3,493 research outputs found
Population Increase, Extralegal Appropriation, and the End of Colonialism
Between 1946 and 1976, the European powers granted independence to all of their large colonies in Africa and Southeast Asia. This paper attempts to provide an economic explanation for this remarkable ending to the era of colonialism. The main theoretical innovation is to consider the effect of population increase on the allocation of time by the indigenous population between productive and subversive activities. The analysis suggests that the increase in population during the colonial period increased the potential return to extralegal appropriation of the profits of colonial companies until the colonies became a net burden on the metropolitan governments. The analysis also suggests that there was less subversive activity in colonies in which the market for indigenous labor was monopsonized because monopsonistic employers internalized the potential negative effect of extralegal appropriation on net profits.
The Profitabality of Colonialism
This paper develops an analytical framework for studying colonial investment from the perspective of neoclassical political economy. The distinguishing feature of colonial investment in this model is that the metropolitan government restricts the amount of investment in the colony in order to maximize the net profits earned in the colony. The model explicitly includes the threat of extralegal appropriative activities by the indigenous population in the colony. The analysis of this model identifies the conditions, where these conditions include both the technology of production and the technology of extralegal appropriation, that determine the profitability of colonialism. The analysis suggests why historically some countries but not others became colonies and why many colonies that were initially profitable subsequently become unprofitable and were abandoned. The model also has implications for the amount of investment. the allocation of resources between productive and appropriative activities, and the distribution of income in colonies.
A Redesigned Benders Decomposition Approach for Large-Scale In-Transit Freight Consolidation Operations
The growth in online shopping and third party logistics has caused a revival
of interest in finding optimal solutions to the large scale in-transit freight
consolidation problem. Given the shipment date, size, origin, destination, and
due dates of multiple shipments distributed over space and time, the problem
requires determining when to consolidate some of these shipments into one
shipment at an intermediate consolidation point so as to minimize shipping
costs while satisfying the due date constraints. In this paper, we develop a
mixed-integer programming formulation for a multi-period freight consolidation
problem that involves multiple products, suppliers, and potential consolidation
points. Benders decomposition is then used to replace a large number of integer
freight-consolidation variables by a small number of continuous variables that
reduces the size of the problem without impacting optimality. Our results show
that Benders decomposition provides a significant scale-up in the performance
of the solver. We demonstrate our approach using a large-scale case with more
than 27.5 million variables and 9.2 million constraints
Mapping the Anomalous in Caryl Phillipsâs âHeartlandâ
All narratives of Caryl Phillips present prolific ground for research in spatial literary studies. Phillipsâs âHeartland,â the focus of this paper, deals with the mechanics of Britainâs enslaving past. The narrator is an anomalous character who stands at the borderline between two multiplicities and takes part in the social deterritorialization process of the absolute anomalous or, to say, a perpetual outsider, the slave, who loiters without a safe anchorage. The process of social deterritorialization necessitates the eradication of all beacons of geographical, familial, tribal, linguistic, and cultural belonging. The process of social deterritorialization necessitates the eradication of all beacons of geographical, familial, tribal, linguistic, and cultural belonging. This then requires a more stratified understanding and evaluation of the slave-making process as well as a critical reading of narratives of slavery such as âHeartland.â This paper, therefore, aims to construct a multifocal mapping of some of the micro spaces used in the process of social deterritorialization and the anomalous bodies as narrated in Caryl Phillipsâs âHeartland.â The paper also aims to use the method of geocritical multifocalization, which highlights the need for a diversification of perspectives in the analysis of any given space, real or fictional
Catalysis of Protein Folding by Chaperones Accelerates Evolutionary Dynamics in Adapting Cell Populations
Although molecular chaperones are essential components of protein homeostatic machinery, their mechanism of action and impact on adaptation and evolutionary dynamics remain controversial. Here we developed a physics-based ab initio multi-scale model of a living cell for population dynamics simulations to elucidate the effect of chaperones on adaptive evolution. The 6-loci genomes of model cells encode model proteins, whose folding and interactions in cellular milieu can be evaluated exactly from their genome sequences. A genotype-phenotype relationship that is based on a simple yet non-trivially postulated protein-protein interaction (PPI) network determines the cell division rate. Model proteins can exist in native and molten globule states and participate in functional and all possible promiscuous non-functional PPIs. We find that an active chaperone mechanism, whereby chaperones directly catalyze protein folding, has a significant impact on the cellular fitness and the rate of evolutionary dynamics, while passive chaperones, which just maintain misfolded proteins in soluble complexes have a negligible effect on the fitness. We find that by partially releasing the constraint on protein stability, active chaperones promote a deeper exploration of sequence space to strengthen functional PPIs, and diminish the non-functional PPIs. A key experimentally testable prediction emerging from our analysis is that down-regulation of chaperones that catalyze protein folding significantly slows down the adaptation dynamics
On the probabilistic min spanning tree Problem
We study a probabilistic optimization model for min spanning tree, where any vertex vi of the input-graph G(V,E) has some presence probability pi in the final instance GâČ â G that will effectively be optimized. Suppose that when this ârealâ instance GâČ becomes known, a spanning tree T, called anticipatory or a priori spanning tree, has already been computed in G and one can run a quick algorithm (quicker than one that recomputes from scratch), called modification strategy, that modifies the anticipatory tree T in order to fit G âČ. The goal is to compute an anticipatory spanning tree of G such that, its modification for any G âČ â G is optimal for G âČ. This is what we call probabilistic min spanning tree problem. In this paper we study complexity and approximation of probabilistic min spanning tree in complete graphs under two distinct modification strategies leading to different complexity results for the problem. For the first of the strategies developed, we also study two natural subproblems of probabilistic min spanning tree, namely, the probabilistic metric min spanning tree and the probabilistic min spanning tree 1,2 that deal with metric complete graphs and complete graphs with edge-weights either 1, or 2, respectively
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