Traffic Control for Network Protection Against Spreading Processes

Epidemic outbreaks in human populations are facilitated by the underlying transportation network. We consider strategies for containing a viral spreading process by optimally allocating a limited budget to three types of protection resources: (i) Traffic control resources, (ii), preventative resources and (iii) corrective resources. Traffic control resources are employed to impose restrictions on the traffic flowing across directed edges in the transportation network. Preventative resources are allocated to nodes to reduce the probability of infection at that node (e.g. vaccines), and corrective resources are allocated to nodes to increase the recovery rate at that node (e.g. antidotes). We assume these resources have monetary costs associated with them, from which we formalize an optimal budget allocation problem which maximizes containment of the infection. We present a polynomial time solution to the optimal budget allocation problem using Geometric Programming (GP) for an arbitrary weighted and directed contact network and a large class of resource cost functions. We illustrate our approach by designing optimal traffic control strategies to contain an epidemic outbreak that propagates through a real-world air transportation network.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1309.627

The Ways of Improvement of the Tax Control System in Russia in the New Geopolitical Conditions Based on Historical Experience and World Practice

Creation of the financial stability is the main task of any state, in which connection the value of taxes and duties as the sources of profitable part of the state budget explains priority of the tax control as the direction of tax authorities\u27 activity. Economic and social development of any modern state much depends on effectiveness of tax control system that is why the problems of tax control organization, elaboration of the ways of tax control improvement are topical. In the modern world the International relations and connections gain the great value, at the state interaction they can appeal to the experience of each other on the questions of legislation, levy of the taxes and duties in the state budget. In each state the tax control systems are different and have both positive and negative aspects. At analysis of the foreign legislation the detailed analysis of the results of the use of certain measures of regulation and control is needed and it is also necessary to prognosticate an experience that will be gained by our state in the case of introduction of analogous measures. It is also must be noted that for creation of the effective tax control system it is necessary to use the large number of mechanisms of tax administration

The Republican Spending Explosion

When the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994, they promised to eliminate the deficit and reduce wasteful spending. For several years, the GOP partly upheld its commitment by modestly curtailing spending growth and balancing the budget. Unfortunately, the balanced budgets of the late 1990s created an "easy money" mindset in Congress, which began a spending spree that continues unabated today. Total federal outlays will rise 29 percent between fiscal years 2001 and 2005 according to the president's fiscal year 2005 budget released in February. Real discretionary spending increases in fiscal years 2002, 2003, and 2004 are three of the five biggest annual increases in the last 40 years. Large spending increases have been the principal cause of the government's return to massive budget deficits. Although defense spending has increased in response to the war on terrorism, President Bush has made little attempt to restrain nondefense spending to offset the higher Pentagon budget. Nondefense discretionary outlays will increase about 36 percent during President Bush's first term in office. Congress has failed to contain the administration's overspending and has added new spending of its own. Republicans have clearly forfeited any claim of being the fiscally responsible party in Washington. Looking ahead, Republicans need to rediscover the reforming spirit that they brought to Washington after the landmark 1994 congressional elections. Fiscally conservative Democrats should challenge big-spending Republicans and work to cut unneeded programs from both the defense and nondefense parts of the budget. In command of the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, Republicans are primarily responsible for the current budget mess, and it is Republicans who have the power to pare back spending to get the federal budget under control once again

Analysis on Bandung Government Budget in Improvement of Human Resources Quality

Experts have long proposed using public services provision as a primary tool for improve the quality of human live in the developing world. Providing a proper basic education and health services to the community can help them to achieve a well living condition. In many developing countries, government becomes the main stakeholder of the provision these public services. Their policies in providing public services commonly reflected in their budget allocation. Therefore, the concern of government toward their citizen’s quality of life can be observed from their budget allocation. Using the major city of Bandung Indonesia as a case study, this research attempts to explore the condition on how far the government’s concern to improve its citizen. This research investigates the allocation of government budget on basic education and health spending. Using the data of government budget between 2005 to 2008 period, this research finds that the allocation of government budget on basic education and health services follows an increasing trend. However, compared to other similar cities the proportion of this allocation is still considered low. In addition, this research also finds that most of this budget is spent to finance routine expenditure instead of development expenditure. This condition is heavily influenced by the condition where the number of government officer is still considered large. And also low public control toward the use of government budget. The research also provides a number of recommendations to overcome several obstacles that inhibit bigger budget allocation to development expenditure in basic education and health services. The research suggests that the government should create a more efficient working system that can lead to reduction of current expenditure. In addition, since public control in government expenditure can address a better public expenditure allocation, the information of government budget should be disseminated widely to public. Therefore, the government should develop a system to increase transparency in government budget allocation.government budget, education, health

Governors' Budgets for FY 2013 - What Is Proposed for Medicaid?

