Absolute Value

Richard Kraut defines absolute goodness as follows: for something to be absolutely good is for its goodness to be unrelated to the needs or interests of any individual. He argues that nothing can be good in this sense. Against Kraut, I argue that the concept of absolute goodness plays an important role in moral thought. I do so by considering a variety of contexts in which an explanation of the value of an act depends on seeing its goodness as outrunning its usefulness in satisfying anyone's needs or interests.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

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The energy of a graph G is the sum of the absolute values of the eigenvalues of the adjacency matrix of G. The Laplacian (respectively, the signless Laplacian) energy of G is the sum of the absolute values of the differences between the eigenvalues of the Laplacian (respectively, signless Laplacian) matrix and the arithmetic mean of the vertex degrees of the graph. In this paper, among some results which relate these energies, we point out some bounds to them using the energy of the line graph of G. Most of these bounds are valid for both energies, Laplacian and signless Laplacian. However, we present two new upper bounds on the signless Laplacian which are not upper bounds for the Laplacian energy.

73289 2 2 | | E El l P Pa ap pe el l d de el l M Me er rc ca ad do o L La ab bo or ra al l e en n l la a t tr ra an ns sf fo or rm ma ac ci ió ón n d de e A Am mé ér ri ic ca a L La at ti in na a El Papel del Mercado Laboral en la Transformación de América Latina Octubre 2012 Reporte Semestral Oficina del Economista Jefe Regional | E El l P Pa ap pe el l d de el l M Me er rc ca ad do o L La ab bo or ra al l e en n l la a t tr ra an ns sf fo or rm ma ac ci ió ón n d de e A Am mé ér ri ic ca a L La at ti in na a | | 5 5 P Pr re ef fa ac ci io o Este informe semestral, producido por la Oficina del Economista Jefe para América Latina y el Caribe del Banco Mundial, examina pormenorizadamente los cambios más significativos que se han producido en los mercados de trabajo de los países de América Latina y el Caribe (LAC) durante la década de 1990 y la década de 2000. Como es costumbre en esta serie, el informe también hace un repaso a la evolución económica reciente de la región de LAC y analiza el panorama de los próximos meses. prestado una excelente asistencia en la investigación. También querríamos dar las gracias a Paloma Anós Casero, Carlos Felipe Jaramillo, Sergio Jellinek y Marcela Sánchez-Bender por sus inestimables comentarios. Finalmente agradecemos a Anna Sanz de Galdeano por su excelente traducción al español. Octubre 2012 | E El l P Pa ap pe el l d de el l M Me er rc ca ad do o L La ab bo or ra al l e en n l la a t tr ra an ns sf fo or rm ma ac ci ió ón n d de e A Am mé ér ri ic ca a L La at ti in na a | | 7 7 | E El l P Pa ap pe el l d de el l M Me er rc ca ad do o L La ab bo or ra al l e en n l la a t tr ra an ns sf fo or rm ma ac ci ió ón n d de e A Am mé ér ri ic ca a L La at ti in na a insuficientemente estudiadas. Por lo tanto, también complementa las conclusiones de carácter más general del World Bank Development Report on Jobs de 2012 recientemente publicado. El empleo en LAC durante los años 2000, estimulado por el fuerte crecimiento económico, se expandió vigorosamente en comparación con la lenta década de 1990. Esta expansión fue tan fuerte que logró absorber la incesante incorporación laboral femenina, aun cuando la informalidad se redujo, y el desempleo disminuyó de manera estable. En concreto, se crearon más de 35 millones de empleos nuevos, mientras que la informalidad, uno de los rasgos distintivos de América Latina, disminuyó en siete de los nueve países donde es posible medirla de manera coherente a lo largo de la década.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

The actual distribution of world income across countries is extremely unequal, much higher than the within country inequality faced by most countries. The question studied in this paper is: how do international policies on aid, trade and factor movements affect the international distribution of income?

The Latin America and the Caribbean region (LAC) has seen a "decade of convergence". During the last decade, LAC countries have exhibited high growth rates and recovered quickly after the global financial crisis. The region benefited from favorable external conditions, in particular high commodity prices, and relatively loose financial conditions, especially in the United States. LAC had considerably lost ground vis-à-vis US income levels from 1980 until the early 2000s, but has converged somewhat to the US level since. Growth in LAC was thus not only higher in this period than before but also higher than in the United States (and many advanced economies), hence constituting a 'decade of convergence'.

