Bureaucracy intermediaries, corruption and red tape

Intermediaries helping individuals and firms with the government bureaucracy are common in developing countries. Although such bureaucracy intermediaries are, anecdotally, linked with corruption and welfare losses, few formal analyses exist. In our model, a government license can benefit individuals. We study individuals' net gain when acquiring the license through the regular bureaucratic procedure, through bribing or through intermediaries. For a given procedure, individuals using intermediaries are better off than if intermediaries and corruption had not existed. Intermediaries "grease the wheels". We then study incentives of corrupt bureaucrats to create red tape. When free to choose levels of red tape, bureaucrats implement more red tape and individuals are unambiguously worse off in a setting with intermediaries than with "direct" corruption only. Intermediaries can thus improve access to the bureaucracy, but also strengthen incentives to create red tape - a potential explanation why license procedures tend to be long in developing countries.Bureaucracy; Corruption; Intermediaries; Red tape

The scenario-based generalization of radiation therapy margins

We give a scenario-based treatment plan optimization formulation that is equivalent to planning with geometric margins if the scenario doses are calculated using the static dose cloud approximation. If the scenario doses are instead calculated more accurately, then our formulation provides a novel robust planning method that overcomes many of the difficulties associated with previous scenario-based robust planning methods. In particular, our method protects only against uncertainties that can occur in practice, it gives a sharp dose fall-off outside high dose regions, and it avoids underdosage of the target in ``easy'' scenarios. The method shares the benefits of the previous scenario-based robust planning methods over geometric margins for applications where the static dose cloud approximation is inaccurate, such as irradiation with few fields and irradiation with ion beams. These properties are demonstrated on a suite of phantom cases planned for treatment with scanned proton beams subject to systematic setup uncertainty

In search of a new identity:Shiga Shigetaka's recommendations for Japanese in Hawaii

The demand for on-demand video streaming has seen an enormous increased usage and is today the main contributor to Internet traffic. Technological developments combined with the accessibility of sufficiently powerful end-user hardware, large bandwidth capacities and significantly reduced storage cost are major contributors to this trend. We have built a simulation environment where multiple clients stream linear and branched video while competing over a shared bottleneck network. We examine how rate caps can be implemented to increase the overall Quality of Experience (QoE). First we present simulation results demonstrating the impact that rate caps have on clients playing linear video and compare and relate the results with prior work. Second we simulate the performance implementation of branched video and consider how its performance is affected by rate caps. Here, we highlight and discuss the trade-off patterns between playback quality and stability observed when a cap is implemented. To derive our conclusions we consider a range of scenarios, in which we vary different variables when a rate cap is set or not and measure the (i) requested encodings, (ii) buffer occupancy, and (iii) the amounts of switches between encodings made by the clients during the playback sequence. The rate cap implementation is shown to generate less switches between encodings, providing an enhanced stability and thus contributing to a better QoE in both the linear and branched environment

Optimal Unemployment Insurance Design:Time Limits, Monitoring, or Workfare?

This paper analyses crucial design features of unemployment insurance (UI) policies. We examine three different means of improving the efficiency of UI: the duration of benefit payments, monitoring in conjunction with sanctions, and workfare. To that end we develop a quantitative model of equilibrium unemployment. The model features worker heterogeneity, which takes the form of differences in preferences for leisure. All the instruments are ways of limiting the duration of UI benefit receipt and the model can be used to compare them in a coherent fashion. The analysis suggests that a system with monitoring and sanctions restores search incentives most effectively, since it brings additional incentives to search actively so as to avoid the sanction. Therefore, the UI provider can offer a more generous UI replacement rate in a system with monitoring and sanctions than in the other two systems. Workfare appears to be inferior to the other two systems.Unemployment insurance; search; monitoring; sanctions; workfare

Do unemployment benefits increase unemployment? New evidence on an old question

We examine the relationship between unemployment benefits and unemployment using Swedish regional data. To estimate the effect of an increase in unemployment insurance (UI) on unemployment we exploit the ceiling on UI benefits. The benefit ceiling, coupled with the fact that there are regional wage differentials, implies that the generosity of UI varies regionally. More importantly, the actual generosity of UI varies within region over time due to variations in the benefit ceiling. We find fairly robust evidence suggesting that the actual generosity of UI does matter for regional unemployment. Increases in the actual replacement rate contribute to higher unemployment as suggested by theory. We also show that removing the wage cap in UI benefit receipt would reduce the dispersion of regional unemployment. This result is due to the fact that low unemployment regions tend to be high wage regions where the benefit ceiling has a greater bite. Removing the benefit ceiling thus implies that the actual generosity of UI increases more in low unemployment regions.Unemployment; Unemployment insurance; Unemployment dispersion

Migration and Local Public Services

Using unique Swedish micro data we examine the impact of local public services on community choice. The choice of community is modeled as a choice between a discrete set of alternatives. The US literature has produced conflicting evidence with respect to the importance of local public services. We find a robust positive (negative) relationship between local public services (local income tax rates) and the residential choices of short-distance migrants (defined as those moving within a local labor market). However, local public characteristics are less important for migrants who entered from other local labor markets. Using information on subsequent mobility, we also investigate whether the last result is due to lack of information about the characteristics of the local public sector. The evidence suggests that this is not the case.Migration; Local public services; Tiebout; Discrete choice; repeat migration