Welfare is often administered locally, but financed through grants from the central government. This raises the question how the central government can prevent local governments from spending more than necessary. Block grants are more efficient than matching grants, because the latter reduce the...

This paper introduces a general, formal treatment of dynamic constraints, i.e., constraints on the state changes that are allowed in a given state space. Such dynamic constraints can be seen as representations of "real world" constraints in a managerial context. The notions of transition,...

In this paper, we provide an empirical analysis of the impact of monitoring and social ties within group lending programs on moral hazard behavior of its participants, based on data from an extensive questionnaire held in Eritrea among participants of 102 groups. We find support for the fact...

We consider two planning problems faced by an electricity distributor. Electricity can be ob-tained both from power plants and small generators such as hospitals and greenhouses, whereas the future demand for electricity is uncertain. The price of electricity obtained from the power plants...

New product development is one of the most powerful but difficult activities in business. It is also a very important factor affecting final product quality. There are many techniques available for new product development. Experimental design is now regarded as one of the most significant...

UML is the de facto standard language for analysis and design in object-oriented frameworks. Information systems, and in particular information systems based on databases and their applications, rely heavily on sound principles of analysis and design. Many present-day database applications...

This paper addresses the problem of how to query and update so-called database federations. A database federation provides for tight coupling of a collection of heterogeneous component databases into a global integrated system. This problem of querying and updating a database federation is...

This paper investigates asymmetric effects of monetary policy over the business cycle. A two-state Markov Switching Model is employed to model both recessions and expansions. For the United States and Germany, strong evidence is found that monetary policy is more effective in a recession than...

While specifications of queries are usually of a declarative nature (since the work of Codd in the early seventies), specifications of transactions are still mainly of an operational and descriptive nature. Especially descriptions of complex transactions (such as cascading deletes) tend to be...

The paper considers a (static) portfolio system that satisfies adding-up contraints and the gross substitution theorem. The paper shows the relationship of the two conditions to the weak dominant diagonal property of the matrix of interest rate elasticities. This enables to investigate the...