The average cost optimal control problem is addressed for Markov decision processes with unbounded cost. It is found that the policy improvement algorithm generates a sequence of policies which are c-regular (a strong stability condition), where c is the cost function under consideration. This result only requires the existence of an initial c-regular policy, and an irreducibility condition on ...

This essay seeks to characterise the essential features of an equitable health care system in terms of the classical Aristotelian concepts of horizontal and vertical equity, the common (but ill-defined) language of "need" and the economic notion of cost-effectiveness as a prelude to identifying some of the more important issues of value that policy-makers will have to decide for themselves; the...

a r t i c l e i n f o The use of high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has increased substantially over the past five years in the United States. Use of this drilling technology to extract natural gas from hitherto impermeable shale is expected to increase even more in coming decades. Two institutions, integration contracts and well spacing requirements, evolved to mitigate the...

Introduction An increasing number of organisations, as part of a strategic planning approach to continuous improvement, are starting to use policy deployment. In Western organisations the interest in policy deployment has primarily been generated by the use of self-assessment against a recognised model for business excellence such as the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Model a...

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And among those who believe in a role for growth policy, the debate on how to think about the appropriate growth policy design, and on how to use theory for that purpose, is not settled either. Advocates of the so-called “Washington Consensus” argue that the combination of macroeconomic stabilization, market liberalization, and privatization, should lie at the heart of any growth package no mat...

In this paper we introduce a theory of policy routing dynamics based on fundamental axioms of routing update mechanisms. We develop a dynamic policy routing model (DPR) that extends the static formalism of the stable paths problem (introduced by Griffin et al.) with discrete synchronous time. DPR captures the propagation of path changes in any dynamic network irrespective of its time-varying to...

Errors of measurement arise because our observations are affected by many sources of variability, but our conceptual frameworks necessarily ignore much of this variability. Sources of variability that are not included in our models and descriptions of phenomena are treated as error or noise. A good theory of error supports the development of precise measurements, clearly defined constructs and ...

We examine theoretically and empirically the properties of the equilibrium wage function and its implications for policy. Our emphasis is on how the researcher approaches economic and policy questions when there is labor market heterogeneity leading to a set of wages. We focus on the application where hedonic models have been most successful at clarifying policy relevant outcomes and policy eff...