Reassessing traffic accidents in developing countries

Current approaches to traffic accidents in developing countries have followed methods utilized in industrialized countries, based on the ‘man-vehicle-road’ causal factors. The persistence of poor traffic safety conditions attests to the inadequacies of these methods. The paper proposes that current unsafe conditions have to be analyzed instead in the context of the physical, political, technical and enforcement environments. Alternative approaches are suggested, based on the acknowledgment of the accident as an environmentally related problem and the acceptance of the safe circulation space as a political right. Accordingly, alternative policy actions are suggested.     

Monetary and fiscal policy interactions in a post Keynesian open-economy model

Using a post Keynesian model, this study aims to analyze the stabilizing role of fiscal and monetary policies in an open economy with a managed exchange rate regime. The real exchange rate is modeled as an endogenous variable and inflation explained using the conflicting claims approach. The dynamic properties of macroeconomic equilibrium are evaluated in different regimes of fiscal and monetary policies. The main result of this study suggests that the preferred policy regime is the one in which economic authorities are complementary and fiscal policy plays an explicitly active role. In this regime, the fiscal policy must commit to the target for the rate of capacity utilization and the monetary authority must commit to the inflation target.     

An improved algorithm and solution on an integrated production-inventory model in a three-layer supply chain

Ben-Daya et al. (2010) established a joint economic lot-sizing problem (JELP) for a three-layer supply chain with one supplier, one manufacturer, and multiple retailers, and then proposed a heuristic algorithm to obtain the integral values of four discrete variables in the JELP. In this paper, we first complement some shortcomings in Ben-Daya et al. (2010), and then propose a simpler improved alternative algorithm to obtain the four integral decision variables. The proposed algorithm provides not only less CPU time but also less total cost to operate than the algorithm by Ben-Daya et al. (2010). Furthermore, our proposed algorithm can solve certain problems, which cannot be solved by theirs. Finally, the solution obtained by the proposed algorithm is indeed a global optimal solution in each of all instances tested.     

Estimation of conditional time-homogeneous credit quality transition matrices

This paper presents a methodology for estimating time-homogeneous credit quality transition matrices. Using a unique data set on credit ratings of commercial loans in Colombia, we show that 70% of the time we cannot reject the null hypothesis of time homogeneity of transition matrices estimated this way. We also find that obtaining matrices for different subsamples is not necessary, given the similarities of the survival functions.