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Now showing items 31-40 of 15788
Out of control? : local democracy failure and fiscal control boards
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
The nation's current recession has strained the finances of local governments such that many cities with already delicate budgets have plunged into fiscal crisis. This dissertation examines three causes of fiscal crisis - ...
Panel data analyses of urban economics and housing markets
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
The thesis looks three pertinent issues in Housing Market and Urban Economics literature with panel data- home sales and house price relationship, efficiency of housing market and commercial property taxation. For the first ...
Practical knowledge and abilities
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
The thesis is an exploration of the relations between know-how, abilities, and ordinary knowledge of facts. It is shown that there is a distinctively practical sort of know-how and a corresponding interpretation of 'S knows ...
Two approaches to human rights
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
Contemporary philosophy of human rights is dominated by two seemingly opposed approaches. This dissertation is concerned with the choice between them. The traditional approach to human rights is characterized by the belief ...
The significance of fairness/
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
This dissertation is about fairness and the role it plays in political and personal morality. Specifically, I investigate when it is appropriate to rely on considerations of fairness to draw substantive conclusions about ...
Flexible bureaucracies : discretion, creativity, and accountability in labor market regulation and public sector management
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
This dissertation is about state bureaucracies and the conditions under which they learn, innovate, and play a positive role in social and economic development. It takes issue with the extant literature on the topic, which ...
The articulatory basis of positional asymmetries in phonological acquisition
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
Child phonological processes that lack counterparts in adult phonological typology have long posed a problem for formal modeling of phonological acquisition. This dissertation investigates child-specific processes with a ...
Compliance and competitiveness : how prosecutors enforce labor and environmental laws and promote economic development in Brazil
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
This dissertation bridges the fields of international development, legal sociology, and organizational behavior to examine how Brazilian prosecutors enforce labor and environmental laws. Typically, the enforcement of ...
Exploring flexible strategies in engineering systems using screening models : applications to offshore petroleum projects
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
Engineering Systems, such as offshore petroleum exploration and production systems, generally require a significant amount of capital investment under various technical and market uncertainties. Choosing appropriate designs ...
A screening model to explore planning decisions in automotive manufacturing systems under demand uncertainty
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
Large-scale, complex engineering systems, as for automotive manufacturing, often require significant capital investment and resources for systems configuration. Furthermore, these systems operate in environments that are ...