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A new lass of sensors for thermal imaging and detection in the infra‐red band is emerging which exploits the pyroelectric effect in ferroelectric materials. These sensors, which are fabricated in the form of large linear or two‐dimensional arrays of detectors interfaced to a silicon readout circuit, do not require cooling for their operation, in contrast to the photon detection based thermal imagers. They thus have the potential for low cost thermal detection and imaging. This paper examines the design of these arrays and the technologies employed in their fabrication, with particular attention to their specialised packaging requirements, by reference to a range of linear and two‐dimensional pyroelectric array devices that have been fabricated in this laboratory.

After a brief introduction to the advantages and method of construction of flip chip solder bond devices, this paper looks at different techniques that can be used to inspect these devices at various stages in their construction. These techniques include optical, infra‐red, acoustic and electron microscopy, radiograph, electrical and tensile testing. The advantages and limitations of each of the techniques are discussed and an outline inspection schedule is suggested.

When individual or household incomes are collected for administrative or scientific surveys, the accounting period is sometimes a month, sometimes a quarter, and sometimes a year. The accounting period likely affects the shape of the income distribution and the level of measured inequality. The present study systematically explores the sensitivity of inter-temporal and inter-regional inequality comparisons to the length of the accounting period.

We propose a framework for the measurement of income mobility over several time periods, based on the notion that multi-period mobility amounts to measuring the degree of association between the individuals and the time periods. More precisely we compare the actual income share of individuals at a given time in the total income of all individuals over the whole period analyzed, with their “expected” share, assumed to be equal to the hypothetical income share in the total income of society over the whole accounting period that an individual would have had at a given time, had there been complete independence between the individuals and the time periods. We then show that an appropriate way of consistently measuring multi-period mobility should focus on the absolute rather than the traditional (relative) Lorenz curve and that the relevant variable to be accumulated should be the difference between the “a priori” and “a posteriori” shares previously defined. Moving from an ordinal to a cardinal approach to measuring multi-period mobility, we then propose classes of mobility indices based on absolute inequality indices. We illustrate our approach with an empirical application using the EU-SILC rotating panel dataset. Our empirical analysis seems to vindicate our approach because it clearly shows that income mobility was higher in the new EU countries (those that joined the EU in 2004 and later). We also observe that income mobility after 2008 was higher in three countries that were particularly affected by the financial crisis: Greece, Portugal, and Spain.

The economic reality of the 1990s in Europe forced the labor markets to become more flexible. Using a consistent comparative dataset for 14 countries, the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), we explore the degree of earnings mobility and inequality across Europe, and the role of labor market institutions in understanding the cross-national differences in earnings mobility. We study the degree of rank mobility and the degree of mobility as equalizer of long-term earnings. The country ranking in long-term earnings inequality is similar with the country ranking in annual inequality, which is a sign of limited long-term equalizing mobility within countries with higher levels of annual inequality. In long-term earnings inequality, Denmark renders the most mobile earnings distribution with the second highest equalizing effect. The only disequalizing mobility in a lifetime perspective is found in Portugal. With respect to the relationship between earnings mobility and earnings inequality, we find a significant negative association both in the short and the long run. Based on the rankings in long-term Fields mobility and long-term inequality, Denmark is expected to have the lowest lifetime earnings inequality in Europe, followed by Finland, Austria, and Belgium. The Mediterranean countries (Spain and Portugal) are expected to have the highest long-term inequality. With respect to the institutional factors that may be related to earnings mobility, we bring evidence that the deregulation in the labor and product markets, the degree of unionization, the degree of corporatism and the spending on ALMPs are positively associated with earnings mobility.

Purpose: Most of the characterizations of inequality or poverty indices assume some invariance condition, be that scale, translation, or intermediate, which imposes value judgments on the measurement. In the unidimensional approach, Zheng (2007a, 2007b) suggests replacing all these properties with the unit-consistency axiom, which requires that the inequality or poverty rankings, rather than their cardinal values, are not altered when income is measured in different monetary units. The aim of this paper is to introduce a multidimensional generalization of this axiom and characterize classes of multidimensional inequality and poverty measures that are unit consistent.

Design/methodology/approach: Zheng (2007a, 2007b) characterizes families of inequality and poverty measures that fulfil the unit-consistency axiom. Tsui (1999, 2002), in turn, derives families of the multidimensional relative inequality and poverty measures. Both of these contributions are the background taken to achieve our characterization results.

Findings: This paper merges these two generalizations to identify the canonical forms of all the multidimensional subgroup- and unit-consistent inequality and poverty measures. The inequality families we derive are generalizations of both the Zheng and Tsui inequality families. The poverty indices presented are generalizations of Tsui's relative poverty families as well as the families identified by Zheng.

Originality/value: The inequality and poverty families characterized in this paper are unit and subgroup consistent, both of them being appropriate requirements in empirical applications in which inequality or poverty in a population split into groups is measured. Then, in empirical applications, it makes sense to choose measures from the families we derive.

A recent trend in the study of poverty is to consider a relative poverty line, one that is responsive to the nature of the income distribution. We develop an axiomatic approach to the determination of an amalgam poverty line. Given a reference income (e.g., the mean or the median), the amalgam poverty line becomes a weighted average of the absolute poverty line and the reference income, where the weights depend on the policy maker’s preferences for aggregating the two components. The paper ends with an empirical illustration comparing urban and rural areas in the People’s Republic of China and India.

This paper discusses first various ways of measuring unemployment and, borrowing ideas from the poverty measurement literature, proposes four more general unemployment indices which are parallel to Sen poverty index, to its generalization by Shorrocks, to the FGT, and to the Watts poverty indices.

It then presents an empirical illustration based on Swiss data at the level of the “canton.” More precisely, using the so-called Shapley decomposition, it computes the contribution to the difference between the value of each of these four unemployment indices in a given “canton” and in Switzerland as a whole, of three components measuring, respectively, the impact of differences in the traditional unemployment rate, in the average unemployment duration, and in the inequality in the unemployment durations. The paper ends by discussing the impact on the results obtained of assumptions made concerning the maximum unemployment duration.

Inequality is an essential factor for the alleviation of poverty. In Cameroon, most of the households derive their livelihoods from non-wage income and a better understanding of how different variables affect income inequality is a way to reduce those inequalities and improve social welfare. Studies carried out so far barely make out the determinants among non-wage earners. This study sets out to identify these determinants, using the regression-based decomposition technique and data obtained from the 2005 Employment and Informal Sector Survey (EISS) undertaken by the National Statistic Institute (INS) in Cameroon. Results show that the total inequality of an hourly active income ensues from the ratio of age/experience and unobserved individual heterogeneity among non-wage earners.