Design knowledge capture for a corporate memory facility

Currently, much of the information regarding decision alternatives and trade-offs made in the course of a major program development effort is not represented or retained in a way that permits computer-based reasoning over the life cycle of the program. The loss of this information results in problems in tracing design alternatives to requirements, in assessing the impact of change in requirements, and in configuration management. To address these problems, the problem was studied of building an intelligent, active corporate memory facility which would provide for the capture of the requirements and standards of a program, analyze the design alternatives and trade-offs made over the program's lifetime, and examine relationships between requirements and design trade-offs. Early phases of the work have concentrated on design knowledge capture for the Space Station Freedom. Tools are demonstrated and extended which helps automate and document engineering trade studies, and another tool is being developed to help designers interactively explore design alternatives and constraints

The Gains from Improved Market Efficiency: Trade Before and After the Transatlantic Telegraph

This paper looks at the gains from improved market efficiency in long-distance grain trade in the second half of the 19th century when violations of the law of one price were reduced due to improved information transmission. Two markets, a major export centre, Chicago, and a major importer, Liverpool, are analyzed. We show that there was a law of one price equilibrium throughout the period but that markets displayed spells of demand- or supply-constrained trade when the law of one price was violated. Over time adjustments back to equilibrium, as measured by the half-life of a shock, become faster, violations of the law of one price become smaller and hence less persistent. There were also significant gains from improved market efficiency but that improvement took place after the information ‘regime’ shifted from pre-telegraphic communication to a regime with swift transmission of information in an era which developed a sophisticated commercial press and telegraphic communication. Improved market efficiency probably stimulated trade more than falling transport costs.market integration; error correction; law of one price

The Nature and Costs of Dis-Equilibrium Trade: The Case of Transatlantic Grain Exports in the 19th Century

The essential issue addressed in this paper is whether inefficient spatial arbitrage has significant welfare effects. The paper looks at the gains from improved market efficiency in transatlantic grain trade in the period 1855-1895. It shows that there is a law of one price equilibrium but that markets display spells of demand- or supply- constrained trade. Over time adjustments back to equilibrium as measured by the half-life of a shock become faster, and adjustment parameters are much larger than routinely reported in the PPP-literature. There are also significant gains from improved market efficiency but most of that improvement takes place in one step after the information ‘regime’ shifts from pre-telegraphic communication to a regime with swift transmission of information in an era with a sophisticated commercial press and telegraphic communication. Improved market efficiency probably stimulated trade more than falling transport costs.market integration; error correction; law of one price

The influence of human rights on land rights and spatial information

This paper reviews the growing influence of human rights issues on land rights, administration, management and tenure. In the last few decades, attention focussed on integrating economic and environmental considerations to achieve sustainable land use. The World Trade Organisation began in 1995. As a condition of membership, nations undertook legislative programmes aimed at reducing price distortions and barriers to international trade. Reducing trade barriers has direct effects on agricultural production as a major land use. Similarly, as signatories to the 1992 Rio Declaration, nations undertook caring for and reporting on the state of the environment. However, quality of life is also an issue in deciding what is sustainable development. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed in 1948, provided a framework for a series of international human rights conventions. These conventions now influence national legislative programmes. The purpose of this paper is to review some of the implications of human rights on rights in land and the production and use of spatial information

Trends in the Marine Aquarium Trade: the Influence of Global Economics and Technology

The marine aquarium hobby is a global industry with trade chains on six continents. This industry is undergoing rapid changes in hob byist preferences that are in part driven by global economies and technology. In an effort to better assess the past trends and help provide insight into future growth and demand, we assessed three different trade data sources, the United States-State of Florida Marine Life Landings, CITES stony coral imports, and United States Fish and Wildlife Service’s Law Enforcement Information Systems import data for ‘live rock’. Data for the past 10 years were analyzed and a clear trend of growth followed by decline was observed with the peak and degree of decline varying for the different trade categories. While the global economic downturn decreased trade volumes across the board other forces have dramatically affected the importation of coral reef products. ‘Live Rock’ and Florida produced ‘live sand’ dramatically decreased two years prior to the global economic recession. The decline of these trade categories coincides with rapid changes in technology used to maintain captive reef aquariums which allowed for the advent of the smaller “nano” reef tanks. Importing and exporting countries, CITES and other international government bodies, concerned Non-Governmental Organizations and scientist would greatly benefit from a deeper understanding of this industry from a producer and consumer standpoint in order to better predict how the marine aquarium hobby will be shaped by external forces in the future

