Beyond Tradeoffs

Beyond Tradeoffs
Author :
Publisher : Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages : 382
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0815791291
ISBN-13 : 9780815791294
Rating : 4/5 (91 Downloads)

Synopsis Beyond Tradeoffs by : Nancy Birdsall

Latin American income distribution is among the most unequal in the world. Both the poor and the wealthy have paid a price for this inequality, which is in part responsible for the region's low growth rates. The essays in this book propose new ways of reducing inequality, not by growth-inhibiting transfers and regulations, but by enhancing efficiency—eliminating consumption subsidies for the wealthy, increasing the productivity of the poor, and shifting to a more labor and skill-demanding growth path. In Beyond Tradeoffs, Latin American experts demonstrate how market-friendly measures in key policy areas can simultaneously promote greater equity and greater efficiency. By identifying win-win strategies, the authors challenge the conventional wisdom that there is always a tradeoff between these two objectives. Extensive macroeconomic reforms in the region have provided opportunities to implement such strategies across many sectors. The volume aims at building a "Latin consensus" on a second round of reforms—reforms that address the urgent issue of inequality without undermining efficient growth. Contributors include Jonathan Coles, Rene Cortazar, Ricardo Hausmann, Juan Luis Londoño, Nora Lustig, Moises Naím, and Joseph Stiglitz. Copublished with the Inter-American Development Bank

Beyond Fear

Beyond Fear
Author :
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages : 293
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780387217123
ISBN-13 : 0387217126
Rating : 4/5 (23 Downloads)

Synopsis Beyond Fear by : Bruce Schneier

Many of us, especially since 9/11, have become personally concerned about issues of security, and this is no surprise. Security is near the top of government and corporate agendas around the globe. Security-related stories appear on the front page everyday. How well though, do any of us truly understand what achieving real security involves? In Beyond Fear, Bruce Schneier invites us to take a critical look at not just the threats to our security, but the ways in which we're encouraged to think about security by law enforcement agencies, businesses of all shapes and sizes, and our national governments and militaries. Schneier believes we all can and should be better security consumers, and that the trade-offs we make in the name of security - in terms of cash outlays, taxes, inconvenience, and diminished freedoms - should be part of an ongoing negotiation in our personal, professional, and civic lives, and the subject of an open and informed national discussion. With a well-deserved reputation for original and sometimes iconoclastic thought, Schneier has a lot to say that is provocative, counter-intuitive, and just plain good sense. He explains in detail, for example, why we need to design security systems that don't just work well, but fail well, and why secrecy on the part of government often undermines security. He also believes, for instance, that national ID cards are an exceptionally bad idea: technically unsound, and even destructive of security. And, contrary to a lot of current nay-sayers, he thinks online shopping is fundamentally safe, and that many of the new airline security measure (though by no means all) are actually quite effective. A skeptic of much that's promised by highly touted technologies like biometrics, Schneier is also a refreshingly positive, problem-solving force in the often self-dramatizing and fear-mongering world of security pundits. Schneier helps the reader to understand the issues at stake, and how to best come to one's own conclusions, including the vast infrastructure we already have in place, and the vaster systems--some useful, others useless or worse--that we're being asked to submit to and pay for. Bruce Schneier is the author of seven books, including Applied Cryptography (which Wired called "the one book the National Security Agency wanted never to be published") and Secrets and Lies (described in Fortune as "startlingly lively...¦[a] jewel box of little surprises you can actually use."). He is also Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Counterpane Internet Security, Inc., and publishes Crypto-Gram, one of the most widely read newsletters in the field of online security.

Beyond HR

Beyond HR
Author :
Publisher : Harvard Business Press
Total Pages : 269
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781422104156
ISBN-13 : 142210415X
Rating : 4/5 (56 Downloads)

Synopsis Beyond HR by : John W. Boudreau

In Beyond HR: The New Science of Human capital, John Boudreau and Peter Ramstad show you how to do this through a new decisions science-talentship. Through talentship, you move far beyond merely reactive mind-set of planning and budgeting for headcount and hiring and retaining talent.

The 360° Corporation

The 360° Corporation
Author :
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Total Pages : 250
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781503610439
ISBN-13 : 1503610438
Rating : 4/5 (39 Downloads)

Synopsis The 360° Corporation by : Sarah Kaplan

Companies are increasingly facing intense pressures to address stakeholder demands from every direction: consumers want socially responsible products; employees want meaningful work; investors now screen on environmental, social, and governance criteria; "clicktivists" create social media storms over company missteps. CEOs now realize that their companies must be social as well as commercial actors, but stakeholder pressures often create trade-offs with demands to deliver financial performance to shareholders. How can companies respond while avoiding simple "greenwashing" or "pinkwashing"? This book lays out a roadmap for organizational leaders who have hit the limits of the supposed win-win of shared value to explore how companies can cope with real trade-offs, innovating around them or even thriving within them. Suggesting that the shared-value mindset may actually get in the way of progress, bestselling author Sarah Kaplan shows in The 360° Corporation how trade-offs, rather than being confusing or problematic, can actually be the source of organizational resilience and transformation.

