1,406 research outputs found
[Handwritten note concerning Jack Ruby and Nolan Ray Schaffer]
No full textHandwritten note by an unknown author concerning Jack Ruby and Nolan Ray Schaffer
The enterprise sector and emergence of the Polish fiscal crisis, 1990-91
No full textThe author analyzes the causes of the collapse of profitability in 1991 of the Polish enterprise sector. He explores how it affected the government budget and assesses the forecasts of enterprise sector performance used to prepare the government's 1990 and 1991 budgets. About half of the drop in profitability he attributes to the decrease in the inflation rate and the consequent decrease in the inflation bias in profits that results from historical cost accounting. He attributes most of the rest of the collapse in profitability to higher labor costs and higher amortization allowances. When wages are endogenized in a simple model, nearly the entire collapse of profitability is explained by the changes in inflation bias and amortization allowances. The decrease in the inflation bias and the increase in amortization allowances caused profits, and thus profit taxes, to fall, freeing up cash that could be spent on wages, causing profits and profit taxes to fall even further. This loss in government revenues was offset by increased revenues from wage taxes, which were in turn offset by an increase in wage indexed government spending, notably on pensions. As a result of all these changes, the government deficit increased about 4 to 5 percent of GDP - about half of the fiscal swing between 1990 and 1991. Policy options recommended for increasing tax revenues include: increasing the turnover tax rate and introducing the value added tax that will replace it at rates that maintain the increased level of revenue; increasing the social security tax rate; and maintaining, but not raising, the historical cost based profit tax, an automatic stabilizer. An obvious alternative to the profit tax based on historical cost accounting is to redress 1991 mistake, the indexing of amortization deductions. The author recommends drastically reducing or even abolishing amortization deductions for state owned enterprises for fixed capital acquired before 1990 (before the start of the transition from socialism). It is odd that these firms are given a tax break on top of the free use of state owned capital. If anything, they should be paying for the use of the capital.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management
Stemming the Tide of Foreclosure: Evaluating the Use of Eminent Domain to Relieve Underwater Homeowners
No full textMore than six years since the housing bubble burst in 2007, over twelve million homes nationwide remain underwater––one out of every five homes with a mortgage. These homeowners are more likely to default on their mortgage payments because the overall principal value of their mortgages is greater than the value of their home. Being underwater limits an individual homeowner’s ability to recover from financial shocks, such as job loss or reduction in income, and at an aggregate level, it threatens another wave of foreclosures. Further, securitization of residential mortgages has inhibited refinancing, even when advantageous to all stakeholders.
This Note evaluates a proposal that aims to overcome a collective action problem between borrowers, lenders, mortgage servicers, and government actors by recalibrating the value of underwater mortgages. Using the power of eminent domain, local municipalities would seize underwater mortgages from private-label securitization trusts, compensating the trusts with the true fair market value of the mortgage (which, by definition, would be less than the current home value). The municipalities, in conjunction with a venture capitalist fund, would refinance the mortgage with a government-approved vendor at a value closer to the true market price. This proposal would likely survive a constitutional challenge and should be piloted in communities burdened by trillions of dollars of household debt.
The author would like to thank Professor Michael Heller for his guidance and comments. The author would also like to thank Jonathan and Toby Schaffer, Zachary Schaffer, and Daniel Sartori for their unwavering support and patience during this process, and always. Many thanks to the Columbia Business Law Review editorial staff for their dedication in preparing this Note for publication
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Stemming the Tide of Foreclosure
No full textMore than six years since the housing bubble burst in 2007, over twelve million homes nationwide remain underwater––one out of every five homes with a mortgage. These homeowners are more likely to default on their mortgage payments because the overall principal value of their mortgages is greater than the value of their home. Being underwater limits an individual homeowner’s ability to recover from financial shocks, such as job loss or reduction in income, and at an aggregate level, it threatens another wave of foreclosures. Further, securitization of residential mortgages has inhibited refinancing, even when advantageous to all stakeholders.
This Note evaluates a proposal that aims to overcome a collective action problem between borrowers, lenders, mortgage servicers, and government actors by recalibrating the value of underwater mortgages. Using the power of eminent domain, local municipalities would seize underwater mortgages from private-label securitization trusts, compensating the trusts with the true fair market value of the mortgage (which, by definition, would be less than the current home value). The municipalities, in conjunction with a venture capitalist fund, would refinance the mortgage with a government-approved vendor at a value closer to the true market price. This proposal would likely survive a constitutional challenge and should be piloted in communities burdened by trillions of dollars of household debt.
