Second Round

For thousands of years the immortal Gilgamesh has presided over the legendary Ur-Bar, witnessing history unfold from within its walls. Some days it is a rural tavern, others a fashionable wine shop. It may appear as a hidden speakeasy or take on the form of your neighborhood local. For most patrons it is simply a place to quench their thirst, but for a rare few the Ur-Bar is where they will meet their destiny. Join R.K. Nickel, Rachel Atwood, Kari Sperring, Jean Marie Ward, Gini Koch, Jacey Bedford, William Leisner, Garth Nix, Diana Pharaoh Francis, David Keener, Mike Marcus, Kristine Smith, Aaron M. Roth, and Juliet E. McKenna as they recount all new tales from the Ur-Bar. From humor to horror, from the Roman Empire to Martian Colonies, there’s something to please everyone. Just remember to beware when the mysterious bartender offers you the house special ...

This book focuses on the exchange rate pass-through (ERPT), second round effects and the inflation process in South Africa. The authors demonstrate that magnitudes of the second round effects of the exchange rate depreciation and oil price shocks depend on inflation regimes. The impact of positive oil price shocks on inflation is weakened by monetary policy credibility. Evidence shows the influence of oil price on unit labour costs and correlation between exchange rate changes and inflation has weakened. In addition, ERPT is reduced by low business and consumer confidence, high trade openness, low inflation and high exchange rate volatility which weaken real economic activity. Both monetary and fiscal policy credibility lowers the sizes of ERPT to inflation and inflation expectations. Fiscal policy via fuel levies, administered prices and public transport inflation channel impacts the responses of monetary policy to inflation shocks. The authors show that second round effects contribute very little to wage inflation following an exchange rate depreciation shock. Both lending rate and household consumption responds asymmetrical to repo rate changes. This book will appeal to policymakers, students, academics and analysts.

The second round of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (MHWS), a nationally and regionally representative phone survey, was implemented between April and June 2022. It follows from a first round that was carried out between December 2021 and February 2022. This report discusses the findings from the second round related to shocks, livelihoods, coping strategies and food security. We find that 19.6 percent of households reported security and climatic shocks in the three months prior to their interview. Further, there is an uptick in reported crime, violence,and insecurity across communities in the second round, compared with the first. Theft is also an important issue, with 3.2 percent of households burglarized. Fifty-five percent of households report a lower income in the beginning of 2022 compared to 12 months earlier. Eighty-three percent of households use at least one coping strategy to meet daily needs during the month prior to the survey. The three most common copying strategies are spending savings, reducing nonfood expenditure, and reducing food expenditure. Seventeen percent of households have poor or borderline food consumption, more than in round one (R1), when the share was 9.4 percent. This change is in part driven by a decrease in animal-sourced food consumption, from 5.0 days a week in R1, to 3.9 days a week in round two (R2). Finally, hunger is an issue for 4.0 percent of households. Regression analysis reveals that self-reported community insecurity and climatic shocks are strongly associated with negative outcomes for income, coping, and food security. Finally, households in Kayah and Chin are the most vulnerable; they report insecurity, violence, and crime in their communities and compared to the other states/regions are more likely to have income loss, poor food consumption and hunger.

Egypt introduced the Takaful and Karama Program (TKP), a pair of targeted cash transfer schemes in March 2015. Takaful and Karama was designed as a conditional cash transfer program providing income support targeted to the poor and most vulnerable; namely poor families with children (under 18 years of age), poor elderly (aged 65 years and above) and persons with severe disability. Originally implemented as an unconditional cash transfer, the program is now a conditional cash transfer program, but the conditionalities have yet to be monitored. Starting July 2017, households received EGP60 for each child under 6 years old, EGP80 for each child in primary education, EGP100 for children in preparatory education, and EGP140 for secondary education. As of June 2017, 90% of TKP beneficiaries were women. In 2018, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) completed the first round of impact evaluation of TKP, based on household survey data collected after the first 15 months of the program. The evaluation found that TKP substantially improved wellbeing for poor households, increasing household consumption per adult equivalent by 8.4 percent. and reducing the probability that a beneficiary household is poor (< USD1.90 per capita per day) by 11.4 percentage points, which is comparable to several of the well-known, large-scale programs in Latin America where consumption impacts are on the order of 7-8 percent.

Round Table 82 compares the experiences of a number of countries and seeks to determine what the prospects are for the development of regional transport.

This Round Table features three reports on international coach service: one from italy, one from the Netherlands and one from Sweden.

The pass-through effects of oil price shocks on wage and consumer price inflation vary with the states or structural characteristics of an economy. The effects have declined over time in Europe and been higher in emerging European economies than in advanced economies. The pass-through to wages is found to have been higher when the prevailing level of inflation was higher or when the degrees of unionization and centralized bargaining were higher, while lower under a higher credibility of monetary policy. The effects of oil price shocks on core inflation and inflation expectations are consistent with their effects on wages.