On some problems arising from Professor Rawls' conception of distributive justice

This paper is concerned with two specific aspects of Professor Rawls' conception of distributive justice. In Section I Rawls' controversial difference principle is discussed in the context of individual decision under uncertainty, as well as the problem of interpersonal comparison of utilities. It is noted that, contrary to some recent accounts, Rawls' conception of the original position is considerably different from that to be found in the works of Harsanyi. In Section II an attempt is made to articulate in a precise way Rawls' intergenerational savings principle. While it is noted that the Rawlsian savings rule possesses a number of attractive properties, it is demonstrated that it conflicts with the principle of intertemporal Pareto efficiency.This is a revised and expanded version of the text of a lecture delivered at the Moral Sciences Club of the University of Cambridge in February, 1973. I would like to acknowledge the many instructions that I have received on the matters discussed in this paper from Kenneth Arrow, Simon Blackburn, Frank Hahn, Philip Pettit, John Rawls, Abhijit Sen, Amartya Sen, and Robert Solow. While I doubt very much if any of these gentlemen would agree with all that I assert in this paper, I hope that each agrees with some of the propositions madehere.     

Evaluation of the In Touch training program for the management of alcohol and other drug use issues in schools

In Touch is a professional training program designed to develop staff skills and support structures so as to enable schools to manage alcohol and other drug (AOD) matters in a coordinated manner that maximizes beneficial outcomes for at-risk students, while at the same time maintaining school discipline and community relationships. This study is an evaluation of the impact of the program on alcohol and other drug (AOD) related knowledge, attitudes and activity of participating school staff, and on AOD management practice in their schools. Data from 53 intervention participants and 21 controls were compared at pre- and post-intervention. These data indicated a 46% increase in AOD knowledge among those who participated in In Touch training. Attitudes favorable to integrated, supportive management of AOD issues also increased significantly in this group, as did desirable practice. However, change in school practice was limited. Significantly more schools whose staff participated in In Touch training had a written drug policy at post-intervention, but schools' usual responses to AOD-related incidents were substantially the same. These findings indicate that professional training on the management of AOD matters can change the understanding and practice of individual staff, but if school structures and practice are to be substantially influenced, a broader program is required.     

Finite sample properties of maximum likelihood and quasi-maximum likelihood estimators of egarch models

In this paper I examine finite sample properties of the maximum likelihood and quasi-maximum likelihood estimators of EGARCH(1,1) processes using Monte Carlo methods. I use response surface methodology to summarize the results of a wide array of experiments which suggest that the maximum likelihood estimator has reasonable finite sample properties. The Gaussian quasi-maximum likelihood estimator has poor finite sample properties when the data generating process has conditional excess kurtosis. Some of these poor properties appear to be asymptotic in nature.     

Empirical Bayes estimation in directional data

Empirical Bayes procedures have been developed extensively in the literature, under the assumption that the underlying parameter space (or the sample space) is Euclidean in nature. However, there has been almost no research carried out into when the data comes from a different space. We develop empirical Bayes techniques to estimate the mean direction of the Fisher-von Mises distribution. In this case, the underlying space is non-Euclidean. The special case when the data are angles on the unit circle is illustrated with an example.     

Implementation With Contingent Contracts

We study dominant strategy incentive compatibility in a mechanism design setting with contingent contracts where the payoff of each agent is observed by the principal and can be contracted upon. Our main focus is on the class of linear contracts (one of the most commonly used contingent contracts) which consist of a transfer and a flat rate of profit sharing. We characterize outcomes implementable by linear contracts and provide a foundation for them by showing that, in finite type spaces, every social choice function that can be implemented using a more general nonlinear contingent contract can also be implemented using a linear contract. We then qualitatively describe the set of implementable outcomes. We show that a general class of social welfare criteria can be implemented. This class contains social choice functions (such as the Rawlsian) which cannot be implemented using (uncontingent) transfers. Under additional conditions, we show that only social choice functions in this class are implementable.     

A multimodal skewed extension of normal distribution: its properties and applications

A multimodal skewed extension of normal distribution is proposed by applying the general method as in [Huang WJ, Chen YH. Generalized skew-Cauchy distribution. Stat Probab Lett. 2007;77:1137–1147] for the construction of skew-symmetric distributions by using a trigonometric periodic skew function. Some of its distributional properties are investigated. Properties of maximum likelihood estimation of the parameters are studied numerically by simulation. The suitability of the proposed distribution in empirical data modelling is investigated by carrying out comparative fitting of two real-life data sets.     

A speciation-based bilevel niching method for multimodal truss design problems

Truss design is a well-known structural optimization problem that has important practical applications in various fields. Truss design problems are typically multimodal by nature, meaning that it offers multiple optimal solutions concerning the topology (combinatorial optimization problem) and/or sizes (continuous optimization problem) of the members, but they are evaluated to have similar or equally good objective function values. From a practical standpoint, it is desirable to find as many alternative designs as possible, rather than finding a single design, as often practiced. Several techniques based on classical and metaheuristic optimization methods have been developed for simultaneous optimization of topology and size of a truss. However, all these methods unable to find multiple topologies and their corresponding size solutions in a single run. A few metaheuristics incorporating niching techniques have been developed for finding multiple topologies for the truss design problem, but these studies ignored the fact that for each known topology, multiple design solutions in terms of size can be found. To address this issue, this paper proposes a bi-level truss formulation and subsequently a speciation-based bilevel niching method (BiL-NM) using such a formulation. The BiL-NM consists of a modified SPSO niching method which is robust to find multiple topologies and a canonical PSO for their corresponding size solutions. Extensive empirical studies are carried out to analyze the accuracy, robustness, and efficiency of the BiL-NM. The results confirm that the proposed BiL-NM is superior in all these three aspects over the state-of-the-art methods on several low to high-dimensional truss design problems.

     

Does federal flood hazard mitigation assistance affect community rating system participation?

With the inexorable march of climate change, increased flooding is inevitable. Understanding the feedback between federal flood mitigation policies and the ways in which local governments build flood resilience is a significant gap in the literature. In particular, the effect that federal flood mitigation grants have on the intensity of local flood mitigation is nonexistent. This work measures flood risk mitigation by using the level of participation in FEMA's Community Rating System (CRS). Communities that participate in the CRS and undertake mitigation are awarded points; more points imply a higher level of participation. Since its inception in 1990, CRS communities have received considerably more federal pre-disaster flood mitigation grants compared to non-CRS communities. This study assesses the effect of federal pre-disaster flood mitigation grants on the level of participation in the CRS program. We use data on Hazard Mitigation Assistance programs and CRS participation data between 2010 and 2015. We link these data to flood risk and socioeconomic information. Our results indicate (i) federal pre-disaster flood mitigation grants do not appear to significantly influence the level of CRS participation, (ii) the effect of flood risk and socioeconomic factors on the level of CRS participation are mixed, and (iii) the current level of CRS participation is influenced by the previous level of CRS participation, which is not tied to federal pre-disaster flood mitigation grant. These findings add to the growing discussions on the drivers and barriers of local flood risk mitigation.     

Effect of urbanization on the dynamics of ecosystem services: An analysis for decision making in Kolkata urban agglomeration

Urban Ecosystems - Urbanization has profound influence on the changes of land use and land cover, which on the other hand exert significant impact on ecosystem services and their values, especially...