Modeling Recreational Amenities in an Urban Setting: Location, Congestion, and Substitution Effects

In this article, we introduce a recreational amenity—a greenbelt park—into a simple urban economic model. For multiple possible park placements, we solve for the associated equilibrium urban structure, including the equilibrium rent gradient, city boundary, total number of park visits, the overall utility level, and total vehicle miles traveled. We examine how these change with alternative park placement sites. We then show how two modifications of the basic model—allowing congestion at the site to affect site quality, and introducing the possibility of a substitute site at the city’s periphery—affect our conclusions about how greenbelt location influences urban structure.urban structure, greenbelt, congestion, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Optimal Sterilization Policies in Interdependent Economies

In this paper, a two-country leader-follower model with imperfect asset substitution is used to derive the optimal sterilization coefficients for two-country flexible and fixed exchange rate regimes. It is found that, in general, incomplete sterilization is optimal. However, both the origin and the type of macroeconomic shocks the economies experience are important in determining the appropriate degree of sterilization. We also find that sterilization policies have spill-over effects (strategic complements) in both cases. Thus, in a competitive policy-making environment, greater sterilization by one country leads to greater sterilization by the other country. Further, the impact of increasing capital market integration is examined in particular. We show that greater integration compounds this problem, leading to full sterilization as the optimal outcome under perfect capital mobility

IN SITU CONSERVATION OF CROP GENETIC RESOURCES IN A CENTER OF DIVERSITY

The purpose of this paper is to model farmer behavior with respect to in situ conservation, extending the existing literature beyond competition within the principal crop to encompass a broader definition of on-farm diversity and testing the hypothesis that factors affecting the principal crop explain overall crop diversity on the farm . Primary survey data is used from a rural area of Puebla state, Mexico. A Poisson regression is run on the total number of species in the milpa system as explained by cultural, agricultural and economic variables. A set of Poisson regressions, one for each crop group, is run in order test whether factors affect different crops in different ways. Policy implication of the findings are discussed for an in situ conservation program.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Cyber risk as a threat to financial stability

Information systems play a critical role in the functioning of financial institutions. While supporting their services and enabling their strategies, underlying vulnerabilities could pose an important source of risk: cyber risk. This may impair financial institutions’ operational capabilities and even threaten their viability. Furthermore, the high level of interconnection and interdependence between the elements of the financial system allows for the contagion of cyber risk among them. Consequently, the materialization of cyber risk in its most extreme form could threaten the stability of the financial system. To address this topic, the article first introduces cyber incidents and their estimated costs, focusing on the financial system. Cyber risk is then considered, together with the main vulnerabilities and threats to cyber security affecting financial institutions. This is followed by a justification of the potential systemic effect of cyber risk on the financial system, supported by the use of theoretical models. Moreover, highlights of the current regulatory framework on cyber risk for financial institutions operating in Spain are also presented. Finally, recommended future lines of work for the improvement of the management of cyber risk in the financial system are discussed

Power and influence of information technology project teams : an empirical study in a South African context

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Commerce (M Com) at the University of the Witwatersrand, February 2017Information systems development (ISD) project teams are involved in requirements elicitation, analysis, development, testing and deployment of various information technology solutions. These teams often compete with each other for limited resources in an attempt to fulfil their organisational mandate. As a result, project teams can exert power over each other and employ various influence tactics in attempt to gain and maintain positions of power which allow them to control key resources and influence decision making processes. This study examined the strategic environmental and structural conditions of fulfilment which influence the power of ISD project teams, and the extent to which influence tactics can impact on team power level. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire instrument. A sample of 106 teams from five companies was obtained. The companies operate in the financial services and government sectors. A single key informant responded on behalf of their team. Correlation and regression analysis was used to test the hypothesized links between power and the structural conditions of fulfilment namely centrality and substitutability, as well as, the environmental condition of coping with uncertainty. The moderating effects of influence tactics on these relationships was tested via hierarchical moderated regression. Results indicated that the strategic condition of coping with uncertainty significantly and positively affects perceived team power, whilst substitutability significantly and negatively affects perceived team power. Support for the structural condition of centrality was not found to be significant. Additionally, the influence tactic of rational persuasion was found to moderate the relationship between power and coping with uncertainty such that rational persuasion interacts with coping with uncertainty to affect power. Results also indicated that the influence tactic of collaboration was not a moderator but rather has significant direct effects on perceived team power. The study concluded that ISD project teams who cope with project uncertainties and whose tasks and functionalities are difficult to replace, as well as, those who effectively collaborate with other teams will have greater power within project settings. Moreover, ISD project teams can combine rational persuasion tactics with coping with uncertainty to exert even stronger effects on power. The outcomes of this study help to bring an understanding of the impact of the strategic conditions factors on perceived team power within ISD project settings, as well as the role of specific influence tactics in the formation of power.GR201

The Farm Business Environment and New Generation Cooperatives as an Innovation Strategy

Agribusiness,

Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MUSIASEM): An Outline of Rationale and Theory

This paper presents an outline of rationale and theory of the MuSIASEM scheme (Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism). First, three points of the rationale behind our MuSIASEM scheme are discussed: (i) endosomatic and exosomatic metabolism in relation to Georgescu-Roegen’s flow-fund scheme; (2) the bioeconomic analogy of hypercycle and dissipative parts in ecosystems; (3) the dramatic reallocation of human time and land use patterns in various sectors of modern economy. Next, a flow-fund representation of the MUSIASEM scheme on three levels (the whole national level, the paid work sectors level, and the agricultural sector level) is illustrated to look at the structure of the human economy in relation to two primary factors: (i) human time - a fund; and (ii) exosomatic energy - a flow. The three levels representation uses extensive and intensive variables simultaneously. Key conceptual tools of the MuSIASEM scheme - mosaic effects and impredicative loop analysis - are explained using the three level flow-fund representation. Finally, we claim that the MuSIASEM scheme can be seen as a multi-purpose grammar useful to deal with sustainability issues.Energy, Flow-Fund Model, Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis, Mosaic Effects, Impredicative Loop, Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism, Hierarchy, Multi-Purpose

Services for Business Processes in EA – Are They in Relation?

Business services arguably play a central role in service-based information systems as they would fill in the gap between the technicality of Service-Oriented Architecture and the business processes captured in Enterprise Architecture. Business services have distinctive features that are not typically observed in plain Web services. The representation of business services requires that we view human activity and human-mediated functionality through the lens of computing and systems engineering. We give insights into the modeling of business services and relationships between them. This work sheds light on the analysis, design and reusability of business-aware services that business owners, entrepreneurs and business architects alike would find useful when dealing with their service ecosystem

Categories and classifications in EuroWordNet

In EuroWordNet we develop wordnets in 8 European languages, which are structured along the same lines as the Princeton WordNet. The wordnets are inter-linked in a multilingual database, where they can be compared. This comparison reveals many different lexicalizations of classes across the languages that also lead to important differences in the hierarchical structure of the wordnets. It is not feasible to include all these classes (the superset) in each language-specific wordnet and to reach consensus on the implicational effects across all the languages. Each wordnet is therefore limited to the lexicalized words and expressions of a language. The wordnets are thus autonomous language-specific structures that capture valuable information about the lexicalization of each language, which is important for information retrieval, machine translation and language generation. By connecting the wordnets to a separate ontology, semantic inferencing can still be guaranteed. Still, different types of classification schemes can be distinguished among the lexicalized classes. In this paper we will further describe the properties of these different classes and discuss the advantages and effects of distinguishing them in wordnet-like structures