On the Provision of Public Goods on Networks: Incentives, Exit Equilibrium, and Applications to Cyber .

Attempts to improve the state of cyber-security have been on the rise over the past years. The importance of incentivizing better security decisions by users in the current landscape is two-fold: it not only helps users protect themselves against attacks, but also provides positive externalities to others interacting with them, as a protected user is less likely to become compromised and be used to propagate attacks against other entities. Therefore, security can be viewed as a public good. This thesis takes a game-theoretic approach to understanding the theoretical underpinnings of users' incentives in the provision of public goods, and in particular, cyber-security. We analyze the strategic interactions of users in the provision of security as a non-excludable public good. We propose the notion of exit equilibrium to describe users' outside options from mechanisms for incentivizing the adoption of better security decisions, and use it to highlight the crucial effect of outside options on the design of incentive mechanisms for improving the state of cyber-security. We further focus on the general problem of public good provision games on networks. We identify necessary and sufficient conditions on the structure of the network for the existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium in these games. We show that previous results in the literature can be recovered as special cases of our result. We provide a graph-theoretical interpretation of users' efforts at the Nash equilibria, Pareto efficient outcomes, and semi-cooperative equilibria of these games, by linking users' effort decisions to their centralities in the interaction network. Using this characterization, we separate the effects of users' dependencies and influences (outgoing and incoming edges, respectively) on their effort levels, and uncover an alternating effect over walks of different length in the network. We also propose the design of inter-temporal incentives in a particular type of security games, namely, security information sharing agreement. We show that either public or private assessments can be used in designing incentives for participants to disclose their information in these agreements. Finally, we present a method for crowdsourcing reputation that can be useful in attaining assessments of users' efforts in security games.PhDElectrical Engineering: SystemsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133328/1/naghizad_1.pd

A Whole-of-Government Approach to Reducing Tropical Deforestation

Tropical forests provide critical global and local ecosystem services and habitat for many of the world’s plants and animals. Their loss threatens the sustainable economic growth and social stability of developing countries, and illegal deforestation abroad places U.S. producers at an unfair disadvantage. For these and other reasons, the United States has long been engaged in programs to reduce forest loss. This engagement has recently increased, with the new Presidential Global Climate Change Initiative including a pillar dedicated to slowing forest loss. While promising, this new funding and coordination is insufficient, with a narrow focus on climate-based development assistance. Engaging the full suite of forest policy levers in the federal government, or taking a “whole-of-government” approach, would provide greater immediate impact in preventing forest loss while building the foundations of a working landscape ethic. In this discussion paper, we explore the opportunities to expand U.S. contributions to reducing tropical deforestation through this approach. A whole-of-government approach to international deforestation consists of coordinating and focusing the programs across the federal government that could reduce the rate of tropical forest loss. It is an integrated strategy that employs existing activities and authorities of the U.S. government and directs them under an overarching goal of reducing deforestation in tropical forest countries, while continuing to support other developing-country goals, such as economic development, health, food security, and biodiversity. We identify three major areas where policy adjustments and actions by relevant authorities can have immediate and tangible impact on reducing deforestation.tropical deforestation, forest conservation, U.S. policy, REDD, reducing emissions from deforestation, whole-of-government, environment and trade, forest policy

Modelling Economic Impacts of Alternative International Climate Policy Architectures.A Quantitative and Comparative Assessment of Architectures for Agreement

This paper provides a quantitative comparison of the main architectures for an agreement on climate policy. Possible successors to the Kyoto protocol are assessed according to four criteria: economic efficiency; environmental effectiveness; distributional implications; and their political acceptability which is measured in terms of feasibility and enforceability. The ultimate aim is to derive useful information for designing a future agreement on climate change control.climate policy, integrated modelling, international agreements

Enforcement in Dynamic Spectrum Access Systems

The spectrum access rights granted by the Federal government to spectrum users come with the expectation of protection from harmful interference. As a consequence of the growth of wireless demand and services of all types, technical progress enabling smart agile radio networks, and on-going spectrum management reform, there is both a need and opportunity to use and share spectrum more intensively and dynamically. A key element of any framework for managing harmful interference is the mechanism for enforcement of those rights. Since the rights to use spectrum and to protection from harmful interference vary by band (licensed/unlicensed, legacy/newly reformed) and type of use/users (primary/secondary, overlay/underlay), it is reasonable to expect that the enforcement mechanisms may need to vary as well.\ud \ud In this paper, we present a taxonomy for evaluating alternative mechanisms for enforcing interference protection for spectrum usage rights, with special attention to the potential changes that may be expected from wider deployment of Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) systems. Our exploration of how the design of the enforcement regime interacts with and influences the incentives of radio operators under different rights regimes and market scenarios is intended to assist in refining thinking about appropriate access rights regimes and how best to incentivize investment and growth in more efficient and valuable uses of the radio frequency spectrum

Data standardization

With data rapidly becoming the lifeblood of the global economy, the ability to improve its use significantly affects both social and private welfare. Data standardization is key to facilitating and improving the use of data when data portability and interoperability are needed. Absent data standardization, a “Tower of Babel” of different databases may be created, limiting synergetic knowledge production. Based on interviews with data scientists, this Article identifies three main technological obstacles to data portability and interoperability: metadata uncertainties, data transfer obstacles, and missing data. It then explains how data standardization can remove at least some of these obstacles and lead to smoother data flows and better machine learning. The Article then identifies and analyzes additional effects of data standardization. As shown, data standardization has the potential to support a competitive and distributed data collection ecosystem and lead to easier policing in cases where rights are infringed or unjustified harms are created by data-fed algorithms. At the same time, increasing the scale and scope of data analysis can create negative externalities in the form of better profiling, increased harms to privacy, and cybersecurity harms. Standardization also has implications for investment and innovation, especially if lock-in to an inefficient standard occurs. The Article then explores whether market-led standardization initiatives can be relied upon to increase welfare, and the role governmental-facilitated data standardization should play, if at all

The impact of water supply variability on treaty cooperation between international bilateral river basin riparian states

This paper assesses the impact of water supply variability on treaty cooperation between international bilateral river basin riparian states. Climate change is anticipated to change the variability of water supply, as well as its expected magnitude. Previous studies have focused mainlyon water scarcity, measured in terms of mean precipitation or per capita water availability in the country, as a trigger for conflict or cooperation. The water variability measure used here captures both annual runoff variability and precipitation variability over periods of 30 and 100 years. The analysis used economic and international relations data to identify incentives for international cooperation in addressing water supply variability. The authors find that small-to-moderate increases in variability create an impetus for cooperation, although large increases in variability would reduce incentives for treaty cooperation. Stronger diplomatic and trade relations support cooperation, while uneven economic power inhibits cooperation. Various measures of democracy/governance suggest different impacts on cooperation across the basin riparians. The findings have policy implications in the context of preparedness for impacts of climate change on the water sector.Water Supply and Sanitation Governance and Institutions,Water and Industry,Town Water Supply and Sanitation,Drought Management,Common Property Resource Development