National Politics and International Agreements

International agreements about transnational issues are difficult to reach, as the examples of the Copenhagen summit or the never-ending discussions of the future of the European Union make clear. In this paper, we relate this difficulty to the political process and the conflicts of interest attached to an agreement, both within and between national electorates, related to national income distributions. We set up a political economy model of a two-country world economy, where an international agreement on the financing of an international public good has to be negociated by two elected national delegates. We prove that any international agreement involves higher taxes in both countries than in the case of no-agreement. If reachable, an IA may generate losers in either country. If the political process involves a constraint on tax rates, an agreement may or may not be reached. Finally, when an agreement is reached, it may exhibit strategic delegation when the median voters are the Condorcet winners in both countries : this delegation is the outcome of the struggle by electorates to transfer the tax burden to the other country's taxpayers. In brief, the fate of an international agreements depends on national politics and distributive issues in the involved countries.International agreements, bargaining, delegation, voting.

Is inequality harmful for the environment in a growing economy ?

In this paper we investigate the relationship between inequality and the environment in a growing economy from a political economy perspective. We consider an endogenous growth economy, where growth generates pollution and a deterioration of the environment. Public expenditures may either be devoted to supporting growth or abating pollution. The decision over the public programs is done in a direct democracy, with simple majority rule. We prove that the median voter is decisive and show that inequality is harmful for the environment : the poorer the median voter relative to the average individual, the less she will tax and devote resources to the environment, preferring to support growth.Inequality, growth, environmental policy, political economy.

Une technique d'assistance par le bruit pour aider l'opérateur de Teager-Kaiser à suivre une composante fréquentielle perturbée.

National audienceThis paper deals with the improvment of the Teager-Kaiser energy algorithm (TKEA), designed to track a frequency component corrupted by an additive noise. Methods based on the original TKEA are not robust at all when corrupted by such perturbations. It is proposed here a method based on the Noise Assisted Data Analysis (NADA) paradigm. It is shown that it allows to significantly increase this robustness.Cet article propose une technique pour améliorer l'opérateur de Teager-Kaiser (OTK) utilisé pour le suivi d'une composante fré-quentielle perturbée par un bruit additif. Les méthodes basées sur l'OTK classiques sont très peu robustes aux diverses perturbations possibles. Une méthode d'assistance par le bruit est mise en place. Nous montrons qu'elle permet de statistiquement améliorer cette robustesse. Abstract – This paper deals with the improvment of the Teager-Kaiser energy algorithm (TKEA), designed to track a frequency component corrupted by an additive noise. Methods based on the original TKEA are not robust at all when corrupted by such perturbations. It is proposed here a method based on the Noise Assisted Data Analysis (NADA) paradigm. It is shown that it allows to significantly increase this robustness

An empirical analysis of valence in electoral competition

Spatial models of voting have dominated mathematical political theory since the seminal work of Downs. The Downsian model assumes that each elector votes on the basis of his utility function which depends only on the distance between his preferred policy platform and the ones proposed by candidates. A succession of papers introduces valence issues into the model, i.e. candidates' characteristics which are independent of the platforms they propose. So far, little is known about which of the existing utility functions used in valence models is the most empirically founded. Using a large survey run prior to the 2007 French presidential election, we evaluate and compare several spatial voting models with valence. Existing models perform poorly in ¯tting the data. However, strong empirical regularities emerge. This leads us to a new model of valence that we call the partisan valence model. This new model makes sense theoretically and is sound empirically

Sharp threshold for percolation on expanders

We study the appearance of the giant component in random subgraphs of a given large finite graph G=(V,E) in which each edge is present independently with probability p. We show that if G is an expander with vertices of bounded degree, then for any c in ]0,1[, the property that the random subgraph contains a giant component of size c|V| has a sharp threshold.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-AOP610 the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Comparaison de mesures de voisment/non-voisement dans les signaux de parole

National audienceCet article présente une mesure de voisement basée sur le calcul du signal analytique. Cette mesure peut être utile pour plusieurs applications concernant le traitement de la parole. Par exemple, considérant la reconnaissance automatique de la parole, elle pourrait être incorporée dans les vecteurs acoustiques communément utilisés, comme par exemple les Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) et leurs deux premières dérivées, ceci pour améliorer les performances du système. La base de données TIMIT est segmentée manuellement en phonèmes : c'est pourquoi l'évaluation de la mesure développée est effectuée sur cette base. L'information de voisement est déduite de cette segmentation. Il est montré dans cet article que la segmentation automatique voisé/non-voisé obtenue en utilisant la méthode décrite dans les sections suivantes et la segmentation manuelle voisé/non-voisé fournie dans TIMIT sont très similaires

The three worlds of welfare capitalism revisited

URL des Documents de travail : http://ces.univ-paris1.fr/cesdp/cesdp2012.htmlDocuments de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 2012.18 - ISSN : 1955-611XWe introduce a new way to model the Bismarckian social insuance system, stressing its corporatist dimension. Comparing the Beveridgean, Bismarckian and Liberal systems according to the majority voting rule, we show that for a given distribution of risks inside society, the Liberal system wins if the inequality of income is low, and the Beveridgean system wins if the inequality of income is high. Using a utilitarian criterion, the Beveridgean system always dominates and the Bismarckian system is preferred to the Liberal one.Dans cet article, nous introduisons la dimension corporatiste dans la modélisation du système de protection sociale à la Bismarck. En comparant les systèmes beveridgien, bismarckien et libéral selon la règle de vote à la majorité, nous montrons que pour une distribution donnée des risques à l'intérieur de la société, le système libéral, est préféré si l'inégalité des revenus est faible, et le système beveridgien est préféré si l'inégalité de revenu est élevée. Sous un critère utilitariste, le système beveridgien domine toujours et le système bismarckien est préférable au système libéral

