Pensions policy and the recession
1. Retirement provision requires a balance between pensions financed by individual saving and pensions paid by the state from taxes and insurance contributions collected from people of working age. The balance to be struck has to reflect the extent to which it is fair to expect future generations to support the current population in old age as against the fact that people of modest means are likely to find saving for retirement very difficult. 2. The Government's policy approach has been based on the view that, for behavioural reasons, individual retirement saving is best facilitated through automatic enrolment into incentivised pension schemes which prevent people having access to their retirement saving until they reach retirement. The Government takes the view that, in order to maintain a fair balance, pension saving should be encouraged and enabled 3. Policy-makers are probably more concerned than households about the burden that some mechanisms for financing retirement impose on future generations. Indeed some households may not fully recognise the implications for their successors of some forms of finance. 4. This means that an overall assessment of whether the nation is saving enough for its changing population structure may give an answer different to that obtained from the question whether and how far existing households have resources adequate to finance their own old age. 5. Capital gains on housing amount to a transfer of resources to existing home-owners from future generations which do not yet own homes and some of the econometric evidence on household behaviour suggests that these gains do affect consumption; they would not do so if households wanted to take full account of the impact of them on their descendents. 6. Savings rates including capital gains have been very high recently. On the other hand savings rates excluding capital gains but taking account of saving by businesses and by the government (both of which contribute to the resources available to address an ageing population) have been low in the last twenty years, both by comparison with earlier periods and relative to other advanced countries. 7. This suggests that policies to raise savings rates are very timely. 8. However, an argument is frequently put forward that, during a recession, the economy can be supported by promoting consumption rather than saving. This raises the question whether the Government's policies of facilitating retirement saving are misplaced. 9. This study concludes that the country's long-term history of …
Consumption, employment uncertainty, and capital losses
From a household point of view the two major changes associated with the economic disruption of the last eighteen months are, first, that the unemployment rate and presumably the risk of unemployment have risen sharply, and secondly, that there have been large declines in asset prices. It is obviously not possible to say how far either of these changes is permanent, but there is a risk that steady state unemployment may increase, at least for a substantial period of time. Equally, given that asset prices in 2007 were unusually high, it seems most unlikely that they will rapidly recover to the levels of two years ago. This study explores the implications of these two changes for household behaviour. The analysis is conducted using the National Institute Benefit and Tax Model (NIBAX) made available to the Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue and Customs. NIBAX is a simulation model of household behaviour, which operates on the assumption that households plan for the future. This planning is considered to take account of the framework of taxes and benefits that exists, in the light of practical considerations regarding the uncertainty of the future, and the importance of credit constraints. Thus the results tell us how people would behave if they did understand their economic environment and planed rationally for an uncertain future. The structure of this paper is as follows. First, we provide an outline description of the NIBAX model. We then discuss the simulation framework and present simulation results. It turns out that the effects of capital losses depend very much on whether labour supply is exogenous and this is illustrated. Finally conclusions are drawn.
Physical Processes in Inorganic Scintillators
BASIC PRINCIPLES AND PROCESSES Physical Mechanism of Scintillation Creation of Electron Hole Pairs Excitation and Emission of Luminescence Centers Scintillation Materials Halides Oxides and Oxide Systems Chalcogenides Glasses Interaction of Ionizing Radiation with Scintillators High Energy Photons Charged Particles Neutral Particles General Characteristics of Inorganic Scintillators Light Yield Duration of Scintillation Pulse Afterglow Temperature Response Optical Properties Radiation Hardness Density Emission Spectra Mechanical and Chemical Properties Physical Parameters Cost Consideration Scintillator Requirements in Various Applications High Energy Physics Intermediate Energy Physics Positron Emission Tomography Gamma Spectroscopy Energy Resolution Intrinsic Scintillator Resolution Nonproportional Response Time Resolution Low Energy Quanta and Electrons CONVERSION OF ELECTRONIC EXCITATIONS IN SOLIDS Charge Carrier Behaviors Delta Rays Secondaries Excitation of Luminescence Centers Effect of Ionization Density Energy Losses Simple Phenomenological Model Plasmon Model Polaron Model Scintillation Yield Spectra Vacuum Ultraviolet Region Ultrasoft X-Rays X-Rays Gamma Rays Heavy Ionizing Particles INTRINSIC LUMINESCENCE OF INORGANIC SCINTILLATORS Excitonic Luminescence Alkali Halide Crystals Alkaline-Earth Fluorides Ternary Halide Compounds Excitonic-Like Luminescence Cesium Iodide Tungstate and Molybdate Phosphors Core-to-Valence Transitions First Evidence for Radiative Core-to-Valence Transitions Excitation Spectra Emission Spectra Experiment Theory Luminescence Kinetics Experimental Theoretical Investigations Temperature Dependence of Luminescence Parameters Conditions of Detection Prospects for Research EXTRINSIC LUMINESCENCE OF INORGANIC SCINTILLATORS Thallium-Activated Halide Scintillators Crystals with NaCl-Type Structure Crystals with CsCl-Type Structure Other Thallium-Based and Thallium-Doped Crystals Crystals Containing Other ns2 Ions Bismuth Germanate (BGO) Sodium-Activated Cesium Iodide Rare-Earth-Activated Crystals General Considerations Europium-Activated Crystals Cerium-Activated Compounds Preliminary Comments LaF3-CeF3 Systems Cerium Chloride Barium Fluoride Gadolinium-Containing Crystals Lu- and Y-Containing Crystals Nd- and Pr-Activated Crystals DEFECT FORMATION BY IONIZING RADIATION Effect on Scintillator Characteristics Mechanisms of Defect Formation Efficiency of Defect Production Geometrical Factor Separation between F and H Centers Temperature Dependence of Production Efficiency Role of Halogen Ion Impurities Effect of Cation Impurities Formation Time of F-H Pairs Closing Comments References Index