19,222 research outputs found
Assessing the pro-poorness of government fiscal policy in Thailand
This paper proposes a methodology to assess the pro-poorness of government fiscal policies in view of bringing marginal reforms. A government policy is said to be pro-poor if it benefits the poor proportionally more than the non-poor. The author first derives the poverty elasticity for the general class of poverty. Then, using the idea of poverty elasticity, she proposes a pro-poor index that can be utilized to assess government expenditure and tax policies. This index may be useful in making the government fiscal system more beneficial towards the poor through marginal reforms. The proposed methodology is applied to Thailand, utilizing the 1998 Socio-Economic Survey.Poverty, Income distribution, Pro-poor, Tax policy, Public spending
Quantifying Shannon's Work Function for Cryptanalytic Attacks
Attacks on cryptographic systems are limited by the available computational
resources. A theoretical understanding of these resource limitations is needed
to evaluate the security of cryptographic primitives and procedures. This study
uses an Attacker versus Environment game formalism based on computability logic
to quantify Shannon's work function and evaluate resource use in cryptanalysis.
A simple cost function is defined which allows to quantify a wide range of
theoretical and real computational resources. With this approach the use of
custom hardware, e.g., FPGA boards, in cryptanalysis can be analyzed. Applied
to real cryptanalytic problems, it raises, for instance, the expectation that
the computer time needed to break some simple 90 bit strong cryptographic
primitives might theoretically be less than two years.Comment: 19 page
Quantifying Resource Use in Computations
It is currently not possible to quantify the resources needed to perform a
computation. As a consequence, it is not possible to reliably evaluate the
hardware resources needed for the application of algorithms or the running of
programs. This is apparent in both computer science, for instance, in
cryptanalysis, and in neuroscience, for instance, comparative neuro-anatomy. A
System versus Environment game formalism is proposed based on Computability
Logic that allows to define a computational work function that describes the
theoretical and physical resources needed to perform any purely algorithmic
computation. Within this formalism, the cost of a computation is defined as the
sum of information storage over the steps of the computation. The size of the
computational device, eg, the action table of a Universal Turing Machine, the
number of transistors in silicon, or the number and complexity of synapses in a
neural net, is explicitly included in the computational cost. The proposed cost
function leads in a natural way to known computational trade-offs and can be
used to estimate the computational capacity of real silicon hardware and neural
nets. The theory is applied to a historical case of 56 bit DES key recovery, as
an example of application to cryptanalysis. Furthermore, the relative
computational capacities of human brain neurons and the C. elegans nervous
system are estimated as an example of application to neural nets.Comment: 26 pages, no figure
Evaluating Targeting Efficiency of Government Programmes: International Comparisons
targeting, pro-poor growth, poverty
Evaluating Targeting Efficiency of Government Programmes: International Comparisons
This paper suggests how the targeting efficiency of government programmes may be better assessed. Using the “pro-poor policy” (PPP) index developed by the authors, the study investigates not only the pro-poorness of government programmes geared to the poorest segment of the population but also basic service delivery in education, health and infrastructure. The paper also shows that the targeting efficiency for a particular socio-economic group should be judged on the basis of a ‘total-group PPP index’, to capture the impact of operating a programme for the group. Using micro-unit data from household surveys, the paper presents a comparative analysis for Thailand, the Russian Federation, Viet Nam and 15 African countries.Targeting, universalism, pro-poor, poverty
A note on measuring unemployment
This paper proposes a new measure of the unemployment rate. This measure takes into account not only people who are unemployed, but also those earning below the subsistence level of income in the labor market. The proposed methodology is applied to Brazil?s unit record household surveys covering the period between 1995 and 2004.Open unemployment rate, Underemployment, Productive employment, Poverty
Pro-poor Growth: Concepts and Measurement with Country Case Studies
This paper looks into the interrelation between economic growth, inequality, and poverty. Using the notion of pro-poor growth, we examine the extent to which the poor benefit from economic growth. First, various approaches to defining and measuring propoor growth are scrutinised using a variety of criteria. It is argued that the satisfaction of a monotonicity axiom is a key criterion for measuring pro-poor growth. The monotonicity axiom sets out a condition that the proportional reduction in poverty is a monotonically increasing function of the pro-poor growth measure. The paper proposes a pro-poor growth measure that satisfies the monotonicity criterion. This measure is called a ‘poverty equivalent growth rate’, which takes into account both the magnitude of growth and how the benefits of growth are distributed to the poor and the non-poor. As the new measure satisfies the criterion of monotonicity, it is indicative that to achieve rapid poverty reduction, the poverty equivalent growth rate—rather than the actual growth rate—ought to be maximised. The methodology developed in the paper is then applied to three Asian countries, namely, the Republic of Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.
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