Information Design for Congested Social Services: Optimal Need-Based Persuasion

We study the effectiveness of information design in reducing congestion in social services catering to users with varied levels of need. In the absence of price discrimination and centralized admission, the provider relies on sharing information about wait times to improve welfare. We consider a stylized model with heterogeneous users who differ in their private outside options: low-need users have an acceptable outside option to the social service, whereas high-need users have no viable outside option. Upon arrival, a user decides to wait for the service by joining an unobservable first-come-first-serve queue, or leave and seek her outside option. To reduce congestion and improve social outcomes, the service provider seeks to persuade more low-need users to avail their outside option, and thus better serve high-need users. We characterize the Pareto-optimal signaling mechanisms and compare their welfare outcomes against several benchmarks. We show that if either type is the overwhelming majority of the population, information design does not provide improvement over sharing full information or no information. On the other hand, when the population is a mixture of the two types, information design not only Pareto dominates full-information and no-information mechanisms, in some regimes it also achieves the same welfare as the "first-best", i.e., the Pareto-optimal centralized admission policy with knowledge of users' types.Comment: Accepted for publication in the 21st ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC'20). 40 pages, 6 figure

Effects of Corruption on Poverty and Economic Growth

Promoting economic growth and poverty reduction have become important in national and international policy framework; however in low-income countries, corruption threatens the global fight against poverty. Therefore, there is a strong correlation between economic performance and a country’s ranking on the corruption indices, however, no causality between poverty and corruption can be derived from this correlation. Since most of the studies which have investigated the link between corruption and poverty may draw conclusions on causality in the form of models that only show correlation, this study is set out to investigate the Granger causal relationship between corruption and poverty as the first objective. It uses dynamic panel system GMM estimators, focuses on capability poverty using human poverty index (HPI) and is based on a sample of 97 countries during 1997-2006. The empirical findings reveal that corruption and poverty go together, with bidirectional causality. Although ASEAN has recorded good economic growth, corruption and poverty are high in the region. This may lead to some doubt as to whether ASEAN countries are outlier. The second objective of this study is to investigate the effects of corruption on long run growth for ASEAN countries and compare it with the other developing countries during 1997-2006 using GMM estimators. The estimated growth equation used in this study is the growth equation popularized by Barro (1991). The basic model is modified to include corruption but as the robustness check in other specifications, additional variables are included. The results of linear growth equation show that corruption increases economic growth both in ASEAN and developing countries and support the idea that in economies with low level of governance, corruption is beneficial for economic growth. Additionally, the empirical evidence reveals a non linear relationship between corruption and growth with the results indicating corruption increases economic growth at low incidence levels of and hampers it at higher level. The results of non linear growth equation also confirm that in economies with low level of governance, small amount of corruption increases growth. This study also traces the transmission channels including investment in physical capital and human capital. While the results of the linear physical capital equation indicate that corruption increases growth through its positive effect on investment in physical capital, the results of nonlinear equation show that the relationship between investment in physical capital and corruption is justified by an inverted U shape function. The results of human capital equation also suggest that corruption hampers growth through its adverse effects on the human capital stock. Overall, the total positive effect of corruption on growth is verified in low level of incidence and low level of governance for ASEAN countries as well as developing countries. Finally the third objective is to study the effects of corruption on poverty for the same countries and in the same time period. The empirical results indicate that in addition to the direct effects of corruption on poverty, it has an indirect effect through economic growth. While economic growth adversely affects poverty, the increased growth that is due to increased corruption is not pro poor and increases poverty

Authentication of newly established human esophageal squamous cell carcinoma cell line (YM-1) using short tandem repeat (STR) profiling method

