Tuning the Diversity of Open-Ended Responses from the Crowd

Crowdsourcing can solve problems that current fully automated systems cannot. Its effectiveness depends on the reliability, accuracy, and speed of the crowd workers that drive it. These objectives are frequently at odds with one another. For instance, how much time should workers be given to discover and propose new solutions versus deliberate over those currently proposed? How do we determine if discovering a new answer is appropriate at all? And how do we manage workers who lack the expertise or attention needed to provide useful input to a given task? We present a mechanism that uses distinct payoffs for three possible worker actions---propose,vote, or abstain---to provide workers with the necessary incentives to guarantee an effective (or even optimal) balance between searching for new answers, assessing those currently available, and, when they have insufficient expertise or insight for the task at hand, abstaining. We provide a novel game theoretic analysis for this mechanism and test it experimentally on an image---labeling problem and show that it allows a system to reliably control the balance betweendiscovering new answers and converging to existing ones

Increasing the effectiveness of mergers and acquisitions within the management consulting industry

School of Managemen

African American male youth: An urban ethnography of race, space & place

Student migration within U.S. urban school districts is now a central feature of policies that promote school choice to access a quality education. Policymakers also support the value of diversity in public schools, even as educational policies and legal decisions that redress racial inequities have receded into the political background. This paper draws from a four-year ethnography (2007-2011) to explore the intersections of race and the geography of school opportunity, and their impact on 15 African American male youth who leave their neighborhoods to participate in a diversity initiative [DI] at an elite public high school in Chicago. The ethnography conveys the visible and often invisible borders of race and place and the impact on youth\u27s perceptual cartographies of the spaces in which their daily lives occur. As the issue of social inclusion gains salience, not only in U.S. cities, but also in cities everywhere, the relevance of these processes and their impact on disadvantaged groups are important to understand. (DIPF/Orig.

Pressure Groups and Experts in Environmental Regulation

We study a problem of adverse selection in the context of environmental regulation, where the firm may suffer from a certain degree of ignorance about its own type. In a framework like the construction of a certain infrastructure project, the presence of ignorance about its impact on the environment, can play an important role in the determination of the regulatory policy. First, an optimal contract is constructed for any exogenous level of ignorance. Second, the presence of potentially informed third-parties is studied from the perspective of the regulator, which allows us to analyze the impact on the efficiency of the contract, of the presence of environmentalists and of experts. Then, we obtain some insights on how the problem differs when the degree of ignorance is a choice variable for the firm. We finally use our results to derive policy implications concerning the existing envoronmental regulation, and the potential role of interested parties as information providers.environmental regulation, ignorance, environmentalists, experts.

Ignorance, Intention and Stochastic Outcomes

In sequential interactions, both the agent's intention and the outcome of his choice may influence the principal's action. While outcomes are typically observable, intentions are more likely to be hidden, leaving potential wiggle room for the principal when deciding on a reciprocating action. We employ a controlled experiment to investigate how intentions and outcome affect the principal's actions and whether principals use hidden information as an excuse to behave more selfishly. We find that principals react mainly to the intention of the agent. When intentions are not revealed by default, principals tend to select into information based on their inclination to behave more prosocially. While information avoidance is frequent and selfishness is higher with hidden information, we do not find evidence of a strategic exploitation of moral wiggle room

The Theory of the Firm and the Markets for Strategic Acquisitions

Five problems are addressed: (1) the role of competent actors in the venture capital and exit markets supporting the industrialization of winning technologies in small innovative firms, (2) the competence of the large firm to integrate large-scale operational efficiency with small-scale innovative capability through distributed development work and integrated production and (3) the importance of viable markets for strategic acquisitions, both in making this possible and in allowing a flexible choice for the small firm between growing aggressively on its own through own acquisitions, or being acquired strategically itself. We (4) find that the less developed markets in continental Europe may be a disadvantage compared to the US in ushering in a future New Economy. We finally (5) discuss what becomes of the Coasian theory of the firm when production is constantly outsourced in, or insourced from the market as the relative efficiency of coordination through management and over the market changes.competence bloc; experimentally organized economy; heterogeneity; Marshallian industrial district receiver competence; strategic acquisitions

Ignorance, intention and stochastic outcomes

In sequential interactions, both the agent’s intention and the outcome of his choice may influence the principal’s action. While outcomes are typically observable, intentions are more likely to be hidden, leaving potential wiggle room for the principal when deciding on a reciprocating action. We employ a controlled experiment to investigate how intentions and outcome affect the principal’s actions and whether principals use hidden information as an excuse to behave more selfishly. We find that principals react mainly to the intention of the agent. When intentions are not revealed by default, principals tend to select into information based on their inclination to behave more prosocially. While information avoidance is frequent and selfishness is higher with hidden information, we do not find evidence of a strategic exploitation of moral wiggle room

Mexican Indigenismo, Choctaw Self-Determination, And Todd Downing's Detective Novels

Englis

The First Restatement of Agency: What Was the Agenda?

the paper presents the modern communication technology in wireless network, LTE and WiMAX. The system architectures between LTE and WiMAX network will be shown. In addition, a comparison of the system architecture and the air interface of these two networks will be discussed. The paper further concludes with discussion of these two aspects and gives the short look into the future 4G networks.QC 20141110</p