IMPORTING GRAIN TO JAPAN

International Relations/Trade,

A Truthful Mechanism for the Generalized Assignment Problem

We propose a truthful-in-expectation, $(1-1/e)$-approximation mechanism for a strategic variant of the generalized assignment problem (GAP). In GAP, a set of items has to be optimally assigned to a set of bins without exceeding the capacity of any singular bin. In the strategic variant of the problem we study, values for assigning items to bins are the private information of bidders and the mechanism should provide bidders with incentives to truthfully report their values. The approximation ratio of the mechanism is a significant improvement over the approximation ratio of the existing truthful mechanism for GAP. The proposed mechanism comprises a novel convex optimization program as the allocation rule as well as an appropriate payment rule. To implement the convex program in polynomial time, we propose a fractional local search algorithm which approximates the optimal solution within an arbitrarily small error leading to an approximately truthful-in-expectation mechanism. The presented algorithm improves upon the existing optimization algorithms for GAP in terms of simplicity and runtime while the approximation ratio closely matches the best approximation ratio given for GAP when all inputs are publicly known.Comment: 18 pages, Earlier version accepted at WINE 201

Knowledge Representation Concepts for Automated SLA Management

Outsourcing of complex IT infrastructure to IT service providers has increased substantially during the past years. IT service providers must be able to fulfil their service-quality commitments based upon predefined Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with the service customer. They need to manage, execute and maintain thousands of SLAs for different customers and different types of services, which needs new levels of flexibility and automation not available with the current technology. The complexity of contractual logic in SLAs requires new forms of knowledge representation to automatically draw inferences and execute contractual agreements. A logic-based approach provides several advantages including automated rule chaining allowing for compact knowledge representation as well as flexibility to adapt to rapidly changing business requirements. We suggest adequate logical formalisms for representation and enforcement of SLA rules and describe a proof-of-concept implementation. The article describes selected formalisms of the ContractLog KR and their adequacy for automated SLA management and presents results of experiments to demonstrate flexibility and scalability of the approach.Comment: Paschke, A. and Bichler, M.: Knowledge Representation Concepts for Automated SLA Management, Int. Journal of Decision Support Systems (DSS), submitted 19th March 200

New imperialism or new capitalism?

Over the past century, the institution of capital and the process of its accumulation have been fundamentally transformed. By contrast, the theories that explain this institution and process have remained largely unchanged. The purpose of this paper is to address this mismatch. Using a broad brush, we outline a new, power theory of capital and accumulation. We use this theory to assess the changing meaning of the corporation and the capitalist state, the new ways in which capital gets accumulated and the specific historical trajectory of twentieth-century capitalism up to the present.arms; accumulation; capital flow; capitalism; conflict; corporation; crisis; distribution; elite; energy; finance; globalization; growth; imperialism; GPE; liberalism; Marxism; Middle East; military; national interest; neoclassical economics; neoliberalism; nomos; oil; OPEC; ownership; peace; power; profit; ruling class; security; stagflation; state; stock market; TNC; United States; US; utility; value; violence; war

Cheap wars

The new conflicts of the twenty-first century – the 'infinite wars,' the 'clashes of civilization,' the 'new crusades' – are fundamentally different from the mass wars and statist military conflicts that characterized capitalism from the nineteenth century until the end of the Cold War. The novelty lies not so much in the military nature of the conflicts, as in the broader role that war now plays in capitalism.accumulation capital capitalism crisis differential accumulation distribution elite energy conflict globalization inflation Iraq Israel Keynesianism Lebanon Middle East military spending neo-liberalism oil ownership power prices profit ruling class TNC United States violence war warfare welfare Weapondollar-Petrodollar