The energy of a graph G is equal to the sum of the absolute values of the eigenvalues of G, which in turn is equal to the sum of the singular values of the adjacency matrix of G. Let X, Y, and Z be matrices, such that X + Y = Z. The Ky Fan theorem establishes an inequality between the sum of the singular values of Z and the sum of the sum of the singular values of X and Y. This theorem is applied in the theory of graph energy, resulting in several new inequalities, as well as new proofs of some earlier known inequalities.

In many low income African countries, three factors are placing an undue burden on the elderly. First, the burden on the elderly has enormously increased with the increase in mortality of prime age adults due to HIV AIDS pandemic and regional conflicts. Second, the traditional safety net of the extended family has become ineffective and unreliable for the elderly. Third, in a few countries, the elderly are called upon to shoulder the responsibility of the family as they became the principal breadwinners and caregivers for young children. While a number of studies have examined the welfare consequences of these developments on children, few studies have systematically analyzed the poverty situation among the elderly (relative to other groups) in low income countries Africa, and the role of social pensions. This study aims to fill this gap.

There are numerous applications for image fusion, some of which include medical imaging, remote sensing, nighttime operations and multi-spectral imaging. In general, the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and various pyramids (such as Laplacian, ratio, contrast, gradient and morphological pyramids) are the most common and effective methods. For quantitative evaluation of the quality of fused imagery, the root mean square error (RMSE) is the most suitable measure of quality if there is a “ground truth” image available; otherwise, the entropy, spatial frequency or image quality index
of the input images and the fused images can be calculated and compared. Here, after analyzing the pyramids’ performance with the four measures mentioned, an advanced wavelet transform (aDWT) method that incorporates
principal component analysis (PCA) and morphological processing into a regular DWT fusion algorithm is presented. Specifically, at each scale of the wavelet transformed images, a principle vector was derived from two input images and then applied to two of the images’ approximation coefficients (i.e., they were fused by using the principal eigenvector). For the detail coefficients (i.e., three quarters of the coefficients), the larger absolute values were chosen and subjected to a neighborhood morphological processing procedure which served to verify the selected pixels by using a “filling” and “cleaning” operation (this operation filled or removed isolated pixels in a 3-by-3 local region). The fusion performance of the advanced DWT (aDWT) method proposed here was compared with six other common methods, and, based on the four quantitative measures, was found to perform the best when tested on the four input image types. Since the different image sources used here varied with respect to intensity, contrast, noise, and intrinsic characteristics, the aDWT is a promising image fusion procedure for inhomogeneous imagery.

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The energy of a graph is the sum of the absolute values of the eigenvalues of its adjacency matrix. Koolen and Moulton have proved that the energy of a graph on n vertices is at most n(1 + √ n)/2, and that equality holds if and only if the graph is strongly regular with parameters (n, (n + √ n)/2, (n + 2 √ n)/4, (n + 2 √ n)/4). Such graphs are equivalent to a certain type of Hadamard matrices. Here we survey constructions of these Hadamard matrices and the related strongly regular graphs.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

What role does the business environment play in promoting and restraining firm growth? Recent literature points to a number of factors as obstacles to growth. Inefficient functioning of financial markets, inadequate security and enforcement of property rights, poor provision of infrastructure, inefficient regulation and taxation, and broader governance features such as corruption and macroeconomic stability are discussed without any comparative evidence on their ordering. In this paper, we use firm level survey data to present evidence on the relative importance of different features of the business environment. We find that although firms report many obstacles to growth, not all the obstacles are equally constraining. Some affect firm growth only indirectly through their influence on other obstacles, or not at all. Using Directed Acyclic Graph methodology as well as regressions, we find that only obstacles related to finance, crime and political instability directly affect the growth rate of firms. Robustness tests further show that the Finance result is the most robust of the three. These results have important policy implications for the priority of reform efforts. Our results show that maintaining political stability, keeping crime under control, and undertaking financial sector reforms to relax financing constraints are likely to be the most effective routes to promote firm growth.

