Efficient provision of public goods with endogenous redistribution

We study a balanced mechanism that is capable of implementing in Nash equilibrium all the Pareto-efficient individually rational allocations for an economy with public goods. The Government chooses a set of weights directly related to the Lindahl prices corresponding to the Pareto-efficient allocation to be implemented. The mechanism then guarantees that initial endowments are re-allocated so that the chosen vector of Lindahl prices is indeed a Lindahl equilibrium, and implements the corresponding Lindahl allocation. Finally, besides being balanced, our mechanism is simple. Each agent has to declare a desired increase in the amount of public good, and a vector of redistributive transfers of initial endowments (across other agents).Received: 9 May 2003, Accepted: 22 October 2003, JEL Classification: C79, H21, H30, H41We wish to thank Jeremy Edwards, Andrew Postlewaite and Emanuela Sciubba for helpful comments. Of course, any remaining errors are our own.     

Assessing the hedging potential of gold and other precious metals against uncertainty due to epidemics and pandemics

Quality & Quantity - We assess the hedging capabilities of four prominent precious metals namely gold, palladium, platinum and silver against market risks due to epidemics and pandemics. The...     

A self-balancing CUSUM approach for the efficient allocation of resources during post-disaster debris disposal operations

Hurricane Katrina and other recent disasters have underscored the challenges related to disaster-generated debris disposal. During Katrina, extraordinary amounts of debris, far exceeding typical annual amounts of solid waste, were almost instantaneously deposited across a three-state area. Collection and disposal of disaster debris is an enormous task. Although the locations and amounts of debris can be easily summarized after recovery activities have been completed, they are uncertain and difficult to estimate in real time. Inaccurate estimates can result in inequitable allocation of disposal resources, increased costs, prolonged recovery, and increased social, political, and economic unrest. This paper uses prospective statistical process control methods to achieve equity in allocating debris disposal resources. These methods enable the detection of emerging debris collection patterns in real time as debris information becomes available during disposal operations. Using the self-starting CUSUM method proposed by Hawkins (Statistician 36:299?C315, 1987) as a foundation, we develop a self-balancing approach for debris cleanup operations and evaluate its performance using data from a 2003 Atlantic hurricane.     

房地产开发和上海城市人口再分布

城市尤其是特大城市 ,以其独特的区位优势和集聚效应 ,在国家社会经济发展中占有重要地位。城市发展的稀缺资源是土地 ,依据级差地租原理 ,有偿集约化利用有限的土地资源 ,不断优化产业结构和产业布局 ,针对城市人口和产业的高度密集状况 ,培育强大的房地产业 ,并引导城市人口合理再分布 ,对强化完善城市功能和实现可持续发展 ,具有十分重要的意义。房地产开发与城市人口再分布关系十分密切 ,前者对后者是强大的推动力 ,后者则是不断优化土地利用结构 ,促进房地产业进一步发展的保证。本文拟针对上海市的情况 ,对房地产开发与城市人口再分布…     

Addressing blood and body fluid spills: conserving time and resources during surface disinfecting

As new issues and areas of concern arise in the health care industry, such as the potential transmission of HIV and HBV, adaptive measures will continue to be developed to assist health care professionals in their mission to provide expert medical care for patients and safe environments in which to practice. Health care institutions must commit to exploration of the advances in infection control that employ improved measures to manage the cleaning and disinfecting of spill incidents involving blood and/or body fluids and the disinfecting of contaminated surfaces. Together, product manufacturers and health care workers will discover new ways to save time, money, and resources. The goal for health care administrators should be to focus on products that stress simplicity, efficiency, cost containment, and, most important, the safety of staff and patients.     

Business cycles and redistribution: The role of government quality

We study how government quality mediates the relationship between business cycles and redistribution. Our key hypothesis is that the potential of income redistribution to reduce rising inequality levels after an economic crisis depends on government quality. The empirical evidence based on a panel of 46 countries over the period 1996–2016 lends strong support to this hypothesis. We find that macroeconomic recessions promote redistribution of income in high government quality contexts, but they lead to wider economic inequalities in countries with poor quality of government.     