Trade-Off

Trade-Off
Author :
Publisher : Currency
Total Pages : 242
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780385525954
ISBN-13 : 0385525958
Rating : 4/5 (54 Downloads)

Synopsis Trade-Off by : Kevin Maney

A Fresh and Important New Way to Understand Why We Buy Why did the RAZR ultimately ruin Motorola? Why does Wal-Mart dominate rural and suburban areas but falter in large cities? Why did Starbucks stumble just when it seemed unstoppable? The answer lies in the ever-present tension between fidelity (the quality of a consumer’s experience) and convenience (the ease of getting and paying for a product). In Trade-Off, Kevin Maney shows how these conflicting forces determine the success, or failure, of new products and services in the marketplace. He shows that almost every decision we make as consumers involves a trade-off between fidelity and convenience–between the products we love and the products we need. Rock stars sell out concerts because the experience is high in fidelity-–it can’t be replicated in any other way, and because of that, we are willing to suffer inconvenience for the experience. In contrast, a downloaded MP3 of a song is low in fidelity, but consumers buy music online because it’s superconvenient. Products that are at one extreme or the other–those that are high in fidelity or high in convenience–-tend to be successful. The things that fall into the middle-–products or services that have moderate fidelity and convenience-–fail to win an enthusiastic audience. Using examples from Amazon and Disney to People Express and the invention of the ATM, Maney demonstrates that the most successful companies skew their offerings to either one extreme or the other-–fidelity or convenience-–in shaping products and building brands.

Tradeoffs and Optimization in Analog CMOS Design

Tradeoffs and Optimization in Analog CMOS Design
Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages : 632
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780470033692
ISBN-13 : 047003369X
Rating : 4/5 (92 Downloads)

Synopsis Tradeoffs and Optimization in Analog CMOS Design by : David Binkley

Analog CMOS integrated circuits are in widespread use for communications, entertainment, multimedia, biomedical, and many other applications that interface with the physical world. Although analog CMOS design is greatly complicated by the design choices of drain current, channel width, and channel length present for every MOS device in a circuit, these design choices afford significant opportunities for optimizing circuit performance. This book addresses tradeoffs and optimization of device and circuit performance for selections of the drain current, inversion coefficient, and channel length, where channel width is implicitly considered. The inversion coefficient is used as a technology independent measure of MOS inversion that permits design freely in weak, moderate, and strong inversion. This book details the significant performance tradeoffs available in analog CMOS design and guides the designer towards optimum design by describing: An interpretation of MOS modeling for the analog designer, motivated by the EKV MOS model, using tabulated hand expressions and figures that give performance and tradeoffs for the design choices of drain current, inversion coefficient, and channel length; performance includes effective gate-source bias and drain-source saturation voltages, transconductance efficiency, transconductance distortion, normalized drain-source conductance, capacitances, gain and bandwidth measures, thermal and flicker noise, mismatch, and gate and drain leakage current Measured data that validates the inclusion of important small-geometry effects like velocity saturation, vertical-field mobility reduction, drain-induced barrier lowering, and inversion-level increases in gate-referred, flicker noise voltage In-depth treatment of moderate inversion, which offers low bias compliance voltages, high transconductance efficiency, and good immunity to velocity saturation effects for circuits designed in modern, low-voltage processes Fabricated design examples that include operational transconductance amplifiers optimized for various tradeoffs in DC and AC performance, and micropower, low-noise preamplifiers optimized for minimum thermal and flicker noise A design spreadsheet, available at the book web site, that facilitates rapid, optimum design of MOS devices and circuits Tradeoffs and Optimization in Analog CMOS Design is the first book dedicated to this important topic. It will help practicing analog circuit designers and advanced students of electrical engineering build design intuition, rapidly optimize circuit performance during initial design, and minimize trial-and-error circuit simulations.

A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation

A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation
Author :
Publisher : Island Press
Total Pages : 314
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781642831399
ISBN-13 : 1642831395
Rating : 4/5 (99 Downloads)

Synopsis A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation by : Carolyn Kousky

Tens of millions of Americans are at risk from sea level rise, increased tidal flooding, and intensifying storms. A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation identifies a bold new research and policy agenda and provides implementable options for coastal communities responding to these threats. In this book, coastal adaptation experts present a range of climate adaptation policies that could protect coastal communities against increasing risk, including concrete financing recommendations. Coastal adaptation will not be easy, but it is achievable using varied approaches. A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation will inspire innovative and cross-disciplinary thinking about coastal policy at the state and local level while providing actionable, realistic policy and planning options for adaptation professionals and policymakers.