Examines trends in governors' Medicaid budget proposals, including expected shortfalls, fiscal priorities, additional spending cuts, policy actions to control Medicaid costs, and targeted investments, as well as tax cuts and fiscal reform proposals

Assessing the financial impact of the Scotland Bill : problems of Scottish Government accounting

The Scotland Bill contains proposals based on the Calman Report to remedy the major financial weakness of the 1997 devolution settlement – namely its limited tax-raising powers. The new funding model will combine Block Grant with new tax revenues from a Scottish Income Tax, a Scottish Land Transaction Tax and a Scottish Landfill Tax. However, it has been heavily criticised by the Scottish Government for having a "long-term deflationary bias". This is a strong attack on a model intended to maintain stability and promote accountability in devolution finance. The current approach is embedded in the UK fiscal framework, in which the UK Government has responsibility for the planning and control of the public finances, and resource allocation to UK Departments and Devolved Administrations. The Scottish Budget therefore benefits from "an automatic macroeconomic stabilisation level and a public expenditure per capita substantially above the UK average". The UK Budget process provides a high degree of stability. It operates through incremental change, in which the major part of the new budget is the existing baseline, and decisions are made around the margins of this budget base. In the case of the Scottish Budget, incremental adjustments are made through the Barnett Formula which delivers the same per capita increase/decrease as comparable UK programmes, and has delivered "stability and predictability" since devolution

Quantum--Classical Interface Based on Single Flux Quantum Digital Logic

We describe an approach to the integrated control and measurement of a large-scale superconducting multiqubit circuit using a proximal coprocessor based on the Single Flux Quantum (SFQ) digital logic family. Coherent control is realized by irradiating the qubits directly with classical bitstreams derived from optimal control theory. Qubit measurement is performed by a Josephson photon counter, which provides access to the classical result of projective quantum measurement at the millikelvin stage. We analyze the power budget and physical footprint of the SFQ coprocessor and discuss challenges and opportunities associated with this approach.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure

Separation of Powers and Political Budget Cycles

From a theoretical viewpoint, political budget cycles (PBC) arise in equilibrium when rational voters are imperfectly informed about the incumbent's competency and the incumbent enjoys discretionary power over the budget. This paper focuses on the second condition, examining how executive discretion is affected by the budgetary process under separation of powers. We specifically model PBC in the composition of government spending. The main result is that effective checks and balances in the budgetary process curb PBC. The institutional features of the executive-legislature bargaining game, namely, the actual agenda-setting authority, the status quo location and the degree of legislative oversight and control of the implementation of the budgetary law, play critical roles for the existence and the size of PBC. These results are consistent with recent empirical findings, which show that PBC are more pronounced in developing countries, where there are also less effective checks and balances.Rational political budget cycles; budget composition; separation of powers; checks and balances; budgetary process.

Who Cares About the Budget? The Effect of National and State Fiscal Policy on State Electoral Accountability

Although state government officials have direct power over certain issues like fiscal policy, legislatures and governors can be held accountable for conditions largely outside their control, such as unemployment at the state and national levels. To compound this effect, national fiscal policy and economic conditions have been volatile and highly publicized in recent years, with little research to discover how much these conditions affect elections at the state level. This study finds that although national fiscal policy and economic conditions are highly visible, voters often only hold state representatives accountable for conditions within their control: state fiscal policy decisions. Furthermore, governors are held more accountable than legislators for fiscal policy decisions, while legislatures avoid direct scrutiny and are only affected by partisan association with presidential and gubernatorial representatives. Interestingly, while governors are punished for increasing the size of government, they are rewarded independently for revenue and expenditure increases as well as budget mismanagement. This implies that while voters allocate accountability for fiscal policy conditions to state representatives, voter desire for government program and benefit sustainment outweighs the conventional desire for prudent budget management. Finally, it is observed that while voters desire lavish spending at the state level, they expect more fiscal prudence from federal budget decisions