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A consumer is considered as a person or a group of people who uses purchased goods, products, or services only for personal use, and not for manufacturing or resale. Consumers usually purchase valuable and useful commodities or goods by spending all or partial of their income. The property of a commodity that enables it to satisfy human wants is called utility. Producers must be conscious to increase the utility among the consumers. This study has considered the maximization of utility problem of consumers of Bangladesh subject to two constraints; namely, budget constraint and coupon constraint. Consequently, in the study two Lagrange multipliers are used and interpreted these with mathematical analysis. Prediction of consumer behavior will help both producers and consumers to take decision of their future economic productions and consumptions, respectively. This article is ornamented with sufficient theorems and economic analyses. So that all the readers find interest when go through the economic analysis of utility maximization.

Joint activities for global water partnerships in regional development programs are usually facilitated by implementing transboundary water projects. Most projects are however hampered by the absence of a clear economic base for making investment decisions. In this paper, we propose a zero-one integer programming model to determine the optimal decisions for selection of project portfolios on transboundary waters; where project selection is based on several time periods in the future.The objective is to determine whether to undertake a project or not; so that the net present value of investment returns is maximized to support needy communities. A numerical example is presented for illustration; demonstrating the optimal choice of investment projects under budget constraints. The zero-one integer programming model provides a feasible solution for choice of transboundary project investment decisions; given the competing nature of capital budgets prior project implementation. The proposed model can be efficient; where limited funds among competing projects serve as a basis for project selection criteria; a decision for facilitation enhancement towards water partnership for regional development.

Characterizing the demand curve of products is important for pricing them optimally. However, in deriving empirical demand curves, econometricians have to contend with identification issues. Furthermore, theoretical demand curves derived using standard economic theory are divorced from empirical realities: firms rarely have information on customers’ budget constraints; theoretical utility functions are seldom derived empirically. Recognizing these issues, we propose an experimental approach for determining a product’s demand curve and, in turn, its profit-maximizing price in online environments. The proposed approach yields precise estimates and is quick and inexpensive to implement.

Libraries must know and fulfill every information needs of their users. This descriptive study wants to find out strategies for meeting information needs and the obstacles experienced by users in meeting information needs at the Makassar Islamic and Arabic Language College Library (STIBA)? Research data was obtained from informants who are users. The results of the study indicate that the STIBA library has tried to meet the information needs of its users while the constraints experienced by librarians in meeting the needs of users are budget constraints.

We study whether two groups of mental health care providers—each paid according to a different payment scheme—adjusted the duration of their patients' treatments after they faced an exogenous 20% drop in the number of patients. For the first group of providers, self-employed providers, we find that they did not increase treatment duration to recoup their income loss. Treatment duration thresholds in the stepwise fee-for-service payment function seem to have prevented these providers to treat patients longer. For the second group of providers, large mental health care institutions who were subject to a budget constraint, we find an average increase in treatment duration of 8%. Prior rationing combined with professional uncertainty can explain this increase. We find suggestive evidence for overtreatment of patients as the longer treatments did not result in better patient outcomes, i.e. better General Assessment of Functioning scores.

Upgrading a legacy network to a Software Defined Network in stages, and minimizing the energy consumption of a network are now of great interest to operators. To this end, this paper addresses a novel problem: minimize the energy consumption of a network by upgrading switches over multiple stages subject to the available monetary budget at each stage. Our problem considers (i) bundled links that can be powered-off individually, (ii) decreasing upgrade cost and increasing traffic demands over multiple stages, and (iii) rerouting demands to an alternative path with a delay that is within a predefined limit. Additionally, the link load on the path is no larger than a given maximum utilization. We formulate the problem as an Integer Linear Program and propose a greedy heuristic called Green Multi-Stage Switch Upgrade (GMSU). Experiment results on five actual network topologies show that: 1) our approaches reduce the energy consumption by up to 73.98%; 2) rerouting traffic demand via longer paths improves the energy saving by up to 9.6%; 3) GMSU produces results that are at most 4.83% from the optimal result; and 4) increasing the budget and the number of stages affect the total energy saved and the number of upgraded switches.

Types and complexity of information security related vulnerabilities are growing rapidly and present numerous challenges to the enterprises. One of the key challenges is to identify the optimal set of precautions with limited budget. Despite the fact that majority of enterprises have a budget constraint for installing and maintaining the protection systems, the majority of the previous work only focus on prioritization of security targets and do not consider the preventative actions and budget constraints. This article presents a decision support system (DSS) based on analytical hierarchical process and mixed integer programming techniques for optimal selection of enterprise information security preventative actions. The proposed approach enables maximizing the amount of risk prevented for a fixed amount of budget by identifying the optimal set of precautions. The new DSS also assists enterprise decision-makers in determining the minimum enterprise information security budget for a given level of risk. The main contribution of the paper is that it provides a risk management method to identify a multi-level threat model and the corresponding optimal combination of preventative actions for an enterprise while considering the budget constraints. The treemap information visualization technique is also integrated into the proposed method to improve information security related management decisions.

