Weighting must wait: incorporating equity concerns into cost effectiveness analysis may take longer than expected

Current practice in economic evaluation is to assign equal social value to a unit of health improvement (“a QALY is a QALY is a QALY”). Alternative views of equity are typically considered separately to efficiency. One proposal seeks to integrate these two sets of societal concerns by attaching equity weights to QALYs. To date, research in pursuit of this goal has focussed on candidate equity criteria and methods for estimating such weights. It has implicitly been assumed that should legitimate, valid, and reliable equity weights become available, it would be a straightforward task to incorporate them into as a separate simple calculation after estimating cost per unweighted QALY. This paper suggests that in many situations these simple approaches to incorporating equity weights will not appropriately reflect the preferences on which the weights are based and therefore equity weights must be incorporated directly into the cost effectiveness analysis. In addition to these technical issues, there are a number of practical challenges that arise from the movement from implicit to explicit consideration of equity. Equity weights should be incorporated in economic evaluation, but not until these challenges have been appropriately addressed

Using fuzzy numbers and OWA operators in the weighted average and its application in decision making

Se presenta un nuevo método para tratar situaciones de incertidumbre en los que se utiliza el operador OWAWA (media ponderada – media ponderada ordenada). A este operador se le denomina operador OWAWA borroso (FOWAWA). Su principal ventaja se encuentra en la posibilidad de representar la información incierta del problema mediante el uso de números borrosos los cuales permiten una mejor representación de la información ya que consideran el mínimo y el máximo resultado posible y la posibilidad de ocurrencia de los valores internos. Se estudian diferentes propiedades y casos particulares de este nuevo modelo. También se analiza la aplicabilidad de este operador y se desarrolla un ejemplo numérico sobre toma de decisiones en la selección de políticas fiscalesWe present a new approach for dealing with an uncertain environment when using the ordered weighted averaging – weighted averaging (OWAWA) operator. We call it the fuzzy OWAWA (FOWAWA) operator. The main advantage of this new aggregation operator is that it is able to represent the uncertain information with fuzzy numbers. Thus, we are able to give more complete information because we can consider the maximum and the minimum of the problem and the internal information between these two results. We study different properties and different particular cases of this approach. We also analyze the applicability of the new model and we develop a numerical example in a decision making problem about selection of fiscal policies

Which values should be built into economic measures?

Many economic measures are structured to reflect ethical values. I describe three attitudes towards this: maximalism, according to which we should aim to build all relevant values into measures; minimalism, according to which we should aim to keep values out of measures; and an intermediate view. I argue the intermediate view is likely correct, but existing versions are inadequate. In particular, economists have strong reason to structure measures to reflect fixed, as opposed to user-assessable, values. This implies that, despite disagreement about precisely how to do so, economists should standardly adjust QALYs and DALYs to reflect egalitarian values

National Culture\u27s Impact on Effectiveness of Supply Chain Disruption Management

The purpose of this research is to understand the national cultural antecedents that may help explain differences in supply chain disruptions mitigation abilities of companies from different countries. An analysis of survey data on disruption planning and response collected from various organizations worldwide was performed using weighted least square regression and factor analysis. We find that culture influences disruption planning and response. Statistical findings suggest that differences in disruption planning and response abilities between companies from different countries could be partly attributed to national culture. All five Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture, i.e., Power Distance, Individualism, Masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance, and Long-term Orientation were shown to have a significant positive effect on disruption planning and response. National cultural dimensions and economic status of a country could be effectively used to predict disruption planning and response abilities of companies in various countries. Managers could benefit from our research as it could help them assess disruptions mitigation abilities of their partners located in other countries. Increasing international trade and globalization of supply chains accentuate the importance of our research

Fuzzy argumentation for trust

In an open Multi-Agent System, the goals of agents acting on behalf of their owners often conflict with each other. Therefore, a personal agent protecting the interest of a single user cannot always rely on them. Consequently, such a personal agent needs to be able to reason about trusting (information or services provided by) other agents. Existing algorithms that perform such reasoning mainly focus on the immediate utility of a trusting decision, but do not provide an explanation of their actions to the user. This may hinder the acceptance of agent-based technologies in sensitive applications where users need to rely on their personal agents. Against this background, we propose a new approach to trust based on argumentation that aims to expose the rationale behind such trusting decisions. Our solution features a separation of opponent modeling and decision making. It uses possibilistic logic to model behavior of opponents, and we propose an extension of the argumentation framework by Amgoud and Prade to use the fuzzy rules within these models for well-supported decisions