A PAC-Bayesian Analysis of Graph Clustering and Pairwise Clustering

We formulate weighted graph clustering as a prediction problem: given a subset of edge weights we analyze the ability of graph clustering to predict the remaining edge weights. This formulation enables practical and theoretical comparison of different approaches to graph clustering as well as comparison of graph clustering with other possible ways to model the graph. We adapt the PAC-Bayesian analysis of co-clustering (Seldin and Tishby, 2008; Seldin, 2009) to derive a PAC-Bayesian generalization bound for graph clustering. The bound shows that graph clustering should optimize a trade-off between empirical data fit and the mutual information that clusters preserve on the graph nodes. A similar trade-off derived from information-theoretic considerations was already shown to produce state-of-the-art results in practice (Slonim et al., 2005; Yom-Tov and Slonim, 2009). This paper supports the empirical evidence by providing a better theoretical foundation, suggesting formal generalization guarantees, and offering a more accurate way to deal with finite sample issues. We derive a bound minimization algorithm and show that it provides good results in real-life problems and that the derived PAC-Bayesian bound is reasonably tight

Do IoT Users Trade off their Information Privacy?

The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) has not only improved people’s quality of life but also raised concerns about information privacy. Although several studies have been conducted regarding information privacy concerns, there has not been sufficient discussion of the information privacy trade-off behavior in the IoT environment. Because previous studies only indirectly measured the information privacy trade-off behavior, the understanding of the behavior itself or its cause is limited. To address this issue, this study explored information privacy trade-off behavior in more depth using a large-scale sample and two-step analysis. Both panel data (23,724 samples for three years) and cross-sectional data (350 samples) were used in the analysis. The analysis results confirmed the existence of the information privacy trade-off for IoT users. Furthermore, it was found that the trade-off is associated with the social value of IoT devices and that men with IoT experience predominantly have strong trade-off behavior

Consumer optimism and price discrimination

We study monopolistic design of a menu of non-linear tariffs when consumers have biased prior beliefs regarding their future preferences. In our model, consumers are "optimistic'' if their prior belief assigns too much weight to states of nature characterized by large gains from trade. A consumer's degree of optimism is his private information, and the monopolist employs the menu of non-linear tariffs to screen it. We characterize the optimal menu and show that the existence of non-common priors has significant qualitative implications for price discrimination and ex-post inefficiency. Finally, the characterization enables us to interpret aspects of real-life menus of non-linear tariffs.contracts, speculative trade, screening, non-common priors, mechanism-design, optimism, three-part tariffs

What are we learning from the life satisfaction literature?

The recent availability of cross-sectional and longitudinal survey data on life satisfaction in a large number of countries gives us the opportunity to verify empirically (and not just to assume) what matters for individuals and what economists and policymakers should take into account when trying to promote personal and societal wellbeing. The wide array of econometric findings available in this booming literature display evidence, generally robust to different cultural backgrounds, on the effects of some important happiness drivers (income, unemployment, marital status) which can be considered “quasi stylized facts” of happiness. If economic policies, for many obvious reasons, cannot maximize self declared life satisfaction as such, we are nonetheless learning a lot from these contributions. In particular, results on the relevance and the risk of crowding out of relational goods, on the revisited inflation/unemployment trade off and, more in general, on the measurement of the shadow value of non market goods obtained with life satisfaction estimates, are conveying relevant information about individual preferences and what is behind utility functions. Such findings suggest us to move beyond anthropological reductionism toward behavioral complexity and to refocus target indicators of economic policies in order to minimize the distance between economic development and human wellbeing.life satisfaction, shadow value of non market goods, unemployment/inflation trade-off