The author would like to thank Professor Michael Heller for his guidance and comments. The author would also like to thank Jonathan and Toby Schaffer, Zachary Schaffer, and Daniel Sartori for their unwavering support and patience during this process, and always. Many thanks to the Columbia Business Law Review editorial staff for their dedication in preparing this Note for publication
Appropriate policy measures to attract private capital in consideration of regional efficiency in using infrastructure and human capital
No full textRegional economic policy disposes of two principal options to attract private capital, which in turn helps to safeguard employment and to foster regional growth. On the one hand, regional policy could seek to enhance a region's level of public capital (e.g. transport infrastructure), which as a consequence makes the region more attractive to private investors in general. On the other hand, private capital could be attracted in a more direct way by proposing specific innovation, SME or cluster programs. The success of both options is partly driven by the regions already existing level of region specific production factors and the ability to use these factors efficiently. Indirect approaches to attract private capital seem to be particularly promising for efficient regions (no matter of the absolute level of public capital). In contrast, inefficient regions shall benefit more from specific programs. However, for Germany the factual pattern seems to be the other way around, which could widening rather than closing the income gap among regions. --
Alfred Schaffer, Shaka en die transnasionalisme
No full textIn this article, I read the Dutch poet Alfred Schaffer’s volume of poetry Mens dier ding (Man animal thing) against the background of transnationalism. I employ transnationalism as critical or hermeneutic perspective and focus on the identity of the author, the themes worked out in the volume and the use of anachronism and metapoetical references as literary strategies in support of the transnational nature of the text. Reference is made to the way in which Schaffer’s biography (his Dutch-Aruban descent, his movement between the Netherlands and South Africa, his views on poetry) facilitates a transnational reading of his volume Mens dier ding based on the history of the Zulu king Shaka as depicted in Thomas Mofolo’s novel Chaka (published in 1925). The article also reads Mens dier ding against the background of the idea that transnational literature is a particular kind of literature that emerges at a specific point in history and deals with issues and themes associated with imperialism, colonisation, decolonisation and globalisation such as migration, displacement, cultural hybridity, identity, citizenship and the status of refugees. This reading is prompted by the fact that Schaffer displaces the historical Shaka to the present and eventually also represent him as an asylum seeker in an unnamed country. I discuss the volume’s formal features, the transnational conversation with Mofolo’s novel, the use of anachronism and the insertion of metapoetical elements in the text as literary strategies to deal with transnational issues such as migration, displacement, racial hierarchies, inequality and refugee experience
Better algorithms for selective sampling
No full textWe study online algorithms for selective sampling that use regularized least squares (RLS) as base classifier. These algorithms typically perform well in practice, and some of them have formal guarantees on their mistake and query rates. We refine and extend these guarantees in various ways, proposing algorithmic variants that exhibit better empirical behavior while enjoying performance guarantees under much more general conditions. We also show a simple way of coupling a generic gradient-based classifier with a specific RLS-based selective sampler, obtaining hybrid algorithms with combined performance guarantees. Copyright 2011 by the author(s)/owner(s)
Women Writing Africa: The Southern Region
No full textBeginning with a Sesotho women’s lament song from 1842, this volume brings together poetry, songs, newspaper columns, political petitions, personal letters, and prison diaries, along with little-known works by writers such as Bessie Head, Doris Lessing, Yvonne Vera, Zoe Wicomb, and Nadine Gordimer. Each of the 120 texts in the volume is accompanied by a scholarly note that provides detailed background information, while an introductory essay sets the broader historical stage. Approximately one third of the texts are oral in origin, and few have previously been available in book form.Edited by M.J. Daymond, Dorothy Driver, Sheila Meintjes, Leloba Molema, Chiedza Musengezi, Margie Orford, Nobantu Rasebots
From correspondence analysis to multiple and joint correspondence analysis
No full textThe generalization of simple (two-variable) correspondence analysis to more than two categorical variables, commonly referred to as multiple correspondence analysis, is neither obvious nor well-defined. We present two alternative ways of generalizing correspondence analysis, one based on the quantification of the variables and intercorrelation relationships, and the other based on the geometric ideas of simple correspondence analysis. We propose a version of multiple correspondence analysis, with adjusted principal inertias, as the method of choice for the geometric definition, since it contains simple correspondence analysis as an exact special case, which is not the situation of the standard generalizations. We also clarify the issue of supplementary point representation and the properties of joint correspondence analysis, a method that visualizes all two-way relationships between the variables. The methodology is illustrated using data on attitudes to science from the International Social Survey Program on Environment in 1993.Correspondence analysis, eigendecomposition, joint correspondence analysis, multivariate categorical data, questionnaire data, singular value decomposition
Magnetohydrodynamic marginal stability study of force-free reversed field pinch configurations with a surrounding vacuum region
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