Using goal programming to determine interest group disutility for public policy choices

Within this paper a framework is developed for incorporating into the process of social choice both interest group preferences for social goals and the efficient allocation of limited resources. The social welfare function is adopted as the foundation for the framework and the goal programming algorithm is used to approximate the utility of the interest groups for their optimal policy choice. A function is defined which measures the disutility experienced by a social unit when a policy other than its optimal choice is selected. A surrogate measure of this disutility involving imposed preference weight changes for social goals is determined and its implications for use in developing the social welfare function are examined.     

中外城市群发展经验及其对山东半岛城市群的启示

城市群(带)是在工业化基础上而产生的一种城市高级化的空间组织形式,是区域参与国际竞争的战略支点。本文从解析城市群(带)研究的相关理论入手,着重分析了中外城市群发展的一般特征和形成的经验,提出了良好的区位和基础设施是城市群(带)发展的条件,工业化是其动力,产业转移是其发展的机遇,产业联系是其成功的关键。并以此为基础,对山东半岛建设城市群的路径和措施进行了对比分析,提出了对策建议。     

A column generation-based approach to solve the preference scheduling problem for nurses with downgrading

The demand for nurses in virtually all western countries has been outpacing the supply for more than a decade. The situation is now at the point where the rules for good practice are being stretched to the limit and patient care is in jeopardy. The purpose of this paper is to present several ideas for maximizing the use of the available staff and to quantify the resultant benefits. Two approaches are investigated for substituting nurses with higher level skills for those with lower level skills when there is sufficient idle time to do so. Idle time is usually due to scheduling constraints and contractual agreements that prevent a hospital from arbitrarily assigning nurses to shifts over the week.When the substitution is skill-related, as it is here, it is often called downgrading. The models that we develop are for preference scheduling, which means that individual preferences are taken into account when constructing monthly rosters. There are several reasons for doing this in today's environment, the most important is the need to boost staff morale and increase retention. The problem is modeled as an integer program and solved with a column generation technique that relies on intelligent heuristics for identifying good candidate schedules. The computations show that high quality solutions, as measured by the reduction in the need for non-unit nurses as well as the degree to which preferences are satisfied, can usually be obtained in a matter of minutes.     

Characteristics and implications of Chinese macroeconomic data revisions

The research examining macroeconomic data for developed economies suggests that an understanding of the nature of data revisions is important both for the production of accurate macroeconomic forecasts and for forecast evaluation. This paper focuses on Chinese data, for which there has been substantial debate about data quality for some time. The key finding in this paper is that, while it is true that the Chinese macroeconomic data revisions are not well-behaved, they are not very different from similarly-timed U.S. macroeconomic data revisions. The positive bias in Chinese real GDP revisions is a result of the fast-growing service sector, which is notably hard to measure in real time. A better understanding of the revisions process is particularly helpful for studies of the forecast errors from surveys of forecasters, where the choice of the vintage for outcomes may have an impact on the estimated forecast errors.     

Limited monitoring and the essentiality of money

Monetary theory emphasizes that imperfect monitoring is necessary for money to be essential, that is, for money to achieve socially desirable allocations. Little is known about how limited monitoring must be if money is to be essential, though. Understanding sufficient conditions for the essentiality of money is important since monitoring is a natural way in which credit is introduced in monetary models. In this paper, we show that money can fail to be essential even if monitoring is quite limited. This indicates that one must be careful when introducing monitoring in monetary models to allow for the coexistence of money and credit.     

A framework for service enterprise workflow simulation with multi-agents cooperation

Process dynamic modelling for service business is the key technique for Service-Oriented information systems and service business management, and the workflow model of business processes is the core part of service systems. Service business workflow simulation is the prevalent approach to be used for analysis of service business process dynamically. Generic method for service business workflow simulation is based on the discrete event queuing theory, which is lack of flexibility and scalability. In this paper, we propose a service workflow-oriented framework for the process simulation of service businesses using multi-agent cooperation to address the above issues. Social rationality of agent is introduced into the proposed framework. Adopting rationality as one social factor for decision-making strategies, a flexible scheduling for activity instances has been implemented. A system prototype has been developed to validate the proposed simulation framework through a business case study.     