Cross-contamination during or early after establishment of a new cell line could result in the worldwide spread of a misidentified cell line. Therefore, newly established cell lines need to be authenticated by a reference standard method. This study was conducted to investigate the authenticity of a newly established epithelial cell line of human esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) called YM-1 using short tandem repeat (STR) DNA profiling method. Primary human ESCC epithelial cells were cultured from the fresh tumor tissue of an adult female patient. Growth characteristics and epithelial originality of YM-1 cells were studied. Genomic DNA was isolated from YM-1 cells harvested at passage 22 and ESCC donor tumor sample on two different days to prevent probable DNA contamination. STR profiling was performed using AmpFℓSTR® Identifiler® Plus PCR Amplification Kit. To address whether YM-1 cells undergo genetic alteration as the passage number increases, STR profiling was performed again on harvested cells at passage 51. YM-1 cells grew as a monolayer with a population doubling time of 40.66Â h. Epithelial originality of YM-1 cells was confirmed using ICC/IF staining of cytokeratins AE1/AE3. The STR profile of the ESCC donor tumor sample was the same with YM-1 cells at passage 22. However, STR profile of the donor tumor sample showed an off-ladder (OL) allele in their D7S820 locus. Also, re-profiling of YM-1 cells at passage 51 showed a loss of heterozygosity (LOH) at D18S51 locus. This suggests that long-term culture of cell lines may alter their DNA profile. Comparison of the DNA fingerprinting results in DSMZ, and ATCC STR profiling databases confirmed unique identity of YM-1 cell line. This study provides an easy, fast, and reliable procedure for authentication of newly established cell lines, which helps in preventing the spread of misidentified cells and improving the reproducibility and validity of experiments, consequently. © 2015, International Society of Oncology and BioMarkers (ISOBM)

A Comparative Study of the Strategies Employed in "The Old Man and the Sea" Translated from English into Persian on the Basis of Vinay and Darbelnet's Model

Translation as a culture-based phenomenon has been investigated from various perspectives and it is a field of knowledge that is wide open and has not been exhausted yet. The aim of this study is to examine the use of Vinay and Darbelnet’s translation strategies in translation of the novel “The Old Man and the Sea” from English to Persian by Najaf Daryabandari and Mohammad Taghi Faramarzi.  It also made an attempt to investigate which of the two main categories of translation strategies (direct and oblique translation) is the prevalent tendency in translation of this novel by the two translators

Bijan

‘Bijan’ is a representation of personal experiences from the days of the Iranian Revolution and my involvement in student political activism; an interpretation of ‘a moment of crisis’ and ‘abjection’. Abjection, as developed by Julia Kristeva, ‘is what disturbs identity, system, order’. Recalling past events and people from a time of living through utter abjection, causes narrative to disrupt and shatter around the theme of suffering, making my narrative representations fragmented, ambiguous and discontinuous

On the treatment of uncertainty in innovation projects

Innovations encounter a relatively high level of uncertainty in their lifecycle path. As innovations are about implementing a new idea, they suffer from a shortage or lack of knowledge dependent on and directly proportional to the radical quality of novelty. They lack information to predict the future and face (high) uncertainty in the background knowledge used for the risk assessment. Incomplete information causes innovation risk analysts to assign subjective assumptions to simplify system models developed for innovation risk assessment. Subjective and non-subjective assumptions as uncertain assumptions are part of the background knowledge and source of uncertainty. This thesis tries to assess and treat innovation assumptions uncertainties by proposing a hybrid model which comprises the semi-quantitative risk assessment (SQRA) approach, extended semi-quantitative risk assessment (EQRA) approach, and knowledge dimension method. SQRA and EQRA highlight the criticality of assumptions and present a systematic approach to assess and treat assumption uncertainties. SQRA applies probabilistic analysis to conduct an assumptions risk assessment, and EQRA provides innovation managers with guidance on developing strategies to follow up uncertain assumptions over the process implementation. The knowledge dimension technique evaluates and communicates the strength of background knowledge applied in assumptions risk assessment to innovation decision-makers expressing whole uncertainty aspects in the background knowledge (assumptions, data, models, and expert judgment). The model can effectively contribute to innovation risks and uncertainties management during the project execution.2021-09-29T16:30:09