Jere R. Absolute values for (-statistics are given in parentheses beneath point estimates. a. Probabilities in square brackets. b. Standard-errors in square brackets. c. Censored normal regression (with 8 right-censored and 2,617 uncensored observations for age when started school and with 2,173 right-censored and 442 uncensored observations for last completed grade). The R 2 is a pseudo R 1 .

Emissions trading is a hot issue. At national as well as supranational levels, proposals for introduction of emissions trading schemes have been made. This paper assesses alternative emissions trading schemes at domestic level: (1) schemes where the total level of emissions is fixed (absolute cap-and-trade), (2) schemes where the allowable level of emissions per firm is related to some firm-specific indicator (relative cap-and-trade), and (3) mixed schemes which combine elements of the above alternatives. We present a quantitative assessment of these alternatives for climate change policy in the Netherlands. It is concluded that while relative capand-trade would avoid negative effects on competitiveness, it would not reduce emissions at the lowest costs. Besides, the addition of a trade system to existing relative standards does not result in additional emission reduction; it should be combined with other policy measures, such as energy taxes, in order to realise further reduction. Absolute cap-and-trade leads to efficient emissions reduction, but, implemented at the national level, its overall macroeconomic costs may be significant. The mixed scheme has as drawback that it treats firms unequal, which leads to high administrative costs. We conclude that none of the trading schemes is an advisable instrument for domestic climate policy. r

Currency risk is one of the two components of the total interest rate differential. Hard pegs, such as currency boards, are meant to reduce or even eliminate currency risk, thus, reducing domestic interest rates. This paper investigates the patterns and determinants of the currency risk premium in two currency boards-Argentina and Hong Kong. Despite the presumed rigidity of currency boards, the currency premium is almost always positive and at times very large. Its term structure is usually upward sloping, but flattens out or even becomes inverted at times of turbulence. The premium and its term structure depend on domestic and global factors related to devaluation expectations and risk perceptions. D

This paper reports panel gravity estimates of aggregate bilateral trade for 130 countries over the period 1962-96 in which the coe±cient of distance is allowed to change over time. In a standard speci¯cation in which transport costs are proxied by distance only, it is found paradoxically that the absolute value of the elasticity of bilateral trade to distance has been signi¯cantly increasing. The result is attributed to a relatively larger decline in costs independent of distance (such as handling) than in distance-related costs (e.g. oil price). An extended version of the model that controls for these two factors eliminates this positive trend without reversing it. However, when the sample is split into two groups (`rich-rich' and`poor-poor'), the paradox is maintained for the`poor-poor' group. While not conclusive, these results are consistent with the view that poor countries may have been marginalized by the current wave of globalization.

This paper is focused on the operator inequalities of the Bohr type. We will give a new and transparent proof for the operator Bohr inequality through an absolute value operator identity, show some related operator inequalities by means of 2×22×2 (block) operator matrices, and finally we will present a generalization of the operator Bohr inequality for multiple operators.

Emissions trading is a hot issue. At national as well as supranational levels, proposals for introduction of emissions trading schemes have been made. This paper assesses alternative emissions trading schemes at domestic level: (1) schemes where the total level of emissions is fixed (absolute cap-and-trade), (2) schemes where the allowable level of emissions per firm is related to some firm-specific indicator (relative cap-and-trade), and (3) mixed schemes which combine elements of the above alternatives. We present a quantitative assessment of these alternatives for climate change policy in the Netherlands. It is concluded that while relative capand-trade would avoid negative effects on competitiveness, it would not reduce emissions at the lowest costs. Besides, the addition of a trade system to existing relative standards does not result in additional emission reduction; it should be combined with other policy measures, such as energy taxes, in order to realise further reduction. Absolute cap-and-trade leads to efficient emissions reduction, but, implemented at the national level, its overall macroeconomic costs may be significant. The mixed scheme has as drawback that it treats firms unequal, which leads to high administrative costs. We conclude that none of the trading schemes is an advisable instrument for domestic climate policy. r

The actual distribution of world income across countries is extremely unequal, much higher than the within country inequality faced by most countries. The question studied in this paper is: how do international policies on aid, trade and factor movements affect the international distribution of income?

