Using dynamic microsimulation to understand professional trajectories of the active Swiss population

Within the social and economic sciences and of particular interest to demographers are life course events. Looking at life sequences we can better understand which states, or life events, precede or are precursors to vulnerability. A tool that has been used for policy evaluation and recently has been gaining ground in life course sequence simulation is dynamic microsimulation. Within this context dynamic microsimulation consists in generating entire life courses from the observation of portions of the trajectories of individuals of different ages. In this work, we aim to use dynamic microsimulation in order to analyse individual professional trajectories with a focus on vulnerability. The primary goal of this analysis is to deepen upon current literature by providing insight from a longitudinal perspective on the signs of work instability and the process of precarity. The secondary goal of this work which is to show how, by using microsimulation, data collected for one purpose can be analysed under a different scope and used in a meaningful way. The data to be used in this analysis are longitudinal and were collected by NCCR-LIVES IP207 under the supervision of Prof. Christian Maggiori and Dr. Gregoire Bollmann. Individuals aged 25 to 55 residing in the German-speaking and French-speaking regions of Switzerland were followed annually for four years. These individuals were questioned regarding, amongst their personal, professional and overall situations and well-being. At the end of the fourth wave, there were 1131 individuals who had participated in all waves. The sample remained representative of the Swiss population with women and the unemployed slightly over represented. Using the information collected from these surveys, we use simulation to construct various longitudinal data modules where each data module represents a specific life domain. We postulate the relationship between these modules and layout a framework of estimation. Within certain data modules a set of equations are created to model the process therein. For every dynamic (time-variant) data module, such as the labour-market module, the transition probabilities between states (ex. labour market status) are estimated using a Markov model and then the possible outcomes are simulated. The benefit of using dynamic microsimulation is that longitudinal sample observations instead of stylised profiles are used to model population dynamics. This is one of the main reasons large-scale dynamic microsimulation models are employed by many developed nations. There has been limited use, however, of such approaches with Swiss data. This work contributes to the analysis of professional trajectories of the active Swiss population by utilising dynamic microsimulation methods

Dependent types for enforcement of information flow and erasure policies in heterogeneous data structures

We consider verification of information flow and erasure proper-ties in programs with heterogeneous heap-based data structures, in the presence of procedures with local state. A heterogeneous data structure, such as a hash table implementing a medical record database, may store both secret and public data simultaneously. In contrast, extant work primarily focuses on homogeneous data struc-tures which store data of a uniform security level. Heterogeneity, however, does not come for free. For example, standard imple-mentations of hash tables do not support heterogeneity, and may leak sensitive information easily owing to hash collisions. In this paper we identify unique representation as a sufficient condition for a heterogeneous data structure to be leak-free, while simultane-ously supporting abstraction and modularity in verification. As a case study, we implement and verify a novel uniquely-represented variant of heterogeneous hash tables. Furthermore, we demonstrate modular reasoning by showing how specifications of the hash table methods can be used in a client application; we thereby obtain ab-stract and concise formal proofs of erasure. We formalize our work in Relational Hoare Type Theory (RHTT), an expressive, higher-order imperative language and program logic embedded in the Coq proof assistant

Methodological Pluralism and its Critics in International Economic Law Research

This paper (accepted for publication in the Journal of International Economic Law 15 (2012)) uses the term ‘legal methodology’ as referring to the conceptions of the sources and ‘rules of recognition’ of law, the methods of interpretation, the functions and systemic nature of legal systems like international economic law (IEL), and their relationships to other areas of law and politics. It begins with discussing six competing theories of justice justifying international economic regulation. This overview of theories of justice is followed by a discussion of competing moral, economic, political and legal conceptions of the ‘primary’ and ‘secondary rules’ of IEL. Due to the ‘dual nature’ of modern legal systems resulting from the universal recognition of human rights and of other principles of justice, legal positivism, natural law theories, social and policy conceptions of national, transnational and international legal systems must be applied in mutually coherent ways. As law and jurisprudence are less about ‘truth’ than about ‘institutionalizing public reason’, positive and normative legal arguments must respect legitimate ‘constitutional pluralism’ and ‘reasonable disagreement’ about interpretation and legal protection of civil, political, economic, social and cultural human rights as relevant context for interpreting IEL. The paper explains why, due to ‘globalization’ and the transformation of ever more national into transnational public goods, national Constitutions have become ‘partial constitutions’ that can no longer protect many public goods without international law and institutions. Constitutional and ‘public goods’ theories confirm that the five competing conceptions of IEL must be embedded into a multilevel constitutional framework limiting abuses of public and private power in all human interactions at national, transnational and international levels. The paper includes case-studies illustrating the need for comparative institutional research on which multilevel legal, institutional and regulatory approaches protect human rights, other cosmopolitan rights of citizens and related public goods most effectively. The obvious ‘governance failures’ in protecting interdependent public goods call not only for ‘democratic empowerment’ of citizens by cosmopolitan rights compensating the inadequate parliamentary control of multilevel governance by new forms of ‘participatory’, deliberative and cosmopolitan democracy. The obvious abuses of ‘Westphalian conceptions’ of ‘international law among states’ must also be limited by stronger multilevel judicial protection of cosmopolitan rights in order to hold governments more accountable for their failures to protect interdependent public goods more effectively