Auctioning incentive contracts; application to welfare-to-work programs

This paper applies the theory of auctioning incentive contracts to welfare-to-work programs. In several countries, the government procures welfare-to-work projects to employment service providers. In doing so, the government trades off adverse selection (the winning provider is not the most efficient one) and moral hazard (the winning provider shirks in his effort to reintegrate unemployed people). We compare three simple auctions with the socially optimal mechanism and show that two of these auctions approximate the optimal mechanism if the number of providers is large. Using simulations, we observe that competition between three bidders is already sufficient for the outcome of these auctions to reach 95% of the optimal level of social welfare.

Team incentives in public organisations; an experimental study

Using a simple production game, we investigate whether public firms perform better when they increase the power of their workersââ¬â¢ incentive schemes. In a laboratory experiment, subjects choose between a ‘public firm’ and a ‘private firm’ with team and individual incentives, respectively. When exposed to individual incentives, workers in the public firm increase effort in one parametrisation, but show a decrease in another. One reason for the latter observation is that reciprocators self-select in the public firm, rendering cooperation profitable.

Best Effort and Practice Activation Codes

Activation Codes are used in many different digital services and known by many different names including voucher, e-coupon and discount code. In this paper we focus on a specific class of ACs that are short, human-readable, fixed-length and represent value. Even though this class of codes is extensively used there are no general guidelines for the design of Activation Code schemes. We discuss different methods that are used in practice and propose BEPAC, a new Activation Code scheme that provides both authenticity and confidentiality. The small message space of activation codes introduces some problems that are illustrated by an adaptive chosen-plaintext attack (CPA-2) on a general 3-round Feis- tel network of size 2^(2n) . This attack recovers the complete permutation from at most 2^(n+2) plaintext-ciphertext pairs. For this reason, BEPAC is designed in such a way that authenticity and confidentiality are in- dependent properties, i.e. loss of confidentiality does not imply loss of authenticity.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, TrustBus 201

Tutorial on Neutron Physics in Dosimetry

Almost since the time of the discovery of the neutron more than 70 years ago, efforts have been made to understand the effects of neutron radiation on tissue and, eventually, to use neutrons for cancer treatment. In contrast to charged particle or photon radiations which directly lead to release of electrons, neutrons interact with the nucleus and induce emission of several different types of charged particles such as protons, alpha particles or heavier ions. Therefore, a fundamental understanding of the neutron-nucleus interaction is necessary for dose calculations and treatment planning with the needed accuracy. We will discuss the concepts of dose and kerma, neutron-nucleus interactions and have a brief look at nuclear data needs and experimental facilities and set-ups where such data are measured.Comment: Invited talk at the 11th Neutron and Ion Dosimetry Symposium NEUDOS-11, October 11-16, 2009, Cape Town, South Africa. 14 pages, 8 figures; submitted to Radiation Measurement

Post Asymptotic Giant Branch Bipolar Reflection Nebulae: Result of Dynamical Ejection or Selective Illumination?

published_or_final_versio

Morphology of the red rectangle proto-planetary nebula

Poster no. 94Using the 3D morpho-kinematic modeling software SHAPE, we have created a model of the Red Rectangle that naturally reproduces many exotic morphological features including the notorious "ladder rungs". © 2012 International Astronomical Union.published_or_final_versionThe IAU Symposium No. 283: 'Planetary Nebulae: an Eye to the Future', Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, Spain, 25-29 July 2011. In International Astronomical Union Proceedings, 2012, v. 7 n. S283, p. 410-41

REMARKS ON THE MORPHOLOGY OF THE TEAK MOTH, HYBLAEA PUERA CR.

abstract not availabl