Journal of shellfish research.

v. 17, no. 4-5 (1998)

Journal of shellfish research.

v. 16 (1997)

Journal of shellfish research.

v. 18 (1999)

Report of the Agricultural Research Institute and College, Pusa.

190712

Approval voting ion dichotomous preferences

The aim of this paper is to find normative foundations of Approval Voting. In order to show that Approval Voting is the only social choice function that satisfies anonymity, neutrality, strategy-proofness and strict monotonicity we rely on an intermediate result which relates strategy-proofness of a social choice function to the properties of Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives and monotonicity of the corresponding social welfare function. Afterwards we characterize Approval Voting by means of strict symmetry, neutrality and strict monotonicity and relate this result to May's Theorem. Finally, we show that it is possible to substitute the property of strict monotonicity by the one efficiency of in the second characterization.

On the weights of nations: assigning voting weights in a heterogenous union

Consider a voting procedure where countries, states, or districts comprising a union each elect representatives who then participate in later votes at the union level on their behalf. The countries, provinces, and states may vary in their populations and composition. If we wish to maximize the total expected utility of all agents in the union, how to weight the votes of the representatives of the different countries, states or districts at the union level? We provide a simple characterization of the efficient voting rule in terms of the weights assigned to different districts and the voting threshold (how large a qualified majority is needed to induce change versus the status quo). Next, in the context of a model of the correlation structure of agents preferences, we analyze how voting weights relate to the population size of a country. We then analyze the voting weights in Council of the European Union under the Nice Treaty and the recently proposed constitution, and contrast them under different versions of our model.

Voting by committees with exit

We study the problem of a society choosing a subset of new members from a finite set of candidates (as in Barberà, Sonnenschein, and Zhou, 1991). However, we explicitly consider the possibility that initial members of the society (founders) may want to leave it if they do not like the resulting new society. We show that, if founders have separable (or additive) preferences, the unique strategy-proof and stable social choice function satisfying voters' sovereignty (on the set of candidates) is the one where candidates are chosen unanimously and no founder leaves the society.

Voting by committees under constraints

We consider social choice problems where a society must choose a subset from a set of objects. Specifically, we characterize the families of strategy-proof voting procedures when not all possible subsets of objects are feasible, and voters' preferences are separable or additively representable.

Candidate stability and voting correspondences

We study the incentives of candidates to enter or to exit elections in order to strategically affect the outcome of a voting correspondence. We extend the results of Dutta, Jackson and Le Breton (2000), who only considered single-valued voting procedures by admitting that the outcomes of voting may consist of sets of candidates. We show that, if candidates form their preferences over sets according to Expected Utility Theory and Bayesian updating, every unanimous and non dictatorial voting correspondence violates candidate stability. When candidates are restricted to use even chance prior distributions, only dictatorial or bidictatorial rules are unanimous and candidate stable. We also analyze the implications of using other extension criteria to define candidate stability that open the door to positive results.

Research policy and endogenous growth

This paper studies the effects of different types of research policy on economic growth. We find that while tax incentives to private research, public funding of private projects, and basic research performed at public institutions have unambiguously positive effects on economic growth, performing applied research at public institutions could have negative growth effects. This is due to the large crowding out of private research caused by public R\&D when it competes with private firms in the "patent race". Concerning the effects of these policies on welfare, it is found that research policy can either improve or reduce consumer welfare depending on the characteristics of the policy and that an excessively high research subsidy will reduce it.

Weighted approval voting

To allow society to treat unequal alternatives distinctly we propose a natural extension of Approval Voting by relaxing the assumption of neutrality. According to this extension, every alternative receives ex-ante a non-negative and finite weight. These weights may differ across alternatives. Given the voting decisions of every individual (individuals are allowed to vote for, or approve of, as many alternatives as they wish to), society elects all alternatives for which the product of total number of votes times exogenous weight is maximal. Our main result is an axiomatic characterization of this voting procedure.

Research work in Tokyo Institute of Technology

Research carried out in Tokyo Institute of Technology. The objective is to determine the influence of Interfacial Transition Zone (ITZ) around Lightweight aggregate in concrete on Chloride ion diffusivity. The ITZ of conventional concretes is the weakest point of concrete. The accumulating water on ITZ zone forms the most permeable area inside the concrete. Hence ITZ paves the way for chloride ion diffusion. The quality of ITZ depends on type and quality of aggregates used, water-cement ratio and also the method used for the production of concrete. It has been used two types of lightweight aggregates will be used, Chinese and Japanese, with different absorption capacities. The idea is to produce concrete with same effective water - cement ratio, using the same aggregates in two different conditions, dry and saturated, and compare the chloride ion diffusivity in these concretes (by diffusion test). A comparison of ITZ thickness of these concretes by SEM and EDAX-maps is also proposed. The chloride ion diffusion of concretes produced with the same effective water – cement ratio and same aggregates (dry and ssd) will depend, mainly, on ITZ.