Shapley Values for Assessing Research Production and Impact of Schools and Scholars. ESRI WP370, January 2011

Performance measures of individual scholars tend to ignore the context. I introduce contextualised metrics: cardinal and ordinal pseudo-Shapley values that measure a scholar’s contribution to (perhaps power over) her own school and her market value to other schools should she change job. I illustrate the proposed measures with business scholars and business schools in Ireland. Although conceptually superior, the power indicators imply a ranking of scholars within a school that is identical to the corresponding conventional performance measures. The market value indicators imply an identical ranking within schools and a very similar ranking between schools. The ordinal indices further contextualise performance measures and thus deviate further from the corresponding conventional indicators. As the ordinal measures are discontinuous by construction, a natural classification of scholars emerges. Averaged over schools, the market values offer little extra information over the corresponding production and impact measures. The ordinal power measure indicates the robustness or fragility of an institution’s place in the rank order. It is only weakly correlated with the concentration of publications and citations

On the Shapley value and its application to the Italian VQR research assessment exercise

Research assessment exercises have now become common evaluation tools in a number of countries. These exercises have the goal of guiding merit-based public funds allocation, stimulating improvement of research productivity through competition and assessing the impact of adopted research support policies. One case in point is Italy's most recent research assessment effort, VQR 2011–2014 (Research Quality Evaluation), which, in addition to research institutions, also evaluated university departments, and individuals in some cases (i.e., recently hired research staff and members of PhD committees). However, the way an institution's score was divided, according to VQR rules, between its constituent departments or its staff members does not enjoy many desirable properties well known from coalitional game theory (e.g., budget balance, fairness, marginality). We propose, instead, an alternative score division rule that is based on the notion of Shapley value, a well known solution concept in coalitional game theory, which enjoys the desirable properties mentioned above. For a significant test case (namely, Sapienza University of Rome, the largest university in Italy), we present a detailed comparison of the scores obtained, for substructures and individuals, by applying the official VQR rules, with those resulting from Shapley value computations. We show that there are significant differences in the resulting scores, making room for improvements in the allocation rules used in research assessment exercises

Continuing Professional Development in Sustainability Education for K-12 Teachers: Principles, Programme, Applications, Outlook

abstract: The next generation will be better prepared to cope with the daunting sustainability challenges if education for sustainable development is being taught and learned across educational sectors. K-12 school education will play a pivotal role in this process, most prominently, the teachers serving at these schools. While pre-service teachers’ education will contribute to this transition, success will depend on effective professional development in sustainability education to teachers currently in service. Arizona State University has pioneered the development and delivery of such a programme. We present the design principles, the programme, and insights from its initial applications that involved 246 K-12 in-service teachers from across the USA. The evaluation results indicate that due to participation in the programme, sustainability knowledge, perception of self-efficacy, inclusion of sustainability in the classroom, modelling of sustainable behaviours, and linking action to content all increased. We conclude with recommendations for the widespread adopting of the programme

Teachers and Digital Literacies: Mixed-Methods Investigation into 1:1 Technology-Enhanced Learning Environments

Despite the bustling technological landscape in which we live and learn, technology is still limited in its integration within classrooms. The current drive in education to promote 21st-century skills and digital literacies appears to remain relatively idle for a variety of reasons. This mixed-methods study examines the impact 1:1 technology has on digital literacies and the barriers faced by teachers with its incorporation into secondary classrooms. It explores the extent to which instructors within 1:1 environments perceive their technology integration and investigates how this indirectly impacts the acquisition of digital literacies within the classroom. By gaining more insight into how technology and digital literacy skills are integrated into 1:1 classrooms, we may gain insight into current integration practices as well as barriers to implementation, furthering literature in this area. Moreover, this research may enable educational systems to effectively align beliefs, research, and practice to support teachers in meeting newly adopted technologies and digital literacy standards

Mapping the Evolution of "Clusters": A Meta-analysis

This paper presents a meta-analysis of the “cluster literature” contained in scientific journals from 1969 to 2007. Thanks to an original database we study the evolution of a stream of literature which focuses on a research object which is both a theoretical puzzle and an empirical widespread evidence. We identify different growth stages, from take-off to development and maturity. We test the existence of a life-cycle within the authorships and we discover the existence of a substitutability relation between different collaborative behaviours. We study the relationships between a “spatial” and an “industrial” approach within the textual corpus of cluster literature and we show the existence of a “predatory” interaction. We detect the relevance of clustering behaviours in the location of authors working on clusters and in measuring the influence of geographical distance in co-authorship. We measure the extent of a convergence process of the vocabulary of scientists working on clusters.Cluster, Life-Cycle, Cluster Literature, Textual Analysis, Agglomeration, Co-Authorship

THE CLIMATE CHANGE RESPONSE BILL 2010: AN ASSESSMENT. ESRI WP371. January 2011

Climate change is an important problem. It would be desirable to have legislation that would put Ireland on a low-cost and equitable trajectory to a zero-carbon economy. The draft Climate Change Response Bill 2010 will not achieve that. The exact emission reduction targets for 2020 are ambiguous, but considerably more ambitious than Ireland’s obligations under EU legislation. EU legislation severely constrains the options for domestic climate policy so that the extra emission reduction would fall almost exclusively on agriculture, households, small and medium enterprises, and transport. The target in the draft bill for 2020 would require draconian policies. It would be better to keep the EU targets for 2020. The targets for 2030 and 2050 would require a further sharpening of climate policy. It would be better to base climate policy on predictably rising carbon prices. The draft bill fails to create a framework that would ensure that policy interventions are effective, as cheap as possible, and fair. Current policy meets none of these criteria. The Regulatory Impact Analysis is a collection of qualitative assertions that shed little light on the impact of the draft bill. The proposed National Climate Change Expert Advisory Body would need to acquire the appropriate expertise and be truly independent to fulfil its envisaged role

Regional and Sectoral Estimates of the Social Cost of Carbon: An Application of FUND. ESRI WP375, February 2011

The social cost of carbon is an estimate of the benefit of reducing CO2 emissions by one ton today. As such it is a key input into cost-benefit analysis of climate policy and regulation. We provide a set of new estimates of the social cost of carbon from the integrated assessment model FUND 3.5 and present a regional and sectoral decomposition of our new estimate. China, Western Europe and the United States have the highest share of harmful impacts, with the precise order depending on the discount rate. The most important sectors in terms of impacts are agriculture and increased energy use for cooling. We present an extensive sensitivity analysis with respect to the discount rate, equity weights, different socio economic scenarios and values for the climate sensitivity parameter

What\u27s News At Rhode Island College

https://digitalcommons.ric.edu/whats_news/1535/thumbnail.jp

Goldilocks and the Three Electricity Prices: Are Irish Prices “Just Right”?*. ESRI WP372. January 2011

In this paper we analyse the 2008 electricity price in the Irish All-Island Market. We test whether this price is ‘efficient’ by comparing it to the electricity price in Great Britain. This analysis suggests that around €16 per MWh of the difference in wholesale prices between Ireland and Britain is due to differences in generating technology. The new wholesale electricity market for the island of Ireland appears to be working well – it is producing a wholesale price that approximates the long run marginal cost that would apply in a large liquid competitive market. In the British market the wholesale price appears to be below the long run marginal cost of producing electricity. Retail margins in Great Britain are high, especially for households. Only some of this margin compensates vertically integrated utilities for the low wholesale price. In the Republic of Ireland the retail margin was probably also higher than it should have been