The Measurement and Determinants of Single-Family House Prices

We assess the conceptual and empirical features of a number of house price series for the United States. We then calculate a measure of the net up-grading of the existing stock of houses that took place during the 1950–1989 period and adjust price indexes for this net increase in quality. Judgments about the trend, volatility, and determinants of house prices are shown to depend crucially on which price series is used. The Freddie Mac upgrade-adjusted house price measure rose 5.7% over the past four decades, falling 7.7% from 1950 through 1970 before rising 14.5% from 1970 through 1989. Real house prices declined in the early 1980s due to the increase in real after-tax interest rates and the decline in real materials costs. The recovery of house prices in the late 1980s is attributed to lower unemployment and real after-tax interest rates and particularly to demographic factors associated with the aging of baby boomers.     

Strategies for competitive advantage in nonprofit organisations

In the commercial sector, a range of strategies has been proposed for competitive advantage. Many of these strategies are inappropriate for nonprofit organisations. (The terms ‘nonprofit’, ‘not-for-profit’ and ‘charity’ are used interchangeably in this paper.) This paper proposes four generic strategies for competitive advantage in nonprofit organisations: externally driven, niche, differentiation and awareness. The niche strategy has two sub-strategies: the issue or emotional niche and the geographical niche. Differentiation has three sub-strategies; differentiation by audience, differentiation by product and differentiation by belief. These four strategies are not mutually exclusive and many nonprofit organisations move from one strategy to another. A development model for these transitions is proposed.     

Alcohol consumption,smoking and wages

The good health of an individual is a combination of uncontrollable factors that includes genetics and random events and controllable factors through the regulation of activities such as smoking and drinking. Since the work of Grossman in the 1970s, a significant relationship between health and earnings has been predicted. In this present paper the 1995 Australian National Health Survey is used to examine simultaneously the effects of drinking and smoking on wages. To model the interaction of smoking with alcohol consumption separate models are fitted for smokers and nonsmokers. These models account for potential selectivity bias resulting from the decision to smoke, and endogeneity arising from a potential causal relationship between earnings and alcohol consumption.     

An economic reappraisal of the Melamchi water supply project - Kathmandu,Nepal

This paper examines whether the benefits of the Melamchi water supply project in Nepal are likely to exceed its costs, assuming that high-quality municipal water services can be delivered to households and firms in the urbanized part of the Kathmandu Valley. Monte Carlo simulations are used to explore the sensitivity of the net present value and economic internal rate of return calculations to a wide range of assumptions and input parameters. We find that extreme assumptions are not required to generate large differences in economic feasibility; quite plausible differences in the values of some key parameters can lead to large differences in the economic attractiveness of the project. The results reveal that the three most important influences on net present value and economic internal rate of return are: (i) the discount rate and discounting procedure; (ii) the magnitude of monthly benefits for households connected to the new water system; and (iii) the annual growth rate in monthly benefits of connected households after the project comes on line. Our contribution lies in illustrating, with an actual case study in a developing country, the degree to which cost-benefit calculations of large infrastructure projects are influenced by key economic modeling assumptions and input parameters.JEL Classification: H42, H43, H54, Q25, Q56 Correspondence to: Dale WhittingtonWe would especially like to thank Keiichi Tamaki (ADB) and Ian Hill (Acres International) for their guidance and assistance with this project. We would also like to thank the following individuals for their help during our mission to Kathmandu in May, 2003: Richard W. A. Vokes, Kathie M. Julian, Raj Kumar Malla, Madan Shankar Shrestha, Suman Prasad Sharma and Noor Kumar Tamrakar.     

Savings and investment rates in Latin America: An error correction analysis

Using savings and investment rates from fifteen Latin and Central American countries, this study explores the possibility of a long-run relationship between saving and investment. The analysis consists of regressions unit root tests, and an error correction model developed by Jansen and Schulze (1996) and Jansen (1996). Of the 15 countries, there is evidence to substantiate capital mobility in 13 countries. For Chile and Uruguay, countries that have experienced considerable capital controls, evidence indicates the lack of capital mobility for these two countries.     

Meeting the broadband access infrastructure demands: The promise of Gigabit Ethernet

Global Internet traffic growth continues to create bandwidth demand in the telecommunications network. As 100 Mb/s Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet LANs are widely installed in enterprises, the Intranet bandwidth grows quickly. With active adoption of ADSL and cable modem broadband accesses in the SOHO and residential markets, more data traffic is generated in these markets as well. Presently, most telecom carriers use synchronous optical network/synchronous digital hierarchy (SONET/SDH) equipment to “aggregate” data traffic in the metropolitan area network (MAN) before accessing the Internet backbone network. Because of the intrinsic limitations of SONET/SDH equipment in transporting data traffic, especially in terms of bandwidth scalability and provisioning efficiency, there is a need to find a broadband access solution that can overcome the drawbacks of SONET/SDH. Because the inherent simplicity of the technology, Ethernet offers cost effectiveness, ease of networking, packet-based IP friendly protocol, and rapid provisioning advantages while competing with other networking technologies. These advantages coupled with the newly developed gigabit WAN capability have well-positioned Gigabit Ethernet as a compelling technology to break the bandwidth bottleneck in the MAN environment. In this paper, we review the enhancement of Gigabit Ethernet technology and discuss the pros and cons of using Gigabit Ethernet technology in the MAN. We also address the implications of this technology evolution on telecom carriers.