Debate: Can Sustainable Tourism include Flying?

Can Sustainable tourism include flying? was the question addressed by the debate at the University of Central Lancashire (University of Central Lancashire), UK on March 30th 2012. There was an unexpected degree of consensus among the speakers that tourism had severe environmental impacts, mainly from flying and that many countries currently benefitting from tourism development were likely to suffer from climate change. They also agreed that corporate tourism often diverted funds from destination areas into their own profits. Those arguing for flying stressed the balance of environmental, social and economic benefits, while those arguing against prioritised the environmental damage of increasing aviation. The pro-fliers were optimistic about technological advances in aircraft and fuels but the others doubted their potential to reduce emissions from current or increased levels of aviation. Both sides admitted behavioural change was difficult, but saw hope in recent trends

The return of the CC(C)TB: First critical analysis (including hybrid mismatches with non-Eu countries)

International and EU reactions against hybrid mismatche

Tax avoidance revisited: exploring the boundaries of anti-avoidance rules in the EU BEPS context

Analysis of Belgian anti-avoidance rules in tax legislatio

Modelling unemployment in the presence of excess labour supply:An application to Egypt

Due to its pyramid population structure, Egypt needs to create jobs at a high pace to absorb the many new entrants at its labour market. This article structurally models and quantifies the impact of these demographic shocks and the shedding of public sector jobs on unemployment. The findings indicate that Egypt needs to grow at 5% for many years to come. Job creation better occurs in the private than in the public sector. Egypt’s public sector has been driving up government expenditures disproportionably, not only because of the numerous public sector employees but also because of high public wage growth. Keywords: Demography, labour supply, employment, public sector employment, public finance.

Cadabra: reference guide and tutorial

Cadabra is a computer algebra system for the manipulation of tensorial mathematical expressions such as they occur in “field theory problems”. It is aimed at, but not necessarily restricted to, high-energy physicists. It is constructed as a simple tree-manipulating core, a large collection of standalone algorithmic modules which act on the expression tree, and a set of modules responsible for output of nodes in the tree. All of these parts are written in C++. The input and output formats closely follow TEX, which in many cases means that cadabra is much simpler to use than other similar programs. It intentionally does not contain its own programming language; instead, new functionality is added by writing new modules in C++

Measuring monetary conditions in Europe: use and limitations of the monetary conditions index. MRPA Paper No. 23534, 1999

The Monetary Conditions Index is a composite index of interest and exchange rates frequently used by central banks, the IMF, and the OECD. This paper considers the benefits and weaknesses of the MCI in the light of large macroeconometric models. It follows that the impact of the exchange rate on GDP relative to the impact of the short-term interest rate is substantially lower under a monetary union. For most countries, including a long-term interest rate in the MCI only affects the level of the MCI and not its turning points

Monte-Carlo simulation of the coherent backscattering of electrons in a ballistic system

We study weak localization effects in the ballistic regime as induced by man-made scatterers. Specular reflection of the electrons off these scatterers results into backscattered trajectories which interfere with their time-reversed path resulting in weak localization corrections to the resistance. Using a semi-classical theory, we calculate the change in resistance due to these backscattered trajectories. We found that the inclusion of the exact shape of the scatterers is very important in order to explain the experimental results of Katine et al. [Superlattices and Microstructures 20, 337 (1996)].Comment: 3 pages, 7 ps figures, accepted for publication in Superlattices and Microstructure

A two-variable approach to solve the polynomial Lyapunov equation

A two-variable polynomial approach to solve the one-variable polynomial Lyapunov equation is proposed. Lifting the problem from the one-variable to the two-variable context allows to use Faddeev-type recursions in order to solve the polynomial Lyapunov equation in an iterative fashion. The method is especially suitable for applications requiring exact or symbolic computation