Education to Employment: Designing a System that Works

Considering the education-to-employment system as a highway with three critical intersections -- enrolling in postsecondary education, building skills, and finding a job -- this research has determined places where students take wrong turns or fall behind, and why. With increased data and innovative approaches, employers, educators, governments and youth can create a better system

A Model for Optimizing Energy Investments and Policy Under Uncertainty with Application to Saudi Arabia

An energy producer must determine optimal energy investment strategies in order to maximize the value of its energy portfolio. Determining optimal investment strategies is challenging. One of the main challenges is the large uncertainty in many of the parameters involved in the optimization process. Existing large-scale energy models are mostly deterministic and thus have limited capability for assessing uncertainty. Modelers usually use scenario analysis to address model input uncertainty. In this research, I developed a probabilistic model for optimizing energy investments and policies from an energy producer’s perspective. The model uses a top-down approach to probabilistically forecast primary energy demand. Distributions rather than static values are used to model uncertainty in the input variables. The model can be applied to a country-level energy system. It maximizes the portfolio expected net present value (ENPV) while ensuring energy sustainability. The model was built in MSExcel® using the @RISK Palisade add-in, which is capable of modeling uncertain parameters and performing stochastic simulation optimization. The model was applied to Saudi Arabia to determine its optimum energy investment strategy, determine the value of investing in alternative energy sources, and compare deterministic and probabilistic modeling approaches. The model, given its assumptions and limitations, suggests that Saudi Arabia should keep its oil production capacity at 12.5 million barrels per day, especially in the short term. It also suggests that most of the future power-generation (electricity) demand in Saudi Arabia should be met using alternative-energy sources (nuclear, solar, and wind). Otherwise, large gas production is required to meet such demand. In addition, comparing probabilistic to deterministic model results shows that deterministic models may overestimate total portfolio ENPV and underestimate future investments needed to meet projected power demand. A primary contribution of this work is rigorously addressing uncertainty quantification in energy modeling. Building probabilistic energy models is one of the challenges facing the industry today. The model is also the first, to the best of my knowledge, that attempts to optimize Saudi Arabia’s energy portfolio using a probabilistic approach and addressing the value of investing in alternative energy sources

Forecasting OPEC oil price: a comparison of parametric stochastic models

Most academic papers on oil price forecasting have frequently focused on the use of WTI and European Brent oil price series with little focus on other equally important international oil price benchmarks such as the OPEC Reference Basket (ORB). The ORB is a weighted average of 11-member countries crude streams weighted according to production and exports to the main markets. This paper compares the forecasting accuracy of four stochastic processes and four univariate random walk models using daily data of OPEC Reference Basket series. The study finds that the random walk univariate model outperforms the other stochastic processes. An element of uncertainty was introduced into the point estimates by deriving probability distribution that describes the possible price paths on a given day and their likelihood of occurrence. This will help decision makers, traders and analysts to have a better understanding of the possible daily prices that could occur. JEL Classification Numbers: E64; C22; Q30 Keywords: Oil Price Forecasting, Probability Distributions, and Forecast Evaluation Statistics, Brownian Motion with Mean Reversion process, GARCH Model

Incorporating the Delphi Technique to investigate renewable energy technology transfer in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is a major oil-producing nation facing a rapidly-growing population, high unemployment, climate change, and the depletion of its natural resources, potentially including its oil supply. Technology transfer is regarded as a means to diversify countries\u27 economies beyond their natural resources. This dissertation examined the opportunities and barriers to utilizing technology transfer successfully to build renewable energy resources in Saudi Arabia to diversify the economy beyond oil production. Examples of other developing countries that have successfully used technology transfer to transform their economies are explored, including Japan, Malayasia, and the United Arab Emirates. Brazil is presented as a detailed case study to illustrate its transition to an economy based to a much greater degree than before on renewable energy. Following a pilot study, the Delphi Method was used in this research to gather the opinions of a panel of technology transfer experts consisting of 10 heterogeneous members of different institutions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, including aviation, telecommunication, oil industry, education, health systems, and military and governmental organizations. In three rounds of questioning, the experts identified Education, Dependence on Oil, and Manpower as the 3 most significant factors influencing the potential for success of renewable energy technology transfer for Saudi Arabia. Political factors were also rated toward the Very Important end of a Likert scale and were discussed as they impact Education, Oil Dependence, and Manpower. The experts\u27 opinions are presented and interpreted. They form the basis for recommended future research and discussion of how in light of its political system and its dependence on oil, Saudi Arabia can realistically move forward on renewable energy technology transfer and secure its economic future

Towards a Theory of 'Late Rentierism' in the Arab States of the Gulf

Rentier state theory (RST) gained currency in the late 1980s, and remains widely cited or accepted, as an explanation for the lack of democratization and for economic problems in oil- and gasproducing states of the Middle East. It postulates that externally-derived, unproductively-derived 'rents' such as oil and gas revenues (or fees, foreign aid, and the like) give the state autonomy from society, removing pressures for democratization, economic liberalization, and other policies in response to societal antagonism or pressure. Societal pressures are 'bought off' by rents, and rents also pay the cost of an expansive state repressive capacity. This argument is, of course, simplistic, and the development strategies of the Gulf in the past two decades - including the spectacular globalized development of Dubai and, more recently, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and others - suggests that a simple argument of state autonomy from society is inaccurate or incomplete, and that RST requires refinement and sophisticatization. The paper is a preliminary attempt at that refinement, specifically arguing that while rents allow allocative states to restrict or even avoid pressure for democratization, the state still relies - as all do - on a base level of legitimacy and societal toleration of the regime. Thus, rentiers must still be politically responsive, yet not democratic, to a core set of societal needs and values. The state must balance repression and cooptation - a rentier does not have unlimited repressive ability, whatever its financial capacity - and especially, if it is to survive, a rentier state must be adaptable to the changes brought by globalization and must provide opportunity and employment through economic diversification. Yet the rentier state is relieved of democratic accountability, while never truly autonomous from society, and thus still has a non-democratic or quasi-democratic accountability attached to the rentier bargain. The paper that follows makes this case, and argues for the concept of a 'late-stage rentier state' in the case of the Arab states of the Gulf. The paper begins by outlining the tenets and constraints of orthodox RST, and then makes the case for a more sophisticated understanding of these states' rent-based relationships with society, and highlights their main characteristics in the Gulf from the 1990s to today