Sanitation improvement is crucial in saving lives that are lost due to water contamination. Progress towards achieving full sanitation coverage is still slow in low-income informal settlements in most developing countries. Furthermore, resources are being wasted on installing facilities that are later misused or never used because they do not meet the local demand. Understanding demand for impr...

Muscle endurance is one of the important composite factors to health-related physical fitness. However, previous measurement techniques for evaluation of isometric muscle endurance have been problematic, including rapid increase of blood pressure and heart rate. The progressive workload method which gradually increases the load can reduce subject's physical and mental burden and is safe even fo...

Using the most recently available data, this paper estimates the price and income elasticities of gasoline demand in the United States from a semiparametric smooth coefficient model. The econometric approach provides more flexibility by allowing functional coefficients to accommodate heterogeneity in gasoline demand. Instrumental variables are used to correct for the potential endogeneity of th...

This paper introduces X-Force, a novel binary analysis engine. Given a potentially malicious binary executable, X-Force can force the binary to execute requiring no inputs or proper environment. It also explores different execution paths inside the binary by systematically forcing the branch outcomes of a very small set of conditional control transfer instructions. X-Force features a crash-free...

Both oligopoly theory and experiments are concerned almost uniquely with sellers’ behavior. Buyers’ ability to exhibit non-trivial behavior in different market institutions remains unaddressed. This paper investigates the impact of three variables (number of buyers, surplus division at the market-clearing price and information revelation) on strategic and fairness-motivated demand withholding. ...

This paper examines the causal impact of labor force participation on informal caregiving. To address the endogeneity of labor force participation, we exploit local business cycles and instrument for individual labor force participation with state unemployment rates. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we find that labor force participation significantly reduc...

We study a risk-averse newsvendor problem with quantity competition and price competition. Under the Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) criterion, we characterize the optimal quantity and pricing decisions under both quantity and price competition. For quantity competition, we consider two demand splitting rules, namely proportional demand allocation and demand reallocation. Although competition ...

Almost all research into the operations and behavior of salespeople has focused on sales at the retail level. But in many supply chains, manufacturers use a sales force to promote sales and improve coordination with retailers. In this note, we add an important piece to the science of sales operations by investigating the impact of two primary tasks performed by wholesale-salespersons: (1) enhan...