Intergenerational Risk Sharing, Pensions and Endogenous Labor Supply in General Equilibrium

In the context of a two-tier pension system, with a pay-as-you-go first tier and a fully funded second tier, we demonstrate that a system with a defined wage-indexed second tier performs strictly better than one with a defined contribution or defined real benefit second tier. The former completely separates systematic redistribution (confined to the first tier) from intergenerational risk sharing (the role of the second tier). This way labor supply is undistorted.funded pensions, risk sharing, overlapping generations, endogenous labour supply

Why the Dialectical Tier is an Epistemic Animal

Ralph Johnson has proposed a “two tiered” conception of argument, comprising of the illative core and the dialectical tier. This paper's two-part thesis is that (i) the dialectical tier is best understood as an epistemic requirement for argument, and (ii) once understood epistemically, the dialectical tier requirement can be defended against the leading objections

Planning for Complementarity: An Examination of the Roll and Opportunities of First-Tier and Second-Tier Cities Along the High-Speed Rail Network in California, Research Report 11-17

The coming of California High-Speed Rail (HSR) offers opportunities for positive urban transformations in both first-tier and second-tier cities. The research in this report explores the different but complementary roles that first-tier and second-tier cities along the HSR network can play in making California more sustainable and less dependent on fossil fuels while reducing mobile sources of greenhouse gas emissions and congestion at airports and on the state’s roadways. Drawing from case studies of cities in Northern and Southern California, the study develops recommendations for the planning, design, and programming of areas around California stations for the formation of transit-supportive density nodes

Dynamics of Multi-Player Games

We analyze the dynamics of competitions with a large number of players. In our model, n players compete against each other and the winner is decided based on the standings: in each competition, the mth ranked player wins. We solve for the long time limit of the distribution of the number of wins for all n and m and find three different scenarios. When the best player wins, the standings are most competitive as there is one-tier with a clear differentiation between strong and weak players. When an intermediate player wins, the standings are two-tier with equally-strong players in the top tier and clearly-separated players in the lower tier. When the worst player wins, the standings are least competitive as there is one tier in which all of the players are equal. This behavior is understood via scaling analysis of the nonlinear evolution equations.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

Improved Approximation Algorithms for Relay Placement

In the relay placement problem the input is a set of sensors and a number $r \ge 1$, the communication range of a relay. In the one-tier version of the problem the objective is to place a minimum number of relays so that between every pair of sensors there is a path through sensors and/or relays such that the consecutive vertices of the path are within distance $r$ if both vertices are relays and within distance 1 otherwise. The two-tier version adds the restrictions that the path must go through relays, and not through sensors. We present a 3.11-approximation algorithm for the one-tier version and a PTAS for the two-tier version. We also show that the one-tier version admits no PTAS, assuming P $\ne$ NP.Comment: 1+29 pages, 12 figure

Van askop, lantaarns en wieken : molenterminologie in de Zuid-Nederlandse dialecten

In dit artikel legt de auteur kort uit hoe een (wind)molen werkt, maar zij belicht daarbij vooral de woordenschat in de Zuid-Nederlandse dialecten en heel specifiek enkele belangrijke onderdelen die taalkundig interessant zijn. Dit artikel maakt vooral gebruik van de drie regionale woordenboeken en het proefschrift van Jan Stroop

Allocating Risk Across Pyramidal Tiers: Evidence from Thai Business Groups

This paper shows that pyramidal ownership can be used to control downside risk. The research setting is Thailand before and after the 1997 Asian crisis. The focus is on family business groups that owned banks. The results show that the controlling family pursues different investment strategies for banks across pyramidal tiers in order to mitigate the entire group risk. Lower tier banks are used to undertake risky loans, while upper tier banks carry out more profitable investments. After the crisis hit, upper tier banks survived and almost all lower tier banks went bankrupt. By letting lower tier banks fail, the controlling family was able to save the rest of the group's firms.Pyramids, Business groups, Family Firms, Banks, Corporate Governance, Emerging markets, Thailand

Relative Performance Pay, Bonuses, and Job-Promotion Tournaments

Several empirical studies have challenged tournament theory by pointing out that (1) there is considerable pay variation within hierarchy levels, (2) promotion premiums only in part explain hierarchical wage differences and (3) external recruitment is observable on nearly any hierarchy level. We explain these empirical puzzles by combining job-promotion tournaments with higher-level bonus payments in a two-tier hierarchy. Moreover, we show that under certain conditions the firm implements first-best effort on tier 2 although workers earn strictly positive rents. The reason is that the firm can use second-tier rents for creating incentives on tier 1. If workers are heterogeneous, the firm strictly improves the selection quality of a job-promotion tournament by employing a hybrid incentive scheme that includes bonus payments.bonuses, external recruitment, job promotion, limited liability, tournaments

Handoff Rate and Coverage Analysis in Multi-tier Heterogeneous Networks

This paper analyzes the impact of user mobility in multi-tier heterogeneous networks. We begin by obtaining the handoff rate for a mobile user in an irregular cellular network with the access point locations modeled as a homogeneous Poisson point process. The received signal-to-interference-ratio (SIR) distribution along with a chosen SIR threshold is then used to obtain the probability of coverage. To capture potential connection failures due to mobility, we assume that a fraction of handoffs result in such failures. Considering a multi-tier network with orthogonal spectrum allocation among tiers and the maximum biased average received power as the tier association metric, we derive the probability of coverage for two cases: 1) the user is stationary (i.e., handoffs do not occur, or the system is not sensitive to handoffs); 2) the user is mobile, and the system is sensitive to handoffs. We derive the optimal bias factors to maximize the coverage. We show that when the user is mobile, and the network is sensitive to handoffs, both the optimum tier association and the probability of coverage depend on the user's speed; a speed-dependent bias factor can then adjust the tier association to effectively improve the coverage, and hence system performance, in a fully-loaded network.Comment: Accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication