Fertility and development in Brazil

In the past, one of the concomitants of development has been a sustained reduction in fertility. As a result of this experience, demographers hypothesize that in a society in which fertility is lower in urban areas, among the upper socioeconomic status groups and the better-educated, fertility will decline to a moderate level as the country changes from a rural, agricultural socioeconomic structure, with low levels of living and education, to an urban, industrial structure, with rising levels of living and education.The data analyzed in this study indicate, however, that though substantial social and economic development (as measured by changes in industrial structure, per capita income, urbanization, and education) occurred in Brazil from at least 1920-40 to 1960, during which time fertility differentials of the kind indicated above existed, fertility has shown little or no tendency to decline. Between 1940 and 1960, in fact, the birth rate appears to have remained fairly constant around 43. With the death rate steadily dropping, the rate of natural increase and population growth (given a small net in-migration) has been accelerating. p ]From a theoretical point of view, these facts reinforce a growing realization, based on similar findings in some other developing countries, that the prevailing theoretical ideas concerning the relationship between development and fertility require modification, particularly in the direction of greater specificity. On the practical side, the question is raised whether Brazil's rate of economic development during the postwar period up to 1960 can be maintained, let alone increased, in the face of a population growth rate which will probably average 3.2-3.5 percent for the period 1960-70 and which, in the absence of a decline in fertility, is likely to accelerate further.     

Risk,Process Maturity,and Project Performance: An Empirical Analysis of US Federal Government Technology Projects

In recent years, there has been increasing pressure on the US federal government to reduce spending and improve the management of its technology projects. Mitigating the adverse impact of risks on the performance of these projects presents a significant challenge for its stakeholders. Our research examines this challenge in two steps. First, we identify and define a set of salient risks in federal technology projects—specifically, complexity risk and contracting risk in the planning process, and execution risk in the execution process. Next, we investigate whether higher levels of process maturity, assessed by the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) framework, mitigate the negative effect of project risks on project performance. The analysis of time‐series data collected from 82 federal technology projects across 519 quarterly time periods indicates that each of the three types of risks has a significant negative effect on project performance. This finding highlights the practical significance of managing these risks in the federal technology project context. Further, we find that increasing levels of process maturity attenuate the negative effect of project risks on the performance of federal technology projects. However, the attenuation effects are consequential only at high levels of project risks; at low levels of project risk, increasing levels of process maturity can adversely affect project performance. To demonstrate the financial implications of increasing process maturity levels in federal technology projects, we examine the magnitude of project cost savings (and overruns) across different levels of CMMI and project risks. In summary, our study contributes to the sparse literature on public sector operations by addressing the understudied context of federal technology projects, and provides a nuanced examination of the implications of process maturity in managing the risk to performance relationship in such projects.     

Computing equilibrium in network utility-sharing and discrete election games

Journal of Combinatorial Optimization - This paper studies the computation of pure Nash equilibrium (PNE) in network utility-sharing and discretized Hotelling–Downs games, and the interplay...     

A Multiple Objective Embedded Network Model for Human Resource Planning and an Implementation of the Tchebycheff Method

A multiple objective embedded network model is proposed to model a variety of human resource planning problems including executive succession planning, compensation planning, training program design, diversity management and human systems design. The Tchebycheff Method, an interactive multiple objective programming solution procedure developed by Steuer and Choo [32], is implemented using NETSIDE, a computer routine for solving network problems with side constraints developed by Kennington and Whisman [17]. This paper demonstrates how the network structure common to many types of human resource planning problems can be exploited to improve solution efficiency, and how our approach extends the use of network models in human resource planning by including multiple objectives and extranetwork constraints. An illustrative example demonstrating the modeling and solution approach is presented, and the potential applications of these approaches in two specific areas of human resource planning are discussed.