12,679 research outputs found
Why invest in rural America and how? : a critical public policy question for the 21st century
Significant portions of rural America are in trouble. For some parts of rural America, the slow slide to no longer being economically, socially, or politically viable is within sight. At the same time, without intending it, rural America appears headed for a land of the rich and the poor—a rural America of resorts and pockets of persistent poverty.> Yet current rural policies are designed for the past, not the future. In terms of public dollars committed, today’s rural policy focuses primarily on two areas—agriculture and manufacturing. Neither focus can meet the future needs of rural people and their communities.> In his paper presented at this year’s conference sponsored by the Center for the Study of Rural America, Exploring Policy Options for a New Rural America, Dr. Stauber discusses how a successful rural policy must be crafted with three key societal benefits in mind—the survival of the rural middle class, reducing concentrated rural poverty, and sustaining and improving the quality of the natural environment.Rural areas ; Rural development
Creating new rural development strategies : the role of nonprofits
Rural areas ; Rural development ; Nonprofit organizations
Pricing Step Options under the CEV and other Solvable Diffusion Models
We consider a special family of occupation-time derivatives, namely
proportional step options introduced by Linetsky in [Math. Finance, 9, 55--96
(1999)]. We develop new closed-form spectral expansions for pricing such
options under a class of nonlinear volatility diffusion processes which
includes the constant-elasticity-of-variance (CEV) model as an example. In
particular, we derive a general analytically exact expression for the resolvent
kernel (i.e. Green's function) of such processes with killing at an exponential
stopping time (independent of the process) of occupation above or below a fixed
level. Moreover, we succeed in Laplace inverting the resolvent kernel and
thereby derive newly closed-form spectral expansion formulae for the transition
probability density of such processes with killing. The spectral expansion
formulae are rapidly convergent and easy-to-implement as they are based simply
on knowledge of a pair of fundamental solutions for an underlying solvable
diffusion process. We apply the spectral expansion formulae to the pricing of
proportional step options for four specific families of solvable nonlinear
diffusion asset price models that include the CEV diffusion model and three
other multi-parameter state-dependent local volatility confluent hypergeometric
diffusion processes.Comment: 30 pages, 16 figures, submitted to IJTA
Security Policy Specification Using a Graphical Approach
A security policy states the acceptable actions of an information system, as
the actions bear on security. There is a pressing need for organizations to
declare their security policies, even informal statements would be better than
the current practice. But, formal policy statements are preferable to support
(1) reasoning about policies, e.g., for consistency and completeness, (2)
automated enforcement of the policy, e.g., using wrappers around legacy systems
or after the fact with an intrusion detection system, and (3) other formal
manipulation of policies, e.g., the composition of policies. We present LaSCO,
the Language for Security Constraints on Objects, in which a policy consists of
two parts: the domain (assumptions about the system) and the requirement (what
is allowed assuming the domain is satisfied). Thus policies defined in LaSCO
have the appearance of conditional access control statements. LaSCO policies
are specified as expressions in logic and as directed graphs, giving a visual
view of policy. LaSCO has a simple semantics in first order logic (which we
provide), thus permitting policies we write, even for complex policies, to be
very perspicuous. LaSCO has syntax to express many of the situations we have
found to be useful on policies or, more interesting, the composition of
policies. LaSCO has an object-oriented structure, permitting it to be useful to
describe policies on the objects and methods of an application written in an
object-oriented language, in addition to the traditional policies on operating
system objects. A LaSCO specification can be automatically translated into
executable code that checks an invocation of a program with respect to a
policy. The implementation of LaSCO is in Java, and generates wrappers to check
Java programs with respect to a policy.Comment: 28 pages, 22 figures, in color (but color is not essential for
viewing); UC Davis CS department technical report (July 22, 1998
Quantum information in base n defined by state partitions
We define a "nit" as a radix n measure of quantum information which is based
on state partitions associated with the outcomes of n-ary observables and
which, for n>2, is fundamentally irreducible to a binary coding. Properties of
this measure for entangled many-particle states are discussed. k particles
specify k nits in such a way that k mutually commuting measurements of
observables with n possible outcomes are sufficient to determine the
information.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Discovery of Blue Luminescence in the Red Rectangle: Possible Fluorescence from Neutral Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Molecules?
Here we report our discovery of a band of blue luminescence (BL) in the Red
Rectangle (RR) nebula. This enigmatic proto-planetary nebula is also one of the
brightest known sources of extended red emission as well as of unidentified
infra-red (UIR) band emissions. The spectrum of this newly discovered BL is
most likely fluorescence from small neutral polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon
(PAH) molecules. PAH molecules are thought to be widely present in many
interstellar and circumstellar environments in our galaxy as well as in other
galaxies, and are considered likely carriers of the UIR-band emission. However,
no specific PAH molecule has yet been identified in a source outside the solar
system, as the set of mid-infra-red emission features attributed to these
molecules between the wavelengths of 3.3 micron and 16.4 micron is largely
insensitive to molecular sizes. In contrast, near-UV/blue fluorescence of PAHs
is more specific as to size, structure, and charge state of a PAH molecule. If
the carriers of this near-UV/blue fluorescence are PAHs, they are most likely
neutral PAH molecules consisting of 3-4 aromatic rings such as anthracene
(C14H10) and pyrene (C16H10). These small PAHs would then be the largest
molecules specifically identified in the interstellar medium.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJL (LaTeX, uses
emulateapj.sty
Modelling Charitable Donations: A Latent Class Panel Approach
Abstract: We apply a latent class tobit framework to the analysis of charitable donations at the household level where the latent class aspect of the model splits households into two groups, which we subsequently interpret as "low" donators and "high" donators. Then the tobit part of the model explores the determinants of the amount donated by each household conditional on being in that class. We consider both total donations and also separately religious donations. Our findings, which are based on US panel data, suggest that price and labour income elasticities differ substantially across the two classes. The inverse price effect is most pronounced for the "low" donators group for both total and religious donations. The labour income elasticity switches direction of influence upon charitable donations across the two latent classes with a negative influence for the "high" donators group and a positive influence for the "low" donators group, for the case of total donations to charity, a pattern which is reversed in the case of solely religious donations.Charity, Donations, Latent Class, Panel Data, Tobit
Modelling Charitable Donations to an Unexpected Natural Disaster: Evidence from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics
Using household-level data, we explore the relationship between donations to the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami disaster and other charitable donations. The empirical evidence suggests that donations specifically for the victims of the tsunami are positively associated with the amount previously donated to other charitable causes, which accords with complementary rather than substitution effects. This relationship exists when we decompose overall charitable donations into different types of philanthropy, with charitable contributions to caring, needy and religious organizations having the largest positive association with donations to the victims of the tsunami. When we explore the impact of donations to the victims of the tsunami on future donations to charity, however, our findings suggest an inverse relationship with the largest inverse association with donations to needy and caring organizations.charity, donations, system tobit, tobit
- …