The IMF's role in structural adjustment

In the 1980s conditional lending for structural adjustment in developing countries moved the IMF beyond its role of macroeconomic crisis management. Fund-supported adjustment programmes have often been flawed by a lack of distributional analysis and by poor sequencing of reforms, notably premature financial liberalisation. As a result they have caused avoidable hardship. In addition, the attempt to taper out aid as part of the reform programme leads to avoidable reductions in post-stabilisation growth. An important role for the Fund in post-stabilisation environments is to provide credible signals to private investors.

Intertemporal Syndromes: Redistribution from the Future to the Present..

This chapter focuses on a particular type of policy failure, namely the sacrifice of future income for present gain. All societies and their governments face a trade-off between present and future consumption. Choices become sufficiently erroneous to be seen as a 'syndrome' if governments prioritize current spending to such an extent that future consumption is actually lower than current consumption. Africa's intertemporal syndromes fall into two groups, unsustainable booms in public spending, and looting of assets. Bouts of unsustainable public spending were usually, although not invariably triggered by booms in revenues from natural resource rents. These were often amplified by unsustainable debt accumulation. Looting of assets occasionally took the form of dispossession of private assets, but more commonly the target was publicly owned assets. We include within our discussion of looting those episodes in which growth-reducing strategies such as capital flight were induced by an anticipation of looting.

Fostering teamwork skills across the School of Engineering using online self and peer assessment

Teamwork skills have been a recognised key employability attribute in university graduates for at least the last two decades, as analysed by Curtis and McKenzie (2002) and continue to be a significant key selection criterion of many Australian employers (Graduate Outlook, 2014). This paper outlines the implementation process, learning and future directions associated with the use of an online self and peer assessment strategy, aimed to develop teamwork skills in engineering students, at Deakin University. Initially student feedback from a pilot study was used to inform and justify a three-year trial of the strategy. Then consideration was given to the professional development needs of academics to support and foster the teaching and assessment of teamwork skills in the school. Into the future, teamwork skill development depends upon the evaluation of course learning outcomes and development of minimum standard descriptors of teamwork skills across all year levels

Some economic consequences of the transition from civil war to peace

Drawing on evidence from Africa - especially Ethiopia and Uganda - the authors of this volume draw conclusions about economic policy in the aftermath of civil war. A sample of conclusions follows. Civil wars differ from international wars. They are informal, often have no clear beginning and end, weaken rather than strengthen the authority of the state, and leave two unreconciled armies to be demobilized within one territory. Civil wars erode the institutions of civil society, leading to a decline in the stock of social capital, which takes some time to restore. Private investment and government revenue are slow to recover, and military expenditures are not easily reduced. As a result, there is little or no peace dividend in the short run. The period of transition to peace is a particularly suitable time for radical policy reform, despite the high degree of polarization typical in countries engaged in civil war. And speedy reform, far from increasing uncertainty, is likely to reduce it. After a civil war, private agents are fearful both of each other and of the government. This, perhaps even more than physical damage to infrastructure, hinders private-sector-led recovery, as irreversible investment is delayed despite being financeable. The transition to peace is primarily the transition from fear and the defensive responses that became ingrained in wartime. The peace dividend comes as a gradual recovery of confidence induces repatriation of financial and human capital. Such confidence can be boosted by the early sequencing of investment-sensitive policy reforms and by preserving low inflation through direct consumer price index targeting. Lack of confidence can be compensated for by temporary undervaluation of the exchange rate, or however, may prove more difficult to make credibly time-bound. Finally, aid can permit accelerated rehabilitation of the infrastructure (especially transport networks) needed to return to a market economy. Contrary to the studies hypothesis, the authors found that demobilization - at least in Uganda - did not lead to a significant upsurge in insecurity. In the short term, demobilization significantly reduced crime, unless the demobilized lacked access to land. If the demobilized returned to their home areas and were given some assistance, with identifiable exceptions they were able to find income-earning opportunities.Debt Markets,Emerging Markets,Economic Theory&Research,,Investment and Investment Climate