Variable population size issues in models of decentralized income redistribution

We examine the distributive implications of decentralized redistribution in a federation with mobility. From a regional perspective, redistribution involves variable populations. As distribution and population issues are normatively inseparable, regional social preferences should exhibit reasonable properties in both respects. Critical-level (CL) utilitarianism does so. In autarky, CL utilitarian governments implement an egalitarian solution. With free mobility some degree of inequality always proves optimal when critical levels are fixed. Egalitarianism can be reached as a Nash equilibrium if and only if average incomes are used as variable critical levels. Since this is unacceptable on efficiency grounds we conclude that under reasonable assumptions egalitarian outcomes do not survive in fiscal games.     

在动态供应链重构中应用数据挖掘识别企业模式

提出了从各种渠道的数据信息中用数据挖掘识别企业模式的方法。对适用于动态供应链合作伙伴模式识别的特征属性、数据转换和径向基函数神经网络方法进行了较详细的分析,并给出了一个利用数据挖掘方法选择供应商的仿真案例。     

The demographic effects of income redistribution and accelerated economic growth revisited

The statistical basis of Winegarden's conclusions, i.e., that an egalitarian redistribution of incomes in a typical low-income country would cause a substantial increase in fertility, was examined in detail in that it casts doubt about the validity of all previous econometric studies based on international cross-sectional data. Winegarden's model is reproduced as are his findings. The reexamination of Winegarden's (1984) findings revealed 3 areas which suggest that his conclusions may require modification. In regard to family planning, Winegarden's results indicated that the introduction of a state-supported family planning program would cause a large decline in natality after about a decade. A much weaker relationship emerged when the fertility equation was recomputed using a more appropriate economic method. Further, the results were highly sensitive to changes in the threshold year used to classify countries with regard to family planning programs. It is argued that a qualitative index devised by Mauldin and Berelson (1978) provides a more reliable way to measure the effects of such programs than the binary variable Winegarden used. The use of this index fundamentally altered the findings regarding economic growth and income distribution. According to Winegarden's calculations, faster economic growth would have a pronatal impact in the more economically advanced nations yet help to reduce fertility for those countries in the early stages of development. In contrast, it was found that variations in the rate of economic growth had no discernible impact on natality. Winegarden's results suggested that an egalitarian redistribution of incomes would cause substantial increase in fertility in a typical low-income country, but it was found here that these distributional effects would be fairly modest over a wide range of incomes. Consequently, it appears that any concern about the demographic effects of greater equality in less-developed countries is not well-founded. The potential for reducing natality in the richer nations by means of income redistribution may be overstated by Winegarden's results.     

Dynamic inoperability input-output modeling for economic losses estimation in industries during flooding

Among all natural disasters, flood stands as a recurrently happening disaster. It holds the aptitude to disrupt the organizations and to cause absenteeism of the workforce in industries. As the workforce is directly involve in the functioning of industries, work force absenteeism can cause reduced production and inoperability which outcomes in financial losses of industrial sectors. This research objects to estimate inoperability of industries due to distraction of workers by incorporating Dynamic Inoperability Input-Output Model (DIIM). Economic losses are determined from inoperability. Industrial area which is selected for the research includes local industries in Peshawar, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Various industries are chosen and are ordered according to inoperability and economic losses. Industries having highest financial damages are: (i) Agriculture; (ii) Sugar mills; and (iii) Marble industry. These three industries hold liable for 40.6% of the overall financial losses of fifteen industries. Industries suffering from highest inoperability include (i) Sugar mills; (ii) Agriculture and (iii) Marble industry. A risk analysis frame work has also been developed to help industrial sectors to recover after a disaster. Besides, data of three different floods has also been taken for the above mentioned critical sectors to plot probability distributions for predicting economic losses of most frequent floods. Furthermore, this research methodology has been applied to flooding but it can be applied to any other disaster, everywhere.     

Prevention and mitigation of epidemics: Biodiversity conservation and confinement policies

This paper presents a first model integrating the relation between biodiversity loss and zoonotic pandemic risks in a general equilibrium dynamic economic set-up. The occurrence of pandemics is modeled as Poissonian leaps in economic variables. The planner can intervene in the economic and epidemiological dynamics in two ways: first (prevention), by deciding to conserve a greater quantity of biodiversity to decrease the probability of a pandemic occurring, and second (mitigation), by reducing the death toll through a lockdown policy, with the collateral effect of affecting negatively labor productivity. The policy is evaluated using a social welfare function embodying society’s risk aversion, aversion to fluctuations, degree of impatience and altruism towards future generations. The model is explicitly solved and the optimal policy described. The dependence of the optimal policy on natural, productivity and preference parameters is discussed. In particular the optimal lockdown is more severe in societies valuing more human life, and the optimal biodiversity conservation is larger for more “forward looking” societies, with a small discount rate and a high degree of altruism towards future generations. Moreover, societies accepting a large welfare loss to mitigate the pandemics are also societies doing a lot of prevention. After calibrating the model with COVID-19 pandemic data we compare the mitigation efforts predicted by the model with those of the recent literature and we study the optimal prevention–mitigation policy mix.     

