Corruption: Democracy, Autocracy, and Political Stability

The recent empirical literature on corruption has identified a long list of variables that correlate significantly with corruption but only five were distinguished by Leamer’s Extreme Bounds Analysis as robust to various samples, measures of corruption, and regression specifications. Among these five factors that were found to reduce corruption are decades-long tradition of democracy and political stability. In today’s world, however, there are many countries that combine one of these two robust determinants of corruption with the opposite of the other: politically stable autocracies or newly formed and unstable democracies. The central question raised in this paper is: Is it worth, in terms of corruption, for a country to trade stability with autocratic rule for political freedoms but with transitional instability? We find that the answer to this question is in the affirmative - the level of corruption is indeed lower in unstable democracies than in stable dictatorships. Our results are robust to various measures of corruption, alternative regressor indices, and regression specifications.corruption, democracy, autocracy, dictatorship, political stability

Social change and cycling as a form of sustainable transportation : the behavior-policy interaction in a medium-sized developing city

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning; and, (S.M. in Transportation)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-170).In developing countries, growth frequently parallels increasing motorization rates, and visions of mobility are often centered on the private automobile as the most flexible form of personal transportation and a symbol of increasing wealth. The pursuit of mobility in this form has severe social, environmental, and economic consequences, some of which can be mitigated by the promotion of alternative modes of transportation Cycling and other forms of human-powered transportation have benign environmental effects, improve physical health, and can positively affect the psychology of people who, by choosing this mode, are more active and spend time outside and engaged in their environment. Given these benefits, it not surprising that some medium-sized, developing cities are including cycling in their transportation plans.These cities experience significant barriers, however, in promoting cycling as a form of sustainable transportation. Much of the challenge involves effectively utilizing planning processes and tools, which are often imported and applied in a context where they were not designed to be used, to elicit more sustainable transportation behavior in the midst of rapid change. Solutions that come from these planning processes and tools (particularly infrastructure and other engineering- focused solutions) can be ineffective in promoting an alternative form of transportation.Addressing these shortcomings to elicit a change in behavior toward cycling as a form of sustainable transportation requires a new combination of planning tools and processes that can produce effective solutions.(cont.) In this thesis, I propose a three-step approach to induce behavioral change toward cycling, including: gaining an understanding of the barriers to bicycle use through attitude and perception analysis, improving the planning process through a visioning and backcasting exercise, and assessing and selecting the most appropriate modeling tools for the short-term and long-term promotion of cycling. I apply this approach using a single case study: Chihuahua, Mexico. Although I am unable to show a change in behavior in Chihuahua, initial results indicate that this adjusted approach does have promise in terms of inducing more behavior associated with sustainable transportation practices.by Tegin L. Teich.S.M.in TransportationM.C.P

Big Bang vs. Gradualism – A Productivity Analysis

In the beginning of the 1990s, the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union began reforming their economies. Yet despite two decades of research, it is still unclear which reform path – gradual or radical – is better for long-run growth. Unlike most other studies on the topic, which concentrate on the growth of output per capita, this paper compares the two alternative reform approaches based on the analysis of productivity. We estimate a Malmquist multifactor productivity index for 22 transition economies over 17 years to compare their relative performance depending on their speed of reform. The Malmquist index is further decomposed into efficiency and technological change, and statistical inference is obtained using a smoothed bootstrap procedure. The main results are that the radical reformers exhibit higher rates of productivity growth in the initial years of transition, while the gradual countries do better in the later years. Over the whole time period a gradual reform strategy is superior to faster reforms. These findings have important implications for reforms in the remaining non-market economies and many developing countries

Programming-by-demonstration of reaching motions for robot grasping

Proceedings of: 14th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR 2009), 22-26 June 2009, Munich (Germany)This paper presents a novel approach to skill modeling acquired from human demonstration. The approach is based on fuzzy modeling and is using a planner for generating corresponding robot trajectories. One of the main challenges stems from the morphological differences between human and robot hand/arm structure, which makes direct copying of human motions impossible in the general case. Thus, the planner works in hand state space, which is defined such that it is perception-invariant and valid for both human and robot hand. We show that this representation simplifies task reconstruction and preserves the essential parts of the task as well as the coordination between reaching and grasping motion. We also show how our approach can generalize observed trajectories based on multiple demonstrations and that the robot can match a demonstrated behavoir, despite morphological differences. To validate our approach we use a general-purpose robot manipulator equipped with an anthropomorphic three-fingered robot hand.European Community's Seventh Framework Progra

Tactile Sensors Based on Conductive Polymers

This paper presents results from a selection of tactile sensors that have been designed and fabricated. These sensors are based on a common approach that consists in placing a sheet of piezoresistive material on the top of a set of electrodes. We use a thin film of conductive polymer as the piezoresistive mate¬rial. Specifically, a conductive water-based ink of this polymer is deposited by spin coating on a flexible plastic sheet, giving it a smooth, homogeneous and conducting thin film. The main interest in this procedure is that it is cheap and it allows the fabrication of flexible and low cost tactile sensors. In this work we present results from sensors made using two technologies. Firstly, we have used a flexible Printed Circuit Board (PCB) technology to fabricate the set of electrodes and addressing tracks. The result is a simple, flexible tactile sensor. In addition to these sensors on PCB, we have proposed, designed and fabricated sensors with screen printing technology. In this case, the set of electrodes and addressing tracks are made by printing an ink based on silver nanoparticles. The intense characterization provides us insights into the design of these tactile sensors.This work has been partially funded by the spanish government under contract TEC2006-12376-C02

КРАУДСОРСИНГ В ГЕНЕРАЦИИ ИННОВАЦИОННЫХ ИДЕЙ

The authors discuss a newborn creative environment in Internet networks and possibilities to use it to implement innovative ideas. They put forward some examples of crowdsourcing, notably for transport.О появлении новой креативной среды в интернет-сетях и возможностях ее управляемого использования для реализации инновационных идей. Примеры применения краудсорсинга, включая сферу транспорта