<p>Halving poverty until 2015 is something that all member states of United Nation have agreed up on by adopting the Millennium Development Goals MDG in 1991. The question asked in this paper is how much aid is needed in Tanzania, to reduce poverty by half. The method we use links estimated annual economic growth rates to the required amount of aid needed to halve poverty.</p><p>This study finds that during 2002-2015 Tanzania should receive between $37 to $43 (2002 US dollar) per year and capita depending on the underlying assumptions. Between 1994 and 2002 Tanzania received 36 dollar per year and capita so the amount of aid must at least be kept on the same level as preceding years and perhaps be increased to reach the goal of halving poverty until 2015.</p><p>Moreover, this study only calculates the cost of reaching the first MDG and not the cost of reaching the remaining goals stated in the United Nations Millennium Declaration.</p>

The amount and morphology of the graphite phase largely controls the resulting properties of cast iron. For instance, in flake graphite cast irons the mechanical properties are low while the thermal conductivity is high. This is in contrast with spheroidal graphite cast irons where the mechanical properties are high and the thermal conductivity is low. These differences are due to the different graphite morphologies and must be accounted for in the design work and material selection of cast iron components. In this work the influence of the graphite phase on the elastic and plastic deformation behaviour of cast irons has been studied. The material grades studied originate from castings for marine diesel engine piston rings with different chemical analyses. Two groups of pearlitic cast iron materials were studied; one with differences in graphite morphology and one with grey irons that differed in graphite content. For these different material grades the mechanical properties were correlated to microstructural parameters. In addition to standard uniaxial tensile tests, acoustic emission measurements were used for the study of deformation. When studying the modulus of elasticity of the cast iron it was found that the modulus of elasticity of the inherent graphite phase depends on the roundness of the graphite particles and is due to the strong anisotropy of the graphite phase. A linear correlation between nodularity and the modulus of elasticity of the graphite phase was derived. This correlation made it possible to account for the anisotropy of the graphite phase in the model used. By applying the linear function when modelling the effective modulus of elasticity, a high accuracy between experimental and theoretical values was achieved. Another factor affecting the elastic response when subjecting a cast iron component to tensile load was found to be the plastic deformation that actually occurs at very low strains for all of the studied cast iron grades. It was observed that the plastic deformation in the low strain elastic region, quantified by using acoustic emission measurements, increased linearly with decreasing modulus of elasticity. These measurements showed that the amount of plastic deformation in the elastic region was largely controlled by the graphite morphology. It was concluded that as the roundness of the graphite particles increases, the plastic deformation activity in the elastic region decreases. The plastic deformation activity continued linearly into the pronounced plastic region of the tensile tests. A decrease in roundness or increase in graphite fraction resulted in an increase of the amount of plastic deformation and the strain hardening exponent. A dependence between strength coefficient and graphite fraction was observed. Models for the flow curves for pearlitic cast irons were developed and shown to accurately reproduce the observed experimental curves. The surveys performed and conclusions from this thesis will be helpful in the design of new cast iron materials.

Halving poverty until 2015 is something that all member states of United Nation have agreed up on by adopting the Millennium Development Goals MDG in 1991. The question asked in this paper is how much aid is needed in Tanzania, to reduce poverty by half. The method we use links estimated annual economic growth rates to the required amount of aid needed to halve poverty. This study finds that during 2002-2015 Tanzania should receive between $37 to $43 (2002 US dollar) per year and capita depending on the underlying assumptions. Between 1994 and 2002 Tanzania received 36 dollar per year and capita so the amount of aid must at least be kept on the same level as preceding years and perhaps be increased to reach the goal of halving poverty until 2015. Moreover, this study only calculates the cost of reaching the first MDG and not the cost of reaching the remaining goals stated in the United Nations Millennium Declaration.