Improved one-class SVM classifier for sounds classification

©2007 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.International audienceThis paper proposes to apply optimized One-Class Support Vector Machines (1-SVMs) as a discriminative framework in order to address a specific audio classification problem. First, since SVM-based classifier with gaussian RBF kernel is sensitive to the kernel width, the width will be scaled in a distribution-dependent way permitting to avoid underfitting and over-fitting problems. Moreover, an advanced dissimilarity measure will be introduced. We illustrate the performance of these methods on an audio database containing environmental sounds that may be of great importance for surveillance and security applications. The experiments conducted on a multi-class problem show that by choosing adequately the SVM parameters, we can efficiently address a sounds classification problem characterized by complex real-world datasets

Physiological parameters and evaluation of the upper and lower respiratory airways in french standardbred trotters during a standardised exercise on a treadmill

Cette étude a été réalisée chez 115 chevaux âgés de deux à neuf ans, prêts à courir ou participant à des courses. Les animaux étaient divisés en deux groupes : 23 chevaux obtenant de bons résultats en course et constituant le groupe témoin, et 92 chevaux n'obtenant pas de bons résultats. L'exercice standardisé comprenait dix minutes d'échauffement au petit trot, puis trois paliers d'exercice de trois minutes chacun. Après les trois paliers, le cheval était arrêté une minute, l'endoscope était mis en place, et un quatrième palier était effectué à vitesse maximale. La fréquence cardiaque (FC) était mesurée en continu pendant le test et un échantillon de sang était prélevé par un cathéter placé dans l'artère faciale transverse pendant les dix dernières secondes de chaque palier. Une heure après l'exercice, un lavage broncho-alvéolaire (LBA) était effectué. Les résultats concernant la FC, la lactatémie et la PaO2 suggèrent qu'il existe une différence significative dans la réponse métabolique à l'exercice entre les chevaux contre-performants et les chevaux du groupe témoin. L'endoscopie à l'exercice et le LBA ont permis de répartir les chevaux contre-performants en quatre groupes selon la localisation des affections: affections des voies respiratoires supérieures (VRS), affections des voies respiratoires profondes (VRP), affections des VRS et des VRP, et autres affections. Ces examens ont aussi permis d'évaluer la réponse métabolique à l'exercice dans les différentes situations. La réalisation d'un LBA après exercice peut fournir des informations importantes et ce, même chez des chevaux présentant une affection évidente des voies respiratoires supérieures.This study was carried out in 115 horses between 2 and 9 years old, ready to race or actively racing. The animals were divided into two groups: 23 horses with good racing results representing the control group, and 92 horses with poor racing results. The standardised exercise test started with a 10 min warm-up at a slow trot, followed by 3 periods of exercise of 3 min each. After the three periods, the horse was stopped on the treadmill for 1 min, the endoscope was inserted, and the horse performed a fourth period at maximal speed. The heart rate (HR) was measured throughout the test and blood was collected via a catheter inserted in the transverse facial artery during the last 10 seconds of each period. One hour after the exercise, a broncho-alveolar lavage (BAL) was performed. The results of this study (HR, blood lactate, PaO2) suggest that there is a significant difference in the metabolic response to exercise between poor performers and good performers. The results of the endoscopy during exercise and post-exercise BAL were used to divide poor performers into 4 groups, based on the localisation of the problem : upper respiratory airway (URA) disease, lower respiratory airway (LRA) disease, URA and LRA disease, and other diseases. These tests were also used to evaluate the metabolic response to exercise in the different situations. Post-exercise BAL may provide important information, even in horses with evidence of upper respiratory disease

A critical appraisal of guidelines for the management of knee osteoarthritis using Appraisal of Guidelines Research and Evaluation criteria

Clinical practice guidelines have been elaborated to summarize evidence related to the management of knee osteoarthritis and to facilitate uptake of evidence-based knowledge by clinicians. The objectives of the present review were summarizing the recommendations of existing guidelines on knee osteoarthritis, and assessing the quality of the guidelines using a standardized and validated instrument – the Appraisal of Guidelines Research and Evaluation (AGREE) tool. Internet medical literature databases from 2001 to 2006 were searched for guidelines, with six guidelines being identified. Thirteen clinician researchers participated in the review. Each reviewer was trained in the AGREE instrument. The guidelines were distributed to four groups of three or four reviewers, each group reviewing one guideline with the exception of one group that reviewed two guidelines. One independent evaluator reviewed all guidelines. All guidelines effectively addressed only a minority of AGREE domains. Clarity/presentation was effectively addressed in three out of six guidelines, scope/purpose and rigour of development in two guidelines, editorial independence in one guideline, and stakeholder involvement and applicability in none. The clinical management recommendation tended to be similar among guidelines, although interventions addressed varied. Acetaminophen was recommended for initial pain treatment, combined with exercise and education. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs were recommended if acetaminophen failed to control pain, but cautiously because of gastrointestinal risks. Surgery was recommended in the presence of persistent pain and disability. Education and activity management interventions were superficially addressed in most guidelines. Guideline creators should use the AGREE criteria when developing guidelines. Innovative and effective methods of knowledge translation to health professionals are needed