An Optimal Lower Bound for Buffer Management in Multi-Queue Switches

In the online packet buffering problem (also known as the unweighted FIFO variant of buffer management), we focus on a single network packet switching device with several input ports and one output port. This device forwards unit-size, unit-value packets from input ports to the output port. Buffers attached to input ports may accumulate incoming packets for later transmission; if they cannot accommodate all incoming packets, their excess is lost. A packet buffering algorithm has to choose from which buffers to transmit packets in order to minimize the number of lost packets and thus maximize the throughput. We present a tight lower bound of e/(e-1) ~ 1.582 on the competitive ratio of the throughput maximization, which holds even for fractional or randomized algorithms. This improves the previously best known lower bound of 1.4659 and matches the performance of the algorithm Random Schedule. Our result contradicts the claimed performance of the algorithm Random Permutation; we point out a flaw in its original analysis

Social Union, Convergence and Migration

The forces of the market and systems competition bring about economic and social convergence in Europe, and there is no need for social policies at the EU level. Social harmonization would distort migration flows and slow down the speed of economic convergence. National welfare states will be threatened by the free migration of people in Europe. The race to the bottom is a serious risk. However, to contain this risk, neither harmonization of welfare payments nor constraints on migration are needed. The adoption of the principle of selectively delayed integration is a better alternative.

On the Theory of Spatial and Temporal Locality

This paper studies the theory of caching and temporal and spatial locality. We show the following results: (1) hashing can be used to guarantee that caches with limited associativity behave as well as fully associative cache; (2) temporal locality cannot be characterized using one, or few parameters; (3) temporal locality and spatial locality cannot be studied separately; and (4) unlike temporal locality, spatial locality cannot be managed efficiently online

Studies in Trade and Investment - AGRICULTURAL TRADE - PLANTING THE SEEDS OF REGIONAL LIBERALIZATION IN ASIA

this chapter reviews traditional arguments for trade liberalization and provides a closer look at the additional reasons for use of government intervention.Agricultural trade, government intervention, India

Labour market institutions in Hungary with a focus on wage and employment flexibility

It is widely believed today, that the operation of the labour markets is influenced by institutional factors, affecting macroeconomic adjustment in response to shocks. In this way, labour market institutions affect both cyclical and long-term growth and inflation performance of an economy. The aim of our paper is to review the operation of Hungarian labour market institutions from the point of view of labour market flexibility and find its place in international comparison in the light of existing stock of knowledge on the subject. We describe the institutional setup of the labour markets through seven dimensions (unemployment generosity, tax wedge, active labour market policies, employment protection legislation, product market regulation, union density and coverage and wage bargaining institutions) for which internationally comparable data are available. We conclude that the Hungarian labour market institutions are rather flexible in EU-comparison. However, tax wedge is high and the active labour market policies still perform poorly, both contributing to weak employment.wage flexibility, unemployment, labour market institutions, product market regulation, policy complementarity.

Jointly Optimal Routing and Caching for Arbitrary Network Topologies

We study a problem of fundamental importance to ICNs, namely, minimizing routing costs by jointly optimizing caching and routing decisions over an arbitrary network topology. We consider both source routing and hop-by-hop routing settings. The respective offline problems are NP-hard. Nevertheless, we show that there exist polynomial time approximation algorithms producing solutions within a constant approximation from the optimal. We also produce distributed, adaptive algorithms with the same approximation guarantees. We simulate our adaptive algorithms over a broad array of different topologies. Our algorithms reduce routing costs by several orders of magnitude compared to prior art, including algorithms optimizing caching under fixed routing.Comment: This is the extended version of the paper "Jointly Optimal Routing and Caching for Arbitrary Network Topologies", appearing in the 4th ACM Conference on Information-Centric Networking (ICN 2017), Berlin, Sep. 26-28, 201

The Economics of Policies and Programs Affecting the Employment of People with Disabilities

Over the last several decades, there has been a movement toward the inclusion of people with disabilities in mainstream social institutions. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which supports the full participation of people with disabilities in society and mainstream institutions, illustrates the shift in attitudes toward people with disabilities. Rather than being perceived as having a social or medical problem, individuals with disabilities are increasingly viewed as people with challenges that can be solved if appropriate policies and supports are available for addressing them