Electronic purchasing: determining the optimal roll-out strategy

Electronic purchasing (EP), also known as electronic ordering through catalogs is the most established form of e-procurement nowadays, yet still in its infancy. Theoretically, changing from the "traditional" way of purchasing to EP can lead to huge cost savings. However the implementation (roll-out) of EP including many commodity groups and many departments is a large and costly task. In addition, not much experience on good roll-out strategies is available yet. This paper contributes to the solution of this problem, by presenting a mathematical model for determining the optimal EP roll-out strategy into an organisation based on maximisation of the cost savings. Results from this model suggest that the optimal order of commodity groups and departments for which EP is implemented can contribute considerably to the possible savings that can be realised and is therefore an important factor for a successful implementation strategy of EP

Developing the PAGE2002 Model with Endogenous Technical Change

Presented research demonstrates the inclusion of endogenous technical change into the PAGE2002 integrated assessment model of climate change. The ‘experience curve’ or learning-by-doing concept, made popular by the Boston Consulting Group during the 1960’s provides a mechanism with which to describe cost reduction through experiential learning. The implementation of learning requires both a restructuring of the way costs are modelled as well as the inclusion of an explicit learning function with initial abatement costs and learning coefficients calibrated to historical renewable energy data. The discounted values for total abatement costs are calculated for both the standard PAGE2002 model without an explicit learning function and the modified PAGE2002 model. The results were found to be of a similar magnitude, partially due to the myopic effects of discounting, though the result was found to be highly sensitive to the learning rate used, which in our case was a conservative estimate

D6.1 Intermediate concept assessment report

This Technical Report presents an interim synthesis of the stakeholders' input and the specifications stemming from internal discussions and the stakeholder workshop. It presents the main issues related to the concepts attached to the mechanisms selected in D3.1, for instance in terms of market mechanism design. Following the output of these discussions, some specifications for the project, and sometimes for the models, are laid out

A guide to finance for Social Enterprises in South Africa

The global economic crisis and its aftermath deepen the challenge of decent employment creation. The Global Jobs Pact developed in response to the crisis sets out a framework that ensures linkages between social progress and economic development. In this context, there is increasing interest in the social economy as a way to combine social and economic goals. The Ouagadougou Symposium on the Global Jobs Pact as it relates to Africa included a recommendation to increase support to the social economy. A regional conference in October 2009 on the social economy as a response to the economic crisis in Africa defined the social economy as "a concept designating enterprises and organizations, in particular cooperatives, mutual benefit societies, associations, foundations and social enterprises, which have the specific feature of producing goods, services and knowledge while pursuing both economic and social aims and fostering solidarity.

The Influence of Experimental and Computational Economics: Economics Back to the Future of Social Sciences

Economics has been a most puzzling science, namely since the neoclassical revolution defined the legitimate procedures for theorisation and quantification. Its epistemology has based on farce: decisive tests are not applied on dare predictions. As a consequence, estimation has finally been replaced by simulation, and empirical tests have been substituted by non-disciplined exercises of comparison of models with reality. Furthermore, the core concepts of economics defy the normally accepted semantics and tend to establish meanings of their own. One of the obvious instances is the notion of rationality, which has been generally equated with the apt use of formal logic or the ability to apply econometric estimation as a rule of thumb for daily life. In that sense, rationality is defined devoid of content, as alien to the construction of significance and reference by reason and social communication. The contradictory use of simulacra and automata, by John von Neumann and Herbert Simon, was a response to this escape of economic models from reality, suggesting that markets could be conceived of as complex institutions. But most mainstream economists did not understand or did not accept these novelties, and the empirical inquiry or the realistic representation of the action of agents and of their social interaction remained a minor domain of economics, and was essentially ignored by canonical theorizing. The argument of the current paper is based on a survey and discussion of the twin contributions of experimental and computational economics to these issues. Although mainly arising out of the mainstream, these emergent fields of economics generate challenging heuristics as well as new empirical results that defy orthodoxy. Their contributions both to the definition of the social meanings of rationality and to the definition of a new brand of inductive economics are discussed.

D3.1 High-level modelling requirements

This document provides all the necessary high-level modelling requirements needed for the proper development of the BEACON project. Firstly, it defines an assessment framework for the performance evaluation of the different flight prioritisations mechanisms selected. The suggested framework is based on a combination of desk research and consultation with different air traffic management (ATM) stakeholder representatives. Secondly, it provides a detailed and exhaustive review of the flight prioritisation and trajectory allocation mechanisms proposed in the literature, ultimately identifying and selecting a final set of promising concepts to improve the performance of the ATM system in situations of demand-capacity constraints, to be included in BEACON simulations. Finally, it describes the different variables and parameters that are part of the possible simulation scenarios and selects the potentially most interesting combinations to measure the performance of the proposed prioritisation mechanisms

Operational Risk Management and Implications for Bank’s Economic Capital – a Case Study

In this paper we review the actual operational data of an anonymous Central European Bank, using two approaches described in the literature: the loss distribution approach and the extreme value theory (“EVT”). Within the EVT analysis, two estimation methods were applied; the standard maximum likelihood estimation method and the probability weighted method (“PWM”). Our results proved a heavy-tailed pattern of operational risk data consistent with the results documented by other researchers in this field. Additionally, our research demonstrates that the PWM is quite consistent even when the data is limited since our results provide reasonable and consistent capital estimates. From a policy perspective, it should be noted that banks from emerging markets such as Central Europe are exposed to these operational risk events and that successful estimates of the likely distribution of these risk events can be derived from more mature markets.operational risk, economic capital, Basel II, extreme value theory, probability weighted method

Corporate Evaluation in Banks - Development of a New Evaluation Model with the Special Focus on the Separation of the Value of Maturity Transformation

Banks have to be handled differently in the theory of corporate evaluation. After a critical discussion of existing approaches of corporate evaluation, the following results can be state