The estimated coefficient of distance on the volume of trade is generally found to increase rather than decrease through time using the traditional gravity model of trade. This distance puzzle proved robust to several ad hoc versions of the model using data for 1962–96 for a large sample of 130 countries. The introduction of an ‘‘augmented’ ’ barrier to trade function removes the paradox, yielding a decline in the estimate of the elasticity of trade to distance of about 11 percent over the 35-year period for the whole sample. However, the ‘‘death of distance’ ’ is shown to be largely confined to bilateral trade between rich countries, with poor countries becoming marginalized. There is a widespread perception that the current wave of globalization, much like the first, should have led to the ‘‘death of distance.’ ’ Other things equal, globalization should generate a dispersion of economic activity reflecting a decline in transaction costs, especially transport costs. But studies bas...

This paper examines the link between sectoral concentration and overall performance in the search for on-the-frontier innovations, inside-the-frontier innovations, and export booms. We extend the literature by increasing country coverage and the types of search processes considered, and by focusing on the links with overall performance in these search processes. After controlling for the necessary relationships as well as fixed effects at the country/commodity group level, we find a clear negative relationship between the concentration of innovation portfolios and performance: countries that are the most successful in these search processes have their successes spread across a broader range of industries than those with poorer performance. Furthermore, the search for export booms exhibits the least amount of sectoral concentration and path-dependence. These findings suggest that public support for these processes need not be focused in a narrow range of sectors, and modeling of these processes in theoretical work, particularly in the search for export booms, should be of a stochastic flavor.

This paper brings together the literatures on the political economy of public expenditures and the determinants of economic growth. Based on a new dataset of rural public expenditures in a panel of Latin American economies, the econometric evidence suggests that non-social subsidies reduce agricultural GDP. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that political and institutional factors as well as income inequality are determinants of the size and structure of rural public expenditures, through which they have large and significant effects on agricultural GDP.

For a symmetric positive semi-definite diagonally dominant matrix, if its off-diagonal entries and its diagonally dominant parts for all rows (which are defined for a row as the diagonal entry subtracted by the sum of absolute values of off-diagonal entries in that row) are known to a certain relative accuracy, we show that its eigenvalues are known to the same relative accuracy. Specifically, we prove that if such a matrix is perturbed in a way that each off-diagonal entry and each diagonally dominant part have relative errors bounded by some , then all its eigenvalues have relative errors bounded by . The result is extended to the generalized eigenvalue problem.

A multiview sequence codec with view scalability was described in a previous paper. To enhance the performance of this codec, an efficient disparity vector coding method for multiview sequences is proposed herein. For higher coding efficiency, we encode the differential vectors acquired by subtracting the original vectors from the predicted ones. To enhance the performance of disparity vector coding, it is essential to predict the disparity vectors accurately. The prediction by this proposed method utilizes the correlation among the multiview images, while conventional methods exploit the correlation among the causal blocks. Experiments were performed for three different 5 view sequences. We were able to confirm that the proposed method predicts disparity vectors accurately by comparing the entropy and the mean absolute values for differential vectors with conventional methods. Its performance is superior to vector coding methods used in MPEG-4 which uses only a spatial correlation. The proposed method increases the coding efficiency by a factor of 30-45% while preserving image quality. r

ÖZET: Bu çalışmanın amacı, sınıf öğretmeni adaylarının örnekleminde mutlak değer kavramının gerçekten başlı başına öğrenciler için bir sorun oluşturup oluşturmadığını ortaya koymaktır. Veri toplamak için, 57 birinci sınıf öğretmen adayına açık uçlu sorulardan oluşan bir anket uygulanmıştır. Bilindiği gibi, öğrenciler lise eğitimlerinden sonra üniversiteye başlamaktadırlar, bu yüzden, çalışmanın, mutlak değer kavramı bağlamında, dört yıllık lise eğitiminin bir bilançosunu yapmamızı sağlayacaktır. Öğrencilerin yazmış oldukları cevaplar, kategorilerin belirlenmesi için nitel olarak analiz edilmiştir. Araştırma bulguları, mutlak değer kavramının öğrenciler için hala bir problem olduğunu ve özellikle, mutlak değer dışında her şeyin aynı olduğu, benzer sorularda öğrenci başarısının hissedilir bir şekilde düştüğünü göstermektedir. Anahtar kelimeler: Mutlak değer kavramı, sınıf öğretmeni adayları, matematik eğitimi, zorluk ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to reveal, in the example of primary school student teachers, whether the absolute value concept in itself causes problems for students. To gather data, a questionnaire composed of open-ended questions was administered to 57 first year student teachers. As it is known, after their high school education students begin to the university education, therefore, this study equally allows us to make a balance of four years of the high school education in the case of the absolute value concept. The students' written responses were qualitatively analyzed to characterize patterns and categorize. The research findings revealed that the absolute value concept is still a problem for the student teachers and especially, similar questions in which everything is the same except the absolute value, student achievement sensibly decreases.