The scientist and the church

The April 21, 2005 issue of the LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS carried a lead article titled ‘Blood for Oil?’ The paper is attributed to a group of writers and activists – Iain Boal, T.J. Clark, Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts – who identify themselves by the collective name ‘Retort.’ In their article, the authors advance a supposedly new explanation for the wars in the Middle East. Much of their explanation – including both theory and fact – is plagiarized. It is cut and pasted, almost ‘as is,’ from our own work. The primary source is ‘The Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition,’ a 71 page chapter in our book THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ISRAEL (Pluto 2002). The authors also seem inspired, incognito, by our more recent papers, including ‘It’s All About Oil’ (2003), ‘Clash of Civilization or Capital Accumulation?’ (2004), ‘Beyond Neoliberalism’ (2004) and ‘Dominant Capital and the New Wars’ (2004). In their paper, the Retort group credits us for having coined the term ‘Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition’ – but dismiss our ‘precise calibration of the oil/war nexus’ as ‘perfunctory.’ This dismissal does not prevent them from freely appropriating, wholesale fashion, our concepts, ideas and theories – including, among others, the ‘era of free flow,’ the ‘era of limited flow,’ ‘energy conflicts,’ the ‘commercialization of arms exports,’ the ‘politicization of oil’ and the critique of the ‘scarcity thesis.’ Nowhere in their article do the authors mention the source of these concepts, ideas and theories; occasionally, they even introduce them with the prefix ‘Our view is. . . .’ Their treatment of facts is not very different. They freely use (sometimes without understanding) research methods, statistics and data that took us years to conceive, estimate and measure – again, never mentioning the source. These concepts, theories and facts are far from trivial. Until recently, they were greeted with strategic silence, from both right and left. Their publication has been repeatedly denied and censored by mainstream as well as progressive journals (including, it must be said, by the LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS, that turned down our paper on the subject). They cannot be found anywhere else in the literature, conservative or radical. To treat them as ‘common knowledge’ is deceitful. To cut and paste them without due attribution is blatant plagiarism. The first part of our paper illustrates this process of ‘intellectual accumulation-by-dispossession’ with selected examples. The issue, though, goes well beyond personal vanity and self-aggrandizement. At the core, we are dealing here with the clash of science and church, with the constant attempt of organized faith – whether religious or academic – to disable, block and, if necessary, appropriate creativity and novelty. Creativity and novelty are dangerous. They defy dogma and undermine the conventional creed; they challenge the dominant ideology and threaten those in power; occasionally, they cause the entire edifice of power to crumble. For these reasons, the latent purpose of intellectual accumulation-by-dispossession – like the accumulation of private property – is primarily negative. The word ‘private’ comes from the Latin ‘privatus,’ meaning ‘restricted,’ and from ‘privare,’ which means ‘to deprive.’ And, indeed, the most important feature of private ownership is not to enable those who own, but to disable those who do not. It is only through the threat of prevention – or ‘strategic sabotage’ as Thorsein Veblen called it – that accumulation can take place. It is only by restricting the free creativity of society that society itself can be controlled. The second section of the paper explains how the appropriators of ‘Blood for Oil?’ fit this pattern. The final section of the paper is an epilogue. It describes our failed attempts to get this paper published with The LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS; Retort’s efforts to mislead us; and some additional insight from their AFFLICTED POWERS, a 2005 Verso book that contains the same plagiarism and more. The epilogue concludes with a few observations on the nature of academic dialectics.academia; arms; accumulation; capital; capitalism; church; conflict; corporation; crisis; data; development; distribution; dual; economy; elite; energy; finance; globalization; growth; imperialism; distribution; institutionalism; IPE; liberalization; methodology; Middle East; military; national interest; science; security; oil; OPEC; ownership; peace; plagiarism; politics; power; profit; religion; ruling class; sabotage; stagflation; state; TNC; United States; violence; war

Der Einfluß ökologischer Produktionsverfahren auf die Betriebsstruktur: eine deskriptive Analyse basierend auf der EU Agrarstrukturerhebung 2000

Der ökologische Landbau ist durch Richtlinien klar definiert. Einschränkungen durch diese wirken sich auf die Betriebsorganisation aus. Basierend auf aggregierte Daten aus der Agrarstrukturerhebung 2000 wird die Betriebsstruktur von ökologischen und konventionellen Betrieben verglichen. Weiterhin wird die regionale Verteilung ausgewählter Charakteristika des ökologischen Landbaus im Vergleich zum konvetionellen Landbau in der EU diskutiert. Die Anabaustruktur im ökologischem Landbau ist von einer weiteren Fruchtfolge als im konventionellen Landbau gekennzeichnet, die ökologische Tierhaltung durch eine geringere Viehdichte. Dies trifft jedoch nicht auf alle Regiionen und alle Tiergruppen zu. Mögliche Bestimmungsgründe für die regionale Verteilung ökologischer Betriebe werden diskutiert

Fast Convex Decomposition for Truthful Social Welfare Approximation

Approximating the optimal social welfare while preserving truthfulness is a well studied problem in algorithmic mechanism design. Assuming that the social welfare of a given mechanism design problem can be optimized by an integer program whose integrality gap is at most $\alpha$, Lavi and Swamy~\cite{Lavi11} propose a general approach to designing a randomized $\alpha$-approximation mechanism which is truthful in expectation. Their method is based on decomposing an optimal solution for the relaxed linear program into a convex combination of integer solutions. Unfortunately, Lavi and Swamy's decomposition technique relies heavily on the ellipsoid method, which is notorious for its poor practical performance. To overcome this problem, we present an alternative decomposition technique which yields an $\alpha(1 + \epsilon)$ approximation and only requires a quadratic number of calls to an integrality gap verifier

Some Aspects of Aggregate Concentration in the Israeli Economy, 1964-1986

This essay examines the Israeli market structure from the perspective of ownership. We distinguish between the several corporate holding-groups that dominate the ‘Big Economy’ and the multitude of smaller, largely independent, business entities of the ‘Small Economy’. Although the two “sectors” operate under the same macroeconomic conditions, the analysis reveals marked differences in their business performance. These differences were reflected in an upward trend of aggregate concentration through the 1964-1968 period. Until the early 1970s the upward trend was moderate and was largely due to the different expansion paces of the two “sectors”. Since then, however, the trend intensified as the ‘Small Economy’ stagnated while profits in the ‘Big Economy’ continued to grow.concentration dual economy holding groups Israel market structure national accounting ownership profit surplus