An Experimental Investigation of Preference Misrepresentation in the Residency Match

The development and deployment of matching procedures that incentivize truthful preference reporting is considered one of the major successes of market design research. In this study, we test the degree to which these procedures succeed in eliminating preference misrepresentation. We administered an online experiment to 1,714 medical students immediately after their participation in the medical residency match--a leading field application of strategy-proof market design. When placed in an analogous, incentivized matching task, we find that 23% of participants misrepresent their preferences. We explore the factors that predict preference misrepresentation, including cognitive ability, strategic positioning, overconfidence, expectations, advice, and trust. We discuss the implications of this behavior for the design of allocation mechanisms and the social welfare in markets that use them

The pioneering press of Poverty Bay: 1872-1914

This thesis explores the significance of the newspaper press in a settler society, in this case Poverty Bay on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand. It examines the circumstances of such a society's communications needs and problems, and its demographic structure. It also looks at the changing patterns of journalism in nineteenth century New Zealand and elsewhere and, importantly, printing's technological progress as it affected a provincial newspaper. Remoteness was a dominating feature of the Poverty Bay district and European settlement was slow to develop. The consequence was twofold: institutions, such as the church, the press and the school, were already well-established in New Zealand by the time this second frontier region began to attract much attention - in the case of the press this meant an interconnectedness from the outset, with ideas and staff emanating from established New Zealand circles - and communication difficulties caused by isolation. Poverty Bay's first newspaper, the Poverty Bay Standard, began in 1872, more than thirty years after New Zealand's first newspaper, the New Zealand Gazette. The 1870s saw a clamour of activity. This was reflected in the district's press, not only within its pages, but also with considerable competition and changing of ownership. Eventually one newspaper, the Poverty Bay Herald, succeeded where all others failed. The Poverty Bay Herald has remained in the hands of one family since experienced printer Allan Ramsay Muir became part-owner in 1884. Thus, the family and the community have been intertwined for one hundred and twenty years. Good provincial newspapers provide a cohesive element in their society or they do not succeed. The Poverty Bay Herald initially survived through luck and useful friends but it became a beacon for its community in that it reflected success and modernity. Many others attempted to dislodge it or share the stage, but the Poverty Bay Herald played, and still plays, a significant role as the former 'out district' stabilized and advanced

The 3D dynamics of the Cosserat rod as applied to continuum robotics

In the effort to simulate the biologically inspired continuum robot’s dynamic capabilities, researchers have been faced with the daunting task of simulating—in real-time—the complete three dimensional dynamics of the the “beam-like” structure which includes the three “stiff” degrees-ofreedom transverse and dilational shear. Therefore, researchers have traditionally limited the difficulty of the problem with simplifying assumptions. This study, however, puts forward a solution which makes no simplifying assumptions and trades off only the real-time requirement of the desired solution. The solution is a Finite Difference Time Domain method employing an explicit single step method with cheap right hands sides. The cheap right hand sides are the result of a rather ingenious formulation of the classical beam called the Cosserat rod by, first, the Cosserat brothers and, later, Stuart S. Antman which results in five nonlinear but uncoupled equations that require only multiplication and addition. The method is therefore suitable for hardware implementation thus moving the real-time requirement from a software solution to a hardware solution

Addressing Personal-Income-Tax Manipulation with Tools from Psychology

In order to better understand the tax manipulation decision-making process—both legal uses of tax deductions and illegal tax evasion—this brief looks at the impact of gain/loss framing. Analysis of tax data confirms that tax decisions are influenced by “loss aversion.” For instance, taxpayers are more likely to pursue tax reduction activities when they make a loss smaller, as compared to when they make a gain larger. The brief looks at tools that policymakers have at their disposal for both deterring tax evasion and making exiting tax incentives maximally effective. The brief discusses instances when such gain/loss framing interventions might be deployed, and provides estimates around the size of the revenue responses they may generate. The author estimates that if tax filers who face losses experienced the lower motivation to manipulate shown by those facing gains, annual tax revenue would increase by $1.4 billion. Even attempts at marginal interventions, though smaller in predicted effects, might be financially worthwhile.https://repository.upenn.edu/pennwhartonppi/1051/thumbnail.jp

Health care needs and health policy : the case of renal services.

