Macroeconomics after Keynes: a reconsideration of the general theory

This reassessment of J. M. Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money results from the author's experience in using Keynes's book as the core of her macroeconomics courses for undergraduates. It is intended to encourage others to bring the General Theory back into mainstream teaching, because it "gives a far richer understanding of the structure of macroeconomic interactions and methods of analysing them than much of what has been written since.

Using Communications to Promote Training within the Non-Profit Sector

The influence of a non-profit organization is often subdued by the lack of skills, knowledge, and capability of the workers and volunteers that flood their sector. This is due to a lack of training and development of both potential and current employees (Riddoch, 2009). Untrained workers often feel undervalued and unengaged, which leads to dissatisfaction in the workplace. In addition, employees who are incompetent cause a decrease in efficiency and productivity, which necessitates the hiring of extra workers, costing additional time and money for the organization. Untrained employees can also reflect poorly on the overall organization, causing a lack of public trust and impairing potential donations. However, training involves spending a great deal of time, money, and effort, and non-profit organizations often do not have these resources readily available. In order for an organization to be composed of educated and skilled staff who are dedicated to their mission, both the individual employees and the organization as a whole must understand and believe in the benefit of training and development. This concept must be promoted to both employees and organizations in order to add value and advance both the individual’s career and the mission of the organization

Metrology of Complex Refractive Index for Solids in the Terahertz Regime Using Frequency Domain Spectroscopy

Frequency domain spectroscopy allows an experimenter to establish optical properties of solids in a wide frequency band including the technically challenging 10 THz region, and in other bands enables metrological comparison between competing techniques. We advance a method for extracting the optical properties of high-index solids using only transmission-mode frequency domain spectroscopy of plane-parallel Fabry-Perot optical flats. We show that different data processing techniques yield different kinds of systematic error, and that some commonly used techniques have inherent systematic errors which are underappreciated. We use model datasets to cross-compare algorithms in isolation from experimental errors, and propose a new algorithm which has qualitatively different systematic errors to its competitors. We show that our proposal is more robust to experimental non-idealities such as noise or apodization, and extract the complex refractive index spectrum of crystalline silicon as a practical example. Finally, we advance the idea that algorithms are complementary rather than competitive, and should be used together as part of a toolbox for better metrology.Comment: 21 pages, 11 figures, 4 appendice

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Savings from Wind Power

Currently in Great Britain, estimates of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions savings that arise from wind power replacing other types of generation are approximated as the average emissions of electricity generation; however, this value is known to be incorrect - it assumes that wind power replaces all different forms of generation equally (which is not the case), and also ignores the detrimental effect that balancing the fluctuating output of wind power can have on the efficiency of conventional plant. There has been considerable debate as to whether the actual emissions displacement of wind power will be higher or lower than the average emissions value. The work presented in this poster provides robust values for this emissions displacement, through a detailed marginal analysis of historical operational data from the National Grid. It demonstrates that, between November 2008 and June 2013 the emissions displacement of wind power has been consistently higher than the published average annual emissions factor, despite the significant detrimental effect that wind power has on the efficiency (and thus emissions intensity) of coal and gas-fired plant