Spatial Decentralization and Program Evaluation: Theory and an Example from Indonesia This paper proposes a novel instrumental variable method for program evaluation that only requires a single cross-section of data on the spatial intensity of programs and outcomes. The instruments are derived from a simple theoretical model of government decision-making in which governments are responsive to t...

It has been shown in a number of recent papers that Graver bases methods enable to solve linear and nonlinear integer programming problems in variable dimension in polynomial time, resulting in a variety of applications in operations research and statistics. In this article we continue this line of investigation and show that Graver bases also enable tominimize quadratic and higher degree polyn...

Accurate iris segmentation is presented in this paper, which is composed of two parts, reflection detection and eyelash detection. Eyelashes are classified into two categories, separable and multiple. An edge detector is applied to detect separable eyelashes and intensity variances are used to recognize multiple eyelashes. Reflection is also divided into two types, strong and weak. A threshold ...

Recently the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) has been widely used for various applications arising in scientific computing areas. Most of these application models are, or can be easily reformulated as, linearly constrained convex minimization models with separable nonlinear objective functions. In this note we show that ADMM can also be easily used for the canonical linear pr...

The establishment and growth of an early Australian entrepreneurial firm supplying veterinary services and products is examined. John Pottie established a veterinary practice in Sydney in the 1860's and then proceeded to develop a large and successful family business that is still trading. By exploring the ingredients for its successful entry and growth, this study seeks to show through one lon...

Information Technology (IT) has significant impact on organisation’s success or failure. However, IT does not operate in a vacuum. It is influenced by non-technical factors, such as of human actions and structure, which are inseparable. Hence the relationship between the factors is critical as revealed in this chapter. Structuration was applied as a lens to examine the types of structures that ...

The attempt to match asset price characteristics such as the risk-free interest rate, equity premium and the Sharpe ratio with data for models with instantaneous consumption decisions and time separable preferences has not been very successful. Many recent versions of asset pricing models have, in order to match those financial characteristics better with the data, employed habit formation wher...