Is the public sector too large in a democracy?

The public sector supplies a club good financed by either a head tax or proportional taxation on exogenous incomes in a democracy. For a class of utility functions and club quality functions, the optimal club quality is independent of the income distribution, and hence of the identity of the median voter. With ”uniform and universal” public provision , the median voter chooses the head tax or proportional tax rate. This can result in lower levels of club goods in either financing regime than would occur in the first best. However, provision in all the latter three regimes can be lower than would occur via market supply by a “not for profit” organisation.club good; democracy; taxation

The Company You Keep: Qualitative Uncertainty in Providing Club Goods

Clubs are typically experience goods. Potential members cannot ascertain precisely beforehand their quality (dependent endogenously on the club's facility investment and number of users, itself dependent on its pricing policy). Members with unsatisfactory initial experiences discontinue visits. We show that a monopoly profit maximiser never offers a free trial period for such goods but, for a quality function homogeneous of any feasible degree, a welfare maximiser always does. When the quality function is homogeneous of degree zero, the monopolist provides a socially excessive level of quality to repeat buyers. In other possible regimes, the monopolist permits too little club usage.Clubs, qualitative uncertainty, monopoly, welfarist

Comparing the first-best and second-best provision of a club good: an example.

Excludable and congestible shared goods - club goods (e.g., internet access facilities) - are more prevalent than Samuelsonian public goods. Our example shows that, unlike the usual presumption with pure public goods, the optimal second-best supply of a club good might exceed its first-best level. We argue that this arises because user charges can be levied on club goods the government need not impose distortionary taxes to finance them. Thus, the first and second best in a club economy differ mainly because informational constraints prevent the government achieving the right income distribution in the latter.

Lattice gauge theories dynamical fermions and parallel computation

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D71683/87 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Building change detection from LIDAR point cloud data based on connected component analysis

Building data are one of the important data types in a topographic database. Building change detection after a period of time is necessary for many applications, such as identification of informal settlements. Based on the detected changes, the database has to be updated to ensure its usefulness. This paper proposes an improved building detection technique, which is a prerequisite for many building change detection techniques. The improved technique examines the gap between neighbouring buildings in the building mask in order to avoid under segmentation errors. Then, a new building change detection technique from LIDAR point cloud data is proposed. Buildings which are totally new or demolished are directly added to the change detection output. However, for demolished or extended building parts, a connected component analysis algorithm is applied and for each connected component its area, width and height are estimated in order to ascertain if it can be considered as a demolished or new building part. Finally, a graphical user interface (GUI) has been developed to update detected changes to the existing building map. Experimental results show that the improved building detection technique can offer not only higher performance in terms of completeness and correctness, but also a lower number of under-segmentation errors as compared to its original counterpart. The proposed change detection technique produces no omission errors and thus it can be exploited for enhanced automated building information updating within a topographic database. Using the developed GUI, the user can quickly examine each suggested change and indicate his/her decision with a minimum number of mouse clicks

A comparative study on contour-based corner detectors

Abstract Contour-based corner detectors directly or indirectly estimate a significance measure (e.g. curvature) on the points of a planar curve and select the curvature extrema points as corners. While an extensive number of contour-based corner detectors have been proposed over the last four decades, there is no comparative study of recently proposed promising detectors. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap. We present the general frame-work of the contourbased corner detection technique and discuss two major issues -curve smoothing and curvature estimation, which have major impacts on the corner detection performance. A number of promising detectors are compared using an automatic evaluation system on a common large dataset. It is observed that while the detectors using indirect curvature estimation techniques are more robust, the detectors using direct curvature estimation techniques are faster

Improving understanding of fish farm organic waste dispersal in higher energy environments

Organic waste from open cage fish farms can negatively impact the benthos if the quantities of settling material exceed the natural assimilative capacity of the seabed. The amounts of total organic material which are allowed to be released are thus regulated in most countries where open-cage fish farming takes place. In Scotland, limits on settling organic waste are one of the main factors determining the maximum fish biomass permitted at a farm site. Computer models of the dispersal of total organic waste to the seabed have become an important tool in both initial site licencing, but also continued site monitoring. Introduction to Executive Summary:The main organic waste dispersal model used in Scotland is DEPOMOD. Originally developed in the late 1990s this model has gone through several upgrades, the latest version being NewDEPOMOD. The original model was developed and calibrated for relatively sheltered, low dispersal sea-loch sites with muddy seabed, where the model’s predictive capability has proven to be generally high. However, many newer fish farms have been developed in more dispersive sites. Despite NewDEPOMOD incorporating a relatively sophisticated waste resuspension sub-model, problems have been encountered with accurately predicting the benthic footprint of fish farm organic waste at these more dispersive sites. The main aim of the INCREASE project was to try and improve our understanding of why these predictive problems are occurring and to suggest future work to address any issues identified