Based on the perspective of new structural economics, this paper reviews each stage of China's state-owned enterprise reform, summarizes their main features, and argues that the root of state-owned enterprise's low efficiency and soft budget constraints is their strategic and social policy burdens. According to the state-owned enterprise's existing situation, the paper provides suggestions for deepening its reform.

Logistics network is one of the most important parts of supply chains with significant share in achieving sustainability across them. In this paper, we investigate a new multi-objective mixed integer linear programming model for the design of multimodal logistics network. A bi-objective mathematical model is introduced and two conflicting objectives including the minimization of total cost and the total environmental impact are taken into account. Effective environmental life cycle assessment-based method is incorporated in the model to estimate the relevant environmental impacts. Due to budget constraints, financing decisions for facility construction are considered in the proposed model. To cope with the model objective functions, the augmented ε-constraint method is applied. Computational analysis is also provided by using a cement multimodal rail-road logistics network case study to present the significance of the proposed model. Results show that utilizing the proposed multi-period optimization model influences the location of multimodal terminals and their construction time. Also, the results show that the use of the proposed model enhances the efficiency of terminals. On the other hand, computational results indicate that preferences of decision-makers and the importance of environmental objective have significant impacts on the topology of transportation network.

This study uses a Japanese nationwide sample and experimentally compares rebate and matching, both of which are schemes intended to lower the price of monetary donation. Standard economic theory predicts that the two schemes will have the same effect on individuals’ donation behavior when their donation price is equivalent. However, we conduct an incentivized economic experiment through the Internet on 2300 Japanese residents, and find that matching, which lowers the donation price by adding a contribution from a third-party, increases individuals’ donation expenditures compared to rebate, which lowers it through a refund from a third-party. The experimental result shows that the donation expenditure in a 50% rebate treatment drops by approximately 126 Japanese yen compared to the control, while in a 1:1 matching treatment with essentially the same price of donation as the 50% rebate, the expenditure conversely rises by approximately 56 Japanese yen. This tendency is consistent with the results of previous experimental studies comparing the two schemes. We further empirically confirm that the superiority of 1:1 matching over 50% rebate is not conclusively influenced by the participants’ confusion or misunderstanding, or budget constraint lines’ difference between the two schemes. Although the Japanese government has previously enriched rebate’s content, the level of monetary donations by the Japanese people is still low on an international scale. Based on this study’s findings, we discuss the possibility that implementing matching into the society effectively encourages their donation behavior.

The real exchange rate (RER) measures relative price levels across countries, capturing deviations from purchasing power parity (PPP). RER is a key variable in international macroeconomic models as it is central to equilibrium conditions in both goods and asset markets. It is also one of the most starkly-behaved variables empirically, tightly co-moving with the nominal exchange rate and virtually uncorrelated with most other macroeconomic variables, nominal or real. This survey lays out an equilibrium framework of RER determination, focusing separately on each building block and discussing corresponding empirical evidence. We emphasize home bias and incomplete pass-through into prices with expenditure switching and goods market clearing, imperfect international risk sharing, country budget constraint and monetary policy regime. We show that RER is inherently a general-equilibrium variable, which depends on the full model structure and policy regime, and therefore partial theories like PPP are insufficient to explain it. We also discuss issues of stationarity and predictability of exchange rates. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Tourism transport is becoming a crucial part of the tourism industry. Determining the reliability of tourism transport networks is required by travel agencies and other practitioners. However, much of recent reliability assessments cannot utilize directly for tourism transport networks. Moreover, there exists a lack of passengers-oriented reliability evaluation that involves the impacts of latency. Therefore, this study assesses reliability regarding carrying the required number of passengers to their destination under budget and time constraints when considering late arrivals. For reliability assessment, an algorithm, which combines the concept of the minimal path adding a searching procedure with the Recursive Sum of Disjoint Products method, is proposed. An illustrative example is adopted to provide travel agencies with an intuitive visualization of the proposed algorithm. Reliability analysis suggests improving the performance of tourism transport networks.

Nonmonetary mechanisms for repeated allocation and decision making are gaining widespread use in many real-world settings. Our aim in this work is to study the performance and incentive properties of simple mechanisms based on artificial currencies in such settings. To this end, we make the following contributions: For a general allocation setting, we provide two black-box approaches to convert any one-shot monetary mechanism to a dynamic nonmonetary mechanism using an artificial currency that simultaneously guarantees vanishing gains from nontruthful reporting over time and vanishing losses in performance. The two mechanisms trade off between their applicability and their computational and informational requirements. Furthermore, for settings with two agents, we show that a particular artificial currency mechanism also results in a vanishing price of anarchy.

