Economics Research

My previous article in Kelleher's Collectors Connection introduced the concept of the Taxonomy of Cover Elements. In this third article, I discuss Postal History Research Sources & Methods. Traditional sources include specialized philatelic libraries and digitized journals, as well as Postal Bulletins, Laws and Regulations. This article also explores the use of governmental websites, genealogical sources, retroReveal.org, tools and techniques for conducting analytical philately, and non-philatelic archives. The article also proposes a curriculum for teaching courses in postal history to undergraduate history and economics majors, as well as a comparable curriculum at the high school AP level.

This document is my third column, as published in the July-August, 2016 issue of Kelleher's Collectors Connection and contains extracts from my forthcoming book, "Mastering Postal History".

TARKI Social Research Institute was awarded a contract by the European Commission to prepare a feasibility study on “Monitoring pension developments through micro socioeconomic
instruments based on individual data sources”. From the onset the project was designed so as to

- Inform on the state of development of instruments used by Member States to monitor life time earnings and related acquisition of pension rights
- Provide descriptions of available tools, such as data sets and models of prospective pension outcomes based on individual data sources
- Identify and characterise tools, in particular where they already exist and where they could be further developed (notably needs for adequate data sources, need for building models).
- Analyse and describe both the administrative and survey data used for the prospective models of pension outcomes across all Member States (where such instruments exist) and elaborate a classification of instruments built to assess future developments
of pension benefits, based on individual information
- Characterise the various results available and review them as well as those likely to be derived through such instruments