A network-based analysis of the impact of structural damage on urban accessibility following a disaster: the case of the seismically damaged Port Au Prince and Carrefour urban road networks

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010 led to an unprecedented effort in collecting and providing geographical information in support of humanitarian aid. Although most of the compiled datasets and generated maps were able to provide specific and detailed information regarding the location of damaged buildings and road interruptions, none or little information was available to describe the accessibility—or otherwise—of the urban space. Here we try to offer an alternative method to define the urban accessibility landscape in the aftermath of earthquake damage, by combining simple graph theory concepts and GIS-based spatial analysis to assess how the urban space accessibility decreases when the road network is damaged.     

Is power more evenly balanced in poor households?

The structure of intra-household allocation is crucial to know whether a transfer from a rich household to a poor one translates into a transfer from a rich individual to a poor one. If rich households are more unequal than poor ones, then a progressive transfer among households reduces intra-household inequality, hence inequality among individuals. More specifically, two conditions have to be satisfied for extending Generalized Lorenz judgments from household level to individual one. The fraction of the couple's expenditures devoted to goods jointly consumed should decrease at the margin with the couple's income as well as the part of private expenditure devoted to the disadvantaged individual. This double concavity condition is non-parametrically tested on the French Household Expenditure Survey (2000). It is not rejected by the data and supports the view that power is more evenly distributed in poor households.     

A stochastic dominance approach to the measurement of discrimination

This note suggests a bridge between stochastic dominance (Rothschild and Stiglitz, 1970 [17], 1973 [18]), inequality measurement (Atkinson, 1970 [1]) and discrimination measurement (Gastwirth, 1975 [10]). Discrimination orderings are defined and illustrated through discrimination curves, in the same spirit as stochastic dominance analysis. The main result, which links the second order discrimination curve and the Gastwirth discrimination index, also generalizes the equivalence between Generalized Lorenz dominance and second order stochastic dominance.     

On dividends in the phase–type dual risk model

The dual risk model assumes that the surplus of a company decreases at a constant rate over time, and grows by means of upward jumps which occur at random times with random sizes. In the present work, we study the dual risk renewal model when the waiting times are phase-type distributed. Using the roots of the fundamental and the generalized Lundberg’s equations, we get expressions for the ruin probability and the Laplace transform of the time of ruin for an arbitrary single gain distribution. Then, we address the calculation of expected discounted future dividends particularly when the individual common gains follow a phase-type distribution. We further show that the optimal dividend barrier does not depend on the initial reserve. As far as the roots of the Lundberg equations and the time of ruin are concerned, we address the existing formulae in the corresponding Sparre-Andersen insurance risk model for the first hitting time, and we generalize them to cover also the situations where we have multiple roots. We do that working a new approach and technique, approach we also use for working the dividends, unlike others, it can be also applied for every situation.     

Institutional distance among country influences and environmental performance standardization in multinational enterprises

This research compares and contrasts the findings in Aguilera-Caracuel et al. (2013) with the outcomes of applying fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) — a methodological strategy that gathers quantitative and qualitative information to explain complexity at the case level and generality across cases. Using the same sample of 128 multinational enterprises (MNEs) with headquarters and subsidiaries based in the USA, Canada, France, and Spain, we identify a set of relevant configurations of causes and conditions to explain environmental performance standardization. By avoiding separate treatments for each variable, which is typical in multiple regression analysis (MRA), we overcome prior limitations and propose a new way of understanding this phenomenon. In summary, our results significantly reinforce and complement the previous results.     

VRP revisited: The impact of behavioural costs in balancing standardisation and variety

The objective of this paper is to bring a new element to the academic (and industrial) debate concerning the optimum level of variety in component design in mass production companies. Many authors have explored the trade-off between functional and variety costs, and this could be considered as a well-acknowledged management issue, at least from an engineering perspective. Nevertheless, while defining the theoretically optimal level of component variety, there are other elements, more related to operators’ attitude or to operative conditions, which may intervene and prevent effective exploitation of the existing variety. These elements have been given scant attention in literature, while they may play a relevant role in real organisations.In this paper, we will present a case study and an analytic model for these “behavioural costs” in manufacturing environments, so as to show how the theoretically optimal amount of variety changes if one takes into account these aspects. Researchers (and practitioners) might leverage on this contribution in order to rejuvenate the Variety Reduction paradigm, and to increase their awareness in designing and managing mass production manufacturing processes.     

On the value of participation: endogenous emergence of social norms in a three-player ultimatum game experiment

We report results from two different settings of a three-player ultimatum game. Under the “Monocratic” rule, a player is randomly selected to make an offer to two receivers. Under the “Democratic” rule, all three players make a proposal, and one proposal is then randomly selected. A majority vote is required to implement the proposal in either setting. Although the two rules are strategically equivalent, different patterns of behaviour emerge as the number of interactions increase. Under the “Monocratic” rule, proposers seem to be entitled to claim a larger share of the pie, and receivers are more likely to accept, than in the “Democratic” rule. We speculate that institutions allowing more participation in the process of collective choice lead to a more socially responsible behaviour in individuals.     

Interpreting IS alignment: A multiple case study in professional organizations

This paper centers on the interpretation attributed by organizational members to the information systems (IS) alignment concept. Its objective is to study IS alignment in professional organizations. Specifically, it reports on an interpretive study conducted in five Chilean organizations; four professional and one entrepreneurial, of which two are private and three are public. The theoretical background of our study is derived from three IS strategic alignment conceptualizations: managerial, emergent and critical. These concepts formed our theoretical framework that guided data collection and analysis. The study centers on the meanings organizational members assigned to IS strategic alignment, as well as their views on the barriers that hinder achieving this level of organizational integration. The analysis results are summarized in seven hermeneutic themes that point out the different connotations the organizations assigned to IS alignment. The significance of the findings are summarized in four insights that formulate theoretical and practical implications. These insights refer to: (1) the difficulties of achieving alignment for professional organizations, particularly public ones, (2) the limitations these organizations have in being agile, (3) the rationale for acquiring technology and determining IT skills, and (4) the imperative meaning that CIOs attribute to IS alignment. The paper concludes with a reflection on the limitations and relevance of the research.     

Considerazioni generali sull’impostazione Bayesiana di problemi non parametrici. Le medie associative nel contesto del processo aleatorio di Dirichlet parte II

Nei problemi statistici non parametrici la conoscenza della distribuzione iniziale e finale di una generica media associativa si manifesta particolarmente utile. Se la classe delle possibili funzioni di ripartizione scelte per descrivere un fenomeno è retta da un processo di Dirichlet nel senso precisato in D. M. Cifarelli — E. Regazzini (1979), è possibile pervenire ad una rappresentazione esplicita della distribuzione iniziale e ad una relazione ricorrente per il calcolo della distribuzione finale di una generica media associativa, secondo quanto si dimostra in questo lavoro. Lavoro eseguito nell’ambito G.N..F.A. del C.N.R.. A D.M. Cifarelli sono dovuti: i Lemmi 1, 4, i Teoremi 1, 2 ed il numero 3. Ad E. Regazzini sono dovuti: i Lemmi 2, 3, 7, il Teorema 3, il numero 2.3 e le Osservazioni 1, 2. La Parte I è stata pubblicata in questo periodico Anno 2°, Fasc. 1°.