Precipitation over the last 3800 years has been reconstructed using modern pollen calibration and precipitation data. A transfer function was then performed via the linear method of partial least squares. By calculating precipitation anomalies, it is estimated that precipitation deficits were greater than surpluses, reaching 21% and <9%, respectively. The period from 50 BC to 800 AD was the dri...

Governments often use multiple policy instruments for pursuing policy goals with mutually reinforcing eff ects. Th ese eff ects include supplementation and substitution. Th is article examines both eff ects by studying two instruments of state budget stabilization policy: general fund balances and budget stabilization funds. States normally maintain budget surpluses in the general fund. In rece...

This article summarizes the current financial and actuarial status of the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program. The data presented are from the 1983 Trustees Report for the program following enactment of the Social Security Amendments of 1983. The actuarial estimates show that benefits can be paid on time throughout the 1980's and for many years thereafter. However, trus...

This paper is concerned with the pricing behaviour of providers of residential care for people with mental health problems. Two aspects of pricing were considered. First, are there differences between providers' market power and their actual mark-up rates (e.g. due to differences in motivation)? Second, do the different governance arrangements used in sectors of the industry, such as unified pu...

In this paper we present a brokerage system for using idle computing resources as a micro-currency for Web services hardly quantifyable with real currencies as downloading stock charts or accessing a search engine. The Locust (LOw cost Computing Utilizing Skimmed idle Time) system acts as a Broker for micro-payable services by demanding a part of the user’s idle computing resources in exchange ...

Challenging the economic neo-classical discourse that links the accumulation of profit to its distribution, implies disentangling the two notions and admitting the possibility, for an organization, to distribute surpluses while maintaining its nonprofit character. Likewise, it implies belying the alleged incompatibility between the notion of nonprofit and economic entrepreneurship. This suggest...

Abstract: Theoretical literature seeking to explain public-debt accumulation exploded in recent years as debt crises emerged in many nations. Empirical evaluation of political-economy theories has, however, lagged that of basic economic-conditions models. This paper joins those beginning to redress the imbalance, operationalizing and evaluating standard electoral and partisan budget-cycles argu...

We describe an experimental comparison of the out-of-equilibrium performance of three allocation mechanisms designed to achieve Lindahl outcomes as Nash equilibria: the mechanisms due to Walker (1981), Kim (1993), and Chen (2002). We find that Chen’s mechanism, which is supermodular, converges closest and most rapidly to its equilibrium. However, we find that the properties that move subjects t...

China’s apparent escape from the external constraints of peripheral late industrialisation in the build up to the global economic crisis of 2007–2009 has been recent and remains tenuous. Before its spectacular trade surpluses of the 2000s, China’s external accounts reflected many of these constraints. Even in the midst of the surplus surge, external vulnerabilities of a peripheral nature have p...

Mayan towns in the Guatemalan highlands hold markets on specific days of the week. A market is attended by local townspeople, by peasants residing in the town’s hinterland, and by vendors bringing wares from other towns. A market functions to bring in goods from other ecological zones, to bring in goods from higher order centers, and to sell surpluses of locally produced goods. To understand ho...