The Politics of Inequality as Organised Spectacle: Why the Swiss Do Not Want to Tax the Rich

In 2015, Swiss voters had the opportunity to impose a tax on the super rich in a popular vote and thereby fund a redistributive policy. However, a large majority voted against its seemingly obvious self-interest and rejected the tax. We propose an explanation for this puzzling outcome, bridging the usually separate behavioralist and institutionalist perspectives on the politics of inequality. We start from the observation that political economy tends to neglect processes of preference formation. Theorising preferences as socially constructed, we show that interest groups played a major role in shaping the outcome of the vote. Business frames were multiplied through allied parties and the media and had a major impact on individual voting behaviour. In addition, we demonstrate that interest groups representing business interests derive the content of their communication from business’s structurally privileged position in the capitalist economy. Specifically, creating uncertainty about possible perverse effects of government policies on jobs and growth is a powerful tool to undermine popular support. Frames based on this structural power ultimately explain why the Swiss refrained from ‘soaking the rich.’     

An innovation to improve health outcomes in Amajuba district,KwaZulu-Natal,South Africa

Systems’ thinking places high value on understanding the context. This study focused on the collection of disaggregated data in order to understand the context, to facilitate improvement of health outcomes. The aim of this article was to assess the implementation of municipal ward-based health data collection (disaggregated data) and health care workers’ perceptions of this data collection process. This cross-sectional study used mixed methods in Amajuba district. The participants were professional nurses at the Primary Health Care level. Of the 131 respondents, 123 (93.9%) collected municipal ward-based health data, and found it useful. Opportunities for improving data collection were identified. Disaggregation of the data at ward level contributes to a better understanding of the target population’s health, assists planning for health needs and enables provision of targeted interventions in order to improve health outcomes, to prevent financial regression and waste of health resources.     

Estimating yield curves of the U.S. Treasury securities: An interpolation approach

Following the approach of interpolation, this paper proposes the multiple exponential decay model to fit yield curves for both the U.S. TIPS market and the conventional Treasury security market. Several estimation methods, including the unconstrained/constrained nonlinear minimization, quadratic programming, and the iterative linear least squares, are applied to estimate the unknown parameters according to different curve‐fitting purposes. Comparisons between the proposed model and the alternatives show that the multiple exponential decay successfully (1) adapts to a variety of shapes associated with yield curves, (2) (partially) keeps in line with the economic interpretations of Nelson–Siegel summarized by Diebold and Li ( 2006 ), and (3) dominates the competing models in curve‐fitting performance measured by mean fitted‐price errors over the sample period. In addition, the exact specification of a nonparametric interpolation model is pinned down by applying three statistical tools, which enable us to jointly take into account validity, optimality, and parsimoniousness of the proposed model.     

构造信贷市场资金价格形成机制分析——对定南县贷款利率市场化改革的个案研究

文章通过对江西定南县利率改革试点进行个案研究，从宏观和微观两个层面探讨了如何构造信贷市场资金价格形成机制。     

高职学生英语学习心理分析

文章通过调查探讨了高职学生英语学习存在的问题,透过数据分析了问题存在的心理原因,并提出了改善措施,以期提高高职学生英语学习的质量。     

城市房屋拆迁中的公共利益在程序法上的界定——兼评《城市房屋拆迁管理条例》第十六条

公共利益内涵在立法上的缺失,造成大量个人利益被侵犯的案例,在城市房屋拆迁中尤其突出。本文通过探讨如何从程序上赋予受公共利益影响者参与对公共利益内涵的确定以及在个人利益受到侵犯时给予司法救济的途径的问题,试图从法律程序上限制政府对公共利益的滥用,并最大程度地维护公民的个人利益,以此暂时回避对公共利益内涵问题的探讨。     

Why Money Growth Determines Inflation in the Long Run: Answering the Woodford Critique

Woodford argues that it is not appropriate to regard inflation in the steady state of New Keynesian models as determined by steady‐state money growth. Woodford instead argues that the intercept term in the monetary authority's interest rate policy rule determines steady‐state inflation. In this paper, I offer an alternative interpretation of steady‐state behavior, according to which it is appropriate to regard steady‐state inflation as determined by steady‐state money growth. The argument relies on traditional interpretations of the central bank's power in the long run and appeals to model properties that are common to textbook and New Keynesian analysis. According to this argument, the only way the central bank can control interest rates in the long run is via affecting inflation, and its only means available for determining inflation is by determining the money growth rate.     

江苏省耕地保护区划研究

文章以江苏省58个县级行政区为区划单元,应用主成分析法得出影响耕地保护的4个主成分,在此基础上应用聚类分析法初步得出耕地保护区,再结合定性分析最后确定六大耕地保护区。从区划结果看,与江苏省综合农业区划相一致,与客观实际能很好地吻合,说明应用综合数值分析模型研究耕地保护区划是成功的。最后,对得出的六大耕地保护区进行了简要的分析,为有计划分区制定耕地保护政策、措施提供了理论基础。     

Relative Guarantees

Many real-world financial contracts have some sort of minimum rate of return guarantee included. One class of these guarantees is so-called relative guarantees, i.e., guarantees where the minimum guaranteed rate of return is given as a function of the stochastic return on a reference portfolio. These guarantees are the topic of this paper. We analyse a wide range of different functional specifications for the minimum guaranteed rate of return, hereunder both so-called maturity and multi-period guarantees. Several closed form solutions are presented.