PhDThis thesis presents a critical ethnography of decision making with respect to the assessment of health care needs in the UK health system. Theories of need, justice and rights are reviewed in relation to structural changes to the National Health Service, together with the different theoretical approaches underpinning health policy based on human needs. The research on which this thesis is based focuses on a case study of an independent review of renal services in London, concentrating on the needs assessment work of the review group set up by the government and the decision making debates this review group engaged in. The methods used are based on a participatory, critical ethnography. The review process is evaluated critically by relating the technical knowledge produced by the group to a theoretical framework for assessing needs and by using a Habermasian perspective to investigate the ways in which the language of need is used to legitimise the agendas of various vested interests. This work is linked with an analysis of quasi-markets in the health service to explore the capacity that the technical discourses of markets and contracting have for reinforcing the ideological distortions identified in the analysis of the group's debates concerning need. Finally, by linking an analysis based on a case study of renal services to theoretical understandings of health care needs and health policy, a general critique of the UK health system is constructed

Elite city-deals for economic growth? Problematizing the complexities of devolution, city-region building, and the (re)positioning of civil society

The concept of localism and spatial delineation of the ‘city region’ have seen a renaissance as the de facto spatial political units of governance for economic development. One articulation of this has seen the creation of Cardiff Capital Region (CCR) to potentially enhance Wales’s poor economic performance and secure democratic forms of social cohesion. City regions have been vaunted as the ‘spatial imaginary’ for engendering economic development, but there are considerable state spatial restructuring tensions. The paper discusses these by following the development of city-regionalism in Wales and specifically the unfolding of the ‘elite-led’ CCR City-Deal

A physically based parameterization of gravity drainage for sea-ice modeling

We incorporate a physically derived parameterization of gravity drainage, in terms of a convective upwelling velocity, into a one-dimensional, thermodynamic sea- ice model of the kind currently used in coupled climate models. Our parameterization uses a local Rayleigh number to represent the important feedback between ice salinity, porosity, permeability and desalination rate. It allows us to determine salt fluxes from sea ice and the corresponding evolution of the bulk salinity of the ice, in contrast to older, established models that prescribe the ice salinity. This improves the predictive power of climate models in terms of buoyancy fluxes to the polar oceans, and also the thermal properties of sea ice, which depend on its salinity. We analyze the behaviour of exist- ing fixed-salinity models, elucidate the physics by which changing salinity affects ice growth and compare against our dynamic-salinity model, both in terms of laboratory experiments and also deep-ocean calculations. These comparisons explain why the direct effect of ice salinity on growth is relatively small (though not always negligible, and sometimes dif- ferent from previous studies), and also highlight substantial differences in the qualita- tive pattern and quantitative magnitude of salt fluxes into the polar oceans. Our study is particularly relevant to growing first-year ice, when gravity drainage is the dominant mechanism by which ice desalinates. We expect that our dynamic model, which respects the underlying physics of brine drainage, should be more robust to changes in polar cli- mate and more responsive to rapid changes in oceanic and atmospheric forcing.This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley/American Geophysical Union at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013JC009296/abstract

The Errant Muse

This exhibition brings together image and text work by collaborators, artist, Charlotte Hodes and poet, Deryn Rees Jones. At the centre of their work over the last five years (2014-2019) has been the creative possibilities that exist in exploring the relationship between poem and image. The focus in their work together - whether in collage, poem, film, papercut, ceramic or drawing - has been the exploration and interrogation of the single female body and its relationship to, and movement through, space and time. In 'The Errant Muse', Hodes and Rees-Jones cultivated an archive of association as they juxtaposed text and artefact from the Victoria Gallery and Museum and the University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives. Taking on the idea of errancy, of women’s bodies transgressing spaces, wandering off the path, artist and poet offered the viewer a multitude of potential navigations through a new archival landscape