Theoretical Aspects of Collective Decision Making - Survey of the Economic Literature

The article aims at surveying the economic literature related to collective decision making. In order to do so it proposes a coherent framework allowing for a structured analysis of the factors influencing the works of a committee. These factors are divided into external ( shaped outside of the committee e.g. by law) and internal ones (related to the composition of the committee and interactions between its members). The survey of the general economic literature related to collective decision making presented within the proposed framework yields interesting suggestions for further research, including the consequences for the shape of monetary policy committeesArtykuł ma na celu dokonanie przeglądu literatury ekonomicznej z zakresu kolektywnego podejmowania decyzji. W tym celu zaproponowano ramy pozwalające na ustrukturyzowaną analizę czynników wpływających na pracę organu kolektywnego (rady). Dokonano podziału tych czynników na zewnętrzne (tzn. kształtowane poza samą radą, np. przez wymogi prawne) oraz wewnętrzne (związane ze składem rady oraz interakcjami między jej członkami). Dokonany w ramach zaproponowanej struktury przegląd literatury ogólnoekonomicznej dotyczącej kolektywnego podejmowania decyzji pozwala na zaproponowanie interesujących kierunków dalszych badań, w tym konsekwencji dla kształtu rad polityki pieniężnej

De facto capital mobility, equality, and tax policy in open economies

This paper attempts at giving theoretical and empirical answers to the remaining puzzles in the literature on tax competition: the persistently high tax rates on mobile capital and the large variation in domestic tax systems. I argue that governments face a political trilemma, in which they cannot maintain the politically optimal level of public good provision, reduce capital taxes to competitive levels and implement a political support-maximizing mix of tax rates on capital and labour simultaneously. In particular, while legal restriction on capital flows have been eliminated by virtually all OECD countries, de facto capital mobility falls short of being perfect. Limits to full capital mobility result from ownership structures: the higher the concentration of capital, the higher the de facto mobility of capital and the lower the equilibrium tax rate. Second, the demand for the provision of public goods further constraints governments’ choices of the capital tax rate. If revenue from taxation of mobile factors declines, politicians cannot necessarily cut back spending without losing political support. Policy makers, accordingly, do not face a simple optimization problem when deciding on capital taxation. Rather, they have to choose a tax system which allows them to supply an appropriate level of public goods. Policy makers finally face a trade-off resulting from the redistributive conflict between capital-owners and workers. This conflict does not resemble a mere zero-sum game, because lower levels of capital taxation are likely to improve aggregate welfare, but the decision on capital taxation also cannot be analyzed in isolation from the distributive effects of reducing taxes on mobile factors. This political logic of tax competition generates important predictions which are tested empirically for 23 OECD countries over 30 years within a spatial econometrics framework

Weighting must wait: incorporating equity concerns into cost effectiveness analysis may take longer than expected

Current practice in economic evaluation is to assign equal social value to a unit of health improvement (“a QALY is a QALY is a QALY”). Alternative views of equity are typically considered separately to efficiency. One proposal seeks to integrate these two sets of societal concerns by attaching equity weights to QALYs. To date, research in pursuit of this goal has focussed on candidate equity criteria and methods for estimating such weights. It has implicitly been assumed that should legitimate, valid, and reliable equity weights become available, it would be a straightforward task to incorporate them into as a separate simple calculation after estimating cost per unweighted QALY. This paper suggests that in many situations these simple approaches to incorporating equity weights will not appropriately reflect the preferences on which the weights are based and therefore equity weights must be incorporated directly into the cost effectiveness analysis. In addition to these technical issues, there are a number of practical challenges that arise from the movement from implicit to explicit consideration of equity. Equity weights should be incorporated in economic evaluation, but not until these challenges have been appropriately addressed