3,522 research outputs found
The Measurement of Social Exclusion
This paper develops an axiomatic approach to the measurement of social exclusion. At the individual level, social exclusion is viewed in terms of deprivation of the person concerned with respect to different functionings in the society. At the aggregate level we treat social exclusion as a function of individual exclusions. The class of subgroup decomposable social exclusion measures using a set of independent axioms is identified. We then look at the problem of ranking exclusion profiles by exclusion dominance principle under certain restrictions. Finally, applications of decomposable and non-decomposable measures suggested in the paper using European Union and Italian data are also considered.Social Exclusion, Axioms, Characterization, Dominance, Application, Policy
Individual Well-Being in a Dynamic Perspective
This paper explores the determinants of individual well-being as measured by self-reported levels of satisfaction with income. Making full use of the panel data nature of the German Socio-Economic Panel, we provide empirical evidence for well-being depending on absolute and on relative levels of income in a dynamic framework. This finding holds after controlling for other influential factors in a multivariate setting. The main novelty of the paper is the consideration of dynamic aspects: individual's own history as well as the relative income performance with respect to the others living in the society under analysis do play a major role in the assessment of well-being.Interdependent Preferences, Inequality Aversion, Status, Subjective Well-Being, SOEP
Subjective Well-Being and Relative Deprivation: An Empirical Link
This paper explores the relationship between two well-established con-cepts of measuring individual well-being: the concept of happiness, i.e. self-reported level of satisfaction with income and life, and relative deprivation/satisfaction, i.e. the gaps between the individual's income and the incomes of all individuals richer/poorer than him. Operationalizing both concepts using micro panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we provide empirical evidence for subjective well-being dependingmore on relative satisfaction than on absolute levels of income. This finding holds even after controlling for other influential factors in a multivariate setting.Relative deprivation; Satisfaction; Subjective well-being; SOEP
Multidimensional poverty and material deprivation
We examine the measurement of multidimensional poverty and material deprivation following the counting approach. In contrast to earlier contributions, dimensions of well-being are not forced to be equally important but different weights can be assigned to different dimensions. We characterize a class of individual measures reflecting this feature. In addition, we axiomatize an aggregation procedure to obtain a class of indices for entire societies allowing for different degrees of inequality aversion in poverty. We apply the proposed measures to European Union member states where the concept of material deprivation was initiated.Multidimensional poverty measurement, material deprivation, equity
Target Shortfall Orderings and Indices
Given any income distribution, to each income we associate a subgroup containing all persons whose incomes are not higher than this income and a person's target shortfall in a subgroup is the gap between the subgroup highest income and his own income. We then develop an absolute target shortfall ordering, which, under constancy of population size and total income, implies the Lorenz and Cowell-Ebert complaint orderings. Under the same restrictions, one distribution dominates the other by this ordering if and only if the dominated distribution can be obtained from the dominant one by a sequence of rank preserving progressive transfers, where each transfer is shared equally by all persons poorer than the donor of the transfer. The relationship of the ordering with the absolute deprivation and differential orderings, and its consistency with ranking of distributions by absolute target shortfall indices are explored. Well-known inequality indices like the absolute Gini index and the standard deviation are interpreted as absolute target shortfall indices. Finally, the possibility of a relative target shortfall ordering is also discussed.Target shortfall orderings, transfer, indices
The Future of RICH Detectors through the Light of the LHCb RICH
The limitations in performance of the present RICH system in the LHCb
experiment are given by the natural chromatic dispersion of the gaseous
Cherenkov radiator, the aberrations of the optical system and the pixel size of
the photon detectors. Moreover, the overall PID performance can be affected by
high detector occupancy as the pattern recognition becomes more difficult with
high particle multiplicities. This paper shows a way to improve performance by
systematically addressing each of the previously mentioned limitations. These
ideas are applied in the present and future upgrade phases of the LHCb
experiment. Although applied to specific circumstances, they are used as a
paradigm on what is achievable in the development and realisation of high
precision RICH detectors
Model of Thermal Wavefront Distortion in Interferometric Gravitational-Wave Detectors I: Thermal Focusing
We develop a steady-state analytical and numerical model of the optical
response of power-recycled Fabry-Perot Michelson laser gravitational-wave
detectors to thermal focusing in optical substrates. We assume that the thermal
distortions are small enough that we can represent the unperturbed intracavity
field anywhere in the detector as a linear combination of basis functions
related to the eigenmodes of one of the Fabry-Perot arm cavities, and we take
great care to preserve numerically the nearly ideal longitudinal phase
resonance conditions that would otherwise be provided by an external
servo-locking control system. We have included the effects of nonlinear thermal
focusing due to power absorption in both the substrates and coatings of the
mirrors and beamsplitter, the effects of a finite mismatch between the
curvatures of the laser wavefront and the mirror surface, and the diffraction
by the mirror aperture at each instance of reflection and transmission. We
demonstrate a detailed numerical example of this model using the MATLAB program
Melody for the initial LIGO detector in the Hermite-Gauss basis, and compare
the resulting computations of intracavity fields in two special cases with
those of a fast Fourier transform field propagation model. Additional
systematic perturbations (e.g., mirror tilt, thermoelastic surface
deformations, and other optical imperfections) can be included easily by
incorporating the appropriate operators into the transfer matrices describing
reflection and transmission for the mirrors and beamsplitter.Comment: 24 pages, 22 figures. Submitted to JOSA
Multidimensional Poverty and Material Deprivation
We examine the measurement of multidimensional poverty and material deprivation following the counting approach. In contrast to earlier contributions, dimensions of well-being are not forced to be equally important but different weights can be assigned to different dimensions. We characterize a class of individual measures reflecting this feature. In addition, we axiomatize an aggregation procedure to obtain a class of indices for entire societies allowing for different degrees of inequality aversion in poverty. We apply
the proposed measures to European Union member states where the concept of material
deprivation was initiated
Poverty and Time
We examine the measurement of individual poverty in an intertemporal context. In contrast to earlier contributions, we assign importance to the persistence in a state of poverty and we characterize a class of individual intertemporal poverty measures reflecting this feature. In addition, we axiomatize an aggregation procedure to obtain intertemporal poverty measures for entire societies and we illustrate our new indices with an application to EU countries
The dependence of test-mass thermal noises on beam shape in gravitational-wave interferometers
In second-generation, ground-based interferometric gravitational-wave
detectors such as Advanced LIGO, the dominant noise at frequencies
Hz to Hz is expected to be due to thermal fluctuations in the
mirrors' substrates and coatings which induce random fluctuations in the shape
of the mirror face. The laser-light beam averages over these fluctuations; the
larger the beam and the flatter its light-power distribution, the better the
averaging and the lower the resulting thermal noise. In semi-infinite mirrors,
scaling laws for the influence of beam shape on the four dominant types of
thermal noise (coating Brownian, coating thermoelastic, substrate Brownian, and
substrate thermoelastic) have been suggested by various researchers and derived
with varying degrees of rigour. Because these scaling laws are important tools
for current research on optimizing the beam shape, it is important to firm up
our understanding of them. This paper (1) gives a summary of the prior work and
of gaps in the prior analyses, (2) gives a unified and rigorous derivation of
all four scaling laws, and (3) explores, relying on work by J. Agresti,
deviations from the scaling laws due to finite mirror size.Comment: 25 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Class. Quantum Gra
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