The segregative properties of endogenous jurisdiction formation with a land market

This paper examines the segregative properties of Tiebout-like endogenous processes of jurisdiction formation in presence of a competitive land market. In the model considered, a continuum of households with different wealth levels and the same preferences for local public goods, private spending and housing choose a location from a finite set. Each location has an initial endowment of housing that is priced competively and that belongs to absentee landlords. Each jurisdiction is also endowed with a specific technology for producing public goods. Households' preferences are assumed to be homothetically separable between local public goods on the one hand and private spending and housing on the other. Public goods provision is financed by a given, but unspecified, mixture of (linear) wealth and housing taxes. We show that stable jurisdiction structures are always segregated by wealth only if households view any public good conditionally on the quantities of the other public goods as either always a gross substitute, or either always a gross complement, to private spending. We also show that, if there are more than one public good, this condition is not sufficient for segregation unless households preferences are additively separable. Since this condition is necessary and sufficient for the segregation of stable jurisdiction structures without land market and with only one public good, our results suggests that introducing a land market does not affect the segregative properties of endogenous jurisdiction formation but that increasing the number of public goods mitigates segregation.Land market; segregation; jurisdictions; local taxes; mobility.

Utilitarianism or Welfarism: Does it Make a Difference?

We show that it is possible to reconcile the utilitarian and welfarist principles under the requirement of unanimity provided that the set of profiles over which the consensus is attained is rich enough. More precisely, we identify a closedness condition which, if satisfied by a class of n-tuples of utility functions, guarantees that the rankings of social states induced by utilitarian and welfarist unanimities over that class are identical. We illustrate the importance of the result for the measurement of unidimensional as well as multidimensional inequalities from a dominance point of view.Unanimity; Utilitarianism; Welfarism; Stochastic Dominance; Inequality

Appraising Diversity with an Ordinal Notion of Similarity: An Axiomatic Approach

This paper provides an axiomatic characterization of two rules for comparing alternative sets of objects on the basis of the diversity that they offer. The framework considered assumes a finite universe of objects and an a priori given ordinal quadernary relation that compares alternative pairs of objects on the basis of their ordinal dissimilarity. Very few properties of this quadernary relation are assumed (beside completeness, transitivity and a very natural form of symmetry). The two rules that we characterize are the maxi-max criterion and the lexi-max criterion. The maxi-max criterion considers that a set is more diverse than another if and only if the two objects that are the most dissimilar in the former are weakly as dissimilar as the two most dissimilar objects in the later. The lexi-max criterion is defined as usual as the lexicographic extension of the maxi-max criterion. Some connections with the broader issue of measuring freedom of choice are also provided.Diversity, Measurement, Axioms, Freedom of choice

Road User Detection in Videos

Successive frames of a video are highly redundant, and the most popular object detection methods do not take advantage of this fact. Using multiple consecutive frames can improve detection of small objects or difficult examples and can improve speed and detection consistency in a video sequence, for instance by interpolating features between frames. In this work, a novel approach is introduced to perform online video object detection using two consecutive frames of video sequences involving road users. Two new models, RetinaNet-Double and RetinaNet-Flow, are proposed, based respectively on the concatenation of a target frame with a preceding frame, and the concatenation of the optical flow with the target frame. The models are trained and evaluated on three public datasets. Experiments show that using a preceding frame improves performance over single frame detectors, but using explicit optical flow usually does not

Road User Detection in Videos

Successive frames of a video are highly redundant, and the most popular object detection methods do not take advantage of this fact. Using multiple consecutive frames can improve detection of small objects or difficult examples and can improve speed and detection consistency in a video sequence, for instance by interpolating features between frames. In this work, a novel approach is introduced to perform online video object detection using two consecutive frames of video sequences involving road users. Two new models, RetinaNet-Double and RetinaNet-Flow, are proposed, based respectively on the concatenation of a target frame with a preceding frame, and the concatenation of the optical flow with the target frame. The models are trained and evaluated on three public datasets. Experiments show that using a preceding frame improves performance over single frame detectors, but using explicit optical flow usually does not

Is the Distribution of Cardiovascular Risks Really Improving ? A Robust Analysis for France.

