On the structure of Pareto optimal cake partitions

We study Pareto optimal partitions of a “cake” among n players. Each player uses a countably additive non-atomic probability measure to evaluate the size of pieces of cake. We present two geometric pictures appropriate for this study and consider the connection between these pictures and the maximization of convex combinations of measures, which we studied in Barbanel and Zwicker [Barbanel, J.B., Zwicker, W., 1997. Two applications of a theorem of Dvoretsky, Wald, and Wolfovitz to cake division. Theory and Decision 43, 203–207].     

The Stability of Monetary Unions: Lessons from the Breakup of Czechoslovakia

In 1993, Czechoslovakia experienced a two-step breakup. On January 1, the country disintegrated as a political union, while preserving an economic and monetary union. Then, the Czech–Slovak monetary union collapsed on February 8. This paper analyzes the economic background of the two breakups from the perspective of the optimum currency area literature. The main finding is that the Czech and Slovak economies were vulnerable to asymmetric economic shocks, such as those induced by the economic transition. In particular, the stability of Czechoslovakia was undermined by the low correlation of permanent output shocks, low labor mobility, and higher concentration of heavy and military industries in Slovakia. J. Comp. Econom., December 1999, 27(4), pp. 753–781. Center for European Integration Studies (ZEI), University of Bonn, Walter-Flex-Strasse 3, 53113 Bonn, Germany, and Center for Economic Research, Tilburg University, Netherlands; Academia Istropolitana Nova, Bratislava, Slovakia, Central European University, Nador u. 9, 1051 Budapest, Hungary, and Center for European Integration Studies (ZEI), University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS), Stumpergasse 56, 1060 Vienna, Austria.     

美法两国核电标准对元件产品要求的异同

中国进入了核电快速发展的时期,其建设核电站的常规做法是遵循工程建设公司所指定的标准.因此,中国核电站各自遵循不同的标准,包括美国ASME标准和法国RCC-M标准,以及加拿大、俄罗斯和其它国家的标准.同时,中国也在以其它国家的标准为基础,总结其最佳做法制订自己的标准.……     

Hepatocellular carcinoma and hepatitis B e antigen

Hepatitis B e antigen serum persistence in an individual chronically infected with the Hepatitis B virus may be associated with a greatly increased risk of developing cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. This article presents an overview of the Hepatitis B e antigen and discusses the findings of a recent study evaluating its associated risk of hepatocellular carcinoma. A gross photographic image of hepatocellular carcinoma is provided.     

Understanding the real risks of changing employee benefit plans

In an environment of constant change, corporations are looking to alter employee benefits programs to make them more responsive to employee and business needs. A complete risk assessment process is the key to preparing for changes to employee benefits programs by providing employers with an analysis of cost savings against the potential negative ramifications of change. This article outlines the steps involved in a complete review of risk assessment. It then discusses how employers can develop successful change management communication strategies if, after conducting a risk assessment, employers decide to move forward with alterations to their employee benefits programs.     

Housing Finance GSEs: Who Gets the Subsidy?

Taxpayer subsidies that flow toward housing-finance GSEs are implicit in nature. This makes the size and distribution of subsidy values hard to measure directly. An array of indirect analyses indicates that incentive-conflicted GSE managers can and do extract substantial annual subsidies for GSE stockholders. Currently, stockholders are allowed to encourage managers to exploit taxpayers by tying incentive compensation implicitly to increases in the discounted present value of expected future subsidies. To counteract this inappropriate incentive, managers should be made accountable to taxpayers for returning all compensation that can be fairly attributed to increases in subsidies captured by GSE stockholders.     

How Offshore Financial Competition Disciplines Exit Resistance by Incentive-Conflicted Bank Regulators

This paper studies the impact of technological change and regulatory competition on governmental efforts to generate rents for banks in two stylized regulatory environments. In the first environment, incentive-conflicted regulators attempt to create rents by restricting the size and scope of individual banking organizations. In the second, rents come from efforts to supply deposit guarantees to troubled banks. In both cases, innovations in financial technology and in competing domestic and offshore regulatory arrangements make the costs of delivering rents to banks more transparent to taxpayers and encourage customers to push rent-dependent banking systems into crisis. This analysis portrays the banking crises that have roiled world markets in recent years as information-producing events that identify and discredit inefficient strategies of regulating banking markets.     

Africa in the 1990s and beyond: Alternative prescriptions and projections

This article examines the origins, dimensions and implications of Africa's crisis. It draws attention to the impact of historical experiences, the distortions and disarticulations of that experience, and to the coalitions, contradictions, crises and conflicts inherited at independence. It looks at postcolonial alignment and realignment of social and political forces, the crisis of accumulation and power, and the implications of the region's marginal location and role in the global division of labour and power. Calling for a need to transcend the manifestations of the African predicament, the article looks at regional and international responses to the crisis. It concludes by prescribing the need for a fundamental political restructuring, the empowerment of the people and their communities and organizations, a socially sensitive structural adjustment programme, and the recomposition of the content and context of politics and social relations.     

Country image formation,stability, and change: a longitudinal assessment of consumers’ image of Azerbaijan

In 2012, Azerbaijan hosted the Eurovision Song Contest. For this emerging tourism-oriented country, the cultural mega-event represented a unique opportunity to present itself to a broad international public and construct a positive country image. The present longitudinal study explores how consumer images of Azerbaijan as a country were formed and changed as a result of the nation’s hosting of this event. By measuring the same respondents’ country image evaluations before and after the event, the present findings shed light on consumers’ processes of country-image formation and illuminate the event’s impact on Azerbaijan’s country image.