We appreciate helpful discussions with Jean-Paul Abraham, Jos Schmitt and participants at the 23 rd SUERF Colloquium. We acknowledge financial assistance from FWO-Vlaanderen under contracts G.0302.00 and G.0333.01.

Erratum In the original publication of this article [1], the funding number of the NSFC-NIH project was listed incorrectly. This should have been 81361120398, and not 812111519, which belongs to the researching project of another group. Please see amended acknowledgements section below: This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation Project of International Coopera...

This paper examines the impact of reducing corruption and improving transparency to lower trade costs in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation region. The authors find, based on a computable general equilibrium model, significant potential trade and welfare gains for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation members, with increased transparency and lower levels of corruption. Results suggest that trade...

This chapter examines the Karnataka Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Fund, a special purpose fund constituted for welfare of construction workers. Here I focus on implementation social security legislation. rely parliamentary records, two compliance reviews functioning (BOCW) Board by Comptroller Auditor General India, reports from Kannada English newspapers. In so doing, show t...

Background Purchasing refers to the process by which pooled funds are paid to providers in order to deliver a set of health care interventions. Very little is known about purchasing arrangements in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and certainly not in Kenya. This study aimed to critically analyse purchasing arrangements in Kenya, using the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) as a c...

1 Research Assistant of the Fund of Scientific Research Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen) Abstract In this paper we discuss how OPNET can be applied in advanced networking education, enhancing the practical skills of future network engineers. At the K.U.Leuven Master students in Electrical Engineering focusing on Telecommunications have to complete a complex networking design about Voice over IP, Wirel...

In an example with two objects and four bidders, some of which have superadditive values, we characterize the equilibria of a simultaneous ascending auction and compare the revenue and efficiency generated with ones generated by the sequential, the one-shot simultaneous, and the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves auctions. ∗Germano acknowledges financial support from European Commission Grant ERBFMBICT97285...

RÉSUMÉ. La problématique scientifique abordée correspond à la modélisation et à l'amélioration des processus métiers. Ce problème est d'un intérêt croissant pour les entreprises qui prennent conscience de l'impact indéniable que peuvent avoir une meilleure compréhension et une meilleure gestion des processus métiers (PM) sur l'efficacité, la cohérence et la transparence de leurs activités. Le t...

We review the construction of gauge field theories from BRST first-quantized systems and its relation to the unfolded formalism. In particular, the BRST extension of the non linear unfolded formalism is discussed in some details. ∗ Senior Research Associate of the National Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium). 2 BARNICH, GRIGORIEV