In this paper, we appraise the recent evolution of the distribution of individuals’ risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) in France among both men and women using new normative criteria. An individual risk of CVD is described by a probability of getting such a disease. Building on the framework of Gravel and Tarroux (2015), we assume that individuals, who differ by their income, have Von Neuman-Morgenstern (VNM) preferences over such risks. We appeal to Harsanyi’s aggregation theorem to provide empirically implementable dominance criteria that coincide with the unanimity, taken over a large class of such individual preferences, of anonymous and Pareto-inclusive VNM social rankings of distributions of individuals’ risk of CVD. The implementable criteria that we obtain are Sequential headcount poverty dominance and Sequential headcount affluence dominance. We apply these criteria to the distribution of cardiovascular risks among French men and women on the 2006-2010 period. Probabilities of CVD are assigned to individuals on the basis of a logit model estimated on both the men and the women samples for each of the two years. Our main empirical result is that men and women were differently affected by evolution in the distribution of CVD risks between 2006 and 2010. Specifically, the distribution improved for women but did not improve for men

The neuroanatomical organization of intrinsic brain activity measured by fMRI activity in the human visual cortex

Het bestaan ​​van intrinsieke neuronale activiteit op vele schalen is aangetoond met behulp van verschillende methodologische benaderingen, maar de biologische relevantie ervan begrijpen we nog niet goed. Een manier om intrinsieke neuronale activiteit bij mensen te bestuderen is door gebruik te maken van rusttoestand (resting-state; RS) functionele magnetische resonantie beeldvorming (fMRI). In mijn proefschrift, getiteld ”The Neuroanatomical Organization of Intrinsic Brain Activity Measured by fMRI in the Human Visual Cortex”, beschrijf ik nieuwe RS-fMRI analyses die een opmerkelijke mate van detail onthullen over de functionele neuro-anatomische organisatie van de menselijke visuele cortex. Ik heb deze analyses toegepast om de lokale en gedistribueerde hersendynamiek binnen en tussen verschillende delen van de visuele cortex te onderzoeken. Ik laat daarbij zien hoe deze dynamiek als gevolg van verschillende manieren van stimulering verandert. Ik besluit mijn proefschrift door mijn bevindingen te interpreteren en te bespreken in het licht van verschillende theoretische perspectieven. Ik benadruk dat er, naast extern opgewekte reacties, ook een constante stroom van interne processen bestaat. Daarmee moet rekening worden gehouden omdat ze ook bijdragen aan de neuronale activiteit in de visuele cortex. Hoewel ik me heb gericht op het visuele systeem, kan de benadering die ik heb ontwikkeld worden toegepast op elk corticaal netwerk om veranderingen in hersendynamiek te bestuderen onder verschillende experimentele omstandigheden. Samenvattend, de bevindingen verkregen met behulp van mijn nieuwe fMRI-analyses leveren bewijs dat de intrinsieke fluctuaties in activiteit in de vroege corticale visuele cortex wijzen op functioneel relevante processen. Mijn bevindingen ondersteunen het gebruik van RS-fMRI voor het karakteriseren van de corticale functie en connectiviteit bij gezonde personen en mensen met een aandoening

The Progressivity of Equalization Payments in Federations

We investigate the conditions under which an inequality averse and additively separable welfarist constitution maker would always choose to set up a progressive equalization payments scheme in a federation with local public goods. A progressive equalization payments scheme is defined as a list of per capita net (possibly negative) subsidies - one such net subsidy for every jurisdiction - that are decreasing with respect to jurisdictions per capita wealth. We examine these questions in a setting in which the case for progressivity is a priori the strongest, namely, all citizens have the same utility function for the private and the public goods, inhabitants of a given jurisdiction are all identical, and they are not able to move across jurisdictions. We show that the constitution maker favors a progressive equalization payments scheme for all distributions of wealth and all population sizes if and only if its objective function is additively separable between each jurisdiction’s per capita wealth and number of inhabitants. When interpreted as a mean of order r social welfare function, this condition is shown to be equivalent to additive separability of the individual’s indirect utility function with respect to wealth and the price of the public good. Some implications of this restriction to the case where the individual’s direct utility function is additively separable are also derived

Robust normative comparisons of socially risky situations

International audienceIn this paper, we theoretically characterize robust empirically implementable normative criteria for evaluating socially risky situations. Socially risky situations are modeled as distributions, among individuals, of lotteries on a finite set of state-contingent pecuniary consequences. Individuals are assumed to have selfish Von Neumann-Morgenstern preferences for these socially risky situations. We provide empirically implementable criteria that coincide with the unanimity, over a reasonably large class of such individual preferences, of anonymous and Pareto-inclusive Von Neuman Morgenstern social rankings of risks. The implementable criteria can be interpreted as sequential expected poverty dominance.An illustration of the usefulness of the criteria for comparing the exposure to unemployment risk of different segments of the French and US workforce is also provided