An integrated model of downtown parking and traffic congestion

This paper is the first to look at cruising for parking from an economic perspective. We present a downtown parking model that integrates traffic congestion and saturated on-street parking; the stock of cars cruising for parking adds to traffic congestion. Two major results emerge from the model, one of which is robust. The robust one is that, whether or not the amount of on-street parking is optimal, it is efficient to raise the on-street parking fee to the point where cruising for parking is eliminated without parking becoming unsaturated. The other is that, if the parking fee is fixed at a sub-optimal level, it is second-best optimal to increase the amount of curbside allocated to parking until cruising for parking is eliminated without parking becoming unsaturated     

浅谈医院形象与护士素质的关系

医院形象是一个医院是否能生存发展的品牌,是医院巨大的无形资产,护理工作是医疗工作的重要组成部分是医院形象的代表,良好的护士素质、高超的专业技能是患者选择就医的先决条件。     

淘金“碳交易”

这是一个150亿欧元交易规模的市场。但这并非是一场参与即能赢的游戏。通过清洁发展机制(Clean Development Mechanism,简称CDM),高达数百亿欧元的碳交易市场逐步被中国企业了解和熟悉。CDM简单说就是允许发达国家从发展中国家以资金和技术转让的方式购买减排指标,保证其购买指标的成本远远小于超额排放的成本。中国堪称CDM机制最大的受益方。从2002年亚洲开发银行、世界银行、荷     

Predictors for the first-order autoregressive process

The error made in predicting a first-order autoregressive process with unknown parameters is investigated. It is shown that the least squares predictor is unbiased for symmetric error distributions. Alternative predictors for stationary and non-stationary processes are studied using the Monte Carlo method. The ordinary least squares statistics perform reasonably well for one period predictions with samples as small as ten for both stationary and non-stationary processes. It is demonstrated that there is a considerable loss in efficiency when outdated estimators are used to construct predictors.     

城市地下空间开发利用容量评估指标体系的研究

地下空间是城市开发的重要自然资源,城市地下空间开发利用容量评估的目的旨在把握城市所具有的地下空间可开发利用的总量和潜力,建立科学的评估指标体系是地下空间开发利用容量评估的基础.本文分析了城市地下空间开发利用容量的主要影响因素,提出了城市地下空间开发利用容量评估指标体系构建的原则.基于层次分析法建立了城市地下空间开发利用容量评估的层次结构模型,依据该层次结构模型构造了各层次判断矩阵,并进行了层次单排序、层次总排序及其一致性检验.经研究分析得到:地面空间类型、受已开发地下空间的影响程度、地震烈度、滑坡及崩塌、对工程有影响的地下水层数、受影响的地下水赋存类型及活断层等是城市地下空间开发利用容量评估的主要指标.     

磨矿过程控制仿真实验平台的研究

磨矿过程是选矿过程中的关键工序,其运行品质对于提高选矿厂产品质量和生产率至关重要。该过程具有非线性、大时滞、慢时变、关键工艺参数无法在线测量等综合复杂特性,其控制、优化和软测量技术的研究具有重要意义和相当难度。为了降低现场调试的成本和风险,如何在实验室中建立工程化的磨矿过程控制仿真系统成为具有重要实用价值的研究课题。本文设计和开发了磨矿过程控制仿真实验平台。提出了由真实的磨矿过程控制系统和虚拟生产组成的磨矿过程控制仿真实验平台的体系结构,可以为磨矿过程的控制和优化算法提供工程化的实验环境。     

