1,998 research outputs found
Immigrants and Welfare Programmes: Exploring the Interactions between Immigrant Characteristics, Immigrant Welfare Dependence and Welfare Policy
The primary purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the papers within the economics literature that have examined the questions of immigrant welfare use and the responsiveness of immigrants to the incentives created by welfare systems. While our focus is largely on papers looking at the European case, we also draw on studies from the United States, in particular on issues where the European literature is thin. One set of papers asks whether immigrants who are more likely to use welfare are attracted to more generous welfare states. The results from these papers are not clear-cut. Another set of papers asks if immigrants use welfare more intensively than natives and if they assimilate out of or into welfare participation. In most cases, the unadjusted data shows higher use of welfare by immigrants although for some countries, for example Germany, this difference can be explained by differences in characteristics. Yet another set of papers finds that the rate of welfare use by existing migrants can influence the welfare use of newly arrived co-nationals. We illustrate some of these issues by looking at immigrant welfare use in Ireland and the UK. Immigrants in the UK appear to use welfare more intensively than natives but the opposite appears to be the case in Ireland.Ireland, welfare participation, immigrants, U.K.
A Framework for Constraint-Based Deployment and Autonomic Management of Distributed Applications
We propose a framework for deployment and subsequent autonomic management of
component-based distributed applications. An initial deployment goal is
specified using a declarative constraint language, expressing constraints over
aspects such as component-host mappings and component interconnection topology.
A constraint solver is used to find a configuration that satisfies the goal,
and the configuration is deployed automatically. The deployed application is
instrumented to allow subsequent autonomic management. If, during execution,
the manager detects that the original goal is no longer being met, the
satisfy/deploy process can be repeated automatically in order to generate a
revised deployment that does meet the goal.Comment: Submitted to ICAC-0
A Middleware Framework for Constraint-Based Deployment and Autonomic Management of Distributed Applications
We propose a middleware framework for deployment and subsequent autonomic
management of component-based distributed applications. An initial deployment
goal is specified using a declarative constraint language, expressing
constraints over aspects such as component-host mappings and component
interconnection topology. A constraint solver is used to find a configuration
that satisfies the goal, and the configuration is deployed automatically. The
deployed application is instrumented to allow subsequent autonomic management.
If, during execution, the manager detects that the original goal is no longer
being met, the satisfy/deploy process can be repeated automatically in order to
generate a revised deployment that does meet the goal.Comment: Submitted to Middleware 0
Applying constraint solving to the management of distributed applications
Submitted to DOA08We present our approach for deploying and managing distributed component-based applications. A Desired State Description (DSD), written in a high-level declarative language, specifies requirements for a distributed application. Our infrastructure accepts a DSD as input, and from it automatically configures and deploys the distributed application. Subsequent violations of the original requirements are detected and, where possible, automatically rectified by reconfiguration and redeployment of the necessary application components. A constraint solving tool is used to plan deployments that meet the application requirements.Postprin
Determinants of Private Afforestation in the Republic of Ireland
This paper employs a panel regression analysis using county-level data to quantify the relative importance of competing forestry and agricultural policy incentives in explaining trends in private afforestation in Ireland. It concludes that an increase in the level of up front payments to planters is the most cost efficient way of increasing planting levels. The introduction of the Irish agri-environment programme REPS has contributed to a significant decline in the level of forestry planting and offset the recent increases in the level of forestry grants and premia. Several policy reforms to encourage forestry planting in Ireland are proposed, including greater integration of forestry with the REPS scheme and increasing the value of the initial payment which farmers receive.
A Peer-to-Peer Middleware Framework for Resilient Persistent Programming
The persistent programming systems of the 1980s offered a programming model
that integrated computation and long-term storage. In these systems, reliable
applications could be engineered without requiring the programmer to write
translation code to manage the transfer of data to and from non-volatile
storage. More importantly, it simplified the programmer's conceptual model of
an application, and avoided the many coherency problems that result from
multiple cached copies of the same information. Although technically
innovative, persistent languages were not widely adopted, perhaps due in part
to their closed-world model. Each persistent store was located on a single
host, and there were no flexible mechanisms for communication or transfer of
data between separate stores. Here we re-open the work on persistence and
combine it with modern peer-to-peer techniques in order to provide support for
orthogonal persistence in resilient and potentially long-running distributed
applications. Our vision is of an infrastructure within which an application
can be developed and distributed with minimal modification, whereupon the
application becomes resilient to certain failure modes. If a node, or the
connection to it, fails during execution of the application, the objects are
re-instantiated from distributed replicas, without their reference holders
being aware of the failure. Furthermore, we believe that this can be achieved
within a spectrum of application programmer intervention, ranging from minimal
to totally prescriptive, as desired. The same mechanisms encompass an
orthogonally persistent programming model. We outline our approach to
implementing this vision, and describe current progress.Comment: Submitted to EuroSys 200
RAFDA: A Policy-Aware Middleware Supporting the Flexible Separation of Application Logic from Distribution
Middleware technologies often limit the way in which object classes may be
used in distributed applications due to the fixed distribution policies that
they impose. These policies permeate applications developed using existing
middleware systems and force an unnatural encoding of application level
semantics. For example, the application programmer has no direct control over
inter-address-space parameter passing semantics. Semantics are fixed by the
distribution topology of the application, which is dictated early in the design
cycle. This creates applications that are brittle with respect to changes in
distribution. This paper explores technology that provides control over the
extent to which inter-address-space communication is exposed to programmers, in
order to aid the creation, maintenance and evolution of distributed
applications. The described system permits arbitrary objects in an application
to be dynamically exposed for remote access, allowing applications to be
written without concern for distribution. Programmers can conceal or expose the
distributed nature of applications as required, permitting object placement and
distribution boundaries to be decided late in the design cycle and even
dynamically. Inter-address-space parameter passing semantics may also be
decided independently of object implementation and at varying times in the
design cycle, again possibly as late as run-time. Furthermore, transmission
policy may be defined on a per-class, per-method or per-parameter basis,
maximizing plasticity. This flexibility is of utility in the development of new
distributed applications, and the creation of management and monitoring
infrastructures for existing applications.Comment: Submitted to EuroSys 200
The Earnings of Immigrants in Ireland: Results from the 2005 EU Survey of Income and Living Conditions. ESRI WP206. August 2007
This paper has three objectives. First, a review of the developing body of work on the economics of immigration in Ireland is provided. Second, the analysis undertaken by Barrett and McCarthy (forthcoming) of earnings of immigrants in Ireland is updated. Third, the earnings of immigrant women are assessed to see if they experience a “double disadvantage”. Among other findings, the review of the emerging literature points to immigrants faring less well in the Irish labour market relative to native employees. As regards the analysis conducted in this paper, we find that immigrants were earning 15 percent less than comparable natives employees in 2005. For immigrants from non-English speaking countries, the wage disadvantage was 20 percent. The corresponding figure for immigrants from the EU’s New Member States was 31 percent. A double disadvantage is found for immigrant women, with the earnings of female immigrants found to be 14 percent less than those of comparable native female employees. This double disadvantage is concentrated among female immigrants with third level degrees
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