MVD Quarterly Report on Building Project quarter ending March 31, 2007

Pursuant to Section 1 of House File 466 of the 81st General Assembly, the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) is required to make quarterly reports to the Legislative Council regarding the progress of the building project for the Motor Vehicle Division and to inform the General Assembly of any significant delays or unanticipated expenditures. During the quarter ending March 31, 2007, the project progressed as planned. The project is on schedule and no unanticipated expenditures have been made.

Quarterly Report of the Building Project for the Motor Vehicle Division

Pursuant to Section 1 of House File 466 of the 81st General Assembly, the Iowa Department of Transportation is required to make quarterly reports to the Legislative Council regarding the progress of the building project for the Motor Vehicle Division. During the quarter ending June 30, 2007, the project was delayed by two weeks. The Motor Vehicle Division moved into the new Ankeny facility on June 22 and was operational Monday, June 25. The driver's license stations reopened as scheduled Tuesday, June 26, at the Ankeny facility as well as the Oliver Plaza renewal location.

Team Building em Portugal e sua Importância na Motivação das Equipas

Para enfrentar os desafios com que se deparam actualmente, as empresas deverão apostar mais nos seus colaboradores, e principalmente, preocupar-se em criar estímulos, de forma a motivá-los para que possam alcançar tanto os objectivos da organização quanto os objectivos pessoais. Pois pensar apenas em obter lucro e produtividade não incrementando politicas e práticas que privilegiem os recursos humanos, certamente não será uma boa opção. As actividades de Team Building estão a obter cada vez mais importância no seio das organizações, grandes empresas e multinacionais. Estão a tornar-se cada vez mais cruciais para qualquer empresa, dadas as melhorias verificadas no ambiente de trabalho e, consequentemente conduzem a um aumento de produtividade. Existem diversas actividades que se realizadas têm o objectivo de aumentar o grau de motivação dos colaboradores, sendo que, de acordo com as necessidades e pretensões, as empresas podem adoptar as actividades que mais se adequam à sua situação. O recurso ao Team Building como um instrumento de motivação dos colaboradores é actualmente muito praticado nas organizações que utilizam estilos de gestão modernos e orientados para a estratégia. Neste sentido, pretende-se ilustrar as melhorias que o Team Building tem vindo a desempenhar particularmente numa empresa portuguesa. Em termos metodológicos, recorreu-se ao método do estudo de caso qualitativo, à técnica de inquérito por questionário e à pesquisa bibliográfica.

Insider Trading and Real Investment

In this paper I analyze the effects of insider trading on real investmentand the insurance role of financial markets. There is a single entrepreneurwho, at a first stage, chooses the level of investment in a risky business.At the second stage, an asset with random payoff is issued and then the entrepreneurreceives some privileged information on the likely realization of productionreturn. At the third stage, trading occurs on the asset market, where theentrepreneur faces the aggregate demand coming from a continuum of rationaluniformed traders and some noise traders. I compare the equilibrium withinsider trading (when the entrepreneur trades on her inside information in theasset market) with the equilibrium in the same market without insider trading. Ifind that permitting insider trading tends to decrease the level of realinvestment. Moreover, the asset market is thinner and the entrepreneur's netsupply of the asset and the hedge ratio are lower, although the asset priceis more informative and volatile.

Improving Transition Outcomes: Henry County Transition Partners: Infrastructure Building Replication Template

Replication Template for Improving Transition Outcomes Henry County Transition Partners Prototype. This concise document will help you build a community team and the infrastructure necessary to implement and plan for sustaining specific initiatives.

Improving Transition Outcomes: Capacity Building Forum: Dissemination of Promising Transition Practices

Information on the Promising Transition Practices shared at the September 28, 2007 Capacity Building Forum sponsored by Improving Transition Outcomes with Iowa Vocational Rehabilitation Services.

Audit of Academic Building Revenue Bond Funds of Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University) as of and for the year ended June 30, 2007

Audit of Academic Building Revenue Bond Funds of Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University) as of and for the year ended June 30, 2007

Real wage rigidities and the new Keynesian model

Most central banks perceive a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and stabilizing the gap between output and desired output. However, the standard new Keynesian framework implies no such trade-off. In that framework, stabilizing inflation is equivalent to stabilizing the welfare-relevant output gap. In this paper, we argue that this property of the new Keynesian framework, which we call the divine coincidence, is due to a special feature of the model: the absence of non trivial real imperfections.We focus on one such real imperfection, namely, real wage rigidities. When the baseline new Keynesian model is extended to allow for real wage rigidities, the divine coincidence disappears, and central banks indeed face a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and stabilizing the welfare-relevant output gap. We show that not only does the extended model have more realistic normative implications, but it also has appealing positive properties. In particular, it provides a natural interpretation for the dynamic inflation-unemployment relation found in the data.

The macroeconomic effects of German unification: Real adjustments and the welfare state

We study the effects of German unification in a model with capital accumulation, skill differences and a welfare state. We argue that this event is similar to a mass migration of low-skilled agents holding no capital into a foreign country. Absent a welfare state, we observe an investment boom, depressed output and employment conditions. Capital owners and high-skilled agents are willing to give up to 4% of per-capita consumption to favor unification. When a welfare state exists the investment boom disappears and the recession is prolonged. Now, with unification, capital owners and high-skilled agents lose 4% of per-capita consumption.