In this thesis, we analyze the impact of the decentralization of price and leadtime decisions made by the marketing and production departments, respectively, in a make-to-order firm. We first study a monopoly environment, and find that in the decentralized setting, the total demand generated is larger, leadtimes are longer, quoted prices are lower, and the firm profits are lower as compared to the centralized setting. We show that coordination can be achieved using a transfer price contract with bonus payments, where both departments receive a fraction of the total revenues generated as a bonus payment. In the second study, we extend this work to a duopoly environment, where two firms compete on the basis of their price and leadtime quotes in a common market. We find that under intense price competition, firms may suffer from a decentralized structure, particularly under high flexibility induced by high capacity, where revenue based sales incentives motivate sales/marketing for more aggressive price cuts resulting in eroding margins. We take the parameters of the demand models in the first two studies as constant, while estimating those parameters based on historical data is a very important problem in practice. In the last study of this thesis, we address the challenges encountered in estimating the price sensitivity of customers shifting focus to the passenger travel industry. We explore how to obtain better price elasticity estimates through an empirical study with an emphasis on the endogeneity problem, which arises as a result of the simultaneous determination of supply and demand. We show that if one does not account for endogeneity, price elasticities may induce an upward-sloping demand curve suggesting that high price produces high demand, or may be biased downward to the extent that elastic demand curves are incorrectly classified as inelastic. We show the improvement in price elasticities through an instrumental variable approach.

Theoretical strength of solids is defined as the ultimate strength beyond which plastic deformation, fracture, or decohesion would occur. Understanding the microscopic origin from quantum mechanics and thermoelastic formulation is of great importance to mechanical properties and engineering design of various solids. While quite a few theory models have been made in the past century by several generations of scientists, including Frankel and Born, a general and convincing framework has not been fully established. We study this issue from three respects: (1) Unify various elastic stability criteria for solids that determine an upper bound of theoretical strength; (2) with ab initio method, we test the elastic stability conditions of crystal Au. The phenomenon of bifurcation is observed: under hydrostatic expansion, the rhombohedral modulus reaches zero first of all; while under uniaxial tensile stress, the tetragonal shear modulus first reaches zero; (3) propose a nonlinear theoretical formulation of stability criterion. As an analytic method, this scheme is quite simple, in the mean time, it saves computation resource.

個人捐贈為教育、文化及公益慈善機構或團體的重要經費來源，目前我國於租稅上，提供捐贈者可扣抵其課稅所得的租稅誘因，相當於政府利用補貼的方式，降低了捐贈者的捐贈成本。但是否能有效達到激勵捐贈者的效果，則待實證研究分析。 本研究利用民國92年綜合所得稅申報資料分析，實證結果得知，慈善捐贈金額與可支配所得呈正向且顯著的關係；租稅價格變動對慈善捐贈金額變動有負向且顯著之影響，顯示目前政府的租稅政策能夠有效刺激捐贈，但針對高所得者價格彈性的有效性則降低。薪資所得佔可支配所得比率與捐贈金額呈正向之關係。納稅義務人的年齡越大、未婚、女性，較有慈善捐贈的意願。但納稅人申報扶養親屬人數較多及申報自用住宅購屋借款利息較多者，捐贈意願較低。最後，納稅義務人所在的地區也會影響其捐贈支出，隨著納稅人可支配所得增加，地域性的影響也逐漸減小。 / Individual charitable giving is an important source of finance for a wide variety of nonprofit organizations. Charitable contributions are deductible in determining taxable income; therefore, the current income tax system makes the price of charitable contributions less than the price of other goods and services. The deduction can be viewed as a tax subsidy. Whether the tax subsidy can stimulate charitable giving or not should be examined by empirical research. This study uses tax return data obtained from the Taiwan Government Finance and Tax Statistical Databank (for the year 2004). The results indicate that the income elasticity of charitable giving has positive and significant effect on charitable giving; while the tax price elasticity estimate is found to have a negative effect, except for the group of high income taxpayers. Beside price and income, salary to disposable income ratio varies with the giving. Female, married, and elder taxpayers are more likely to donate. However, a taxpayer who claims more deductions for dependents or primary residential house interests will be reluctant to give money to charities. The taxpayer’s registered permanent residence is found to have a strong influence on charitable giving. Nevertheless, as taxpayer’s disposable income increases, the regional factor is diminished gradually. The evidence presented in this study provides a useful foundation for the government to devise the future policy on the charitable deductions.

