Can PPPs Help Close the Infrastructure Gap in the Transition Economies?

This paper dealing with financing development addresses how public infrastructure can be paid for and managed in an environment where public resources are limited but the investment needs for these services are great. This is a characteristic that succinctly describes many of the emerging markets of the region. With insufficient resources in government budgets there has been a need and an increasing tendency to rely more on the private sector to build, maintain and manage infrastructure projects. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) represent a flexible institutional arrangement that allows the public and private sectors to share responsibility in achieving social objectives with specific responsibilities entrusted to the entity that can accomplish it most effectively. However, as with any other institutional structure, the devil is in the details, and in many of the transition economies in the 1990s the details were not appropriately designed. This paper analyses what is required for governments to be able to effectively use this financial model. Seven lessons are provided based upon an analysis of many PPPs that have been implemented in a number of different sectors and countries. In addition, it is emphasized that the effective use of PPPs, which properly considers developmental objectives, can help society not only achieve the cost-effective provision of services but can also increase accessibility of services to the poor and to geographically disadvantaged regions.Financing for development, infrastructures, public-private partnerships, Europe, transition economies, savings, investment

Is There a Role for the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding

The focus of this essay is to enquire as to what role UNECE can play in conflict prevention and peacebuilding. The historic role of the UNECE in bridging the East-West divide and guiding the transition process of the former planned economies is testimony to the importance of this type of activity. During the transition process, political and economic systems often had to be recreated from scratch and sometimes in newly formed nation States. The lessons learned during this process, especially regarding the importance of good governance, provide the basis of the UNECE’s contribution to conflict prevention and post-conflict peacebuilding. The regional significance of peacebuilding and thus the role of a regional body such as UNECE is stressed by explaining that conflicts usually have major transboundary impacts such as migration, environmental degradation, disrupted transportation corridors, or broken trade links. The authors also provide an overview of the institutional initiatives that are being developed within the various UN agencies and other international organizations emphasizing their activities in South-east Europe and Central Asia. The essay ends by considering the future role of UNECE in creating a framework convention or standards, on the basis of agreed principles for post-conflict governance.Peace building, Europe, transition economies, institutional cooperation

Compile-Time Optimisation of Store Usage in Lazy Functional Programs

Functional languages offer a number of advantages over their imperative counterparts. However, a substantial amount of the time spent on processing functional programs is due to the large amount of storage management which must be performed. Two apparent reasons for this are that the programmer is prevented from including explicit storage management operations in programs which have a purely functional semantics, and that more readable programs are often far from optimal in their use of storage. Correspondingly, two alternative approaches to the optimisation of store usage at compile-time are presented in this thesis. The first approach is called compile-time garbage collection. This approach involves determining at compile-time which cells are no longer required for the evaluation of a program, and making these cells available for further use. This overcomes the problem of a programmer not being able to indicate explicitly that a store cell can be made available for further use. Three different methods for performing compile-time garbage collection are presented in this thesis; compile-time garbage marking, explicit deallocation and destructive allocation. Of these three methods, it is found that destructive allocation is the only method which is of practical use. The second approach to the optimisation of store usage is called compile-time garbage avoidance. This approach involves transforming programs into semantically equivalent programs which produce less garbage at compile-time. This attempts to overcome the problem of more readable programs being far from optimal in their use of storage. In this thesis, it is shown how to guarantee that the process of compile-time garbage avoidance will terminate. Both of the described approaches to the optimisation of store usage make use of the information obtained by usage counting analysis. This involves counting the number of times each value in a program is used. In this thesis, a reference semantics is defined against which the correctness of usage counting analyses can be proved. A usage counting analysis is then defined and proved to be correct with respect to this reference semantics. The information obtained by this analysis is used to annotate programs for compile-time garbage collection, and to guide the transformation when compile-time garbage avoidance is performed. It is found that compile-time garbage avoidance produces greater increases in efficiency than compile-time garbage collection, but much of the garbage which can be collected by compile-time garbage collection cannot be avoided at compile-time. The two approaches are therefore complementary, and the expressions resulting from compile-time garbage avoidance transformations can be annotated for compile-time garbage collection to further optimise the use of storage

OBESITY AND HYPERBOLIC DISCOUNTING: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS

Behavioral economists maintain that addictions such as alcoholism, smoking and over-eating represent examples of present-bias in decision making that is fundamentally irrational. In this article, we develop a model of present bias and apparently hyperbolic discounting that is fully consistent with rational behavior. We construct an experiment to test our hypothesis and to determine whether discount rates differ for individuals who engage in behaviors that could endanger their health. Our results show that discount functions are quasi-hyperbolic in shape, and that obesity and drinking are positively related to the discount rate. Anti-obesity policy, therefore, would be best directed to informing individuals as to the long-term implications of short-term gratification, rather than taxing foods directly.addiction, discounting, experiments, hyperbolic, obesity, time-inconsistency, Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Health Economics and Policy, C91, D12, D91, I18,

