GOODHART'S LAW AND MACHINE LEARNING: A STRUCTURAL PERSPECTIVE

We develop a simple structural model to illustrate how penalized regressions generate Goodhart bias when training data are clean but covariates are manipulated at known cost by future agents. With quadratic (extremely steep) manipulation costs, bias is proportional to Ridge (Lasso) penalization. If costs depend on absolute or percentage manipulation, the following algorithm yields manipulation-proof prediction: Within training data, evaluate candidate coefficients at their respective incentive-compatible manipulation configuration. We derive analytical coefficient adjustments: slopes (intercept) shift downward if costs depend on percentage (absolute) manipulation. Statisticians ignoring manipulation costs select socially suboptimal penalization. Model averaging reduces these manipulation costs.     

Viennese kaleidics: Why it’s liberty more than policy that calms turbulence

The idea of a kaleidic economy or society is strongly associated with George Shackle and his vision of Keynesian kaleidics. This essay asserts that the central thrust of the Austrian tradition in economic analysis can be described by the term Viennese kaleidics. In either version of kaleidics, the analytical stress is placed on treating time seriously and not just notionally. Either version of kaleidics leads to recognition that economic processes are better treated as turbulent than as equilibrated. While that turbulence is a natural feature of the unavoidable incompleteness of intertemporal coordination, it is subject to mitigation. This essay explains how it is that individual liberty and private ordering is generally superior to state policy and public ordering in calming the turbulence that naturally characterizes a kaleidic economy.     

‘Devolution’ of transport powers to Local Government: Impacts of the 2004 Traffic Management Act in England

The concept of ‘Devolution’—the transfer of powers away from the Central Government to more local bodies of Government, has been used across many different areas of policy and by many different national governments. This paper examines the devolution of transport powers to the existing Local Traffic Authorities in England via the 2004 Traffic Management Act. The paper first presents a summary of how several different nations have undertaken this process of devolving transport powers and responsibilities to either new or existing bodies. It then presents research from an electronic survey concerning how English Local Traffic Aut`horities are choosing to use some of the new powers available to them and their opinion on complementary areas of transport policy. Research is also presented from structured telephone interviews, concerning how individual Local Authorities perceive the efficacy and equity of the new legislation. Overall, the results show that only some of these new powers are likely to be used by English Local Authorities, with limited variation in how different types of LTA are choosing to implement these new powers. The structured telephone interviews provided some evidence that rural Authorities in particular are more dissatisfied with the legislation and consider some of the measures unhelpful. The results provide some insights on the formulation of devolved policy applicable to existing Local Government bodies and the varying benefits that can be perceived to apply to different types of Local Authority. Conclusions are drawn on some of the practical difficulties arising from the English experience, and lessons of relevance are drawn for other nations considering a similar devolution of transport powers.     

Evaluating impacts of institutional reforms on port efficiency changes: Ownership,corporate structure,and total factor productivity changes of world container ports

This paper evaluates how port institutional reforms influenced efficiency gains between 1991 and 2004. We constructed a panel data for port ownership, corporate structure, and port inputs and outputs for 98 major world ports, and we implemented the Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) model. The MPI provides efficiency measures for input combinations that allow for obtaining the outputs in the presence of institutional reforms, ownership changes, main agent problems, technological progress, efficient scale growth, and many other reasons for efficiency and the lack of it. The results illustrate that ownership restructuring contributed to total factor productivity gains. The restructuring induced optimized operation of container terminals, especially for large ports, as it allowed specialized private entities to concentrate on terminal operation and cargo handling services.     

Wellness tourism in Sareyn,Iran: resources,planning and development

Health tourism is a broad concept that incorporates both medical and wellness tourism. Sareyn, city of Ardabil province, is one of the largest and the most diverse cities for health tourism. Although health tourism in Iran is in its infancy, it can offer new opportunities, and strengthen the overall competitiveness of Iran's tourism industry. In this paper, by using strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis, the strengths and opportunities for sustainable health tourism are determined. Also, weaknesses and threats are recognized; finally, guidelines for efficiently using the strengths and transforming the weaknesses into opportunities and strengths are presented.     

Dynamic routing of time-sensitive air cargo using real-time information

The route planning of time-sensitive air-cargo is becoming more important with the growing air-network congestion and delays. We consider a freight forwarder’s routing of a time-sensitive air-cargo in the presence of real-time and historical information regarding flight availability, departure delays and travel times. A departure delay estimation model is developed to account for real-time information inaccuracy. A novel Markov decision model is formulated and solved with online backward induction. Through synthetic experiments and case studies, we demonstrate that dynamic routing with real-time information can improve delivery reliability and reduce expected cost.     

