Parallel programming using functional languages

It has been argued for many years that functional programs are well suited to parallel evaluation. This thesis investigates this claim from a programming perspective; that is, it investigates parallel programming using functional languages. The approach taken has been to determine the minimum programming which is necessary in order to write efficient parallel programs. This has been attempted without the aid of clever compile-time analyses. It is argued that parallel evaluation should be explicitly expressed, by the programmer, in programs. To do achieve this a lazy functional language is extended with parallel and sequential combinators. The mathematical nature of functional languages means that programs can be formally derived by program transformation. To date, most work on program derivation has concerned sequential programs. In this thesis Squigol has been used to derive three parallel algorithms. Squigol is a functional calculus from program derivation, which is becoming increasingly popular. It is shown that some aspects of Squigol are suitable for parallel program derivation, while others aspects are specifically orientated towards sequential algorithm derivation. In order to write efficient parallel programs, parallelism must be controlled. Parallelism must be controlled in order to limit storage usage, the number of tasks and the minimum size of tasks. In particular over-eager evaluation or generating excessive numbers of tasks can consume too much storage. Also, tasks can be too small to be worth evaluating in parallel. Several program techniques for parallelism control were tried. These were compared with a run-time system heuristic for parallelism control. It was discovered that the best control was effected by a combination of run-time system and programmer control of parallelism. One of the problems with parallel programming using functional languages is that non-deterministic algorithms cannot be expressed. A bag (multiset) data type is proposed to allow a limited form of non-determinism to be expressed. Bags can be given a non-deterministic parallel implementation. However, providing the operations used to combine bag elements are associative and commutative, the result of bag operations will be deterministic. The onus is on the programmer to prove this, but usually this is not difficult. Also bags' insensitivity to ordering means that more transformations are directly applicable than if, say, lists were used instead. It is necessary to be able to reason about and measure the performance of parallel programs. For example, sometimes algorithms which seem intuitively to be good parallel ones, are not. For some higher order functions it is posible to devise parameterised formulae describing their performance. This is done for divide and conquer functions, which enables constraints to be formulated which guarantee that they have a good performance. Pipelined parallelism is difficult to analyse. Therefore a formal semantics for calculating the performance of pipelined programs is devised. This is used to analyse the performance of a pipelined Quicksort. By treating the performance semantics as a set of transformation rules, the simulation of parallel programs may be achieved by transforming programs. Some parallel programs perform poorly due to programming errors. A pragmatic method of debugging such programming errors is illustrated by some examples

The Effect of Audit Standards on Fraud Consultation and Auditor Judgment

We investigate how the strictness of a requirement to consult on potential client fraud affects auditor assessments of fraud risk and the propensity to consult with firm experts. We test two specific forms of guidance about fraud consultations: (1) relatively strict (i.e., mandatory and binding) and (2) relatively lenient (i.e., advisory and non-binding). We predict that a strict consultation requirement will lead to greater propensity to consult and higher fraud risk assessments. We further investigate potentially amplifying effects of a client attribute (underlying fraud risk) and an engagement attribute (deadline pressure). Results from two experiments with 208 Dutch audit managers and partners demonstrate that fraud risk and the consultation propensity are both assessed higher under a strict consultation requirement. For near-partners and partners, this effect is compounded when a client exhibits significant red flags; for managers, it is compounded when deadline pressure is tight. This study demonstrates that the formulation of a standard, such as the consultation requirement, may create adverse incentives that bias risk assessment, which should be considered by regulators and audit firms when developing, formulating and implementing such procedures

Image, Industry, and Ink: Communication of Tattoo Policies By Human Resource Professionals

Despite growing popularity, tattoos have historically been taboo in workplace environments. Those with unconcealable tattoos, especially white-collar workers and women, suffer from a perceived lack of professionalism (Dean, 2010; Hawkes, Senn, & Thorn, 2004). Tattooed individuals often struggle between individual desires and the impression expected in work environments. Meanwhile organizations strike a balance between communicating the organization’s values and employee expression of personal values. This study qualitatively investigates how values and tattoo policies are communicated in organizations, and whether value dissonance influences those communication process. Using a modified version of the Schwartz Value Survey (2006) and semi-structured interviews, the values of seven human resource professionals and their organizations are measured and compared. Results indicate that organizational policy enforcers communicate values through tattoo policies over time, and with unique communication tactics that evoke both organizational and personal values, modeling (conformity), throwing the book down (security), and hypotheticals (authority). Other tactics used by enforcers who experience value dissonance include identification (benevolence) and changing the policy (self-direction). When HR professional’s values are similar to their employer’s perceived organizational values, they are less likely to experience value dissonance. If tattoo policies are developed, communicated, and enforced consistently with organizational values, they can be important communicative tools for organizations

Three Essays on the Impact of Government Assistance Programs on Economic Behaviors of Vulnerable Households.