Obesity and Hyperbolic Discounting: An Experimental Analysis

Behavioral economists maintain that addictions such as alcoholism, smoking and over-eating represent examples of present-bias in decision making that is fundamentally irrational. In this article, we develop a model of present bias and apparently hyperbolic discounting that is fully consistent with rational behavior. We construct an experiment to test our hypothesis and to determine whether discount rates differ for individuals who engage in behaviors that could endanger their health. Our results show that discount functions are quasi-hyperbolic in shape, and that obesity and drinking are positively related to the discount rate. Anti-obesity policy, therefore, would be best directed to informing individuals as to the long-term implications of short-term gratification, rather than taxing foods directly.addiction, discounting, experiments, hyperbolic, obesity, time-inconsistency., Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Health Economics and Policy, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, C91, D12, D91, I18.,

Austronesian prehistory and Polynesian genetics

The migration into and settlement of remote Oceania by the modern Polynesian and Māori peoples is a major achievement, which has been the subject of extensive research and scholarship. The routes taken by the Austronesian peoples and the origins of the migrations are subject to ongoing debate. We present a range of findings from molecular genetic studies of Polynesian and New Zealand Māori populations and a ‘synthetic total evidence theory’ that we suggest can account for key elements of the migrations

Proletarian doctors?: the Colegio Médico de Chile under socialism and dictatorship, 1970-1980

Abstract available : p.xv-xvi

KH 15D: A Spectroscopic Binary

We present the results of a high-resolution spectroscopic monitoring program of the eclipsing pre-main-sequence star KH 15D that reveal it to be a single-line spectroscopic binary. We find that the best-fit Keplerian model has a period P = 48.38 days, which is nearly identical to the photometric period. Thus, we find the best explanation for the periodic dimming of KH 15D is that the binary motion carries the currently visible star alternately above and below the edge of an obscuring cloud. The data are consistent with the models involving an inclined circumstellar disk, as recently proposed by Winn et al. (2004) and Chiang & Murray-Clay (2004). We show that the mass ratio expected from models of PMS evolution, together with the mass constraints for the visible star, restrict the orbital eccentricity to 0.68 < e < 0.80 and the mass function to 0.125 < Fm < 0.5 Msun.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in September AJ. Discussion of rotational velocity deferred to Hamilton, et al. (2004, in prep). Previously reported vsini value in error; Replaced Table 3 with new Figure 3; Added new Table 2 showing individual radial velocities w.r.t. each reference star; Fixed typo in Figure

Relaxation of Microwave Nonlinearity in a Cuprate Superconducting Resonator

The second- and third-order nonlinear microwave response of a superconducting YBa2Cu3O7 thin-film resonator was synchronously measured using three input tones. This technique permits the local measurement, and hence mapping, of intermodulation distortion inside the resonator. Second- and third-order IMD measured with a fixed probe relaxed in remarkably different ways after the removal of a static magnetic field. The second-order IMD relaxed by two different magnetic processes, a fast process that appears related to bulk remanent magnetization and a slow process that fits the description of Bean and Livingston. The third-order IMD relaxes by only one process that is distinct from the two processes controlling second order relaxation

On fuzzy frontiers and fragmented foundations : some reflections on the original and new institutional economics

This article has been published in a revised form in Journal of Institutional Economics, doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137414000307 This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution, re-sale or use in derivative works. © 2014 Millennium Economics Ltd, published by Cambridge University Press.These reflections are prompted by the papers by Ménard (2014) and Ménard and Shirley (2014). Their essays centre on the path-breaking contributions to the 'new institutional economics' (NIE) by Ronald Coase, Douglass North and Oliver Williamson. In response, while recognising their substantial achievements, it is pointed out that these three thinkers had contrasting views on key points. Furthermore, Ménard's and Shirley's three 'golden triangle' NIE concepts - transaction costs, property rights and contracts - are themselves disputed. Once all this is acknowledged, differences of view appear within the NIE, raising interesting questions concerning its identity and boundaries, including its differences with the original institutionalism. There are sizeable overlaps between the two traditions. It is argued here that the NIE can learn from the original institutionalism, particularly when elaborating more dynamic analyses, and developing more nuanced, psychologically-grounded and empirically viable theories of human motivation.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio