70,270 research outputs found
Can Micro Health Insurance Reduce Poverty? Evidence from Bangladesh
This paper examines the impact of micro health insurance on poverty reduction in rural areas of Bangladesh. The research is based on household level primary data collected from the operating areas of the Grameen Bank during 2006. A number of outcome measures relating to poverty status are considered; these include household income, stability of household income via food sufficiency and ownership of non-land assets, and also the probability of being above or below the poverty line. The results show that micro health insurance has a positive association with all of these indicators, and this is statistically significant and quantitatively important for food sufficiency
Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater: Bell's condition of local causality mathematically 'sharp and clean'
The starting point of the present paper is Bell's notion of local causality
and his own sharpening of it so as to provide for mathematical formalisation.
Starting with Norsen's (2007, 2009) analysis of this formalisation, it is
subjected to a critique that reveals two crucial aspects that have so far not
been properly taken into account. These are (i) the correct understanding of
the notions of sufficiency, completeness and redundancy involved; and (ii) the
fact that the apparatus settings and measurement outcomes have very different
theoretical roles in the candidate theories under study. Both aspects are not
adequately incorporated in the standard formalisation, and we will therefore do
so. The upshot of our analysis is a more detailed, sharp and clean mathematical
expression of the condition of local causality. A preliminary analysis of the
repercussions of our proposal shows that it is able to locate exactly where and
how the notions of locality and causality are involved in formalising Bell's
condition of local causality.Comment: 14 pages. To be published in PSE volume "Explanation, Prediction, and
Confirmation", edited by Dieks, et a
Almost Quantum Correlations are Inconsistent with Specker's Principle
Ernst Specker considered a particular feature of quantum theory to be
especially fundamental, namely that pairwise joint measurability of sharp
measurements implies their global joint measurability
(https://vimeo.com/52923835). To date, Specker's principle seemed incapable of
singling out quantum theory from the space of all general probabilistic
theories. In particular, its well-known consequence for experimental
statistics, the principle of consistent exclusivity, does not rule out the set
of correlations known as almost quantum, which is strictly larger than the set
of quantum correlations. Here we show that, contrary to the popular belief,
Specker's principle cannot be satisfied in any theory that yields almost
quantum correlations.Comment: 17 pages + appendix. 5 colour figures. Comments welcom
Is There High-Level Causation?
The discovery of high-level causal relations seems a central activity of the special sciences. Those same sciences are less successful in formulating strict laws. If causation must be underwritten by strict laws, we are faced with a puzzle (first noticed by Donald Davidson), which might be dubbed the 'no strict laws' problem for high-level causation. Attempts have been made to dissolve this problem by showing that leading theories of causation do not in fact require that causation be underwritten by strict laws. But this conclusion has been too hastily drawn. Philosophers have tended to equate non-strict laws with ceteris paribus laws. I argue that there is another category of non-strict law that has often not been properly distinguished: namely, (what I will call) minutiae rectus laws. If, as it appears, many special science laws are minutiae rectus laws, then this poses a problem for their ability to underwrite causal relations in a way that their typically ceteris paribus nature does not. I argue that the best prospect for resolving the resurgent 'no strict laws' problem is to argue that special science laws are in fact typically probabilistic (and thus able to support probabilistic causation), rather than being minutiae rectus laws
Minimal sufficient positive-operator valued measure on a separable Hilbert space
We introduce a concept of a minimal sufficient positive-operator valued
measure (POVM), which is the least redundant POVM among the POVMs that have the
equivalent information about the measured quantum system. Assuming the system
Hilbert space to be separable, we show that for a given POVM a sufficient
statistic called a Lehmann-Scheff\'{e}-Bahadur statistic induces a minimal
sufficient POVM. We also show that every POVM has an equivalent minimal
sufficient POVM and that such a minimal sufficient POVM is unique up to
relabeling neglecting null sets. We apply these results to discrete POVMs and
information conservation conditions proposed by the author.Comment: 25 pages. The main result is improved, and a new appendix is adde
- …