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This brief applies a simple framework for assessing the relative potential for Rotary membership growth in different geographic areas. The analysis is relative in that areas are compared to each other through an econometric procedure. By design about half of the areas are considered as performing comparatively well in that they have membership rates above expectations. The other areas are considered as performing less well because they have membership rates below expectations, and thereby more potential for growth. The simulations entail assessing how much membership growth could be achieved by raising the performance of less well performing areas to their expected levels of performance. That is, relative membership potential gains are estimated by raising the performance of less well performing areas to the average performance in zone 33 as a whole, taking into account the fact that expected membership rates differ between areas. The analysis is conducted for Rotary zone 33 as a whole, which covers part of the Mid Atlantic and South Atlantic regions of the United States, but the results provided in this brief are for 14 geographic areas within district 7690, which covers parts of North Carolina. The results suggest that district 7690 has an average Rotary membership rate, but with substantial potential for membership growth.

Abstract Institutional research should be ready to move to the next stage, a stage that is, as argued by this paper, characterized by a more comprehensive approach integrating economics, politics, and social culture. The theoretical foundation for such a move exists, as the interconnection between political institutions and economic institutions has been addressed by North, Fukuyama, and Acemoglu, and the influences of cultural heritage on institutional choices have further been mentioned by North and Huntington. Another shift in institutional research proposed by this paper is a change from general to specific solutions because the institutional characteristics become individualized after considering the impacts of culture heritage. This paper presents the correlations between political and economic institutions and the unique characteristics of political orders taking different developmental paths using a data analysis based on the World Governance Index (WGI) and other development indicators. The paper also discusses the influences of cultural heritage on institution’s choice of transformation path and proposes a institutional research framework.

This fascicle is a continuation of a first document entitled "Introduction to statistical and probabilistic method" and aims to provide a some clarifications and details on the conduct of parametric tests. For this purpose, it focuses on the specific case of conformity test. A particular special emphasis is put on on the calculation of test statistics, their distributions laws but also on the decision rules for the concluding the test. We also conduct an extensive discussion on the notions Type I error but also the notion of p-value necessary for the construction and the conclusion of the test.

This book tells the story of a largely forgotten enterprise: that of the International Scientific Committee on Price History. If this endeavour can nevertheless still be of interest today, it is not only because failures offer insights into social dynamics as well as successes do ; nor is it solely because we find, gathered around this failed enquiry, a slew of very famous names, and names indeed which one would not expect to stumble upon in this context – there is Beveridge and Kautsky, Bloch and Malinowski. First and foremost, it is because the object of this enquiry offers a rare opportunity to bridge the divide between national scientific traditions as well as between disciplines – such as history and economy, or epistemology and the sociology of scientific knowledge. Thus, the initially narrow scope of this study opens up to a vast field of enquiry, as the object of this study shifts to determining how a particular class of objects – those deemed scientific – are produced, and how epistemological, theoretical and institutional issues interact in this process. Indeed, the conversion of past prices (as they appear in the archives) into historical prices taken as scientific facts, raises diverse and crucial questions : on the respective standing of social and natural sciences, about monetarism, or on the transition from the academic field of the Humboldtian scholar to that of big science. Viewed through the prism of this particular case, these issues will appear in a new light for the simple reason that, in the case at hand, fields of enquiry which are ordinarily examined independently are found to be tightly interrelated.

We present and assess extensive statistics regarding poverty rates and depths for Vancouver, B.C., and Canada. We show that not only are single adults in B.C. the most likely to experience poverty, but they also experience the deepest level of poverty. Both single adults and single parents who are younger (i.e., ages 18–24) are more likely to be in poverty and are deeper in poverty than single older persons (i.e., 65+) or those who live as couples. These poverty rates and depths of poverty remain high for single adults and single parents as they get older (i.e., ages 26–65), at which point the depth of poverty decreases. Lastly, poverty tends to be experienced at higher levels by women than by men when conditioning on family type. For these reasons, B.C. government will have to consider these groups in reforms focused on addressing poverty reduction targets.

This paper examines the effects of intraregional spillovers propagated by Nigeria and South Africa on real economic activities and interest rates movement in three African regional blocs (i.e., ECOWAS, SADC and CEMAC) employing the factor augmented VAR (FAVAR) modelling approach over the period 1980Q2–2015Q1. Moreover, a counterfactual analysis, based on the same modelling approach, is conducted to assess what would happen to the real activities and monetary policy indicators of the three regional blocs in the absence of real and monetary shocks from the two countries. The paper finds that while the influence of Nigeria is limited to ECOWAS, South Africa plays an influential role on the real sectors and financial systems of all the regional blocs, albeit with short-lived impacts on ECOWAS and CEMAC. Moreover, the results of the counterfactual analysis show that real and financial activities in the SADC regions are highly influenced by South Africa. Our result suggests that countries with proper coordination of macroeconomic and monetary policies as well as organised financial market should be the sources of contagion and spillover, mostly at regional level.

Social scientists have long speculated about the extent of agents' rationality, especially in the context of voting. However, existing attempts at classifying voters as (ir)rational have been hampered by the fact that preference orderings and, thus, optimal strategies are generally unobserved. Exploiting the incentive structure of Germany's electoral system, this paper develops a novel set of empirical tests in order to pit the canonical rational choice model against behavioral theories according to which voters simply choose their most preferred candidate. The results indicate that neither approach can rationalize the most-salient features of the data. The findings are consistent, however, with a simple hybrid model in which boundedly rational agents suffer a small psychic cost from acting strategically.

In this article, I evaluate the challenges related to the European Commission’s output gap method of calculating the structural budgetary position, and assess its bottom-up alternatives in the EU’s fiscal framework using the Finnish data for the years 1984-2014. The results reinforce the impression of the limited capacity of the output gap method to predict cyclical changes in real time and suggest that using the output gap method to steer fiscal policy tends to lead to a procyclical policy (stimulus in upturns and austerity in downturns). The bottom-up assessment methods that are based on discretionary fiscal policy measures appear to work better, and using them to steer the fiscal policy could make the policy more countercyclical.

This study examines the relationship between education expenditure and economic growth in Mauritius. The study employed the ARDL bounds testing methodology for the period 1976 to 2016. The study found that education expenditure Granger causes economic growth in Mauritius in the short run. In addition, the study also found that economic growth does not Granger cause education expenditure in Mauritius in the short run. However, in the long-run, the study found that there are long-run relationships between education expenditure and economic growth in both equations; and this means that an increase in either of the variables will eventually lead to an increase in the other variable. The study, therefore, found support for the hypothesis that investment in education raises economic growth. This means that Mauritius has the potential to benefit from further investments in education in the future.

As many central banks contemplate the normalization of monetary policy, their focus is turning to the promise of macroprudential policy as a tool to manage possible future systemic risk in financial markets. Janet Yellen and Mario Draghi, among others, are pinning much of their hopes for managing financial stability in the context of Basel III on macroprudentialism. Despite central banks’ clear intention that this policy will play a significant role in developed economies, few policymakers or financial players know what macroprudential policy is, much less how to assess its efficacy or necessity. The paper is a shorter version of a report on the same subject. It aims to clarify the concept of macroprudential policy for a broader audience, cultivating a better understanding of these tools and their implications for broader monetary policy going forward.