The income redistribution effects of Medicaid: Application in New York State

The efficacy of Medicaid as an income redistribution mechanism among New York State counties was examined to determine tthe degree of income shifting from higher to lower income counties. A sample of 21 counties, grouped into four discrete income classes according to 1970 per capita income was taken.Costs and expenditures (attributed to Medicaid) were allocated over all counties, adjusting for federal and state aid transfers. The data were tabulated for each of the 21 counties and six key ratios (including: Medicaid expenditures per authorized recipient, etc.) were developed as measures of income distribution.The impact of Medicaid was tested using two independent statistical techniques, goodness of fit and pooled comparisons between each pair of means for each ratio. Results indicated that no appreciable shift in income from high to low counties existed. Medicaid failed 45 of 72 mean difference tests, and the true distribution of costs and expenditures across income classes did not differ significantly from a uniform distribution in 77.7% of the cases.The results indicate that the mandated funding structure of Medicaid impinges more severely on poorer counties. Lack of an adequate health care infra-structure may seriously limit the ability of lower income counties to provide care even with Medicaid covering a large share of medical costs.     

Income redistribution versus accelerated economic growth: a comparison of demographic effects

An attempt is made to identify the effects on fertility and mean expectation of life of varying rates of growth in aggregate income and of changes in the income share of the poorer segments of the population. The extent to which these effects vary among developing countries with different levels of mean income is also considered. An econometric model is developed to estimate the direction and strength of the structural relationships among the key variables, and simulation methods are used to predict the final demographic effects of altering either the growth rate or the size distribution of income. The results suggest that there is no general justification for income redistribution as a means of slowing rates of population growth in a developing country. It may be relevant in the more advanced developing countries, but even in those, more direct means (such as family planning programs, education, and health services) may be more effective. This is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the 1983 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (see Population Index, Vol. 49, No. 3, Fall 1983, p. 356).     

文化资源论

论述了文化的内涵、层次;分析了文化资源的价值及其开发与保护;认为历史文化遗产是精神资源,是不可再生的、不可取代的,是可以永续利用的;历史文化资源具有精神文化方面的价值,具有科学研究方面的价值;经济功能、旅游功能只是其多功能中的一种,片面夸大经济功能和旅游功能,会破坏文化资源永续利用的可能性.     

Symbolic management of human resources

This article begins with the observation of three recent and interrelated trends in management: corporate advertising, internal marketing, and strategic management of human resources. The basic argument is that these trends indicate a shift in managerial focus, from the management of human resources to the management of symbolic resources. Symbolic resources are here seen as symbols, metaphors, images, etc., which in a condensed form represent complex organizational phenomena, and which can be developed and utilized to guide strategic corporate action. There are four types of “symbolic resources” that seem to be particularly powerful: historical resources (i.e., elements of the corporate saga or epic), basic values and ideologies (as expressed in the corporate policies), particular activities and events (as anniversaries and celebrations), and finally, the company lifestyle (or ethos).     

企业战略资源的评估

企业战略的实施是在以资源作为基础的前提下进行的.但是各种资源的重要程度是不同的,对战略的影响程度也不一样.那么企业在制定战略时,应该将哪些资源作为重要资源重点加以考虑,而应该将哪些资源看做为次重要资源呢?这就涉及到资源对战略制定的重要度评估问题.作者在本文提出一些粗浅的看法,期望与各位同行共同探讨,不妥之处,欢迎批评指正.     

日本防灾减灾体系考察报告

报告对日本的防灾减灾体系从法律、组织机构、规划、资金投入等几个方面进行了比较详细的介绍 ,并对日本和美国防灾减灾体系进行了对比分析 ,在借鉴的基础上对我国的防灾减灾体系建设提出了若干建议。