Gendered Tradeoffs

Gendered Tradeoffs
Author :
Publisher : Russell Sage Foundation
Total Pages : 251
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781610446785
ISBN-13 : 161044678X
Rating : 4/5 (85 Downloads)

Synopsis Gendered Tradeoffs by : Becky Pettit

Gender inequality in the workplace persists, even in nations with some of the most progressive laws and generous family support policies. Yet the dimensions on which inequality is measured—levels of women's employment, number of hours worked, sex segregation by occupations and wages—tell very different stories across industrialized nations. By examining federally guaranteed parental leave, publicly provided child care, and part-time work, and looking across multiple dimensions of inequality, Becky Pettit and Jennifer Hook document the links between specific policies and aggregate outcomes. They disentangle the complex factors, from institutional policies to personal choices, that influence economic inequality. Gendered Tradeoffsdraws on data from twenty-one industrialized nations to compare women's and men's economic outcomes across nations, and over time, in search of a deeper understanding of the underpinnings of gender inequality in different labor markets. Pettit and Hook develop the idea that there are tradeoffs between different aspects of gender inequality in the economy and explain how those tradeoffs are shaped by individuals, markets, and states. They argue that each policy or condition should be considered along two axes—whether it promotes women's inclusion in or exclusion from the labor market and whether it promotes gender equality or inequality among women in the labor market. Some policies advance one objective while undercutting the other. The volume begins by reflecting on gender inequality in labor markets measured by different indicators. It goes on to develop the idea that there may be tradeoffs inherent among different aspects of inequality and in different policy solutions. These ideas are explored in four empirical chapters on employment, work hours, occupational sex segregation, and the gender wage gap. The penultimate chapter examines whether a similar framework is relevant for understanding inequality among women in the United States and Germany. The book concludes with a thorough discussion of the policies and conditions that underpin gender inequality in the workplace. The central thesis of Gendered Tradeoffs is that gender inequality in the workplace is generated and reinforced by national policies and conditions. The contours of inequality across and within countries are shaped by specific aspects of social policy that either relieve or concentrate the demands of care giving within households—usually in the hands of women—and at the same time shape workplace expectations. Pettit and Hook make a strong case that equality for women in the workplace depends not on whether women are included in the labor market but on how they are included.

Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin

Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin
Author :
Publisher : London Publishing Partnership
Total Pages : 288
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781907994678
ISBN-13 : 190799467X
Rating : 4/5 (78 Downloads)

Synopsis Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin by : David Birch

Technology is changing money: it has been transformed from physical objects to intangible information. With the arrival of smart cards, mobile phones and Bitcoin it has become easier than ever to create new forms of money. Crucially, money is also inextricably connected with our identities. Your card or phone is a security device that can identify you – and link information about you to your money. To see where these developments might be taking us, David Birch looks back over the history of money, spanning thousands of years. He sees in the past, both recent and ancient, evidence for several possible futures. Looking further back to a world before cash and central banks, there were multiple ‘currencies’ operating at the level of communities, and the use of barter for transactions. Perhaps technology will take us back to the future, a future that began back in 1971, when money became a claim backed by reputation rather than by physical commodities of any kind. Since then, money has been bits. The author shows that these phenomena are not only possible in the future, but already upon us. We may well want to make transactions in Tesco points, Air Miles, Manchester United pounds, Microsoft dollars, Islamic e-gold or Cornish e-tin. The use of cash is already in decline, and is certain to vanish from polite society. The newest technologies will take money back to its origins: a substitute for memory, a record of mutual debt obligations within multiple overlapping communities. This time though, money will be smart. It will be money that reflects the values of the communities that produced it. Future money will know where it has been, who has been using it and what they have been using it for.

Risk Vs. Risk

Risk Vs. Risk
Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Total Pages : 364
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0674773047
ISBN-13 : 9780674773042
Rating : 4/5 (47 Downloads)

Synopsis Risk Vs. Risk by : John D. Graham

We see the stories in the newspaper nearly every day: a drug hailed as a breakthrough treatment turns out to cause harmful side effects; controls implemented to reduce air pollution are shown to generate hazardous solid waste; bans on dangerous chemicals result in the introduction of even more risky substitutes. Could our efforts to protect our health and the environment actually be making things worse? In Risk versus Risk, John D. Graham, Jonathan Baert Wiener, and their colleagues at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis marshal an impressive set of case studies which demonstrate that all too often our nation's campaign to reduce risks to our health and the environment is at war with itself.