Intelligent Agents - a Tool for Modeling Intermediation and Negotiation Processes

Many contemporary problems as encountered in society and economy require advanced capabilities for evaluation of situations and alternatives and decision making, most of the time requiring intervention of human agents, experts in negotiation and intermediation. Moreover, many problems require the application of standard procedures and activities to carry out typical socio-economic processes (for example by employing standard auctions for procurement or supply of goods or convenient intermediation to access resources and information). This paper focuses on enhancing knowledge about intermediation and negotiation processes in order to improve quality of services and optimize performances of business agents, using new computational methods that combine formal methods with intelligent agents paradigm. Taking into account their modularity and extensibility, agent systems allow facile, standardized and seamless integration of negotiation protocols and strategies by employing declarative and formal representations specific to computer science.Business processes, Intelligent Agents, Intermediation and Negotiation, Formal Models.

Innovation and growth with financial, and other, frictions

The generation and implementation of ideas, or knowledge, is crucial for economic performance. We study this process in a model of endogenous growth with frictions. Productivity increases with knowledge, which advances via innovation, and with the exchange of ideas from those who generate them to those best able to implement them (technology transfer). But frictions in this market, including search, bargaining, and commitment problems, impede exchange and thus slow growth. We characterize optimal policies to subsidize research and trade in ideas, given both knowledge and search externalities. We discuss the roles of liquidity and financial institutions, and show two ways in which intermediation can enhance efficiency and innovation. First, intermediation allows us to finance more transactions with fewer assets. Second, it ameliorates certain bargaining problems, by allowing entrepreneurs to undo otherwise sunk investments in liquidity. We also discuss some evidence, suggesting that technology transfer is a significant source of innovation and showing how it is affected by credit considerations.

Innovation and Growth with Financial, and Other, Frictions

The generation and implementation of ideas, or knowledge, is crucial for economic performance. We study this process in a model of endogenous growth with frictions. Productivity increases with knowledge, which advances via innovation, and with the exchange of ideas from those who generate them to those best able to implement them (technology transfer). But frictions in this market, including search, bargaining, and commitment problems, impede exchange and thus slow growth. We characterize optimal policies to subsidize research and trade in ideas, given both knowledge and search externalities. We discuss the roles of liquidity and financial institutions, and show two ways in which intermediation can enhance efficiency and innovation. First, intermediation allows us to finance more transactions with fewer assets. Second, it ameliorates certain bargaining problems, by allowing entrepreneurs to undo otherwise sunk investments in liquidity. We also discuss some evidence, suggesting that technology transfer is a significant source of innovation and showing how it is affected by credit considerations.Economic models; Potential output; Productivity

South-South knowledge intermediation: approaches to triangular cooperation in knowledge for development

This multi-disciplinary study explores a field of enquiry at the boundaries of information science and development studies. It is concerned with the facilitation of knowledge processes - processes of knowledge exchange and co-creation - in the international development sector. Additionally, this study considers the importance of human relationships and social networks (and power), and studies these in knowledge intermediation projects. The main gaps that are addressed regard the understanding of intermediating knowledge process concerned with learners situated (partly) across cultural, language, and political boundaries in developing countries. Such projects/programmes/approaches, coined South-South knowledge exchanges by the World Bank, have only seen very limited amount of research; the foci of this research are human relationships and initiation acts, which add further novelty. By mirroring ideas of triangular and South-South collaboration the thesis explores knowledge intermediation projects and three roles played by actors participating in such projects: the intermediary and facilitator of knowledge processes (usually backed by a funding body), someone sharing knowledge (knowledge holders), and someone learning from others (knowledge seeker). This study not only shows how these roles apply to knowledge intermediation projects but also addresses their influence on relational elements at the interpersonal level. Two case studies are used to show how knowledge intermediation projects in the international development sector are shaped by their approach (demand initiated, facilitator/funder initiated), especially in terms of the relationships they foster. The sociology of knowledge approach to discourse analysis (SKAD) is used in the study of the case studies, which is supplemented by social network analysis. After linking the discovered relationship patterns to the initiation acts in the respective case studies a picture emerges that offers two broad insights. Firstly, facilitator/funder initiation of South-South knowledge intermediation projects appears to lead to many potential relationships, most of them irrelevant to an individual and, therefore, unestablished. Secondly, demand initiation of South-South knowledge intermediation projects appears to lead to very few, yet highly relevant, relationships

Factors Affecting the Practices of External Problem Solvers in Broadcast Search

In Broadcast Search (BS) an organization discloses the details of a problem to a community of potential solvers. An online intermediary often manages the process. This study investigates the problem solving practices of solvers. In particular it focuses on the intermediation services and knowledge sources thy use during BS. A questionnaire was distributed to successful solvers. Ninety-three complete questionnaires were returned. The results show that intermediation services can be divided in 3 categories: managing interfaces, supporting collaboration and supporting problem solving. Similarly the sources of knowledge can be divided in: institutional, social and output-oriented sources. The results also show that differences in solver’s use of intermediation services and knowledge sources can be explained taking into account solvers’ experience, organizational context as well as the nature of the proposed solutio

