让援助更为明智

为全世界儿童提供初等学校教育将是一项漫长而且耗费甚大的工程。幸好，自1990年以来，主要的捐助者极大地增加了他们对于总体教育，特别是初等教育的官方发展援助（ODA）。2003年对所有教育目标的捐赠承诺额达到了67亿美元，是6年前承诺额真实数量的两倍以上。对于初等教育的承诺额增加得甚至更快，在1990—2003年间增长了四倍，达到19亿美元。对于初等教育的援助比总体ODA增长的更快，其在承诺额中的份额从1990年的0．4％增长到2003年的1．9％（见图1和图2）。     

Food Stamp Benefits and Child Poverty

In 2000, 8.8 million children lived in households participating in the Food Stamp Program, making this assistance program a crucial component of the social safety net. Despite its importance, little research has examined food stamps' effect on children's overall well-being. Using the Current Population Survey from 1989 to 2001, we consider the impact of food stamps on three measures of poverty—the headcount, the poverty gap, and the squared poverty gap. We find that in comparison to the headcount measure, food stamp benefits lead to large reductions in the poverty gap and squared poverty gap measures.     

Sensitivity Analysis And Schemes Of Arrangement

Formal mathematical techniques are being used increasingly as aids to commercial decision-making. We propose that those deciding whether to liquidate or trade-out should, as a matter of course, have sufficient information to enable sensitivity analysis on any forecast returns. Sensitivity analyses are notably lacking in documentation used for predicting the outcomes of schemes of arrangement such as the complex Estate Mortgage Trusts (EMT) moratorium on the withdrawal of funds by unitholders. This article details the outcomes of some schemes of arrangement in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s and discusses the EMT moratorium. The moratorium procedures provide the setting and data for simulations and sensitivity analyses. Coupled with the evidence provided by Dean (1977, 1983) and Aitken (1981), this suggests a need for information on the expected timing of payouts to enable sensitivity analysis whenever a scheme involves delayed distributions.     

Reserve-requirement changes,open-market operations,and banks' asset mix

Conclusion This paper has demonstrated, in terms of a characteristics-space model of banks' demand for earning assets, that banks' desired ratio of securities to loans willfall when deposits are restricted by means of a raised reserve requirement, butremain constant orrise when the restriction is due to open-market sales (assuming that the differential between loan and security rates of interest does not widen). It is then argued that open-market sales can be judged superior to raised reserve requirements as an instrument of monetary restriction according to at least six criteria. A necessary and sufficient condition for this judgement by each criterion is that banks' asset mix respond to deposit contraction in the manner predicted by our model.     

Introduction to Special Issue on the Economics of Information in Real Estate Markets

The articles featured in this issue are introduced, their relationships noted, and their key points highlighted.