Love of Variety and Immigration

This paper develops a political-economic analysis of immigration in a developed country that operates in a direct democracy regime. It shows that, in a monopolistic competitive environment with differentiated capital intensive commodities produced under increasing returns to scale, labor liberalization is more likely to come about in the societies that have more taste for varieties. This is due to the availability of more and cheaper varieties. It also shows that, the workers and capital owners could share the same positive stance toward labor liberalization. It follows that the latter is impossible in a perfect competitive environment. Finally, in a two period dynamic model with forward looking voters, it demonstrates that the median voter is willing to accept fewer immigrants in the first period, in order to preserve her domestic political influence in the second period due to the naturalization of the immigrants accepted in the first period. Using this strategy, the median voter maximizes her gains from immigration by accepting more immigrants in total at the end of the second period. However, the richer the forward looking median voter, the less restricted will be the policy of the host country toward immigration in the first period.Immigration, Long Run General Equilibrium, Direct Democracy, Perfect Competition, Monopolistic Competition, Factor Price Equalization.

The assessment of the safety factor with Probability Based Design and Euro code 7 in a slope stability case study

Slope stability accidents are widely spread in geotechnical calculation field.The purpose of this paper is to present an artificial slope stability case study,constructed in Porto Romano area (near Durres city, Albania). This embankment was foreseen to be building in a conic trunk shape, with diameter in base 43 m, height 10 m and inclination ratio 1:3, which was also used as a load during the consolidation process within the Preloading Mitigation Seismic Risk study of this area.The way of embankment's construction was suggested by the team of engineers, which performed the slope stability calculations during the design phase.Our study aims to deal with the recalculation of safety factor using Probability Based Design and Eurocode 7 Design Approaches after it failed at 6.45 m of height.After the recalculation we could estimate the causes that led to the failure

Monitoring, endogenous comparative advantage, and immigration

We propose a theory of free movement of goods and labor between two economies in the presence of moral hazard. Each country produces two final goods where the productive efforts of workers cannot be perfectly observed, or verified only in the complex industry. We show that national institutional quality and the system of the early childhood care and education determine the pattern of international trade. However, individuals' decisions to emigrate depend only on the national institutional quality, where the country with more developed institutions serves as the host country of immigrants. We conclude that international labor movement promotes international trade

The Assessment Of Slopes Stability With Probability Methods

This paper aims to deal with the assessment of the stability of slopes, taking inconsideration several methods for analysis:- the limit equilibrium methods such as the Infinitive Slope method, Bishop's simplifiedmethod etc. upon which assumptions are made on the considered failure surface and theinternal forces interacting between the blocks, the equilibrium equations to be satisfied, theunknown variables to be determined (such as the safety factor and normal force) and the areaswithin which these methods could apply.- the probability methods in which the coefficient of variation of the factor of safety(COVF) is determined, (as the ratio of standard deviation to the mean coefficient of the safetyfactor, previously calculated), reliability R (as the probability of a certain case occurring in acertain way, at a certain time, in given conditions), the probability of failure Pf (as 1-R).Following the theoretical analysis, a number of numerical examples are included in order to illustrate in a more explicit manner the methodology used for the application of the assessment methods mentioned above, as well as to highlight the particularities and differences of each method

Design of bearing capacity of the driven piles of a highway bridge foundation according to 3 different methods

Contemporary design methods of bearing capacity of deep foundation (pile foundation) change according to different design codes. The main requisition of the designing process of the deep foundation is related with the axial bearing capacity, which should be sufficient to withstand the applied loads. Many authors has developed and published detailed methods to analyze the behavior of a single reinforced concrete pile or a group of piles, based on vertical bearing capacity due to lateral friction or residence at the pile point. The goal of this paper is to illustrate the calculation methods according to 3 analytical methods of vertical bearing capacity of bored single pile and group of piles of a bridge foundation. Only the vertical loads are considered during the design process. Shear loads and bending moment act as horizontal loads on the group of piles. A comparison between three different methods is shown to determine the bearing capacity and the stress limit allowed. The bridge is located in the 26 kilometer of Elbasan-Tiranë highway