PMD tolerance of 288 Gbit/s Coherent WDM and transmission over unrepeatered 124 km of field-installed single mode optical fiber

Low-cost, high-capacity optical transmission systems are required for metropolitan area networks. Direct-detected multi-carrier systems are attractive candidates, but polarization mode dispersion (PMD) is one of the major impairments that limits their performance. In this paper, we report the first experimental analysis of the PMD tolerance of a 288Gbit/s NRZ-OOK Coherent Wavelength Division Multiplexing system. The results show that this impairment is determined primarily by the subcarrier baud rate. We confirm the robustness of the system to PMD by demonstrating error-free performance over an unrepeatered 124km field-installed single-mode fiber with a negligible penalty of 0.3dB compared to the back-to-back measurements. (C) 2010 Optical Society of Americ

Satellite Navigation for the Age of Autonomy

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) brought navigation to the masses. Coupled with smartphones, the blue dot in the palm of our hands has forever changed the way we interact with the world. Looking forward, cyber-physical systems such as self-driving cars and aerial mobility are pushing the limits of what localization technologies including GNSS can provide. This autonomous revolution requires a solution that supports safety-critical operation, centimeter positioning, and cyber-security for millions of users. To meet these demands, we propose a navigation service from Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) satellites which deliver precision in-part through faster motion, higher power signals for added robustness to interference, constellation autonomous integrity monitoring for integrity, and encryption / authentication for resistance to spoofing attacks. This paradigm is enabled by the 'New Space' movement, where highly capable satellites and components are now built on assembly lines and launch costs have decreased by more than tenfold. Such a ubiquitous positioning service enables a consistent and secure standard where trustworthy information can be validated and shared, extending the electronic horizon from sensor line of sight to an entire city. This enables the situational awareness needed for true safe operation to support autonomy at scale.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, 2020 IEEE/ION Position, Location and Navigation Symposium (PLANS

Impact of Raman amplification on a 2 Tb/s coherent WDM system

The impact of hybrid erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA)/Raman amplification on a spectrally efficient coherent-wavelength-division-multiplexed (CoWDM) optical communication system is experimentally studied and modeled. Simulations suggested that 23-dB Raman gain over an unrepeatered span of 124 km single-mode fiber would allow a decrease of the mean input power of ~6 dB for a fixed bit-error rate (BER). Experimentally we demonstrated 1.2-dB Q-factor improvement for a 2-Tb/s seven-band CoWDM with backward Raman amplification. The system delivered an optical signal-to-noise ratio of 35 dB at the output of the receiver preamplifier providing a worst-case BER of 2 × 10 -6 over 49 subcarriers at 42.8 Gbaud, leaving a system margin (in terms of Q -factor) of ~4 dB from the forward-error correction threshold

Chromatic dispersion compensation using full-field maximum-likelihood sequence estimation

We investigate full-field detection-based maximum-likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) for chromatic dispersion compensation in 10 Gbit/s OOK optical communication systems. Important design criteria are identified to optimize the system performance. It is confirmed that approximately 50% improvement in transmission reach can be achieved compared to conventional direct-detection MLSE at both 4 and 16 states. It is also shown that full-field MLSE is more robust to the noise and the associated noise amplifications in full-field reconstruction, and consequently exhibits better tolerance to nonoptimized system parameters than full-field feedforward equalizer. Experiments over 124 km spans of field-installed single-mode fiber without optical dispersion compensation using full-field MLSE verify the theoretically predicted performance benefits

Shale Gas Impacts on Groundwater Resources: Understanding the Behavior of a Shallow Aquifer Around a Fracking Site in Poland

Exploitation of shale gas by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is highly controversial and concerns have been raised regarding induced risks from this technique. As part of the EU-funded SHEER Project, a shallow aquifer used for drinking water, overlying a zone of active shale-gas fracking, has been monitored for more than a year. Early results reveal the functioning of the shallow aquifer and hydrochemistry, focusing on the identification of potential impacts from the shale gas operation. This stage is an essential precursor to modeling impact scenarios of contamination and to predict changes in the aquifer