Poverty, Inequality, and Redistribution Under Lexicographic Social Welfare

Unlike aversion to inequality, aversion to poverty resists formalization in welfare economics. One way to assign normative significance to the poverty line is to allow the welfare measure to exhibit a discrete loss from poverty (DLP) at z. However, the resulting redistribution scheme prioritizes headcount-reducing transfers to the borderline poor over transfers to the very poorest, rendering the DLP measure unattractive. The paper remedies this by transcending the conventional real valued welfare measure. It proposes a lexicographic L*-ordering, where the first rank criterion corresponds to an inequality-based evaluation function, while the second rank criterion corresponds to an evaluation function that exhibits DLP. The redistribution scheme entails transfers to the poorest until the first rank criterion is satisficed; only then may transfers be allocated to the borderline poor. The model’s parameters can represent varying degrees of concern for the poorest, highlighting its flexibility as a framework for welfare evaluation.poverty, lexicographic ordering, inequality, redistribution, discontinuous choice

Environmentally Sustainable Issues in Philippine Agriculture

Farming and fishing are major sources of livelihood in rural households in the Philippines. Farming systems in the country are complex, multi-faceted, and geared to promote efficient production and a steady source of income. However, these have also wrought unwanted consequences on the environment, notably soil erosion, water pollution, groundwater depletion, loss of natural habitats, and loss of biological diversity. Farming systems are affected by exogenous environmental factors; in turn, the farming systems also affect agricultural production resource bases. Initiatives from various sectors to mitigate the adverse environmental impacts of farming systems and to protect the agricultural production bases are in place in terms of policies, programs, and action projects.Philippines, agriculture, environment, sustainability

Market Size, Differentiated Scale Economies and Interindustry Trade

A stylized pattern of interindustry trade between developing and developed regions identifies the former as specialists in light manufactures and latter in heavy manufactures. Conventional explanations for this pattern rely on the factor proportions model, which is empirically suspect. This paper proposes an alternative model that relies on the interaction between scale economies and domestic market size. Unlike standard increasing returns analysis, the model provides a rich yet tractable characterization of variations in scale economies across industries. The model, in applying a limit pricing framework to the open economy, offers a new approach to analyzing imperfect competition and interregional trade.Interindustry trade, increasing returns, imperfect competition

Eating for a Lifetime: Filling the Policy Gaps in Philippine Fisheries

The fishery sector has become a large and dynamic contributor to Philippine agriculture. However, the sector confronts the problem of high poverty and alarming threats to its resource base. Policy responses to these problems have been implemented in recent years, but serious gaps remain. Addressing these policy gaps requires reforms that would lead to aquaculture development, bureaucratic rationalization and decentralization, the protection of aquatic habitats, the implementation of a science-based regime of fisheries management, and the promotion of diversified livelihoods among poor fishing communities. A concerted effort to address poverty and resource degradation may incur considerable short-run costs, but would likely yield larger long-term social payoffs.fishery, productivity, resource management, policy

Testing real-time multi input-output systems

In formal testing, the assumption of input enabling is typically made. This assumption requires all inputs to be enabled anytime. In addition, the useful concept of quiescence is sometimes applied. Briefly, a system is in a quiescent state when it cannot produce outputs. In this paper, we relax the input enabling assumption, and allow some input sets to be enabled while others remain disabled. Moreover, we also relax the general bound M used in timed systems to detect quiescence, and allow different bounds for different sets of outputs. By considering the tioco-M theory, an enriched theory for timed testing with repetitive quiescence, and allowing the partition of input sets and output sets, we introduce the mtioco^M relation. A test derivation procedure which is nondeterministic and parameterized is further developed, and shown to be sound and complete wrt mtioco^

Work-in-progress Assume-guarantee reasoning with ioco

This paper presents a combination between the assume-guarantee paradigm and the testing relation ioco. The assume-guarantee paradigm is a ”divide and conquer” technique that decomposes the verification of a system into smaller tasks that involve the verification of its components. The principal aspect of assume-guarantee reasoning is to consider each component separately, while taking into account assumptions about the context of the component. The testing relation ioco is a formal conformance relation for model-based testing that works on labeled transition systems. Our main result shows that, with certain restrictions, assume-guarantee reasoning can be applied in the context of ioco. This enables testing ioco-conformance of a system by testing its components separately

A Semantic Framework for Test Coverage

Since testing is inherently incomplete, test selection is of vital importance. Coverage measures evaluate the quality of a test suite and help the tester select test cases with maximal impact at minimum cost. Existing coverage criteria for test suites are usually defined in terms of syntactic characteristics of the implementation under test or its specification. Typical black-box coverage metrics are state and transition coverage of the specification. White-box testing often considers statement, condition and path coverage. A disadvantage of this syntactic approach is that different coverage figures are assigned to systems that are behaviorally equivalent, but syntactically different. Moreover, those coverage metrics do not take into account that certain failures are more severe than others, and that more testing effort should be devoted to uncover the most important bugs, while less critical system parts can be tested less thoroughly. This paper introduces a semantic approach to test coverage. Our starting point is a weighted fault model, which assigns a weight to each potential error in an implementation. We define a framework to express coverage measures that express how well a test suite covers such a specification, taking into account the error weight. Since our notions are semantic, they are insensitive to replacing a specification by one with equivalent behaviour.We present several algorithms that, given a certain minimality criterion, compute a minimal test suite with maximal coverage. These algorithms work on a syntactic representation of weighted fault models as fault automata. They are based on existing and novel optimization\ud problems. Finally, we illustrate our approach by analyzing and comparing a number of test suites for a chat protocol

Computational Analysis of a Spiral Thermoelectric Nanoantenna for Solar Energy Harvesting Applications

Thermo-electrical nanoantennas have been proposed as an alternative option for conversion solar energy harvesting applications. In this work, the response of a spiral broadband antenna has been obtained from numerical and theoretical simulations perspectives. The results show that this device exhibits a responsivity of 20mV/W under 117W/cm2, for a single-frequency radiation. We discuss strategies for enhanced efficiency

A socializing interactive installation for the urban environments

In this paper we present the LEDs Urban Carpet: an interactive urban installation using a body-input as a form of a non-traditional user interface. The installation was tested in various locations around the city of Bath, UK. We selected locations with low, medium and high pedestrian flows. The aim is to generate a novel urban experience, which can be introduced in different locations in the city and with different social situations. The installation represents a game with a grid of LEDs that can be embedded as an interactive carpet into the urban context. A pattern of lights is generated dynamically following the pedestrians movement over the carpet. In this case the pedestrians become active participants that influence the generative process and make the pattern of LED-s change. The paper suggests that introducing this kind of display in a social scenario can enrich the casual interaction of people nearby and this might enhance social awareness and engagement. However, we should point out that a number of factors need to be taken into consideration when designing an interactive installation, especially when situated within the urban space. The experience we present here can assist designers in understanding difficulties and issues that need to be taken into account during the design of an interactive urban project of this nature