THE ROLE OF SOCIAL GRANTS IN MITIGATING THE SOCIO‐ECONOMIC IMPACT OF HIV/AIDS IN TWO FREE STATE COMMUNITIES1

Social grants may play an important role in mitigating the impact of HIV/AIDS. Eligibility for these grants is driven in part by the increasing burden of chronic illness, the mounting orphan crisis and the impoverishment of households associated with the epidemic. This article investigates the role of social grants in mitigating the socio‐economic impact of HIV/AIDS in South Africa, using data from a panel study on the household impact of the epidemic. Social grants reduce inequality and decrease the prevalence, depth and severity of poverty in affected households. However, these transfers also have disincentive effects on employment, while non‐uptake is in some cases higher amongst the poorest.     

A Simple Supermodular Mechanism that Implements Lindahl Allocations

This paper introduces a new incentive‐compatible mechanism which, for general preference environments, implements Lindahl allocations as Nash equilibria. We provide an example that having a mechanism induce a supermodular game is not typically sufficient to guarantee dynamic stability of equilibrium. However, for the new mechanism, inducing a supermodular game guarantees that the best reply mapping is a contraction. Thus, this new mechanism provides a connection between the desirable welfare properties of Lindahl allocations and the theoretical/convergence properties of games whose best reply mappings are a contraction.     

Housing Collateral, Consumption Insurance, and Risk Premia: An Empirical Perspective

In a model with housing collateral, the ratio of housing wealth to human wealth shifts the conditional distribution of asset prices and consumption growth. A decrease in house prices reduces the collateral value of housing, increases household exposure to idiosyncratic risk, and increases the conditional market price of risk. Using aggregate data for the United States, we find that a decrease in the ratio of housing wealth to human wealth predicts higher returns on stocks. Conditional on this ratio, the covariance of returns with aggregate risk factors explains 80% of the cross‐sectional variation in annual size and book‐to‐market portfolio returns.     

AN EMPIRICAL TEST OF THE RESOURCE-BASED THEORY: STRATEGIC REGULATION IN THE DUTCH AUDIT INDUSTRY

The resource-based view of the firm is a recent strategic management theory that seeks to identify the resources that may provide firms with a sustainable competitive advantage. This paper has two purposes. First, the paper relates strategic management arguments to parallel lines of reasoning in industrial organization theory and argues that strategic regulation is a major source of sustainable competitive advantage. The second purpose of the paper is to report the results of an empirical test of the resource-based theory on the basis of a longitudinal data set on the postwar history of the Dutch audit industry. A key determinant of this history proves to be strategic regulation, which stimulates demand for audit services and protects rent-producing resources.     

Statistische eigenschappen van een vlambeveiliging met behulp van een gasontladingsbuis welke gevoelig is voor ultraviolet licht

Summary  The output voltage of a detector circuit containing a gas-filled tube sensitive to ultraviolet radiation can be used to indicate whether a flame is still burning or not. As long as the flame is burning the random nature of the discharges of the tube leads to random fluctuations in the output voltage, which can be considered as a Markov-process with dependent increments. The problem is to select an alarm level for the output voltage with a suitable chosen probability of exceedance while the flame is burning, in order to limit the probability of false alarm. In this article a method is given for determining upper and lower bounds for the distribution function of the output voltage at any moment, answering the question of the alarm level to be chosen. Results are given for a special circuit.