Coordination under Uncertainty

A decision maker needs to schedule several activities that take uncertain time to complete and are only valuable together. Some activities are bound to be finished earlier than others, thus incurring waiting costs. We show how to schedule activities optimally, how to give independent agents performing them incentives that implement the efficient schedule, how to form teams, and how to optimally reduce uncertainty when it is possible to do so at a cost. The paper offers insights into important economic decisions such as planning large projects and coordinating product development activities.

Collaborative futuring with and by makers

Maker spaces and maker activities offering access to low-cost digital fabrication equipment are rapidly proliferating, evolving phenomena at the interface of lay and professional design. They also come in many varieties and change fast, presenting a difficult target for, for instance, public authorities, who would like to cater for them but operate in much slower planning cycles. As part of participatory planning of Helsinki Central Library, we experimented with a form of collaborative futuring with and by makers. By drawing elements from both lead-user workshops and participatory design,we conducted a futuring workshop, which allowed us to engage the local maker communities in identifying the issues relevant for a public maker space in 2020. It further engaged the participants in envisioning a smaller prototype maker space and invited them into realising its activities collaboratively. Our results indicate that particularly the information about future solutions was of high relevance, as was the opportunity to trial and elaborate activities on a rolling basis in the prototype space. Insights about more general trends in making were useful too, but to a lesser extent, and it is likely that these could have been gained just as easily with more traditional means for futuring.Peer reviewe

Insurance and self-protection for increased risk aversion

We re-examine the classic problem of risk aversion and self-protection in this paper. In the beginning of this paper, we conduct comparative statics of risk aversion and prevention efforts based on the mono-periodic two states model of choice under risk. We show this new condition is effective with self-insurance-cum-protection model (Lee, 1998), in which the decision maker\u27s activities to prevent the risk can sever both as self-insurance and self-protection. We suggest a new condition that increased risk aversion induces more prevention activities. This new condition requires only one assumption concerning fear of ruin coefficient, marginal effect of SICP activity on probability and marginal cost of SICP activity. By applying interval dominance order (Quah and Strulovici,2009), we find that a decision maker will exert higher level of SICP activity if he becomes more risk averse, under the condition that his hazard rate is higher than the \u27boldness\u27 coefficient (Aumann and Kurz,1977). This new condition is effective even when the optimal level for SICP activity is not interior solution. With our method, the assumption, that optimal solution is interior, is not necessary and marginal utility functions do not need to be monotonic on the interval [0, w0]. Based on this, the optimal solution can be corner solution or inflection point solution. And the DM\u27s attitude towards risk can be variable. Hence, the relation suggested by our findings is more consistent with real world situations

A MODEL OF GRAIN STORAGE AND HEDGING BY FARMERS

The model analyzed represents circumstances as faced by a grain farmer when his harvest is known and he is making storage and hedging decisions. The scope of the analysis is limited in several respects. A one-period model is employed; only a limited number of options are recognized; and interrelations between the grain enterprise and other economic activities of the decision maker are neglected.Marketing,

Becoming a Maker Educator

The Maker Movement is a global-do-it-yourself (DIY) movement of people who take charge of their lives, solve their own problems and share how they solved them (Roscorla, 2013). This movement is gaining traction in the educational sphere, in both formal (public and private K-16 schools) and informal educational environments (after-school programs, community makerspaces, libraries, museums, etc.). As such, there has been a corresponding increase in the number of articles about the Maker Movement and Maker Education in professional journals, as well as increased attention to the topic with-in school-related professional development activities and education conferences

Towards stronger communities : potential roles for grant makers : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Think about a world where groups and communities who are disadvantaged meet with those who have resources to effect positive social change. This is not a beautiful dream it is a world at the intersection of disadvantage and the grant maker who adopts a community development focus to try to bring about positive social change. This thesis explores the intersection of exemplary grant making and community development practice and theory. The thesis set out to achieve three objectives. Firstly to gather information relating to the theory and practice of grant making and community development, secondly to analyse information relating to potential roles of grant makers / philanthropic bodies in contributing to community development and finally to develop a model of grant making that contributes to community development. In order to achieve these three objectives information was extracted from the literature on both grant making and community development. This was then compared with the interviews of seven interviewees. Four interviewees were international academics or leading grant makers and three were New Zealand based community development practitioners with experience of grant seeking. This mix provided very rich information. The study also examines the journey of a grant maker who has developed from a traditional grant maker to a more community development focussed grant maker and considers how the information gained can be used to enhance practice. The conclusions and recommendations show that a community development model is appropriate for a grant maker and makes recommendations about activities that might enhance this role and cautions that it is not an easy path but it is a rewarding one, both for the grant maker and for the community

Is prevention better than cure? An empirical investigation for the case of avian influenza

The new EU Animal Health Strategy suggests a shift in emphasis away from control towards prevention and surveillance activities for the management of threats to animal health. The optimal combination of these actions will differ among diseases and depend on largely unknown and uncertain costs and benefits. This paper reports an empirical investigation of this issue for the case of Avian Influenza. The results suggest that the optimal combination of actions will be dependent on the objective of the decision maker and that conflict exists between an optimal strategy which minimises costs to the government and one which maximises producer profits or minimises negative effects on human health. From the perspective of minimising the effects on human health, prevention appears preferable to cure but the case is less clear for other objectives

PREMISES FOR A MODEL OF DECISION – MAKING ON THE FINANCING OF A PROJECT

The classical theory of finance is based on the premises of rationality and maximizing profits that accompany economic decision-making. Complementarily, the modern theory of behavioral finance studies the effect of emotional and psychological factors of decision- maker on the choice of financing sources for economic activities. In opposition with the classical perspective, the contemporary theory of finance brings up to the stage various aspects of decision making, including elements of strategic behavior towards risk. All these contradictory elements are used as premises for modeling the decision making process of financing a project.decision - making, behavioral finance, strategic behavior

Delegation and Rewards

We study experimentally whether anti-corruption policies with a focus on bribery might be insufficient to uncover more subtle ways of gaining an unfair advantage. In particular, we investigate whether an implicit agreement to exchange favors between a decision-maker and a lobbying party serves as a legal substitute for corruption. Due to the obvious lack of field data on these activities, the laboratory provides an excellent opportunity to study this question. We find that even the pure anticipation of future rewards from a lobbying party suffices to bias a decision-maker in favor of this party, even though it creates negative externalities to others. Although future rewards are not contractible, the benefitting party voluntarily compensates decision-makers for partisan choices. In this way, both receive higher payoffs, but aggregate welfare is lower than without a rewards channel. Thus, the outcome mirrors what might have been achieved via conventional bribing, while not being illegal

External Debt, Planning Horizon and Distorted Credit Markets

The purpose of this paper is to study the role of policies in the presence of country risk with overdiscounting by the policy maker. Overdiscounting may reflect political uncertainty, which makes the effective planning horizon of the centralized government shorter than that of the private sector. The consequence of overdiscounting is to shift the supply curve facing the economy leftwards. The role of optimal borrowing policies in the presence of country risk is to discourage borrowing for consumption purposes, encourage investment in openness, and discourage investment in activities that reduce openness. The effect of overdiscounting by the policy maker is to increase the values of the optimal policy instruments (i.e. to increase the magnitude of the borrowing taxes and subsidies). Increasing the relative importance of open activities can be viewed as a way to reduce the harmful consequences of overdiscounting. Overdiscounting may rationalize various conditionality clauses that will induce the economy to follow the desired credit market policies.