SOCIAL PREFERENCES FOR NATIONAL DEFENCE AND POLICE ENFORCEMENT IN WESTERN EUROPE

We study the determinants of social preferences for national defence and for police and law enforcement. For this task, we estimate a bivariate ordered probit model for a set of European countries (France, Finland, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden) in 2006. Determinants of spending decisions for defence and police are found to be linked but are of significantly different magnitudes. Besides, measures against terrorist threats are positively linked to police and defence spending increases, while the subjective perception of fiscal pressure has no influence. Finally, no significant differences are found between Northern and Southern Europe.     

Assortment optimization with position effects under the nested logit model

We study the assortment optimization problem with position effects under the nested logit model, whose goal is to find the revenue-maximizing subset of products as well as their corresponding display positions. In this joint assortment-position optimization problem, the choices of products are affected by not only their qualities and prices but also the positions where they are displayed. Despite determining the assortment and their corresponding display positions sequentially, we propose to solve this problem in an integrated way to obtain the optimal solution. We formulate this problem as a nonlinear binary integer programming model and develop a dynamic programming based solution approach to obtain the optimal assortment-position assignments. We carry out extensive numerical experiments to evaluate the benefit of our integrated approach. The most important insight we discover is that it is not necessarily better to put the most attractive products in the best position. Moreover, we show that compared to the sequential approaches, our approach can improve revenue by 10.38% on average, which suggests that firms should take into consideration position effects when making assortment decisions. Finally, we discuss results related to two extensions of this problem, that is, the special case when positions are preassigned to nests, and the joint assortment-position-price optimization problem.     

基于时间序无圈有向图的多准则优化成像调度

合理有效地利用遥感卫星资源获取更多高质量影像数据是卫星成像调度的重要工作。提出了一种新的成像调度解决方案。应用图论相关理论,建立卫星成像时间序无圈有向图模型,利用多项准则作为衡量标准对不同成像路径进行评价,提出时间序多准则最短路径算法求取优化成像路径。理论分析和实验表明,该解决方案可以在较短时间内获得多条pareto优化成像路径,具有良好的调度性能。     

离散数学中“关系”教学的认识与实践

“关系”是离散数学中一个非常抽象的概念，通过提出问题-分析问题-解决问题的层层递进式教学，将抽象概念与具体应用相结合，是非常有效的教学方式。     

维修性增长趋势检验研究

对即时改进和延缓改进两种维修性增长规划方式进行了趋势检验研究.针对即时改进的维修性增长规划方式,提出了趋势检验的图示法和Laplace方法.针对延缓改进的维修性增长规划方式,根据修复率(第i阶段的修复率为μi)的顺序约束条件:∞>μm≥…≥μi≥…≥μ2≥μ1>0,探讨了指数分布和正态分布维修性增长趋势检验的区间估计法,并结合数值例说明了这些方法的可行性.     

Correlates of Perceived Insecurity: Evidence from Pakistan

This study explores the correlates of perceived insecurity among the households in Pakistan. For this purpose, data from the third round of Pakistan Panel Household Survey are merged with terrorist incidents taken from Global Terrorism Database. The results illustrate that objective risk, signified by violence in the district of residence, and victimization play an important role in the formation of perceived insecurity. Moreover, males and residents of rural areas feel more insecure than females and urban residents, respectively. Furthermore, spatial variation in violence indicates that terrorist attacks in the first-order contiguous districts (i.e. the immediate neighbors) are also associated with subjective insecurity. These are crucial findings because behavioral changes, such as perceived insecurity, could force the households to make suboptimal investment decisions. More importantly, since changes in behavioral parameters may be highly persistent, this study cautions that violence in Pakistan may have potentially long-term impacts on social welfare.     

French Arms Exports and Intrastate Conflicts: An Empirical Investigation

The aim of this article is to evaluate how French Major Conventional Weapons (MCW) exports impact on the conflict intensity of recipient countries. The recent increase in French arms exports seems to contradict the French political discourse on the promotion of regional stability. We run zero-inflated ordered probit model in order to analyze the role of the arms trade on the intensity of civil conflicts in 144 countries from 1992 to 2014, using SIPRI and UCDP/PRIO data. Our results suggest that French MCW exports tended not to exacerbate intrastate conflicts during this period. This finding is robust to changes in the empirical framework. We propose two lines of explanations: France seems to be prone to choosing partners that respect human rights and selling more ‘defense-oriented’ MCW than the rest of the world.