Context sensitive multimodal road planning: a case study in Cape Town, South Africa

Road planning practice relies almost exclusively on parameters related to traffic factors, such as private vehicle speeds and volumes. In many developing countries the requirements for public transport and non-motorised transport are not explicitly integrated into the planning process, despite the fact that these form the primary mode of transport for the majority of the population. This affects the mobility opportunities for these sectors of the population and contributes to poor road safety, especially with regards to pedestrians. The research outlined in the paper posits that, in order to assess the usage and needs of the road holistically, other factors related to the adjacent land uses, socio-economic characteristics of the population the road serves, and the environmental context within which the road is located, factors heavily in how the road is used and should, therefore, be considered within the planning process. The paper describes a methodology to include these factors in the planning of roads. The method attempts to prioritise amongst the five primary road based modes (public transport, car, freight, walking and cycling) based upon a combination of traffic and non-traffic factors. The method employed uses a geographic information system (GIS) based spatial multiple criteria evaluation (SMCE) model with inputs from widely available data sources such as census, household travel surveys, land use and environmental data to arrive at solutions for modal priorities. A case study is conducted along an arterial route in Cape Town, South Africa, providing infrastructure planning recommendations and audit possibilities for the future. Since weighting is an important driver in the SMCE process, a sensitivity analysis is conducted to investigate the effect of alternative weighting schemes on the outputs from the method.     

How do cities approach policy innovation and policy learning? A study of 30 policies in Northern Europe and North America

This paper reports on a study of current practice in policy transfer, and ways in which its effectiveness can be increased. A literature review identifies important factors in examining the transfer of policies. Results of interviews in eleven cities in Northern Europe and North America investigate these factors further.The principal motivations for policy transfer were strategic need and curiosity. Local officials and politicians dominated the process of initiating policy transfer, and local officials were also the leading players in transferring experience.A range of information sources are used in the search process but human interaction was the most important source of learning for two main reasons. First, there is too much information available through the Internet and the search techniques are not seen to be wholly effective in identifying the necessary information. Secondly, the information available on websites, portals and even good practice guides is not seen to be of mixed quality with risks of focussing only on successful implementation and therefore subject to some bias. Officials therefore rely on their trusted networks of peers for lessons as here they can access the ‘real implementation’ story and the unwritten lessons. Organisations which have a culture that is supportive of learning from elsewhere had strong and broad networks of external contacts and resourced their development whilst others are more insular or inward looking and reluctant to invest in policy lessons from elsewhere. Solutions to the problems identified in the evidence base are proposed.City to city policy transfer is a very active process in the field of transport. Not enough is yet understood about its benefits or the conditions under which it is most effective. Such understandings should help to promote and accelerate the uptake of effective and well matched policies.     

The Impact of Financial Crises on Labor Markets, Household Incomes, and Poverty: A Review of Evidence

The 1990s have witnessed several financial crises, of whichthe East Asia and Mexico tequila crises are perhaps the mostwell known. What impact have these crises had on labor markets,household incomes, and poverty? Total employment fell by muchless than production declines and even increased in some cases.However, these aggregates mask considerable churning in employmentacross sectors, employment status, and location. Economies thatexperienced the sharpest currency depreciations suffered thedeepest cuts in real wages, though deeper cuts in real wagesrelative to GDP were associated with smaller rises in unemployment.To some extent, families smoothed their incomes through increasedlabor force participation and private transfers, though thelimited evidence available suggests that wealthier familieswere better able to smooth consumption. The initial impact ofthe crises was on the urban corporate sector, but rural householdswere affected as well and in some instances suffered deeperlosses than did urban families. School enrollment declined,especially among poorer families, as did use of health facilities,but he impact on children's nutrition levels appears to vary.Crises have typically proved short-lived, but whether householdsplunged into poverty during a crisis are able to recover asthe economy does remains an open question.      

Determinants of Geographic Voter Participation Rate Differentials: the 2014 Mid-Term Election

Voter participation rates vary widely across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. This empirical study seeks, within the context of a broadened version of the “rational voter model,” to identify determinants of this geographic variation. Using the 2014 mid-term general election, it was found that the voter participation rate across states and the District of Columbia was positively related to whether there is a close governor’s race or a close U.S. Senate race, the female labor force participation rate, the percent of the population aged 65 and over, the number of referenda on the ballot, and the degree of voting-by-mail usage. In addition, it was found that voter turnout was negatively related to the percentages of the population that are either Hispanic or Afro-American.