at Michigan Technological University by Egel Urip and is be used in this project. During the first phase of the project, the difference in the code structure between the previous version of KIVA and the KIVA-4 has been studied, which is the most challenging part of the project. The second phase involves the reverse engineering where the CHT code in previous version is extracted and implemented in KIVA-4 according to the new code structure. The validation of the implemented code is performed using a 4-valve Pentroof engine case. A solid cylinder wall has been developed using GRIDGEN which surrounds 3/4th of the engine cylinder and heat transfer to the solid wall during one engine cycle (0-720 Crank Angle Degree) is compared with that of the reference result. The reference results are nothing but the same engine case run in the previous version with the original code developed by Egel. The results of current code are very much comparable to that of the reference results which verifies that successful implementation of the CHT code in KIVA-4

Dependents And Resource Allocation In An Aging Society: An Examination Of The Preston Argument In Canada

This study is an attempt to evaluate Samuel Preston\u27s assertion that American elderly have recently fared far better than children in terms of poverty and mortality reduction. The divergent paths of America\u27s dependents are related to family breakdown, the rise of politics of aging, and the differential response of health care and education to population change.;An examination of poverty in Canada found a recent reversal of economic well-being of seniors and children. Our analysis of the Survey of Consumer Finances shows that between 1973 and 1985 government transfer did increasingly favour the elderly more than children. However, many elderly were pulled just within 10% above the low income cut-offs.;An examination of mortality decline supports the conclusion that both Canadian elderly and children are faring quite well between 1971 to 1989. Possibly, this reflects the fact that health care in Canada is accessible according to needs, not age. Even though seniors benefit more from the growth of health care budgets, there is no sign of political pressure for health care to respond to seniors at the expense of children. There is also no evidence of a declining educational environment for Canadian children. The decline in the relative number of children has not resulted in a lowered salary for teachers, partly due to strong teachers\u27 unions.;In addition, the gray lobby in Canada has not been as effective as their American counterparts, partly due to the different nature of political process. However, elderly are probably more successful than other age groups in influencing policies. While the 1986 National Election Study shows that seniors vote more often than others, the 1989-90 Middlesex-Oxford qualitative survey reveals that seniors have a sense of intergenerational solidarity. In contrast, those between 45 and 64 are more likely than other groups to favour programs benefitting seniors, instead of those for the young.;Intergenerational equity and transfers have been underlying political discussion on resource allocation in the past two decades. Whereas government policies have traditionally focused on income adequacy for seniors, debates on intergenerational (in)equity may emerge again in the 1990s as child poverty becomes an issue with which to reckon

Automation and hypermedia technology applications

This paper represents a progress report on HyLite (Hypermedia Library technology): a research and development activity to produce a versatile system as part of NASA's technology thrusts in automation, information sciences, and communications. HyLite can be used as a system or tool to facilitate the creation and maintenance of large distributed electronic libraries. The contents of such a library may be software components, hardware parts or designs, scientific data sets or databases, configuration management information, etc. Proliferation of computer use has made the diversity and quantity of information too large for any single user to sort, process, and utilize effectively. In response to this information deluge, we have created HyLite to enable the user to process relevant information into a more efficient organization for presentation, retrieval, and readability. To accomplish this end, we have incorporated various AI techniques into the HyLite hypermedia engine to facilitate parameters and properties of the system. The proposed techniques include intelligent searching tools for the libraries, intelligent retrievals, and navigational assistance based on user histories. HyLite itself is based on an earlier project, the Encyclopedia of Software Components (ESC) which used hypermedia to facilitate and encourage software reuse

The Professional Identity Development of Counseling Students During Extreme Stressors: Lessons Learned in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Based on Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological framework and current literature, we discussed the impact of the COVID-19 crisis may have shaped the professional identity development (PID) of counseling students and the ecosystems of counselor education. While the discipline recognizes the importance of paying attention to counseling students’ PID, the discourse on the topic in the context of extreme environmental stressors such a pandemic appears to be lacking. We discussed in this paper the opportunity the COVID-19 pandemic has presented to counselor educators and supervisors (CES) to frame extreme challenging moments like theses as times to facilitate the strengthening and internalizing of counselor profession identity among counseling trainees. We further shared lessons learned as CES and offered suggestions to various stakeholders in counselor education for consideration. We concluded the paper by exploring implications, technological possibilities, and research possibilities in counselor training

Differential Geometry of Ice Flow

Flowlines on ice sheets and glaciers form complex patterns. To explore their role in ice routing and extend the language for studying such patterns, we develop a theory of flow convergence and curvature in plan view. These geometric quantities respectively equal the negative divergence of the vector field of ice-flow direction and the curl of this field. From the first of these two fundamental results, we show that flow in individual catchments of an ice sheet can converge (despite its overall spreading) because ice divides are loci of strong divergence, and that a sign bifurcation in convergence occurs during ice-sheet “symmetry breaking” (the transition from near-radial spreading to spreading with substantial azimuthal velocities) and during the formation of ice-stream tributary networks. We also uncover the topological control behind balance-flux distributions across ice masses. Notably, convergence participates in mass conservation along flowlines to amplify ice flux via a positive feedback; thus the convergence field governs the form of ice-stream networks simulated by balance-velocity models. The theory provides a roadmap for understanding the tower-shaped plot of flow speed versus convergence for the Antarctic Ice Sheet