Does participation in extracurricular activities reduce engagement in risky behaviours?

Abstract This study finds that participation in extracurricular activities significantly reduces engagement in risky behaviours among Australian adolescents. However, the effects differ by activity type, gender and to some extent by socio-economic status (SES). Participation in activities other than sports and arts reduces both weekly drinking and marijuana use for both genders. Participation in arts reduces weekly drinking among males and marijuana use among females, whereas participation in non-organised sports reduces regular smoking and marijuana use among males only. Even though weekly drinking is positively associated with participation in organised sports among males, the association is likely to reflect unobserved differences between participants in organised sports and non-participants. There is some evidence that extracurricular activity participation lowers engagement in risky behaviours for low-SES females more than it does for high-SES females, yet among males the SES gradient is almost non-existent

Does New Zealand have a household saving crisis?

Household Income and Outlay Accounts, Household Savings, New Zealand

When will New Zealand catch up with Australia?

New Zealands average income, defined as GDP per capita, is now three quarters that of Australia and even lower than in Australias poorest state, Tasmania. Over the last seven years, New Zealand has grown slightly faster than Australia, but at these rates, it would still take 140 years to close the trans-Tasman income gap. To catch up with Australia in five to 10 years, New Zealand would need to grow at between 4.7% and 7.6% per year. This exceeds New Zealands highest average annual growth rate over a five-year period of 4.6%, in the early 1960s. These calculations hold Australian growth rates constant at its annual average over 2000 to 2007. If Australia were to grow faster than its recent performance, the growth rates required of New Zealand to catch up with Australia would be even higher. While such growth rates are not impractical, New Zealand is not currently on track to achieve them, given its recent poor record on labour productivity. Catching up with Australia is not impossible, but very unlikely without major changes to New Zealands policy directions. The challenge is for its policy makers to put forward sensible policies and to carry them through to fruition in the years to come.Australia, New Zealand, economic growth, economic policy

How much new saving will kiwisaver produce?

After two decades of tax neutrality for private saving, New Zealand policy changed radically with the recent introduction of tax incentives for KiwiSaver. A key issue for tax-favoured saving schemes is the extent to which existing saving is reshuffled versus new saving created by reduced consumption. Using data from a nationwide survey carried out by the authors, we estimate that each dollar of KiwiSaver balances represents only $0.09-$0.19 of new saving. The rest is either reshuffling amongst existing saving and debt by KiwiSaver members, or else taxpayer and employer transfers which reduce national saving elsewhere. Homeowners are least likely to fund their KiwiSaver contributions by reducing spending, indicating possible mis-targeting since owners are often blamed for excessive consumption arising from house price wealth effects. There is little evidence that KiwiSaver affects either the reported trend in saving or the presence of dis-saving. Since only one-tenth of households report negative saving, KiwiSaver may be a costly and ineffective solution to a relatively small problem of insufficient household saving

On neutrino and charged lepton masses and mixings: A view from the electroweak-scale right-handed neutrino model

We present a model of neutrino masses within the framework of the EW-$\nu_R$ model in which the experimentally desired form of the PMNS matrix is obtained by applying an $A_4$ symmetry to the \emph{Higgs singlet sector} responsible for the neutrino Dirac mass matrix. This mechanism naturally avoids potential conflict with the LHC data which severely constrains the Higgs sector, in particular the Higgs doublets. Moreover, by making a simple $ans\ddot{a}tz$ we extract $\mathcal{M}_l {\mathcal{M}_l}^\dagger$ for the charged lepton sector. A similar $ans\ddot{a}tz$ is proposed for the quark sector. The sources of masses for the neutrinos are entirely different from those for the charged leptons and for the quarks and this might explain why $U_{PMNS}$ is {\em very different} from $V_{CKM}$.Comment: 19 pages. Two figure

Is poor household saving the cause of New Zealand's high current account deficit?

The current account deficit in the balance of payments has frequently surfaced in public policy debate, with many commentators asserting that low household saving is a major cause of these deficits. Yet, in standard macroeconomic theory, both the current account balance and household saving are endogenous, so one can not cause the other. For any country in any given period, they may be positively or negatively correlated, or uncorrelated, depending on what causative factors were dominant at the time. Moreover, the current account balance is identical to the difference between national saving and investment. There is no general reason to expect it to move in lock step with the level of household saving. Consistently, pooled cross-country and time-series data indicate that simple correlations between the two variables are randomly scattered around zero. In the absence of proper analysis, unsubstantiated assertions about the role of household saving mislead public debate and invite the adoption of welfare-reducing policies, which may not even improve the balance of payments. The case for diverting attention from policies to lift economic growth to policies to improve the balance of payments seems to be not so much unproven as unexamined.Balance of payments, household savings rate, deficit, New Zealand

New summation inequalities and their applications to discrete-time delay systems

This paper provides new summation inequalities in both single and double forms to be used in stability analysis of discrete-time systems with time-varying delays. The potential capability of the newly derived inequalities is demonstrated by establishing less conservative stability conditions for a class of linear discrete-time systems with an interval time-varying delay in the framework of linear matrix inequalities. The effectiveness and least conservativeness of the derived stability conditions are shown by academic and practical examples.Comment: 15 pages, 01 figur

CPI Bias and Real Living Standards in Russia During the Transition

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40070/3/wp684.pd