Morality and institutions: an exploration

This paper explores the question of how culturally varying views of ‘morality’, ‘fairness’ and ‘justice’, particularly those held by the rural poor in developing countries, influence the way people evaluate,work within, use and (sometimes) resist, economic institutions – especially the institutions that emerge or are actively promoted during ‘development’ (market-oriented or otherwise)? It reviews the way this and related questions have been dealt with in a wide range of subjects, including social anthropology, institutional economics, economic sociology, experimental economics, and the study of rural protest. It then discusses how insights about morality and its interactions with institutions could be incorporated more widely into our understanding of the relationship between institutions and development and, in particular, whether we should begin to understand moralities as part of the wider domain of informal institutions which interact with formal institutions to shape behaviours

'Responsible companies' and African livestock-keepers: acting, teaching but not learning?

There is some evidence that companies, both multinational and African, operating from motivations that can be very broadly labelled "Corporate Social Responsibility", can make real and significant contributions to pastoral development and that useful development dialogues can be held with them. But three case studies, from Uganda, Ethiopia and Senegal, also suggest that companies operating in "CSR" mode show a systemic tendency to attempt to teach proper engagement with markets, and remarkably little readiness to learn how pastoralists and other livestock-keepers wish to engage with markets, and what constrains them from doing so. When allied with the intrinsic complexity of livestock-keepers' objectives and constraints in production and marketing, this tendency to teach rather than learn severely limits the potential development contribution of CSR

Scaling effects in angle-ply laminates

The effect of specimen size upon the response and strength of +/- 45 degree angle-ply laminates was investigated for two graphite fiber reinforced plastic systems and several stacking sequences. The first material system was a brittle epoxy based system, AS4 fibers in 3502 epoxy, and the second was a tough thermoplastic based system, AS4 fibers in PEEK matrix. For the epoxy based system, two generic +/- 45 degree lay-ups were studied: (+45 degrees sub n/-45 degrees sub n) sub 2S (blocked plies), and (+45 degrees/-45 degrees) sub 2nS, for n=1 and 2. The in-plane dimensions of the specimens were varied such that the width/length relationship was 12.7 x n/127 x n mm, for m=1, 2, 3, or 4. It is shown that the stress/strain response and the ultimate strength of these angle-ply laminates depends on the laminate thickness and the type of generic lay-up used. Furthermore, it is shown that first ply failure occurs in the surface plies as a result of normal rather than shear stresses. The implications of the experimental findings upon the validity of the +/- 45 degree tensile test which is used to determine the in-plane shear response of unidirectional composites are discussed

On sums of Rudin-Shapiro coefficients II

Let {a(n)} be the Rudin-Shapiro sequence, and let s(n) = ∑a(k) and t(n) = ∑(-1)k a(k). In this paper we show that the sequences {s(n)/√n} and {t(n)/√n} do not have cumulative distribution functions, but do have logarithmic distribution functions (given by a specific Lebesgue integral) at each point of the respective intervals [√3/5, √6] and [0, √3]. The functions a(x) and s(x) are also defined for real x ≥ 0, and the function [s(x) – a(x)]/√x is shown to have a Fourier expansion whose coefficients are related to the poles of the Dirichlet series ∑a(n)/n, where Re τ > ½

Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well?

Draws on research analysis to outline what economic mobility is, why it matters in today's economy, and why it is important for policy makers to focus on mobility as part of the ongoing national economic debate

Evaluation of some scale effects in the response and failure of composite beams

The feasibility of using scale model testing for predicting full-scale behavior of composite beams loaded in tension and flexure was investigated. Classical laws of similitude were applied to fabricate and test replica model beams to identify scaling effects in the load response, strength, and mode of failure. Experiments were conducted using graphite-epoxy composite beams having different laminate stacking sequences and a range of scaled sizes. Results indicated that the elastic response of scaled composite beams was independent of specimen size. However, a significant scale effect in strength was observed. In addition, a transition in failure mode was observed among scaled beams of certain laminate stacking sequences. Weibull statistical and fracture mechanics based models were applied to predict the strength scale effect since standard failure criteria cannot account for the influence of absolute specimen size in failure

Towards an Adaptive Skeleton Framework for Performance Portability

The proliferation of widely available, but very different, parallel architectures makes the ability to deliver good parallel performance on a range of architectures, or performance portability, highly desirable. Irregularly-parallel problems, where the number and size of tasks is unpredictable, are particularly challenging and require dynamic coordination. The paper outlines a novel approach to delivering portable parallel performance for irregularly parallel programs. The approach combines declarative parallelism with JIT technology, dynamic scheduling, and dynamic transformation. We present the design of an adaptive skeleton library, with a task graph implementation, JIT trace costing, and adaptive transformations. We outline the architecture of the protoype adaptive skeleton execution framework in Pycket, describing tasks, serialisation, and the current scheduler.We report a preliminary evaluation of the prototype framework using 4 micro-benchmarks and a small case study on two NUMA servers (24 and 96 cores) and a small cluster (17 hosts, 272 cores). Key results include Pycket delivering good sequential performance e.g. almost as fast as C for some benchmarks; good absolute speedups on all architectures (up to 120 on 128 cores for sumEuler); and that the adaptive transformations do improve performance

What Explains the Wealth Gap Between Immigrants and the New Zealand Born?

Immigrants are typically found to have less wealth and hold it in different forms than the native born. These differences may affect both the economic assimilation of immigrants and overall portfolio allocation when immigrants are a large share of the population, as in New Zealand. In this paper, data from the 2001 Household Savings Survey are used to examine wealth differences between immigrants and the New Zealand-born. Differences in the allocation of portfolios between housing and other forms of wealth are described. Unconditional and conditional wealth quantiles are examined using parametric models. Semiparametric methods are used to decompose differences in net worth at different parts of the wealth distribution into the part due to differences in characteristics and the part due to differences in the returns to characteristics.Immigration, Portfolios, Semiparametric Decomposition, Wealth