Do subsidized work contracts enhance capabilities of the long-term unemployed ? Evidence based on French Data

In the 1990’s, France introduced different subsidised contracts to create jobs targeted at long-term unemployment. These programs were supposed to help the beneficiaries to enhance their employability. It is then interesting to use the “capabilities” approach to assess their impact. From the panel of the Research and Statistical Department of the French Ministry of labour and social affairs (Dares) concerning employment policy beneficiaries, an initial analysis explored the beneficiaries’ refined functionings and a second how they subjectively perceive their standard of living. Comparing beneficiaries’ perceptions to those of a control group provided the necessary data to evaluate the real impact of these employment schemes on beneficiaries. Globally, subsidised employment contracts provide beneficiaries’ with an increased number of opportunities or choices that can be achieved and thus can be said to improve their quality of life. Furthermore, the private sector employment contract to the long-term unemployed (the so-called “CIE”) is generally viewed more positively than the fixed-term contract in the public sector (the so-called “CES”) although the latter is viewed as more successful in allowing beneficiaries to “feel useful” and “regain self-esteem”.

SAY HAY AND HAY WEST: CHARITY, GOVERNMENT AND FARMER RESPONSES TO THE 2002 DROUGHT IN WESTERN CANADA

Crop Production/Industries,

Static Analysis for Extracting Permission Checks of a Large Scale Framework: The Challenges And Solutions for Analyzing Android

A common security architecture is based on the protection of certain resources by permission checks (used e.g., in Android and Blackberry). It has some limitations, for instance, when applications are granted more permissions than they actually need, which facilitates all kinds of malicious usage (e.g., through code injection). The analysis of permission-based framework requires a precise mapping between API methods of the framework and the permissions they require. In this paper, we show that naive static analysis fails miserably when applied with off-the-shelf components on the Android framework. We then present an advanced class-hierarchy and field-sensitive set of analyses to extract this mapping. Those static analyses are capable of analyzing the Android framework. They use novel domain specific optimizations dedicated to Android.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (2014). arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1206.582

Automatically Securing Permission-Based Software by Reducing the Attack Surface: An Application to Android

A common security architecture, called the permission-based security model (used e.g. in Android and Blackberry), entails intrinsic risks. For instance, applications can be granted more permissions than they actually need, what we call a "permission gap". Malware can leverage the unused permissions for achieving their malicious goals, for instance using code injection. In this paper, we present an approach to detecting permission gaps using static analysis. Our prototype implementation in the context of Android shows that the static analysis must take into account a significant amount of platform-specific knowledge. Using our tool on two datasets of Android applications, we found out that a non negligible part of applications suffers from permission gaps, i.e. does not use all the permissions they declare

In-Vivo Bytecode Instrumentation for Improving Privacy on Android Smartphones in Uncertain Environments

In this paper we claim that an efficient and readily applicable means to improve privacy of Android applications is: 1) to perform runtime monitoring by instrumenting the application bytecode and 2) in-vivo, i.e. directly on the smartphone. We present a tool chain to do this and present experimental results showing that this tool chain can run on smartphones in a reasonable amount of time and with a realistic effort. Our findings also identify challenges to be addressed before running powerful runtime monitoring and instrumentations directly on smartphones. We implemented two use-cases leveraging the tool chain: BetterPermissions, a fine-grained user centric permission policy system and AdRemover an advertisement remover. Both prototypes improve the privacy of Android systems thanks to in-vivo bytecode instrumentation.Comment: ISBN: 978-2-87971-111-

The Losses in the Beef Sector in Canada From BSE

The appearance of BSE in the Canadian beef herd brought immediate financial hardship to the industry due to the immediate closure of export outlets to Canadian beef, live animals and by-products. Nobody knew how long the border would stay closed and many worried that the Canadian beef industry could not survive a prolonged disruption of markets for beef. Previously, producers in Canada had enjoyed secure access to markets for beef around the world, with most of the exports destined for the United States, Mexico, Japan and South Korea. Both federal and provincial governments quickly developed assistance programs and, over the next two years, transferred about $2 billion to various sectors of the beef industry. Government subsidies certainly helped the beef sector but industry representatives argued that it did not cover nearly all the losses that had occurred. This is consistent with the results of this study.Livestock Production/Industries,

The Boundary Water Treaty After 100 Years: Examining the Montana – Alberta Dispute

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

The Impact of Trade Barriers on Mandated Biofuel Consumption in Canada

biofuel ethanol trade Canada, Agricultural and Food Policy, Demand and Price Analysis, International Relations/Trade,

The Impact of Trade Barriers on Mandated Biofuel Consumption in Canada

In 2008 the Canadian government passed amendments to the Environmental Protection Act requiring five percent ethanol in transportation fuels sold in Canada by 2010 and two percent renewable content in diesel and heating fuels by 2012. Agricultural commodity and other groups have lobbied for further marketplace intervention that would ensure the biofuel needed to meet the legislated requirement be produced from domestic sources. Indeed, many of these special interests would like the biofuels content increased from five to ten percent and for the increase to be met by domestic firms only. The objective of this study is to compare the relative economic impacts in Canada of achieving a ten percent biofuel content either through increased imports or by substituting domestic production in place of increased imports.biofuel trade policy ethanol canada, Demand and Price Analysis, International Relations/Trade,