With the rapid growth of interventional MRI, radiofrequency (RF) heating at the tips of guidewires, catheters, and other wireshaped devices has become an important safety issue. Previous studies have identified some of the variables that affect the relative magnitude of this heating but none could predict the absolute amount of heating to formulate safety margins. This study presents the first theoretical model of wire tip heating that can accurately predict its absolute value, assuming a straight wire, a homogeneous RF coil, and a wire that does not extend out of the tissue. The local specific absorption rate (SAR) amplification from induced currents on insulated and bare wires was calculated using the method of moments. This SAR gain was combined with a semianalytic solution to the bioheat transfer equation to generate a safety index. The safety index (°C/(W/kg)) is a measure of the in vivo temperature change that can occur with the wire in place, normalized to the SAR of the pulse sequence. This index can be used to set limits on the spatial peak SAR of pulse sequences that are used with the interventional wire. For the case of a straight resonant wire in a tissue with very low perfusion, only about 100 mW/kg/°C spatial peak SAR may be used at 1.5 T. But for ≤10-cm wires with an insulation thickness ≥30% of the wire radius that are placed in well-perfused tissues, normal operating conditions of 4 W/kg spatial peak SAR are possible at 1.5 T. Further model development to include the influence of inhomogeneous RF, curved wires, and wires that extend out of the sample are required to generate safety indices that are applicable to common clinical situations. We propose a simple way to ensure safety when using an interventional wire: set a limit on the SAR of allowable pulse sequences that is a factor of a safety index below the tolerable temperature increase. Magn Reson Med 47: [187][188][189][190][191][192][193] 2002.

Application of required curvature corrections to the linear (relativistic) calibration procedure previously employed reduce (by 0.48 eV) the reported Sls binding energy of H,S to 2478.43 eV and the S KLL Auger energy (by 0.01 eV) to 2098.55 eV. Only the former value is significantly altered. For phosphorus compounds, the Pls binding energy of PH, is essentially unchanged at 2150.87 eV but the P KLL energy is reduced by 0.27 eV to 1841.29 eV.

Abstract. In this note we prove a new result about (finite) multiplier sequences, i.e. linear operators acting diagonally in the standard monomial basis of R[x] and sending polynomials with all real roots to polynomials with all real roots. Namely, we show that any such operator does not decrease the logarithmic mesh when acting on an arbitrary polynomial having all roots real and of the same sign. The logarithmic mesh of such a polynomial is defined as the minimal quotient of its consecutive roots taken in the nondecreasing order of their absolute values. Multiplicateurs et mailles logarithmiques Résumé. Les multiplicateurs considérés dans cette note sont les opérateurs linéaires qui agissent diagonalement sur R[x] muni de sa base standard (les monômes) et qui transforment les polynômes à racines réelles en polynômes à racines réelles. Nous montrons qu’un tel opérateur, appliqué à un polynôme dont toutes les racines sont réelles et de même signe, ne diminue pas la maille logarithmi...

This paper explores whether the rapid growth of China and India in world markets is a threat or an opportunity to Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) exporters. First, the authors focus on the opportunity that the rapid growth of China and India's markets offer to LAC exporters. Using a gravity model, we measure the impact that China and India's demand growth had on LAC exports. We then focus on the threat or hidden opportunity that the growth of China and India had on Latin American exports to third markets. Using a gravity model, we allow for four different channels through which the growing presence of China and India in world markets may be affecting LAC exports to the rest of the world: 1) their growing presence as an exporter to third markets; 2) their growing presence as an importer from third markets; 3) their growing presence as an exporter to LAC; and 4) their growing presence as an importer from LAC. Results suggest that the growth of the two Asian economies domesti...

Drawing on a large set of technical background papers, World Bank economists report that the rise of China and India is bestowing substantive net benefits on Latin America, through higher commodity prices, cheaper industrial inputs, and growing capital inflows. Moreover, if ...