Understanding the Economic Costs and Benefits of Catastrophes and Their Aftermath: A Review and Suggestions for the U.S. Federal Government

The number and magnitude of devastating natural and human events make it imperative that we actively and systematically estimate the costs and benefits of policy decisions in affected localities, regions, states, and nations. Such strategic risk management preparedness efforts should forecast well into the future and include scenarios with and without enhanced engineered structures; with reduced vulnerability through land-use planning and design; with the impact of resiliency and mitigation; with evacuation and relocation; and with the costs and benefits of recovery and restoration. We describe different kinds of regional economic models that can be used in these preparedness planning efforts, explore critical data needs, and advocate a shared federal-state-local strategic planning effort to accomplish the objective.     

On the number of local minima for the multidimensional assignment problem

The Multidimensional Assignment Problem (MAP) is an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem occurring in many applications, such as data association, target tracking, and resource planning. As many solution approaches to this problem rely, at least partly, on local neighborhood search algorithms, the number of local minima affects solution difficulty for these algorithms. This paper investigates the expected number of local minima in randomly generated instances of the MAP. Lower and upper bounds are developed for the expected number of local minima, E[M], in an MAP with iid standard normal coefficients. In a special case of the MAP, a closed-form expression for E[M] is obtained when costs are iid continuous random variables. These results imply that the expected number of local minima is exponential in the number of dimensions of the MAP. Our numerical experiments indicate that larger numbers of local minima have a statistically significant negative effect on the quality of solutions produced by several heuristic algorithms that involve local neighborhood search.Partially supported by the NSF grant DMI-0457473.     

Incomplete Contracts: Where do We Stand?

The paper takes stock of the advances and directions for research on the incomplete contracting front. It first illustrates some of the main ideas of the incomplete contract literature through an example. It then offers methodological insights on the standard approach to modeling incomplete contracts; in particular it discusses a tension between two assumptions made in the literature, namely rationality and the existence of transaction costs. Last, it argues that, contrary to what is commonly argued, the complete contract methodology need not be unable to account for standard institutions such as authority and ownership; and it concludes with a discussion of the research agenda.     

Alliance governance choices: Disentangling the effects of uncertainty and alliance experience

This article analyses the interaction between alliance experience and behavioural uncertainty to improve our understanding of alliance governance. We investigate the extent to which the effect of alliance experience on governance choices is explained by a reduction in “mundane” transaction costs or by a reduction in “opportunistic” transaction costs. Based on more than 12,000 firm experiences with equity and non-equity alliances, we demonstrate a reduction in mundane transaction costs over time by firms reusing the same governance structure in successive alliances. We also find that in high behavioural uncertainty alliances, firms rely on their experience as a substitute for equity governance to reduce opportunistic transaction costs.     

Disclosure among victims of elder abuse in healthcare settings: a missing piece in the overall effort toward detection

Elder abuse remains a largely hidden problem in our society and only a small minority of victims are connected to formal support/protective services. Healthcare settings have been identified as a critical milieu to uncover cases of elder abuse; however, under-detection in these settings is a major issue. Victimization disclosure is an important component within the overall detection effort, yet it has received little attention in the elder abuse literature. Drawing on relevant literature from other domains of family/interpersonal violence, this article highlights the disclosure process, as well as disclosure barriers, facilitators, and competencies to consider when working with older adults.     

从“诬告反坐”到“讹诈有罚”——对被救助者诬赖救助者立法惩罚的再思考

当下诸多被救助者诬告讹诈救助者事件的背后,无不折射出单纯中华传统道德诉求已经不能协调社会的健康发展。当道德的软性约束作用无法发挥时,通过法律制度的建设惩罚诬告讹诈者就成为必要。然现代“讹诈有罚”并非简单的惩恶扬善呼吁,也并非中国古代“诬告反坐”的直接过渡与顺承。立法惩罚诬告者还需从制度渊源、现行体制、证据认定、责任承担、惩罚措施等多方予以考虑。     

生育外部性及生育成本分析

生育虽然是一种家庭行为,但它同时也是具有外部性的社会行为。生育成本包括私人成本和社会成本两部分。由于家庭在生育决策问题上很少考虑社会成本,导致家庭生育意愿与社会需求不一致。通过缴纳社会抚养费等方式,将部分社会成本转化为私人成本,是实现调节生育行为的必要手段。     

渝㈣对重庆市沿线区县的影响

渝怀铁路作为一条典型的扶贫铁路,其绝大部分在重庆区划内。渝怀铁路的建设降低了途经区县的交通成本,从而间接提高了各个区县的客货运量,同时为农村富余劳动力的转移提供了便利条件,并在一定程度上促进了这些地区旅游业的大发展。     

Can personal budgets really deliver better outcome for all at no cost? Reviewing the evidence,costs and quality

Political recognition of the parlous state of English social care and the urgent need for radical reform led to calls for new policy approaches that address the two key problems it faced: inadequate funding and poor quality and inappropriate provision. The New Labour government was convinced that it had found a way of dealing with these two competing problems and it embarked on a policy, which has subsequently gained cross-party support. The centre-piece was the concept of a personal budget, and was introduced with a belief that there would be major cost savings while improving service user satisfaction. This article will critically explore the evidence for whether the strategy is fulfilling that promise.     

Electronic Psychosocial Assessment Tool: Concept Development and Identification of Barriers to Successful Implementation

Information Communication Technologies (ICT) have resulted in positive outcomes in a range of clinical studies, however, most have not had widespread subsequent uptake, partly because they were not developed with all stakeholder requirements in mind. In the current study, we engaged stakeholders in the concept development stage of a project to transform a psychosocial assessment into an ICT-enabled format. By engaging the stakeholders in this early process we were able to identify a range of software functionalities that are likely to improve the applicability for users, as well as identify possible barriers to implementation.