The overarching theme of the dissertation is to examine the impacts of government assistance programs on the economic behaviors of disadvantaged groups such as low-income or single-headed households in the U.S. It is crucial to expand our understanding of how government assistance has helped them to overcome economic barriers to labor force participation or to expand household resources. My dissertation chapters primarily focus on the two largest government safety net programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). I show that public assistance programs play a pivotal role by interacting with economic choices made by vulnerable households, such as labor supply, health, or household expenditures. Exploiting the variation in specific aspects of welfare program or the changes made to program parameters, I study how the policies have altered the life circumstances and opportunities faced by disadvantaged households.PhDEconomicsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113362/1/junekim_1.pd

Last in, first out? Estimating the effect of seniority rules in Sweden

In this paper we investigate whether a relaxation in seniority rules (the ‘last-in-first-out’ principle) had any effect on firms’ employment behaviour. Seniority rules exist in several countries and, like Sweden, most European countries have a more lenient employment protection for firms below a certain size. Despite the fact that small firms represent a large share of all firms and stand for a substantial share of total employment, there is limited knowledge of how such exemption rules affect firms’ employment behaviour — the consequences of seniority rules on firms’ employment behaviour have not been examined at all. Using data including the population of firms matched with the population of workers for the period 1999–2002, we do not find any general effects on worker flows or on hires and separations. The only exception is a tendency of an increase in the share of separations for older workers and workers with longer seniority. The result points to the importance of considering in detail how legislation is formulated and how it works in practice.Employment protection; employment change; hires; separations; regression discontinuity

Maternal attitudes in women trained for childbirth by Lamaze techniques and women receiving no formal prenatal training

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between prenatal education using psychophysical methods and maternal attitudes. The major question was, do courses designed to alter attitudes of women toward childbirth also alter their attitudes toward the child and family? This question was investigated by means of a pretest-posttest, nonequivalent control-group design. The experimental group consisted of 28 women enrolled in Lamaze Training for Childbirth classes in Greensboro, North Carolina. The control group consisted of 28 women selected from private practices of obstetricians. The groups were matched on variables of race, marital status, socio-economic level, age and parity. Pretests were administered approximately six weeks prepartum and posttests approximately six weeks postpartum. The experimental group attended Lamaze classes the six weeks before delivery of the child

Inconsistent Regulators: Evidence From Banking

US state chartered commercial banks are supervised alternately by state and federal regulators. Each regulator supervises a given bank for a fixed time period according to a predetermined rotation schedule. We use unique data to examine differences between federal and state regulators for these banks. Federal regulators are significantly less lenient, downgrading supervisory ratings about twice as frequently as state supervisors. Under federal regulators, banks report higher nonperforming loans, more delinquent loans, higher regulatory capital ratios, and lower ROA. There is a higher frequency of bank failures and problem-bank rates in states with more lenient supervision relative to the federal benchmark. Some states are more lenient than others. Regulatory capture by industry constituents and supervisory staff characteristics can explain some of these differences. These findings suggest that inconsistent oversight can hamper the effectiveness of regulation by delaying corrective actions and by inducing costly variability in operations of regulated entities.

The Political Economy of Finance

If the private benefits of control are high and management owns a small equity stake, managers and workers are natural allies. There are two forces at play. First, managers effectively transform employees into a “poison pill’’ by signing generous long-term labor contracts and thereby reducing the firm’s attractiveness to a raider. Second, employees act as “white squires’’ for the incumbent managers, lobbying against hostile takeovers to protect the high wages enjoyed under incumbent management. Our model is consistent with available empirical findings, and yields new predictions as well.political economy, shareholder protection, corporate governance, bankruptcy law, credit market regulation, financial development, privatization