The housing boom and forest fires

This paper provides evidence that the combination of land-use restrictions and anincreasing demand for housing can create incentives to induce forest fires as a means tocircumvent regulation and increase the supply of land available for residential construction.I estimate the effect of the price of housing on the incidence of forest fires using Spanishdata by region for 1991-2005. The results suggest that higher house prices led to asignificant increase in the incidence of forest fires in a region. I also find that the increasedincidence of forest fires led to a subsequent reduction in forest area and an increase in urbanland area. This evidence supports the claims often found in the media that propertyspeculators trying to build in forest land may be behind the recent increases in the incidenceof forest fires in Mediterranean countries.

Iowa Budget Report, Building on our Progress: Protecting our Priorities, 2009

*********** Some files are large and will take time to load. *********** Seven Files: 1)Report Cover, 2)Table of Contents, 3)Statewide Financial Summaries, 4)Department Budgets, 5)Capitol Projects, 6)Associated Financial Documents, 7)Budget Report. To Members of the 82nd General Assembly, As we begin the second year of our Administration, we are pleased to submit the Fiscal Year 2009 budget for the State of Iowa pursuant to Iowa Code Section 8.21 and our constitutional authority. This budget recognizes the progress that we began last year with improvements in education, economic development, energy independence, and health care; provides funding for new policy initiatives in these areas; and is based on fiscally sound budget practices. Building on last year’s accomplishments, our Fiscal Year 2009 General Fund budget proposes an additional $75 million for increasing teachers’ salaries as part of our goal to move Iowa closer to the national average. We lay the foundation for student achievement by recommending $32.1 million for pre-school education, and we also propose $177.5 million in total for community colleges and $726.2 million in total for Regents universities. To make our State more energy independent, our General Fund budget appropriates the second-year funding of $25 million for the new Iowa Power Fund. The newly established Office of Energy Independence will soon start making awards from the Power Fund. Apart from the budget, we will be making several proposals to implement the new State energy plan. We have pledged to expand the number of Iowans who have health-care coverage. As a result, we are recommending additional funding for enrollment growth in the State Children Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). These additional funds will help the State provide coverage for another 25 percent of children who are eligible but not yet enrolled in hawk-i and the Iowa Medicaid Program. To protect the safety of Iowans, we are recommending issuance of revenue bonds for approximately $260 million in net proceeds to build a new state penitentiary in Ft. Madison, renovate and expand the Women’s Correctional Institution at Mitchellville, upgrade kitchen facilities at the Rockwell City and Mt. Pleasant Correctional Institutions, and expand Community-Based Correctional Facilities in Ottumwa, Sioux City, Waterloo, and Des Moines. Additionally, we are including funding for developing a prototype program for providing parolees and low-risk offenders with mental health and drug abuse treatment and educational services to help them make a crime-free re-entry into our communities. As part of this Capitals Budget, we also propose using $20 million for the State’s matching share for building new facilities at the Iowa Veterans Home. Iowa Budget Report iv Fiscal Year 2009 Importantly, our budget continues to fully fund our State’s Reserve Funds to help buffer Iowa from any future economic downturn. We recommend reimbursing $78.2 million to the Property Tax Credit Fund as part of our multi-year proposal to correct bad budgeting practices and eventually restore $160.0 million to this Fund. To provide more transparency, we are transferring operational expenditures in the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund to the General Fund and expenditures from the Endowment for Healthy Iowans and Healthy Iowans Tobacco Trust Funds to the General Fund. We believe that Iowa has charted a new course of becoming energy independent, providing quality pre-school education, recognizing the importance of our teachers, and providing greater health coverage for children. Our Fiscal Year 2009 budget and policy priorities reflect our continuing faith in Iowa’s ability to be the best state in the nation. We look forward to working with you in a bi-partisan and all-inclusive manner to build on our progress and protect our priorities. Sincerely, Chester J. Culver Governor Patty Judge Lt. Governor

Further evidence on the statistical properties of real GNP

The well-known lack of power of unit root tests has often been attributed to the shortlength of macroeconomic variables and also to DGP s that depart from the I(1)-I(0)alternatives. This paper shows that by using long spans of annual real GNP and GNPper capita (133 years) high power can be achieved, leading to the rejection of both theunit root and the trend-stationary hypothesis. This suggests that possibly neither modelprovides a good characterization of these data. Next, more flexible representations areconsidered, namely, processes containing structural breaks (SB) and fractional ordersof integration (FI). Economic justification for the presence of these features in GNP isprovided. It is shown that the latter models (FI and SB) are in general preferred to theARIMA (I(1) or I(0)) ones. As a novelty in this literature, new techniques are appliedto discriminate between FI and SB models. It turns out that the FI specification ispreferred, implying that GNP and GNP per capita are non-stationary, highly persistentbut mean-reverting series. Finally, it is shown that the results are robust when breaksin the deterministic component are allowed for in the FI model. Some macroeconomicimplications of these findings are also discussed.