Periods Of Imbalance Research Articles

HOUSE PRICES, RENTAL COSTS, AND MORTGAGE INTEREST RATES

Studies have typically adopted the price-rent ratio to determine whether housing exuberance exists and the periods of imbalance between house prices and rental costs. Using the price-rent ratio to conduct tests without considering the effects of mortgage interest rates on user costs may overestimate episodes of exuberance. This study uses data of the overall housing market and those of 10 major metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the United States from 1979Q1 to 2018Q1 to evaluate whether housing exuberance exists in the markets; the results indicate that all the MSAs experienced episodes of exuberance at different times and the overall housing U.S. market was overheated from 1998Q2 to 2007Q3. By considering mortgage rates and using the user-cost-rent ratio, we further determine that short-term housing exuberance emerged in only two MSAs, Los Angeles and Miami, in 2006Q2, which was followed by immediate corrections. Thus, the research results of this study signify that only use the price-rent ratio to determine whether or not rational housing tenure choice made by traders exists is not sufficient. This study provides evidence showing that the method incorporating mortgage interest rates tends to obtain an equilibrium relationship between the rental and housing markets, indicating interest rates play an important role in housing tenure choice.

Workplace stress, burnout and coping: a qualitative study of the experiences of Australian disability support workers.

Disability support workers (DSWs) are the backbone of contemporary disability support services and the interface through which disability philosophies and policies are translated into practical action. DSWs often experience workplace stress and burnout, resulting in a high turnover rate of employees within the non-professional disability service workforce. The full implementation of the National Disability Insurance Schemein Australia is set to intensify the current challenges of attracting and retaining DSWs, as the role becomes characterised by greater demands, ambiguity and conflict. The aim of this study was to explore DSWs' perceptions of enjoyable and challenging aspects of disability support work, sources of stress and burnout and the strategies they use to cope when these issues arise. Twelve DSWs workers providing support for adults living with intellectual and physical disabilities were interviewed. Thematic analysis revealed a superordinate theme of 'Balance' comprising three sub-themes: 'Balancing Negatives and Positives', 'Periods of Imbalance', and 'Strategies to Reclaim Balance'. Participants spoke of the rewarding and uplifting times in their job such as watching a client learn new skills and being shown appreciation. These moments were contrasted by emotionally and physically draining aspects of their work, including challenging client behaviour, earning a low income, and having limited power to make decisions. Participants described periods of imbalance, wherein the negatives of their job outweighed the positives, resulting in stress and sometimes burnout. Participants often had to actively seek support and tended to rely on their own strategies to manage stress. Findings suggest that organisational support together with workplace interventions that support DSWs to perceive the positive aspects of their work, such as acceptance and mindfulness-based approaches, may help to limit experiences of stress and burnout. The further development and evaluation of emotion-focused workplace therapies, and interventions that consider organisational (macro) factors is suggested.

Movements of Long-Term Capital and the Adjustment Process

T HROUGH the wide range of Professor Harris' contributions to economics -in his writing, his teaching, his creative role as an editor, and his participation in governmentone characteristic stands dominant among the many. He has injected the vitality of fresh inquiry into every pursuit to which his lively interests have led him. His two most recent careers, at the Treasury and in California, continue to offer the scope and the challenge which he has met with such incredible versatility through the Harvard years. And it is in the spirit of one who has learned much from him not only in trying to find answers but also in formulating questions -that I would like to add a few more questions to the many that he has posed, and the many he has answered, on the processes of payments adjustment. How many of us have, I wonder, been taunted by some of these same questions as we puzzled along our separate ways toward a reconciliation between text and teacher in those ever-changing, ever-lasting Haberler-Harris courses on international trade? And how few of us, at least among my own pre-war vintage, could have thought that the major uses we would find for all of this would be in attempting to find acceptable norms for avoiding the anarchy of unimpeded freedom, rather than for resisting the strangulation of autarky. The leading countries of the non-communist world are now all learning again to live with convertible currencies for current account, and some for capital account, transactions. Most have for more than a decade been committed to an orderly codification of procedures for limiting the constraints that individual countries place upon the flows of goods from one to another. But the vast area that is still left without systematic and comprehensive attention from governments, and for which there is as yet no satisfactory theoretical formulation to use as a starting point under today's conditions, is that of long-term capital movements. Much has evolved, to be sure, concerning short-term capital movements. An alert sensitivity is developing -aided by the increasingly close and frequent consultations among governments and central banks that the jet age now permits -to the sometimes delicate inter-relations between flows of short-term funds and the effectiveness of monetary policy in any country. As a result, a very thorough reappraisal has been set off, in nearly every one of the leading countries, examining the potentialities for a changing mix among monetary, fiscal, and incomes policies potentialities that take account of the requirements of external as well as internal balance. Both in government policy and in underlying economic theory, however, long-term capital flows continue to be the object mainly of improvised rationalization for whatever has been going on. Apart from various efforts to multilateralize development aid, there has not as yet been a sustained effort to work toward a consensus on the role of movements of longterm capital in the adjustment process. There has been interest, primarily among some of the international organizations, in working toward a codification of procedures. But that does not go to the fundamental need for a reconsideration of the influence that movements of long-term capital may be able to exert as a balancing force. That need has now become compelling in a convertible world of gradually freer trade, where general commitments to high employment, continuing growth, price stability, and fixed exchange rates effectively rule out other patterns of adjustment that were familiar in the textbooks, if not always in the practices, of earlier years. Regardless of their merit, these postwar commitments are, in fact, constraints on the ready correction of surpluses or deficits in the overall external accounts of the various leading countries. Indeed, it is very largely on this account that a plausible case has been made for the likelihood that periods of imbalance may