4,506 research outputs found
Disturbance caused by aircraft noise
Noise pollution caused by the presence of airfields adjacent to residential areas is studied. Noise effects on the sleep of residents near airports and the degree of the residents noise tolerance are evaluated. What aircraft noises are annoying and to what extent the annoyance varies with sound level are discussed
On the class of caustics by reflection
Given any light position S in the complex projective plane P^2 and any
algebraic curve C of P^2 (with any kind of singularities), we consider the
incident lines coming from S (i.e. the lines containing S) and their reflected
lines after reflection off the mirror curve C. The caustic by reflection is the
Zariski clusure of the envelope of these reflected lines. We introduce the
notion of reflected polar curve and express the class of the caustic by
reflection in terms of intersection numbers of C with the reflected polar
curve, thanks to a fundamental lemma established in [14]. This approach enables
us to get an explicit formula for the class of the caustic by reflection in
every case in terms of intersection numbers of the initial curve C.Comment: 21 pages, 1 figur
Multiple Correspondence Analysis & the Multilogit Bilinear Model
Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) is a dimension reduction method which
plays a large role in the analysis of tables with categorical nominal variables
such as survey data. Though it is usually motivated and derived using geometric
considerations, in fact we prove that it amounts to a single proximal Newtown
step of a natural bilinear exponential family model for categorical data the
multinomial logit bilinear model. We compare and contrast the behavior of MCA
with that of the model on simulations and discuss new insights on the
properties of both exploratory multivariate methods and their cognate models.
One main conclusion is that we could recommend to approximate the multilogit
model parameters using MCA. Indeed, estimating the parameters of the model is
not a trivial task whereas MCA has the great advantage of being easily solved
by singular value decomposition and scalable to large data
Degree and class of caustics by reflection for a generic source
We are interested in the study of caustics by reflection of irreducible
algebraic planar curves (in the complex projective plane). We prove the
birationality of the caustic map (for a generic light position). We also give
simple formulas for the degree and the class of caustics by reflection valid
for any irreducible algebraic curve of degree at least 2 and for a generic
light position.Comment: 5 page
Incentives and Workers’ Motivation in the Public Sector
Civil servants have a bad reputation of being lazy. However, citizens' personal experiences with civil servants appear to be significantly better. We develop a model of an economy in which workers differ in laziness and in public service motivation, and characterise optimal incentive contracts for public sector workers under different informational assumptions. When civil servants' effort is unverifiable, lazy workers find working in the public sector highly attractive and may crowd out workers with a public service motivation. When effort is verifiable, the government optimally attracts motivated workers as well as the economy's laziest workers by offering separating contracts, which are both distorted. Even though contract distortions reduce aggregate welfare, a majority of society may be better off as public goods come at a lower cost.public sector labour markets, incentive contracts, work ethics, public service motivation
Managerial Talent, Motivation, and Self-Selection into Public Management
The quality of public management is a recurrent concern in many countries. Calls to attract the economy’s best and brightest managers to the public sector abound. This paper studies self-selection into managerial and non-managerial positions in the public and private sector,using a model of a perfectly competitive economy where people differ in managerial ability and in public service motivation. We find that, if demand for public sector output is not too high, the equilibrium return to managerial ability is always highest in the private sector. As aresult, relatively many of the more able managers self-select into the private sector. Since this outcome is efficient, our analysis implies that attracting a more able managerial workforce to the public sector by increasing remuneration to private-sector levels is not cost-efficient.public management, public service motivation, managerial ability, self-selection
Signaling and Screening of Workers' motivation
This paper develops a model in which workers to a certain extent enjoy working. We examine the implications of workers’ intrinsic motivation for optimal monetary incentive schemes. We show that motivated workers work harder and, for a given level of e.ort, are willing to work for a lower wage. When people di.er in their motivation to work at a particular firm, the profits of the firm depend on its capability to attract and select highly motivated workers. We show that when the firm has all the bargaining power and workers face application cost, the firm needs to commit to a minimum wage o.er in order to attract workers. A higher minimum wage increases the probability to fill the vacancy, but decreases the expected average quality of job applicants, as it induces lower motivated workers to apply. The optimal level of the minimum wage depends on whether or not the firm can observe the motivation of the applicants. If applicants can credibly signal their motivation, a minimum wage not only helps to attract workers, but also to select the best-motivated worker among the job applicants.signaling and screening models, intrinsic motivation, monetary incentive schemes, wage posting, minimum wage, worker selection
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