军队仓库信息化建设评估体系研究

仓库信息化评估是军队后勤信息化建设的主要方面,它的关键环节在于信息化评估指标体系的建立。文中分析了建立仓库信息化评估体系的必要性,构建了仓库信息化评估体系框架,建立了基于模糊综合评价法的仓库信息化评估模型,并给出了实际算例。     

铁路工程突发事件预警体系探讨

安全是铁路运输生产的生命线和永恒的主题,是铁路各项工作的基石[1]。而铁路工程突发事件是影响铁路运输安全的重要因素之一,本文界定了铁路工程突发事件的概念,分析了铁路工程突发事件的特点,明确了铁路工程突发事件预警体系的目的与功能,探讨了铁路工程突发事件预警体系的构成,分析了铁路工程突发事件预警体系的运行程序。     

基于模糊神经网络的渠道衬砌机施工绩效预测

通过工程实地调研,确定影响渠道衬砌机施工绩效的16个主要因素;基于模糊神经网络方法建立渠道衬砌机施工绩效预测数学模型;收集实际工程的渠道衬砌机影响因素和施工效率数据,并进行验证分析计算。结果表明,基于模糊神经网络预测渠道衬砌机施工绩效的方法是实用和有效的。     

浅谈航道港口的泥沙淤泥问题处理

航道就是在湖泊、港湾等水域里为船舶提供安全的航行通道。而港口则是为船舶的停靠和安全进出提供的有利条件。如果航道和港口出现了泥沙淤积的问题,那么就必须要解决它。但要如何解决呢?这就是我们要研究的问题。     

Residential investment and recession predictability

We assess the importance of residential investment for the prediction of economic recessions for an unbalanced panel of 12 OECD countries over the period 1960Q1–2014Q4. Our approach is to estimate various probit models with different leading indicators and evaluate their relative prediction accuracies using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve as our forecasting performance metric. We document that residential investment contains information that is useful for predicting recessions both in-sample and out-of-sample. This result is robust to adding typical leading indicators, such as the term spread, stock prices, consumer confidence surveys and oil prices. It is shown that residential investment is particularly useful for the prediction of recessions for countries with high home-ownership rates. Finally, in a separate exercise for the US, we show that the predictive ability of residential investment is — in a broad sense — robust to employing real-time data.     

Optimization for hierarchical multi-level planning systems using interaction prediction principle

This paper is concerned with the optimization of large-scale dynamic systems composed of interconnected subsystems. The decomposition and hierarchical multi-level approach with coordination is described for linear quadratic problem which has been available for socio-economic and production planning. In particular, we present a general solution algorithm for the two-level optimization using interaction prediction principle. A sample example for which the approach is applicable is illustrated.     

The evidence from Canadian firms on multinational diversification and performance

The purpose of this paper is to identify the effects of multinational diversification on corporate financial performance. This issue is examined for Canadian firms by using four years of individual as well as pooled time-series-cross-sectional data for the years 1992–1994 and 1997. Using three distinct measures of financial performance and two measures of multinational diversification and controlling for size, leverage, growth, and efficiency, we replicate the procedures in prior studies to show that, in general, lower performance is associated with multinationality. However, when a nonlinear specification is used, a hurdle level for foreign assets deployment is identified. Prior to this threshold level, financial performance is inversely related to degree of multinational diversification, but beyond this level, the relationship is positive. We provide an explanation for this U-shaped relationship.     

低房价房地产开发项目桩基方案优化价值分析

软土地区低房价商品房的开发可行性,很大程度上取决于桩基设计方案。文中以一个小高层商品房的桩基方案优选为对象,基于价值分析法,在桩基工程功能和成本分析的基础上,提出桩基设计方案的价值评价指标,并用于该项目评价,结果与传统对比分析法一致。表明:1)价值分析法适用于桩基方案优选,而且与传统的对比分析法相比,用定量的数据说话,更准确、科学;2)所提出的价值评价指标对该项目是正确适用的。此外,还对该工程其它的桩基设计方案以及价值评价指标的通用公式进行了简要探讨,供进一步研究和同类工程参考。