5,111 research outputs found
MINIMUM WAGE AND INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN THE HARRIS-TODARO MODEL
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of a change in the minimum wage on income distribution and employment in a developing economy. The basic framework of our analysis is the original Harris-Todaro model, in which the only factor that is intersectorally mobile is labor. We analyze the effects of a change in the minimum wage on income distribution, sectoral employment and unemployment, both in the framework of a small open economy, and with endogenous commodity-price changes. Our findings differ from the results of the existing literature and shed light on the complex interaction between the urban and the rural sector of a developing economy.Minimum Wage, Economies of Scale, Urban Unemployment
The Greece of the Greeks: By G.A. Perdicaris, A.M. Late Consul of the United Stats at Athens, in two volumes. New-York: Paine and Burgess, 1845.
No full textIntroduction: (introductory) by the authorDedication: by the author to those who are interested in the Fate of GreecePagination: PP21+293P, PP8+300P+1PPVolumes: 2Edition:1stText Genre:Prose / Journa
The Review of Economic Performance and Social Progress 2002: Towards a Social Understanding of Productivity
No full textIn this chapter, Richard Harris points out that a traditional view has been that there is an inherent conflict between economic efficiency and social equality, a view neatly summarized in the title of Okun's famous book, Equality and Efficiency: The Big Trade-off (1975). This view gained renewed currency in the policy debates of the 1990s, as commentators contrasted the economic performance of Europe and the U.S. in that decade. This view has been challenged both by cross-national empirical studies and by theoretical advances. Recent research seems to suggest that there is no efficiency-equity trade-off and that social policy and greater equality may actually contribute to higher productivity growth. Richard Harris surveys two streams of recent research that point in this direction. The chapter also examines new theoretical literature, especially the new endogenous growth theory that suggests that increases in inequality can hurt growth.Equity, Efficiency, Productivity, Labour Productivity, Labor Productivity, Growth, Income, Inequality, Equality, Social Policy, Education, Health, Welfare, Redistribution, Social Cohesion, Cohesion, Investment, Innovation, Competition, Living Standards
Automatic sign language recognition inspired by human sign perception
No full textAutomatic sign language recognition is a relatively new field of research (since ca. 1990). Its objectives are to automatically analyze sign language utterances. There are several issues within the research area that merit investigation: how to capture the utterances (cameras, magnetic sensors, instrumented gloves), how to extract interesting information from the captured data, and how to classify signs or sentences automatically using the extracted information. These issues are of an immediate and basic nature, and must be solved before any automatic recognition of sign language can be achieved. But other issues, pertaining to the nature of sign language and human recognition, are no less interesting: which elements of a sign are important for the meaning of an utterance? How do consecutive signs influence one another? Why are certain types of variation unimportant while others change the meaning of the sign? Automatic sign language recognition has, until recently, mostly focused on the first set of issues. In this thesis, we attempt to integrate knowledge about sign languages and human sign recognition into the automatic sign recognition process. Research on the (psycho)linguistics of sign languages is itself quite young (since ca. 1960), and many questions as yet unanswered. For this reason, we conduct our own studies of human sign language recognition. The knowledge gained from these experiments is applied in an existing automatic sign language recognition system. The thesis is divided into two parts: the first part describes the experiments conducted with human signers, the second part describes experiments investigating the possibilities of integrating such knowledge in the automatic recognizer. This recognizer is meant to be used in an interactive environment for young children to practice sign language vocabulary. For this reason, it is vision-based (which is unobtrusive), and only handles isolated signs. The experiments in part I of the thesis investigate the information content of various sign elements: fragments of a sign in time (chapter 2), and the sign aspects handshape and hand orientation (chapter 3). In time, the central phase of a sign is the most informative one, equally informative to the entire sign. Recognition based on other phases is also possible to a certain extent, and the transition from the preparation phase to the central phase appears to be a salient moment. As for the aspects, the aspect handshape proves more useful for recognition than hand orientation. Chapter 4 gives an overview of the human recognition research and discusses possibilities for application. In part II, the possibilities of utilizing the results of part I in the recognition system are investigated. Chapter 5 describes the addition of the handshape feature to the system (which chapter 3 showed to be the most interesting feature to add). Adding handshape gives a small improvement in the recognition performance. In chapter 6, the salience of the sign fragments used in chapter 2 for the automatic recognizer is investigated. The central phase proves to be the most informative one, as it was for human signers. Chapter 7 describes experiments in which a small set of frames is used to represent a sign. The results show a deterioration in recognition performance. Strict demands on the correctness of the remaining frames are probably partly responsible for the performance decrease. In conclusion, we can say that applying human knowledge in automatic sign language recognition is a complex task. Conclusions about human sign recognition do not necessarily hold for the automatic recognizer as well. The most important obstacles for utilizing information successfully seem to be: 1) data acquisition: computer vision is not as accomplished as human observers in capturing the complex, dynamic hand and face motions that form sign language. This means that information that is present in a sign movement for a human being may not be (correctly) observed by an automatic vision analysis system. Thus, the data that humans work with is not necessarily identical to the data the recognizer works with, and this may cause techniques that are successful for human signers to fail in the automatic system. And 2) differences in basic system architecture. Research into human sign recognition is still ongoing, there is no clear model of human sign recognition yet. This makes it more difficult to translate observations from human sign recognition to the automatic recognizer: human signers may use techniques that are not compatible with the current architecture of the recognizer. For example: human signers may process aspects independently. If the recognition system processes all data as a single stream, then such a technique cannot be implemented. A more thorough understanding of human sign recognition, more sophisticated computer vision techniques, and a close co-operation between the fields of automatic sign language recognition and human sign perception, seems the best way to overcome these obstacles.MediamaticsElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
MINIMUM WAGE AND INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of a change in the minimum wage on income distribution and employment in a developing economy. The basic framework of our analysis is the original Harris- Todaro model, in which the only factor that is intersectorally mobile is labor. We analyze the effects of a change in the minimum wage on income distribution, sectoral employment and unemployment, both in the framework of a small open economy, and with endogenous commodity-price changes. Our findings differ from the results of the existing literature and shed light on the complex interaction between the urban and the rural sector of a developing economy.minimum wage, economies of scale, urban unemployment
Ground water contamination from hazardous waste sites in Harris County.
No full text70 p., ThesisThis study is a comprehensive evaluation of the impact of industrial hazardous waste facilities on ground water quality in Harris County, Texas. The objectives of this study are: 1) to collect agency data on all hazardous waste facilities and the quality of the ground water underlying these facilities; 2) to provide a quantitative and qualitative description of these facilities; 3) to investigate the occurrence of ground water contamination; and 4) to compare the occurrence of ground water with the type of facility. Descriptive statistical analysis obtains frequencies and percentages of the types of facilities and the occurrence of ground water contamination.http://gbic.tamug.edu/request.ht
Frensley, R. B. & Frank
No full text"R. B. Frensley Family History" from Ella Duncan and Fern Pemberton Harris. Stories of the family's life in Berwyn, Ardmore and Duncan. (1895). Teachers G.A. , Maude and Maye Witt are mentioned, also the jail at Ardmore & Duncan, Mr. Speegele-merchant, Chief Ishiti, Dave Putty-killer of Marshal Thurlo, teachers and students at Colonel Maury military school, Dr. Long, neighbors & ministers in Duncan, DUNCAN NINE baseball team, and life in early Duncan. Frank Frensley was an Ardmore banker
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