Improving water service to the urban poor through delegated management: Lessons from the city of Kisumu,Kenya

Partnerships like the delegated management model (DMM), in which a utility delegates management of infrastructure and service delivery to slum residents, are being promoted to improve services to the urban slums in sub‐Saharan Africa. However, there is little empirical evidence of the benefits that DMM offers beneficiaries and its potential limitations. This study, conducted in 2013, compared water service in two slums in the city of Kisumu in Kenya where DMM has been implemented with another where it has not been implemented. Results showed that DMM had lowered the cost of water compared to water kiosks in neighbourhoods in which DMM had not been implemented. The study findings contribute toward an evidence base for stakeholders and regulators who see an opportunity in the integration of DMM into local drinking water provision solutions in urban slums.     

An exercise in futurity: servitude as pathway to young Filipino men’s education- to-work transition

This article examines how young Filipino men looking to work in international seafaring deploy servitude as a means of attaining education-to-work transition. It focuses on those applying to work for free as ‘utility men’ (gofer or flunkey) in Manila’s manning and crewing agencies that supply seafarers to ship operators around the world in exchange for the promise of boarding a ship. Based on participant observation and life history interviews, the article accounts for how they transform their servitude into diskarte – strategy by which they navigate the limited employment opportunities in the Philippines – by constructing their ‘utility manning’ as an informal and negotiated pathway to employment. The young Filipino men’s seeking and enduring servitude, geared towards gleaning better social possibilities, becomes a profoundly rational act of investing in and securing their future.     

Estimating utility functions using generalized maximum entropy

This paper estimates von Neumann and Morgenstern utility functions using the generalized maximum entropy (GME), applied to data obtained by utility elicitation methods. Given the statistical advantages of this approach, we provide a comparison of the performance of the GME estimator with ordinary least square (OLS) in a real data small sample setup. The results confirm the ones obtained for small samples through Monte Carlo simulations. The difference between the two estimators is small and it decreases as the width of the parameter support vector increases. Moreover, the GME estimator is more precise than the OLS one. Overall, the results suggest that GME is an interesting alternative to OLS in the estimation of utility functions when data are generated by utility elicitation methods.     

Normalized Quadratic Systems of Consumer Demand Functions

Empirically estimated demand systems frequently fail to satisfy the appropriate theoretical curvature conditions. We propose and estimate two demand systems for which these conditions can be imposed globally; the first is derived from a normalized quadratic reciprocal indirect utility function and the second is derived from a normalized quadratic expenditure function. The former is flexible if there are no restrictions on its free parameters, but loses flexibility if the curvature conditions need to be imposed. The latter is flexible, in the class of functions satisfying local money metric scaling, even if the curvature conditions need to be imposed.     

Solving the Stochastic Growth Model by Parameterizing Expectations

This article describes a method for solving the one-good stochastic growth model by parameterizing the expectations part of the stochastic Euler equation. The conditional expectation is specified as a function of the state of the system, and the parameters of that function are estimated to solve the model. The article includes a discussion of how to find the parameters of the function and determine systematically the complexity of the functional form necessary to solve the model.     

A multivariate solution of the multivariate ranking and selection problem

The problem of selection of the best multivariate population is given a new formulation which does not involve reducing the populations to univariate quantities. This formulation's solution is developed for known, and (using the Heteroscedastic Method) also for unknown, variance-covariance matrices. Preference reversals and arbitrary nonlinear preference functions are explicitly allowed in this new theory     

城市公用事业分拆竟争的决策分析

在城市公用事业这种自然垄断产业中实行竞争,首先要区别对待自然垄断性业务和非自然垄断性业务。分拆竞争就是将原有的自来水集团业务分离,形成水厂与管网分离、水厂竞争的运行模式。分拆竞争对于被分拆的集团公司与分拆后独立运行的水厂公司,都有一个分拆决策问题。这种分拆决策依赖于公司分拆所带来的直接和间接收益与自来水集团公司滞留水厂公司的收益和成本的对比分析,以及集团管理层、水厂管理者和政府三者的动态博弈。     

《墨子》的思维语言艺术

《墨子》是战国时期墨家著作的总集。由墨子初创,墨子后学增益。现存53篇,9万余字,包含多种文体类别。本文从《墨子》全书,勾勒其思维语言艺术,认为其文字表达具有3个重要的特征,即是准确性和鲜明性,生动性和简练性,理趣性和功利性的统一。在中国古籍浩瀚的思维语言艺术历史长河中,具有独特的原创性价值和意义,值得仔细品味,借鉴传承。     

从结构主义和行为主义看对公用企业的反垄断规制

由于公用企业的特殊性，反垄断法一直对公用企业不适用。但是，随着理论和实践的发展，公用企业受反垄断法的豁免已受到质疑。认为对公用企业无需得到反垄断的豁免，主张依据行为主义理论来对公用企业实行反垄断规制。     

论梁启超的"应用佛学"与其小说观之关系

对梁启超的“应用佛学”思想及其小说观,学界都多有论述,然而却很少有人将二者结合起来,指出其佛学思想与其小说观的关系。细读梁启超两篇小说文论《论小说与群治之关系》与《告小说家,》发现梁启超的小说观与他的“应用佛学”关系紧密。梁启超运用他心目中的佛学宗旨、思维、术语来比附解释他心目中的新小说宗旨、特征、作用。梁启超以佛学论小说来源于传统又超越传统,具有强烈的功用色彩。