The main aim of this thesis was to describe and evaluate the price trend of poultry in selected countries of European Union during the period 2003 2013. The first part of the thesis is focused on theoretical knowledge - the definition of price, pricing terms, pricing methods, factors that influence the price level, the elasticity of demand, legislation and Common Agricultural Policy. It is followed by methodology. In this part procedures and formulas are used to achieve the aim. Practical part is the most important part of the thesis. It describes the evolution price of poultry in selected countries of European Union during the period 2003-2013. In this part is tested existence seasonal fluctuation of price and dependence prices on revenue population. There is also calculated elasticity of demand and prediction of the future price of poultry until 2016. The conclusion sums up results of practical parts.

The main objective of this work is to evaluate the dependency of the price of beef in the income of households. For the six selected EU will be examined twelve consecutive period from 2001 to 2012 will be used for the calculation of trend analysis, the coefficient of elasticity and correlation index. On the basis of these results was to confirm that the four selected countries dependence prices of beef in the income of households. These states are the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany and Austria. In Poland and Hungary dependence was refuted.

Le principe d'élasticité est d'assurer que juste les ressources nécessaires sont provisionnées pour préserver le bon fonctionnement des services Cloud. La propriété d'élasticité permet d'éviter la sous-utilisation et la sur-utilisation des ressources. La propriété d'élasticité a attiré beaucoup d'attention ces dernières années comme une tâche pivot qui permet d'assurer un bon compromis entre les QdS désirées et les coûts opérationnels des AbSs. Toutefois, le contrôle d'élasticité des AbSs et la définition des stratégies d'élasticité non-triviales sont encore des tâches difficiles à réaliser. Une stratégie d'élasticité est utilisée pour gérer l'élasticité en décidant des trois éléments essentiels: 'quand', 'où' et 'comment' utiliser les mécanismes d'élasticité (par exemple, les opérations de duplication/consolidation de services) qui permettent d'assurer les objectifs de QdS avec une consommation optimisée des ressources. La complexité de définition de stratégies d'élasticité augmente avec les métriques de QdS considérées. La difficulté de cette tâche est de plus accentuée avec l'absence d'un langage unifiée pour exprimer ces stratégies. Notre travail de thèse vise à remédier aux limites des approches existantes pour la gestion des stratégies d'élasticité. Il consiste à développer un langage pour décrire différents types des stratégies d'élasticité d'une façon unifiée. Nous définissons un modèle formel qui cadre l'ensemble de métriques à considérer, définit les opérations d'élasticité à appliquer et spécifie les lois d'émission de requêtes. Ce modèle servira aussi pour appliquer et valider les stratégies spécifiées. Nous travaillons en plus sur l'alignement des contrats de qualités de services (Service Level Agreement) avec les stratégies d'élasticité. / Elasticity is the ability of a system to be adjustable to workload change by allocating and releasing as many resources as needed while ensuring the agreed QoS. It has played a pivotal role in many research works for ensuring QoS. Therefore, Elasticity management is witnessing a lot of attention from IT community as a pivotal issue for finding the right tradeoffs between QoS levels and operational costs by working on developing novel methods and mechanisms. However, controlling business process elasticity and defining non-trivial elasticity strategies are challenging issues. Elasticity strategies are policies that are used to manage elasticity by deciding when, where and how to use elasticity mechanisms (e.g, adding or removing resources). Many strategies can be defined to ensure applications elasticity. The abundance of possible strategies requires their evaluation and validation in order to guarantee their effectiveness before using them in real Cloud environments. Our thesis work aims to overcome the limitations of the existing approaches for elasticity strategies management. It consists in developing a configurable Domain-Specific language to describe different types of elasticity strategies in a unified way. We define a formal model that captures a set of QoS metrics and defines elasticity operations. This model will also be used to define and verify elasticity strategies. We will also work on the alignment of Service Level Agreements with the elasticity strategies.

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