Banks, knowledge and crisis: a case of knowledge and learning failure

Purpose – Regulators such as Turner have identified excessive securitization, high leverage, extensive market trading and a bonus culture, as being major factors in bringing about the bank centred financial crisis of 2007-2009. Whilst it is inevitable that banks adopt procyclical business strategies, not all banks took excessive risks and subsequently had to be rescued by taxpayers. The paper examines the extent to which individual bank outcomes can be attributed to systematic differences in banking knowledge concerning the primary risks and value drivers of their organisations by bank board directors and top management. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews a wide range of theoretical, historical and empirical literatures on banking models and detailed case analyses of failing and non-failing banks. A framework for understanding the role and application of knowledge in banking is developed which suggests how banks, despite their pro-cyclical business strategies, are able to institutionalise learning and actively create new knowledge through time to improve bank organisation, intermediation and risk management. Findings – The paper finds that a lack of basic knowledge of banking risks and value drivers by the boards and senior managers of the failing banks were implicated in the banking crisis. These knowledge problems concerned banks' understanding of their organisation, intermediation and risk management in an active market setting characterised by rapid economic and organisational change. Thus, the failing banks ignored or were unaware of this knowledge and hence experienced acute difficulties with learning the new knowledge needed to address the new problems thrown-up by the financial crisis. Practical implications – The analysis suggests that addressing this knowledge gap via the institutionalisation of banking knowledge ought to constitute an important element of any sustainable solution to the problems currently being experienced by the banking sector. By ensuring greater bank learning, knowledge creation, and knowledge use, governments and regulators could help reduce individual bank risk and the likelihood of future crisis. Originality/value – In contrast to the claims made by some politicians and banking insiders, the analysis indicates that the banking crisis and its severity were neither unpredictable nor unavoidable since some banks, by institutionalising banking knowledge and history of past crises, successfully avoided the pitfalls experienced by the failing banks

Trade Liberalization in a Joint Spatial Inter-Temporal Trade Model

This paper considers liberalization of trade in both inter-temporal intermediation services and goods in a joint spatial-inter-temporal trade model. Joint multi-commodity spatial intertemporal models are not (to our knowledge) used in the trade literature as general comparative statics results are unavailable and (in the presence of incomplete markets) existence can also be an issue. Here we use numerical simulation methods. We first consider world with service trade autarky in which there is no domestic intermediation service provision, and service trade liberalization involves costless inter-temporal intermediation provided by foreign service providers. This simple treatment allows us to model service trade liberalization as removing period by period budget constraints for domestic consumers. In such a world, if nonzero tariffs apply to spatial trade we present an example showing how service trade liberalization can be welfare worsening. One implication is that negotiations on services in the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) need not be welfare improving if there are also ongoing tariff negotiations. We then expand the model to capture a more complex world where costly intermediation services can be provided by both within-country and foreign providers. We again illustrate how services liberalization can be welfare worsening. We finally discuss whether welfare worsening service trade liberalization is likely in a real-world situation of highly restricted services trade and considerably more open goods trade, and when services trade are around 1/3 of total goods and services trade as is often claimed from available global service trade data.

Information about bank intangibles, analyst information intermediation, and the role of knowledge and social forces in the ‘market for information’

Although developments in the sell-side analyst literature have revealed the role of intellectual capital (IC) in analysts’ work, the whole information intermediation progress of IC remains a “black box”. This paper develops an analyst information intermediation model, illustrating how ‘soft’ information changes through analyst acquisition, processing and disclosure of information. Bourdieu’s ideas of habitus, field and capital are used to develop our explanation of the analyst information intermediation model. We argue that the combination of empirical evidence and theoretical explanation provides a new and more comprehensive way to improve understanding of the role of analysts within knowledge and social contexts

Innovation and technology transfer: a framework for clustering intermediation roles

Intermediation has become a key role in the complex realm of technology transfer projects. In innovation and technology transfer literature the number of mentions on intermediaries and their involvement in the process haveexpanded, which has triggered a surge in specific literature on the intermediation roles. Several authors have not only proposed new intermediation roles but also complemented and clarified previous ones. In this research, a review of the literature is made, focused on the role and involvement of intermediaries in innovation and technology transfer, covering more than thirty years and referring to four major databases. Following the analysis and discussion of the findings, the results are synthetized in a conceptual framework proposal, clustering thirteen key intermediation roles. Each of these role clusters describes a set of responsibilities, functions and main intermediation activities. Findings show that when it comes to intermediation roles, literature is yet too fragmented and scattered, with little to no connections between the proposed roles. The main contribution of this paper is to contribute to and to provide a comprehensive overview of otherwise scattered and disperse knowledge about the intermediation role.This work has been supported by FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope:UIDB/00319/202

Rethinking bank business models: the role of intangibles

<p>Purpose: This paper provides a new way of rethinking banking models by using qualitative research on intangibles. This is required because the banking sector has been transformed significantly by the changing environment over the past two decades. The 2007-2009 financial crisis also added to concerns about existing bank business models.</p> <p>Design/Methodology approach: Using qualitative data collected from interviews with bank managers and analysts in the UK, this paper develops a grounded theory of bank intangibles.</p> <p>Findings: The model reveals how intangibles and tangible/financial resources interact in the bank value creation process, how they actively respond to environmental changes, how bank intangibles are understood by external observers such as analysts, and how bankers and analysts differ in their views.</p> <p>Research implications: Grounded theory provides the means to further develop bank models as business models and theoretical models. This provides the means to think beyond conventional finance constructs and to relate bank models to a wider theoretical literature concerning intellectual capital, organisational and social systems theory, and ‘performativity’.</p> <p>Practical implications: Such development of bank models and of a systems perspective is critical to the understanding of banks by bankers, by observers and for their ‘critical and reflexive performativity’. It also has implications for systemic risk and bank regulation.</p> <p>Social implications: Improvement in bank models and their use in open and transparent processes are key means to improve public accountability of banks.</p> <p>Originality: The paper reveals the core role of intellectual capital (IC) in banks, in markets, and in developing theory and research at firm and system levels. </p&gt