More Employers, More Jobs, More Money: An Empirical Analysis of Local Economic Development Policy Impacts in U.S. Cities

Local government leaders in the U.S. employ a multitude of programs and policies in the name of economic development to increase the number of firms, employment, wages, and, of course, the tax base. The past few decades have seen a surge in local economic development policies, yet research analyzing their effectiveness is sparse. This study analyzes the relationship between local economic development policy and economic growth in a data set of 412 U.S. cities. Results indicate that policy has only has a weak correlation with economic growth, suggesting that growth is determined more by market conditions rather than government intervention. The article concludes with an entrepreneurial policy approach this author believes may yield development results in an era of limited policy effectiveness.Economic development, Cities, Attraction, Retention, Incentives

Stateman: Using Metafunctions to Manage Large Terms Representing Machine States

When ACL2 is used to model the operational semantics of computing machines, machine states are typically represented by terms recording the contents of the state components. When models are realistic and are stepped through thousands of machine cycles, these terms can grow quite large and the cost of simplifying them on each step grows. In this paper we describe an ACL2 book that uses HIDE and metafunctions to facilitate the management of large terms representing such states. Because the metafunctions for each state component updater are solely responsible for creating state expressions (i.e., "writing") and the metafunctions for each state component accessor are solely responsible for extracting values (i.e., "reading") from such state expressions, they can maintain their own normal form, use HIDE to prevent other parts of ACL2 from inspecting them, and use honsing to uniquely represent state expressions. The last feature makes it possible to memoize the metafunctions, which can improve proof performance in some machine models. This paper describes a general-purpose ACL2 book modeling a byte-addressed memory supporting "mixed" reads and writes. By "mixed" we mean that reads need not correspond (in address or number of bytes) with writes. Verified metafunctions simplify such "read-over-write" expressions while hiding the potentially large state expression. A key utility is a function that determines an upper bound on the value of a symbolic arithmetic expression, which plays a role in resolving writes to addresses given by symbolic expressions. We also report on a preliminary experiment with the book, which involves the production of states containing several million function calls.Comment: In Proceedings ACL2 2015, arXiv:1509.0552

A formal model of asynchronous communication and its use in mechanically verifying a biphase mark protocol

In this paper we present a formal model of asynchronous communication as a function in the Boyer-Moore logic. The function transforms the signal stream generated by one processor into the signal stream consumed by an independently clocked processor. This transformation 'blurs' edges and 'dilates' time due to differences in the phases and rates of the two clocks and the communications delay. The model can be used quantitatively to derive concrete performance bounds on asynchronous communications at ISO protocol level 1 (physical level). We develop part of the reusable formal theory that permits the convenient application of the model. We use the theory to show that a biphase mark protocol can be used to send messages of arbitrary length between two asynchronous processors. We study two versions of the protocol, a conventional one which uses cells of size 32 cycles and an unconventional one which uses cells of size 18. We conjecture that the protocol can be proved to work under our model for smaller cell sizes and more divergent clock rates but the proofs would be harder

Enhancements to ACL2 in Versions 6.2, 6.3, and 6.4

We report on improvements to ACL2 made since the 2013 ACL2 Workshop.Comment: In Proceedings ACL2 2014, arXiv:1406.123

Effect of Aging on Taut Rubber Diaphragms

As part of an investigation of special compositions of rubber suitable for use as diaphragms for aircraft instruments, six samples were used as taut diaphragms in instruments and allowed to age for five years. Two of the instruments were in operating condition after this period of time and one had remarkably little change in performance. In making the rubber tetraethyl thorium disulfide was employed as a vulcanizing agent

Congress’ U-turn on flood insurance reform shows that lawmaking power can very quickly go from free rein to constrained

What influences Congress into passing certain reforms when it does? To investigate this question, Logan Strother looks at two reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program: the first drastically reduced or eliminated flood insurance subsidies, while the second only two years later restored them. He argues that Congress effectively reversed course because the passage of the first reform made the issue much more important to voters than it had been before. While Congress had previously been able to act with a relatively free hand, once voters became interested, legislators had incentive to undo their own reforms

Breaking the Davidic Covenant and the Rape of Zion

Second Samuel 7 lays out the relationship between God and David through a covenant. David breaks the covenant with God when he takes Bathsheba and kills Uriah, and the consequences impact David, his lineage, and Daughter Zion (his kingdom). The language used to describe the city\u27s fall is that of sexual violence, highlighting the horrors of rape within David’s life and lineage after he breaks his covenant with God by taking Bathsheba. The methodology of this thesis is a narrative approach to the biblical text that uses reader-response criticism while exploring the narrative of 2 Samuel 7, 11, and 12. Through reader response criticism, this thesis makes a connection between the covenant God makes with David and the sexually violent fallout that extends to his lineage and household. One can also see how the texts written in Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Isaiah echoes the sexual violence within David’s narrative. This paper continues a feminist post-modern critique of the 2 Samuel narrative by adding Bathsheba to the list of women whose sexual violent narrative can be connected to the language of the fall of Daughter Zion

When Making Money is More Important Than Saving Lives: Revisiting the Ford Pinto Case

Despite a long tradition of ethics training in business colleges, managers commonly make unethical business decisions. This paper reports a five-year study of ethical decision making of business students (n = 192). In an undergraduate microeconomics course, students were presented with financial data from the infamous Ford Pinto case where defective engineering, coupled with unethical management behavior, resulted in a number of fiery fatalities. Facing the decision to repair the cars or pay the estimated costs of lost wrongful death lawsuits, 56.8% of students chose to pay for the deaths. This paper describes the classroom experiment and uses logistic regression to compare the characteristics of the group choosing the correct ethical decision (repair the cars), with the group choosing the incorrect ethical decision (pay for the deaths)

Say His Name: Othello, Paul Robeson, and Racism in America

In Shakespeare’s Othello, Othello faces societal pressures of racism as he marries Senator Brabantio’s White daughter Desdemona. This creates the main plot, and the villain of the play, Iago, plots against him which leads to the destruction of Othello’s reputable character. Othello is transformed into a violent, murderous husband by Iago’s villainous ploy fueled by using racial slurs, and Othello’s final form matches the name his enemies assign him. Stripping Othello of his name and portraying him as “the Moor”, a term used to describe a category of Black persons viewed as barbaric, is a tactic used throughout time and is rooted in historical strategies for identity destruction and racism. The reader witnesses this tactic in a play written some 400 years in the past, but the problem still lingers in America where racism is commonly expressed through “Speech Acts”. Just a short time ago, Paul Robeson, a famous actor of Othello, faced these same problems while pursuing his spot on the stage. In consideration of today’s time, the movement “Say His Name” started following the death of George Floyd only two years ago, and this signifies the persistence of racism alongside the importance of names. Using slurs or refusing to use a person’s rightful name is a form of racial identity destruction witnessed from Shakespeare’s time, to Paul Robeson’s portrayal of the character, and into America’s now as the phrase “Say His Name” has become a staple in the fight against police brutality on Black persons in America