Economists tend to exalt the virtues of free international trade, while politicians are more skeptical. This paper suggests that this is the case because politicians mainly worry about the income distribution effects of trade liberalization, while economists focus on efficiency. Using textbook economic analyses we show that compensating the income distribution effects of free trade may be more ...

Choosing the scope of a plan is a fundamental question for plan makers. This question arises both in explaining plan making we observe and in justifying plan making we recommend. We frame this question from the perspective of potential participants, from the bottom up, rather than from the perspective of creating a planning process by expert judgment about scope, from the top down, such as an a...

BACKGROUND To evaluate a knowledge based planning model for RapidPlan (RP) generated for advanced head and neck cancer (HNC) patient treatments, as well its ability to possibly improve the clinical plan quality. The stability of the model was assessed also for a different beam geometry, different dose fractionation and different management of bilateral structures (parotids). METHODS Dosimetri...

In Iran, new centralization characteristic, especially during Pahlavi dynasty, has been convergence and its vast use in bureaucracy. Historical sociological studies have consensus on the issues of centralization, power centralization, and political sovereignty in Iran; however, these issues have some divisional interruptions and different levels of strength in some parts of the history. This es...

On December 6, 2006, the Centre for Trade Policy and Law at Carleton University organized a conference on the theme "Inte-grative Trade between Canada and the United States—Policy Implications". The discussion was structured around three main papers, which constitute the next three chapters of this volume: Timothy Sturgeon, "Conceptualizing Integrative Trade: The Global Value Chains Framework",...

A survey of AI systems would reveal that it is somewhat awkward to do acting in reasoning (or logic-based) systems (but it is convenient to talk about representational and reasoning issues using them), and it is awkward to study reasoning and representational issues in systems designed for acting/planning. Thus, most "good" planning/acting systems are "bad" KRR systems and vice versa. For examp...

This paper addresses the issues involved in software agents making trade-offs during automated negotiations in which they have information uncertainty and resource limitations. In particular, the importance of being able to make tradeoffs in real-world applications is highlighted and a novel algorithm for performing trade-offs for multi-dimensional goods is developed. The algorithm uses the not...

One of the most important activities in the management of input items of a company is focusing on the process of purchasing, supplier selection and allocating order to suppliers. Decisions about supplier selection due to simultaneously taking inconsistent and diverse issues into account in a wide range of strategic to operational factors, and from quantitative to qualitative criteria will be co...