In today’s multisector configurations, there is little clarity about whether and how public and private subsidies influence social enterprises’ pursuit of financial stability. We address the strategic role of donors in the social-business life cycle whereby social enterprise start-ups rely on subsidies, while mature social enterprises strive for independence from donors. To address the “missing middle,” we develop a typology of subsidy instruments and an intermediary signaling model to clarify how subsidies shape the evolution of outcomes for social enterprises. We argue that source variation matters for certain instruments like corporate intangibles and governmentally subsidized credit guarantees, which trigger crowding-in effects and attract commercial partners, while preventing perverse crowding-out effects, such as soft budget constraints. To illustrate this commercialization story, we draw upon a microfinance case study, demonstrating how public and private donors can induce crowding-in and crowding-out effects. In short, our subsidy typology helps unpack the signals that public and private subsidies send to commercial funders of social enterprises and how they shape the path to future financial independence.

Using the Heckman procedure with the data of the European Investment Bank on investment projects implemented on the principles of PPP, the paper identifies factors that are significant for the development of PPP. In particular, the use of PPP turned out to be most sensitive to the maturity of economic development, as well as to the state’s budgetary constraints, which do not allow building all the necessary infrastructure for providing public goods at the expense of the budget. At the same time, there has been found no statistically stable relationship between the institutional environment and the implementation of PPP projects, which may be so due to the quality of the sample — for developing countries, the importance of institutional environment factors, as well as macroeconomic stability, would most likely be more obvious.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study how budgetary constraints can have ethical implications on patient treatment options. Design/methodology/approach By applying a qualitative methodological approach (interviews) and participant observation, this paper studies the behaviour of surgeons in scenarios of financial restriction. Findings The empirical findings show that despite the conflict between the economy and the leges artis, surgeons maintain the ethical and deontological principles of their profession with fair rules of orientation. Practical implications The importance of this study can be realised by its continuity. One of the authors is already implicated on a wider research to investigate the influence of the economic scarcity of resources on general surgeons’ ethical behaviours. Social implications This paper is a contribution to understanding the rules that restrain the activities of surgeons. Politicians sometimes do not have a full understanding of the pressures that the medical profession faces in their day-to-day activities. Currently, with the addition of problems relate to COVID-19, politicians and populations seem to better understand the importance of the Serviço Nacional de Saúde (SNS), This paper hopes that this understanding will be not only a conjectural moment. Originality/value In conjunction with the economic recession that began in the first decade of this century, health institutions have long faced budgetary constraints that condition their material and human resources and correspondingly shape the scope of health professional activities. Until now, it has not been studied the impact of economic crises on the ethical behaviour of Portuguese surgeons. Therefore, this research is a first step and a useful contribution to understanding the rules that can restrain (or not) the ethical conduct of these health professionals.

This paper analyzes how aging parents' health conditions affect household labor supply. I propose a time-use model with wage heterogeneity and assume that care responsibilities involve both time and budget constraints. When households can purchase care services, differences in secondary earners' wages and care requirements lead to heterogeneity in household responses to a parental health shock. Primary earners and high-wage secondary earners work more. I confirm the model's predictions by using panel data from the Health and Retirement Study to construct an exogenous shock from the change in parents' health conditions and estimate its impact on labor supply.

The subject of the study is the processes of budget decentralization in the management of public finances, as well as mathematical methods and models for implementing the concept of hard budget restrictions in order to create conditions for the self-development of administrative-territorial units. The aim of the study is to develop adaptive economic and mathematical models for implementing the strategy of hard budget constraints implemented in the process of inter-budget regulation. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that currently the subject of acute discussion in the scientific community is the self-development of administrative-territorial entities and increasing their financial independence. In this regard, the focus of economic research is focused on the problems of budgetary decentralization as an engine of economic development, as well as the related topics of the use of mathematical tools for modeling decision support in this area. The created models are subject to the requirements of learnability, adaptability to changing conditions of environmental influences, and the ability to operate not only with quantitative, but also with qualitatively defined characteristics. The problem of mathematical modeling is solved by applying an interdisciplinary synthesis of the theories of stochastic automata operating in random environments and fuzzy logic. The proposed synthesis of theoretical and methodological devices is the novelty of the research. As a result , an economic and mathematical model of a fuzzy automaton is constructed for determining and quantifying the values of the norms for the distribution of tax revenues between budgets of different levels of the budget system. A fuzzy automaton interacts with a simulation model that reproduces budget flows and quantifies the decisions made by the automaton model. The practical significance of the research results lies in the program implementation of the developed models and their inclusion in the public finance management circuit. In the future , it is planned to create a mathematical model of the collective behavior of fuzzy automata models, the interaction of which solves the problem of coordinating the interests of budgets of different levels of the hierarchy in the distribution of tax revenues.

Many academic libraries make streaming video content available to their users on the Kanopy platform. This article explores how libraries have approached Kanopy’s various access models, of which th...