Urban growth drivers in a Europe of sticky people and implicit boundaries

We investigate urban GDP pc growth across the EU12 using data for functionally defined cities - rather than administrative regions. We test hypotheses on the role of human capital, EU integration and fragmentation of urban government and explore spatial dependence and mechanisms of spatial interaction. Results are acceptable on standard econometric tests without measures of spatial interaction but there is spatial dependence. If variables reflecting spatial adjustment are included, they are statistically significant and eliminate spatial dependence. Not only do the results now provide consistent estimates of parameters, they also support relevant theoretical insights and show national borders are still significant barriers to economic adjustment. People in Europe are sticky so it is unreasonable to assume spatial disparities will disappear. Our findings also imply that cities in Europe form national rather than a single continental system

Worker scheduling with induced learning in a semi-on-line setting

Scheduling is a widely researched area with many interesting fields. The presented research deals with a maintenance area in which preventative maintenance and emergency jobs enter the system. Each job has varying processing time and must be scheduled. Through learning the operators are able to expand their knowledge which enables them to accomplish more tasks in a limited time. Two MINLP models have been presented, one for preventative maintenance jobs alone, and another including emergency jobs. The emergency model is semi-on-line as the arrival time is unknown. A corresponding heuristic method has also been developed to decrease the computational time of the MINLP models. The models and heuristic were tested in several areas to determine their flexibility. It has been demonstrated that the inclusion of learning has greatly improved the efficiency of the workers and of the system

Considering skills evolutions in multi-skilled workforce allocation with flexible working hours

The growing need of responsiveness for manufacturing companies facing market volatility raises a strong demand for flexibility in their organisation. Since the company personnel are increasingly considered as the core of the organisational structures, a strong and forward-looking management of human resources and skills is crucial to performance in many industries. These organisations must develop strategies for the short, medium and long terms, in order to preserve and develop skills. Responding to this importance, this work presents an original model, looking at the line-up of multi-period project, considering the problem of staff allocation with two degrees of flexibility. The first results from the annualising of working time, and relies on policies of changing schedules, individually as well as collectively. The second degree of flexibility is the versatility of the operators, which induces a dynamic view of their skills and the need to predict changes in individual performance as a result of successive assignments. We are firmly in a context where the expected durations of activities are no longer predefined, but result from the performance of the operators selected for their execution. We present a mathematical model of this problem, which is solved by a genetic algorithm. An illustrative example is presented and analysed, and, the robustness of the solving approach is investigated using a sample of 400 projects with different characteristics

The impact of construction commencement intervals on residential production building

One model of operation that production builders can use is continuous construction. They build typical house models and generally work with the same subcontractors. In this continuous operation, an order from the sales department triggers the process, which only commences construction when the first required crew becomes available. In this system the decision to commence construction relies on the readiness of the first activity. However the effects of this decision on the whole construction process are often ignored. This research aims to shed light on the importance of construction commencement decisions by highlighting the consequences of this decision on the whole production system

Food-delivery behavior under crowd sourcing mobility services

The rapid development of the online food-delivery industry, has led to not only increases in the number of the crowd-sourced shared food-delivery service drivers on our roads, but also growing urban traffic safety management concerns. This study investigates the decision-making behaviors that exist between delivery drivers, their food-delivery platform and their potential impact on traffic safety. Using the evolutionary game theory, stakeholder decision-making behaviors involving traffic safety within the food-delivery industry were analyzed. From our analysis, several behavioral influencers were identified, including penalties for traffic violations, the opportunity cost of delivery drivers complying with traffic rules, the costs associated with risk and strict management approaches, reputation incentives, costs related to the delivery platform being punished, the probability of compliance with traffic rules, and the probability of adopting a strict management approach by the delivery platform. Our study demonstrates that stabilization strategies used by the food service industry differ when the types of government control measures also differ. When the government takes a more aggressive approach to regulation and control, compliance with the traffic rules and the adoption of strict enforcement measures by management are the only evolutionary stability strategies available to food-delivery platforms. As part of a strict management strategy, appropriate compensation or incentive measures should be provided by the distribution platform. Furthermore, the fines given for traffic violations should be increased to create a safer road environment that has fewer traffic accidents involving food-delivery drivers

The distributional implications of income underreporting in Hungary

The paper estimates the distributional implications of income tax evasion in Hungary based on a random sample of administrative tax records of 230 thousand individuals. Gross incomes in the administrative tax records are compared with those in a nationally representative household budget survey, assuming that tax-evaders are more likely to report their true incomes in an anonymous interview. Our estimates show that the average rate of underreporting is 11%, which conceals large differences between self-employed (who hide the majority of their incomes) and employees. The estimates are likely to be lower bound, due to measurement error in the income survey. These rates are then used in EUROMOD, a tax-benefit microsimulation model to calculate the fiscal and distributional implications of underreporting, while taking account of all major direct taxes and cash benefits and also their interactions. Tax evasion reduces fiscal revenues from personal income taxes by about 19%. While the occurrence of poverty is not affected, income inequality becomes significantly higher (the Gini coefficient increases by 7%), suggesting that high earners tend to evade proportionately more. Finally, we find that tax evasion largely reduces the progressivity of the tax system.tax policy, tax evasion, income distribution, self-employed

Risk Management in Construction

Construction industry have several different sectors producing heterogeneous products, which are immobile, unique, heavy and large, complex, durable and costly. Site conditions in a construction project can be unpredictable and unexpected natural events can negatively affect construction programs and schedules. Weather conditions constitute the most important and unpredictable handicap for the production process of construction. Construction projects usually executed over a long period and have large budgets. Because of this, demand for a construction project is volatile. Unpredictable site conditions and demand volatility bring high level of risk. Because of this, risk management is very important in construction. Construction insurance, surety bonds, contracts and subcontracting are the main affective solutions for the risk management. This study consists of two main sections. In the first section, characteristics of construction industry defined in detail. Secondly, the importance of risk management evaluated. In the second section, the focus of the study is the evaluation of risk management studies in construction with a broad literature review of previous researches

Respondent characteristics associated with adherence in a general population ecological momentary assessment study

OBJECTIVES: Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) has seen an explosion in popularity in recent years; however, an improved understanding of how to minimise (selective) non-adherence is needed. METHODS: We examined a range of respondent characteristics predictors of adherence (defined as the number of EMA surveys completed) in the D2M EMA study. Participants were a sample of n = 255 individuals drawn from the longitudinal z-proso cohort who completed up to 4 EMA surveys per day for a period of 2 weeks. RESULTS: In unadjusted analyses, lower moral shame, lower self-control, lower levels of self-injury, and higher levels of aggression, tobacco use, psychopathy, and delinquency were associated with lower adherence. In fully adjusted analyses with predictors selected using lasso, only alcohol use was related to adherence: beer and alcopops to higher adherence and spirits to lower adherence. CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide potential insights into some of the psychological mechanisms that may underlie adherence in EMA. They also point to respondent characteristics for which additional or tailored efforts may be needed to promote adherence