Understanding the Flattening Phillips Curve

Policy-makers have recently noted an apparent flattening of the Phillips curve. The implications of such a change include that a positive output gap would be less inflationary, but the cost of reducing inflation, once established, would increase. This paper’s objective is to review the evidence and possible explanations for the flattening of the Phillips curve in the context of new-Keynesian economic theory. Using data for the United States and Australia, we find that the flattening is evident in the baseline ‘structural’ new-Keynesian Phillips curve. We consider a variety of reasons for this structural flattening, such as data problems, globalisation and alternative definitions of marginal cost, none of which is entirely satisfactory.Phillips curve; inflation

Event Program: “An Evening with Dr. Ken Robinson”

Currently the Senior Advisor to the President of the J. Paul Getty Center in Los Angeles, Ken Robinson was voted Business Speaker of the Year in 2000 by over 200 European companies. He is a leading force in the development of creativity and human resources and an internationally recognized expert. Event Program: As a former professor of education at the University of Warwick in Warwick, England, his work included a major international report for the European Commission on the social and economic importance of the arts to the development of the European Union. He was consultant to the Council of Europe international project, Culture Creativity and the Young, which involved over 22 European countries. His latest book Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, was published in March 2001 and is available for purchase in the front entry

A number or a person?: perspectives on credit scoring and fair mortgage lending: article four in a five-part series

This fourth article in a five-part series on credit scoring showcases three different perspectives. Up for debate is how lenders can ensure fair treatment to all mortgage applicants and how consumers can be educated about the effect their credit score has on loan pricing.Mortgage loans

Technical Bulletins: Street Aid Fund - Separate Fund Requirement May Be Waived

This Technical Bulletin addresses Chapter 173 of the Public A c t s of 1985, which amended Tennessee Code Annotated 54-4-204 to allow the Comptroller of the Treasury to waive the requirement that street aid funds be accounted for in a separate fund

Parent and teacher perceptions of NAPLAN in a sample of Independent schools in Western Australia

Stories appear frequently in the Australian media regarding parent and teacher perceptions and attitudes towards the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy. However, thorough empirical investigations of parent perceptions are sparse. This study presents a survey of 345 parents across Years 3 and 5 from a sample of Independent schools in Western Australia. A representative sample of teachers from these schools were also surveyed in order to compare and contrast parent and teacher perspectives about the transparency and accountability associated with testing, the usefulness of results for helping individual students, and the perceived clarity of communication of results. Findings reveal mixed positive and negative views that reside within an overall prevailing low opinion of the testing. Some ways for improving the perception of the testing with the general public are discusse

Protective vaccination in the horse against _Streptococcus equi_ with recombinant antigens

_Streptococcus equi_ subspecies _equi_ (_S. equi_) is a clonal, equine host-adapted pathogen of global importance that causes a highly contagious suppurative lymphodendopathy of the head and neck, more commonly known as Strangles. The disease is highly prevalent, can be severe and spread easily by visibly infected animals or by carrier animals that show no clinical signs of disease. Antibiotic treatment is usually ineffective. However, the majority of horses develop immunity to re-infection, suggesting that vaccination should be a feasible way to prevent the infection. Live attenuated vaccine strains of _S. equi_ are available but adverse reactions have been reported and they suffer from a short duration of immunity. Thus, a safe and effective vaccine against _S. equi_ is highly desirable. In this report, Welsh mountain ponies vaccinated with a combination of seven recombinant _S. equi_ proteins, were significantly protected from experimental infection by _S. equi_, resembling the spontaneous disease. The protective antigens consisted of five surface localized proteins and two IgG endopeptidases. The results from a second vaccination trial indicate that the endopeptidases were important for good protection. The similarity of _S. equi_ to other pyogenic streptococci suggests that our findings have broader implications for the prevention of streptococcal infections

Investigating the impact of NAPLAN on student, parent and teacher emotional distress in independent schools

Concerns have been raised about the impact Australia’s national standardised testing, the National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), has upon the well-being of students, parents and teachers. To date, research evidence is unclear as to the level and extent of emotional distress experienced by stakeholders during testing. Despite an unclear evidence base, the prevailing view is that NAPLAN has a general negative impact upon stakeholder well-being. In a pilot study that surveyed all stakeholder groups across 11 independent schools in Western Australia, we found evidence of a minimal impact from the testing. We also found evidence for a small positive association between student and parent distress during testing, and a moderate positive association between parent and teacher distress during testing and their estimations regarding how NAPLAN impacts other people. Our results are not consistent with the prevailing view that NAPLAN has a broad negative impact on well-being, and highlights the need for further research to inform debates about the usefulness and impact of NAPLAN testing. © 2016, The Australian Association for Research in Education, Inc

Lab Retriever: a software tool for calculating likelihood ratios incorporating a probability of drop-out for forensic DNA profiles.

BackgroundTechnological advances have enabled the analysis of very small amounts of DNA in forensic cases. However, the DNA profiles from such evidence are frequently incomplete and can contain contributions from multiple individuals. The complexity of such samples confounds the assessment of the statistical weight of such evidence. One approach to account for this uncertainty is to use a likelihood ratio framework to compare the probability of the evidence profile under different scenarios. While researchers favor the likelihood ratio framework, few open-source software solutions with a graphical user interface implementing these calculations are available for practicing forensic scientists.ResultsTo address this need, we developed Lab Retriever, an open-source, freely available program that forensic scientists can use to calculate likelihood ratios for complex DNA profiles. Lab Retriever adds a graphical user interface, written primarily in JavaScript, on top of a C++ implementation of the previously published R code of Balding. We redesigned parts of the original Balding algorithm to improve computational speed. In addition to incorporating a probability of allelic drop-out and other critical parameters, Lab Retriever computes likelihood ratios for hypotheses that can include up to four unknown contributors to a mixed sample. These computations are completed nearly instantaneously on a modern PC or Mac computer.ConclusionsLab Retriever provides a practical software solution to forensic scientists who wish to assess the statistical weight of evidence for complex DNA profiles. Executable versions of the program are freely available for Mac OSX and Windows operating systems

Competing worlds: The private lives of women nurse students and gender equity in higher education

© 2020 Society for Research into Higher Education. A longitudinal qualitative study of undergraduate women nursing students demonstrated the profound and pervasive influence of the heterosexual intimate relationship on their university engagement and achievement. Hitherto, the importance of women’s private lives have been underappreciated in the arenas of student equity and retention. The study showed that traditional ideas of gender held within the intimate relationship were highly detrimental to student autonomy and capacity to engage, and that the university’s organisation and delivery of the curriculum exacerbated the situation. Participants made personal sacrifices, which, while enabling continuation of their studies, were deleterious to academic achievement and wellbeing. For eight women, this involved separation from their partners. These results have generic implications given the renewed focus on gender equity in higher education. They have specific implications for nurse education, given the rising numbers of mature-age women nurse students, and predicted nursing workforce shortages

DaVinci Institute 2002-2003 Lecture Series

Flyers for events of the 2002-2003 DaVinci Institute Lecture Series