Enriching Resources for the Poor: Lessons from the Philippines

The paper provides an overview of the poverty situation in the Philippines, followed by a brief profile and assessment of two anti‐poverty programs: the Kapit‐Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan‐Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (KALAHI‐CIDSS) program and the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps). Official statistics disclose that the global economic crisis in 2008 adversely affected Filipino households, leading to higher levels of poverty especially in rural areas. In response, government introduced an Economic Resiliency Program with social protection as one component. Sixty‐six social protection programs were launched, including the two under review. KALAHI‐CIDSS and the 4Ps apply poverty reduction strategies that focus on the development of human and social capital, rather than economic capital. They involve processes and relationships that aim to improve the other dimensions of poverty, such as lack of access to opportunities or deprivation of basic human necessities. Qualitative and quantitative reports describe generally favorable outcomes from both programs. However, these gains at the household level need to be supported by relevant policy, enhanced public services and badly‐needed infrastructure programs from government, in order to sustain achievements culled from social protection programs and attain broader developmental impacts.     

论民族地区全面建设小康社会中的科技创新

要文章立足于民族地区社会经济发展和演变的实际,分析了民族地区全面建设小康社会中的科技创新现状,探讨了民族地区走科技创新的新路子的途径。     

论中华民族的多元民族文化观

民族文化观是人们对一个民族包括自身民族与他民族文化的观念、态度和价值取向。中华民族的多元文化观产生于多元的文化起源,形成于多民族长期的接触与交往。它既有多元的特征,也有一体的特征。在历史上,这种文化态度对中国各民族团结、国家和平统一以及社会发展都发挥了积极的作用。在世界格局与中国社会发生重大变革的当今社会,多元民族文化观依然具有很强的现实意义。     

Cautious Expected Utility and the Certainty Effect

Many violations of the independence axiom of expected utility can be traced to subjects' attraction to risk‐free prospects. The key axiom in this paper, negative certainty independence ([Dillenberger, 2010]), formalizes this tendency. Our main result is a utility representation of all preferences over monetary lotteries that satisfy negative certainty independence together with basic rationality postulates. Such preferences can be represented as if the agent were unsure of how to evaluate a given lottery p; instead, she has in mind a set of possible utility functions over outcomes and displays a cautious behavior: she computes the certainty equivalent of p with respect to each possible function in the set and picks the smallest one. The set of utilities is unique in a well defined sense. We show that our representation can also be derived from a “cautious” completion of an incomplete preference relation.     

Benefits of Hybrid Lateral Transshipments in Multi‐Item Inventory Systems under Periodic Replenishment

Lateral transshipments are a method of responding to shortages of stock in a network of inventory‐holding locations. Conventional reactive approaches only seek to meet immediate shortages. The study proposes hybrid transshipments which exploit economies of scale by moving additional stock between locations to prevent future shortages in addition to meeting immediate ones. The setting considered is motivated by retailers who operate networks of outlets supplying car parts via a system of periodic replenishment. It is novel in allowing non‐stationary stochastic demand and general patterns of dependence between multiple item types. The generality of our work makes it widely applicable. We develop an easy‐to‐compute quasi‐myopic heuristic for determining how hybrid transshipments should be made. We obtain simple characterizations of the heuristic and demonstrate its strong cost performance in both small and large networks in an extensive numerical study.     

Exploring Parameter Relations for Multi‐Stage Models in Stage‐Wise Constant and Time Dependent Hazard Rates

Single cohort stage‐frequency data are considered when assessing the stage reached by individuals through destructive sampling. For this type of data, when all hazard rates are assumed constant and equal, Laplace transform methods have been applied in the past to estimate the parameters in each stage‐duration distribution and the overall hazard rates. If hazard rates are not all equal, estimating stage‐duration parameters using Laplace transform methods becomes complex. In this paper, two new models are proposed to estimate stage‐dependent maturation parameters using Laplace transform methods where non‐trivial hazard rates apply. The first model encompasses hazard rates that are constant within each stage but vary between stages. The second model encompasses time‐dependent hazard rates within stages. Moreover, this paper introduces a method for estimating the hazard rate in each stage for the stage‐wise constant hazard rates model. This work presents methods that could be used in specific types of laboratory studies, but the main motivation is to explore the relationships between stage maturation parameters that, in future work, could be exploited in applying Bayesian approaches. The application of the methodology in each model is evaluated using simulated data in order to illustrate the structure of these models.     

A reflected feature space for CART

We present an algorithm for learning oblique decision trees, called HHCART(G). Our decision tree combines learning concepts from two classification trees, HHCART and Geometric Decision Tree (GDT). HHCART(G) is a simplified HHCART algorithm that uses linear structure in the training examples, captured by a modified GDT angle bisector, to define splitting directions. At each node, we reflect the training examples with respect to the modified angle bisector to align this linear structure with the coordinate axes. Searching axis parallel splits in this reflected feature space provides an efficient and effective way of finding oblique splits in the original feature space. Our method is much simpler than HHCART because it only considers one reflected feature space for node splitting. HHCART considers multiple reflected feature spaces for node splitting making it more computationally intensive to build. Experimental results show that HHCART(G) is an effective classifier, producing compact trees with similar or better results than several other decision trees, including GDT and HHCART trees.     

西部乡村—城镇转型多元评价指标体系的构建及应用

以乡村综合发展度、乡村—城镇变迁度、乡村—城镇协调度为测度标准,构建一套综合评价指标体系。以中国西部地区为研究对象,对2001—2010年十年间乡村—城镇转型发展态势进行分析和评价。研究结果表明:(1)从整体层面来看,西部地区乡村综合发展度不断提高,乡村—城镇变迁度不断加快,乡村—城镇协调度不断优化;(2)从省际层面来看,不同省区的乡村—城镇转型呈现出不同的发展面貌,具有较大的差距。     

MAS环境下实现Agent交互协作的关键技术

讨论了MAS环境下实现Agent交互协作的关键性问题。在分析Agent协同设计目标的基础上,将遗传算法应用于子任务的调度,提高了Agent协同工作的效率。应用Agent的通信语言建立了一个基于知识查询与操纵语言的Agent通信模型,通过引入Agent位置追踪和Agent消息缓存机制解决了Agent移动过程中遇到的位置追踪和通信失效问题。