EEOC v. Akal Security, INC.,

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Asymptotics in Minimum Distance from Independence Estimation

In this paper we introduce a family of minimum distance from independence estimators, suggested by Manski's minimum mean square from independence estimator. We establish strong consistency, asymptotic normality and consistency of resampling estimates of the distribution and variance of these estimators. For Manski's estimator we derive both strong consistency and asymptotic normality.Donsker class, empirical processes, extremum estimator, nonlinear simultaneous equations models, resampling estimators

Weighted Minimum Mean-Square Distance from Independence Estimation

In this paper we introduce a family of semi-parametric estimators, suggested by Manski's minimum mean-square distance from independence estimator. We establish the strong consistency, asymptotic normality and consistency of bootstrap estimates of the sampling distribution and the asymptotic variance of these estimators.Semiparametric estimation, simultaneous equations models, empirical processes, extremum estimators

Location and Spatial Pricing in Agricultural Markets

Agricultural markets often feature significant transport costs and spatially distributed production and processing which causes spatial imperfect competition. Spatial economics considers the firms’ decisions regarding location and spatial price strategy separately, usually on the demand side, and under restrictive assumptions. Therefore, alternative approaches are needed to explain, e.g., the location of new ethanol plants in the U.S. at peripheral as well as at central locations and the observation of different spatial price strategies in the market. We use an agent-based simulation model to analyze location and spatial pricing in a general model under multi-firm competition, two-dimensional space, and a continuum of potential price strategies. The results show, e.g., that depending on the location of a processor, different price strategies can be observed, spatial price discrimination can increase with the number of competitors, and elasticity in the producers’ supply functions can be identified as stabilizing factor of processor’s location.spatial competition, location, price discrimination, oligopsony, simulation, Industrial Organization, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, C63, Q11, R32,

Spatial Pricing and the Location of Processors in Agricultural Markets

Spatially dispersed production and processing, endemic for most agricultural or renewable resource markets, causes oligopsonistic competition. The possibility and use of spatial price discrimination in these markets is well documented. It is also well known that the location of processors relative to competitors crucially affects the intensity of competition. However, insights regarding the relation between spatial price discrimination and the spatial differentiation of firms are barely present because the simultaneous investigation of these issues is often intractable analytically. We use computational economics to study these problems under a general theoretical framework. For instance, we show whether and under which conditions firms choose to differentiate their locations and/or price strategies. Results are consistent with observations in agricultural markets.spatial price competition, spatial differentiation, price discrimination, computational economics, Agribusiness,

Monitoring of distributed component interactions

We have describe a generic monitoring approach that can be used to enhance the quality of distributed component software. The generality of the approach is achieved through using reflective technology, i.e. CORBA Interceptors, CORBA POA and Java 2 features. A drawback of using interceptors is the fact that their interfaces have not been standardised so far. However, the process of standardisation is ongoing and has recently resulted in an OMG Joint Revised Submission called Portable Interceptors. Although the Java 2 API enables discovery of ‘forks’ in the execution, we find it lacking functionality for the purpose of discovering synchronisation points (e.g., ‘joins’) within multithreaded components

A model-based approach to service creation

This paper presents a model-based approach to support service creation. In this approach, services are assumed to be created from (available) software components. The creation process may involve multiple design steps in which the requested service is repeatedly decomposed into more detailed functional parts, until these parts can be mapped onto software components. A modelling language is used to express and enable analysis of the resulting designs, in particular the behaviour aspects. Methods are needed to verify the correctness of each design step. A technique called behaviour refinement is introduced to assess the conformance relation between an abstract behaviour and a more concrete (detailed) behaviour. This technique is based on the application of abstraction rules to determine the abstraction of the concrete behaviour such that the obtained abstraction can be compared to the original abstract behaviour. The application of this refinement technique throughout the creation process enforces the correctness of the created servic

Towards a flexible service integration through separation of business rules

Driven by dynamic market demands, enterprises are continuously exploring collaborations with others to add value to their services and seize new market opportunities. Achieving enterprise collaboration is facilitated by Enterprise Application Integration and Business-to-Business approaches that employ architectural paradigms like Service Oriented Architecture and incorporate technological advancements in networking and computing. However, flexibility remains a major challenge related to enterprise collaboration. How can changes in demands and opportunities be reflected in collaboration solutions with minimum time and effort and with maximum reuse of existing applications? This paper proposes an approach towards a more flexible integration of enterprise applications in the context of service mediation. We achieve this by combining goal-based, model-driven and serviceoriented approaches. In particular, we pay special attention to the separation of business rules from the business process of the integration solution. Specifying the requirements as goal models, we separate those parts which are more likely to evolve over time in terms of business rules. These business rules are then made executable by exposing them as Web services and incorporating them into the design of the business process.\ud Thus, should the business rules change, the business process remains unaffected. Finally, this paper also provides an evaluation of the flexibility of our solution in relation to the current work in business process flexibility research

Consistency in Multi-Viewpoint Architectural Design of Enterprise Information Systems

Different stakeholders in the design of an enterprise information system have their own view on that design. To help produce a coherent design this paper presents a framework that aids in specifying relations between such views. To help produce a consistent design the framework also aids in specifying consistency rules that apply to the view relations and in checking the consistency according to those rules. The framework focuses on the higher levels of abstraction in a design, we refer to design at those levels of abstraction as architectural design. The highest level of abstraction that we consider is that of business process design and the lowest level is that of software component design. The contribution of our framework is that it provides a collection of basic concepts that is common to viewpoints in the area of enterprise information systems. These basic concepts aid in relating viewpoints by providing: (i) a common terminology that helps stakeholders to understand each others concepts; and (ii) a basis for defining re-usable consistency rules. In particular we define re-usable rules to check consistency between behavioural views that overlap or are a refinement of each other. We also present an architecture for a tool suite that supports our framework. We show that our framework can be applied, by performing a case study in which we specify the relations and consistency rules between the RM-ODP enterprise, computational and information viewpoints