This paper considers a two period consumption-saving model in which future income is uncertain. If the future income is also ambiguous, in the sense of having multiple priors, then ambiguity attitudes also a¤ect the saving decision. Unlike one-period decision problems, ambiguity attitude does more than just distort the probabilities of the various priors. It also distorts the relative importanc...

The 'big five' causes of maternal death in South Africa in the 3 years 1999-2001 were non-pregnancy-related infection (mainly AIDS), complications of hypertension in pregnancy, obstetric haemorrhage, pregnancy-related sepsis and pre-existing medical conditions. Women 35 years and older were at greater risk of dying than younger women, and women in their first pregnancy or who had had 5 or more ...

JCB • VOLUME 168 • NUMBER 3 • 2005 348 Saving varicella from suicide aricella zoster virus (VZV) causes both varicella (chickenpox) and zoster (shingles). VZV spreads throughout the body, but it does so slowly, and virus only emerges extracellularly in the skin where it can spread to other hosts. That behavior is now explained by Zhenglun Zhu (Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA), Jason Chen, An...

The Abrams Main Battle Tank (MBT) has had a relatively good show. Due to its considerable frontal armor protection it has been able to effectively spearhead many tactical maneuvers. But it has weaknesses: a vulnerability to RPG fire from the rear and, more importantly, serious shortcomings in operational and strategic mobility, because this exceptionally heavy vehicle is driven by a very thirst...

Energy has become a scarce and expensive resource. There is a growing awareness in society that energy saving is a critical issue. This paper surveys algorithmic solutions to reduce energy consumption in computing environments. We focus on the system and device level. More specifically, we study power-down mechanisms as well as dynamic speed scaling techniques in modern microprocessors.

The daunting complexity of important financial decisions can lead to procrastination. We evaluate a low-cost intervention that substantially simplifies the retirement savings plan participation decision. Individuals received an opportunity to enroll in a retirement savings plan at a pre-selected contribution rate and asset allocation, allowing them to collapse a multidimensional problem into a ...

The aim of this paper is to understand the determinants of private saving in Colombia and to evaluate the main hypothesis of the sharp decline in the private saving rate observed in the 1990s.There are three main results. First, the fall of the private saving rate had little impact on the level and composition of aggregate demand. Second, total private saving is not determined by corporate beha...

* Cori E. Uccello is the Senior Health Fellow at the American Academy of Actuaries and a consultant for the Urban Institute. This brief was written while Ms. Uccello was a Senior Research Associate at the Urban Institute. The brief is based on a paper by Eric M. Engen, William G. Gale and Cori E. Uccello, “The Adequacy of Household Saving,” published in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity...

There have been substantial differences between the Japanese and U.S. saving rates in the last 40 years, which have motivated extensive research in this area (see Figure 1). Despite much work, economists have not been able to quantitatively account for the differences in saving rates. In an earlier work, Lawrence J. Christiano (1989) shows that a relatively low initial capital intensity alone i...

With the increasing use of electronic media for our daily transactions, we widely distribute our personal information. Once released, controlling the dispersal of these information is virtually impossible. Privacy-enhancing technologies can help to minimize the amount of information that needs to be revealed in transactions, on the one hand, and to limit the dispersal, on the other hand. Unfort...