Towards a Measure of Core Inflation using Singular Spectrum Analysis

This paper constructs a number of possible core measures of inflation using singular spectrum analysis (SSA). Annual changes in monthly inflation are decomposed into its trend, oscillatory and noise components in order to develop an understanding of the trend and cyclicality in South African headline inflation. Three cyclical components with differing amplitude and frequency are identified. The trend and cyclical components of inflation are found to be a good approximation of core inflation, the inertial part of inflation. These core measures are compared with other candidate core measures based on the properties of a good core inflation measure. Generally, the SSA measures outperform commonly used measures of core inflation based on both in‐ and out‐of‐sample performance.     

GDP in the Dutch Cape Colony: The National Accounts of a Slave‐Based Society

New estimates of the gross domestic product of the Dutch Cape Colony (1652‐1795) suggest that the Cape was one of the most prosperous regions during the eighteenth century. This stands in sharp contrast to the perceived view that the Cape was an “economic and social backwater,” a slave economy with slow growth and little progress. Following a national accounts framework, we find that Cape settlers' per capita income is similar to the most prosperous countries of the time – Holland and England. We trace the roots of this result, showing that it is partly explained by a highly skewed population structure and very low dependency ratio of slavery, and attempt to link the eighteenth‐century Cape Colony experience to twentieth‐century South African income levels.     

Silver fetters? The rise and fall of the Chinese price level 1928–34

We show how the silver standard transmitted world silver price fluctuations into China and made the Chinese price level closely linked to the world silver price. Inflation was transmitted between 1929 and 1931 when the world silver price was falling; while deflation was transmitted during 1932 and 1934 when the world silver price was rising. Using micro-level evidence and counterfactual simulations, we show that the exchange rate was the main shock transmission channel, and silver stocks played an insignificant role.     

URBAN HISTORY AND THE FUTURE OF AUSTRALIAN CITIES

Urban growth is a major theme in economic development and a policy imperative for developed countries that seek to create sustainable cities. We argue that the past weighs heavily on the ability of societies to sustainably manage urban environments. The policy implications of urban history are revealed in comparisons of cities across times and between places. The special issue presents some of the best recent work on the economic and social history of Australian cities. We aim to encourage historians to incorporate urban variables into studies of historical processes and to persuade policymakers to consider historical trends in their analysis.     

污水处理厂的脱氮除磷改造

结合城镇污水处理厂脱氮除磷改造工程实例，对老氧化沟进行功能区划分、设备改造：增加好氧区溶解氧浓度，降低缺（厌）区溶解氧浓度；同时适当增容，延长氧化沟水力停留时间和污泥泥龄。运行结果表明，系统出水主要指标稳定达到GB18918—2002一级A标准。     

DEVELOPMENT PRESSURES AND HERITAGE IN THE PERTH CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT, 1950–90

This article examines the remaking of Perth's Central Business District (CBD) during the 1950–90 period. It traces the establishment of a modernist development ethos in Perth's planning, outlines the inadequacy of the City's planning regulations, and analyses the impact on St George's Terrace, the city's main commercial thoroughfare. The City Council was largely incapable of restraining excessive development and the extension of its system of plot ratios encouraged manipulation to increase the height of developments. Several important historic buildings were demolished because there were no legal means of safeguarding the city's heritage until 1990.     

THE 200 KM CITY: BRISBANE,THE GOLD COAST,AND SUNSHINE COAST

Since the 1970s, several Southeast Queensland coastal towns in areas marketed as the ‘Gold Coast’ and the ‘Sunshine Coast’ have merged with each other and joined with Brisbane to become one of the world's longest urban coastal strips. The population of this 200 km long city is fast approaching three million. This urban pattern reflects the preferences of many Australians about where and in what type of housing they would like to live. The unplanned nature of this growth raises several policy challenges relating to resource use and traffic congestion.     

Stuck on gold: Real exchange rate volatility and the rise and fall of the gold standard, 1875-1939

Did the gold standard diminish macroeconomic volatility? Supporters thought so, critics thought not, and theory offers ambiguous messages. Hard regimes like the gold standard limit monetary shocks by tying policymakers' hands; but exchange-rate inflexibility compromises shock absorption in a world of real disturbances and nominal stickiness. A model shows how lack of flexibility affects the transmission of terms-of-trade shocks. Evidence from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century exposes a dramatic change. The classical gold standard did absorb shocks, but the interwar gold standard did not, supporting the view that the interwar gold standard was a poor regime choice.     

Optimal granularity for portfolio choice

Many optimization-based portfolio rules fail to beat the simple 1/N rule out-of-sample because of parameter uncertainty. In this paper we suggest a grouping strategy in which we first form groups of equally weighted stocks and then optimize over the resulting groups only. This strategy aims at balancing the trade-off between the benefits from optimization and the losses from estimation risk. We rely on Monte-Carlo simulations to illustrate the performance of the strategy, and we derive the optimal group size for a simplified setup. Furthermore, we show that estimation risk also has an impact via the criterion by which the assets are sorted into groups (like the expected excess returns or betas), but does not negate the grouping approach. We relate our work to linear asset pricing models, and we conduct out of sample back-tests in order to confirm the validity of our grouping strategy empirically.     

Swine flu and hype: a systematic review of media dramatization of the H1N1 influenza pandemic

Highly disconcerting at the time, in retrospective, the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic looks like much ado about nothing. As a consequence, many accused the media of having created an artificial hype or hysteria around the new virus, thus contributing to unwarranted public fear. The current paper set out to examine the validity of such accusations. We integrated empirical findings on whether the media dramatized H1N1 on a global scale through systematically reviewing prior content-analytic studies. We developed a coding scheme specifying three indicators of dramatized media coverage that – together – inform about how mass media coverage about H1N1 may amplify risk perceptions in the public: (a) the volume of media coverage, (b) the media content presented, particularly an overemphasis of threat while neglecting measures of self-protection and (c) the tone of coverage. Results show that media attention was immense, that news content stressed threat over precautionary measures, while the pattern of coverage tonality remained nebulous due to conflicting findings. The present review also revealed a critical gap in existing knowledge about the tone of media coverage on H1N1, and discusses implications for future research on dramatization of public health risks by the media.