Transactions Costs and Internal Labor Markets

The concept of transactions costs used by Coase in "The Nature of the Firm" is applied to the internal labor market of an organization. Under joint production it is shown that the number of transaction-specific prices necessary to decentralize labor allocations rises geometrically with the size of the work force. Complexity of calculation and costs of implementation constrains the possibilities for internal decentralization through a price mechanism and substitutes a more authoritarian system of allocation instead. These same issues of complexity and implementation costs limit the usefulness of agency theory as a conceptual framework for this problem. The analysis suggests that an internal labor market must be viewed in a more comprehensive framework of a personnel management system.

A Survey of Agent-Based Modeling Practices (January 1998 to July 2008)

In the 1990s, Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) began gaining popularity and represents a departure from the more classical simulation approaches. This departure, its recent development and its increasing application by non-traditional simulation disciplines indicates the need to continuously assess the current state of ABM and identify opportunities for improvement. To begin to satisfy this need, we surveyed and collected data from 279 articles from 92 unique publication outlets in which the authors had constructed and analyzed an agent-based model. From this large data set we establish the current practice of ABM in terms of year of publication, field of study, simulation software used, purpose of the simulation, acceptable validation criteria, validation techniques and complete description of the simulation. Based on the current practice we discuss six improvements needed to advance ABM as an analysis tool. These improvements include the development of ABM specific tools that are independent of software, the development of ABM as an independent discipline with a common language that extends across domains, the establishment of expectations for ABM that match their intended purposes, the requirement of complete descriptions of the simulation so others can independently replicate the results, the requirement that all models be completely validated and the development and application of statistical and non-statistical validation techniques specifically for ABM.Agent-Based Modeling, Survey, Current Practices, Simulation Validation, Simulation Purpose

Intelligent Systems

This book is dedicated to intelligent systems of broad-spectrum application, such as personal and social biosafety or use of intelligent sensory micro-nanosystems such as "e-nose", "e-tongue" and "e-eye". In addition to that, effective acquiring information, knowledge management and improved knowledge transfer in any media, as well as modeling its information content using meta-and hyper heuristics and semantic reasoning all benefit from the systems covered in this book. Intelligent systems can also be applied in education and generating the intelligent distributed eLearning architecture, as well as in a large number of technical fields, such as industrial design, manufacturing and utilization, e.g., in precision agriculture, cartography, electric power distribution systems, intelligent building management systems, drilling operations etc. Furthermore, decision making using fuzzy logic models, computational recognition of comprehension uncertainty and the joint synthesis of goals and means of intelligent behavior biosystems, as well as diagnostic and human support in the healthcare environment have also been made easier

Special Libraries, Winter 1985

Volume 76, Issue 1https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1985/1000/thumbnail.jp

ComplexWorld Position Paper

The Complex ATM Position Paper is the common research vehicle that defines the high-level, strategic scientific vision for the ComplexWorld Network. The purpose of this document is to provide an orderly and consistent scientific framework for the WP-E complexity theme. The specific objectives of the position paper are to: - analyse the state of the art within the different research areas relevant to the network, identifying the major accomplishments and providing a comprehensive set of references, including the main publications and research projects; - include a complete list of , a list of application topics, and an analysis of which techniques are best suited to each one of those applications; - identify and perform an in-depth analysis of the most promising research avenues and the major research challenges lying at the junction of ATM and complex systems domains, with particular attention to their impact and potential benefits for the ATM community; - identify areas of common interest and synergies with other SESAR activities, with special attention to the research topics covered by other WP-E networks. An additional goal for future versions of this position paper is to develop an indicative roadmap on how these research challenges should be accomplished, providing a guide on how to leverage on different aspects of the complexity research in Air Transport

A Spatial Econometric Model of the Scottish Housing Market, 1980-81

This thesis formulates a spatial econometric model of the Scottish housing market over the period 1980-81. The study is concerned with the role of space in the dynamic operation of an owner-occupier housing market, particularly as applied at the regional level. These four considerations - space, dynamics, tenure, and level of aggregation - are selected for attention after an examination of the approaches to housing market models in a number of disciplines, but in particular within economic and econometric models. It is found that the approaches used in other disciplines can be treated as alternative forms of, or special cases of, those based on the utility maximisation premise of economic theory. Existing utility maximisation housing models are generally specified at the urban level of aggregation, with private rental as the dominant form of tenure. Dynamics are an integral part of urban simulation models but in general the attainability of equilibrium is assumed. The aggregate counterpart to an urban model is a macroeconometric model, which is purely dynamic in specification, and the results from this approach are contrasted with those of microeconomic theories. It is shown that assumptions about the spatial structure of the housing market are implicit in macroeconometric models. Three housing market dimensions or analytical categories - space, time, and house type - are identified, and this provides a basis for the classification of existing models. A matrix formulation is used to specify the theoretical structure of a dynamic regional owner-occupier model, and. the spatial econometric technique of the weights matrix is introduced as a parsimonious method for operationalising the theoretical structure. Empirical estimation of demand and supply equations gives an indication of the nature and scale of spatial interaction effects at the regional level. These indicate that there are grounds for including regional level analysis in any discussion of the operation of the housing market. The results are compared with those of the existing housing market literature, and possible extensions of the matrix formulation show that it is a useful framework for urban level analysis as well. The policy implications which follow from this thesis are then discussed and current policy is examined in the light of these findings

On Self Organising Cyberdynamic Policy

The de facto model of what it means to be effectively organised, hence cybernetically viable, is Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM). Many studies attest to the efficacy of what the VSM proposes, however, these appear to be largely confined to human based organisations of particular types e.g. businesses of assorted sizes and governmental matters. The original contribution to the body of knowledge that this work makes, in contrast, has come from an unconventional source i.e. football (soccer) teams. The unique opportunity identified was to use the vast amounts of football player spatial data, as captured by match scanning technology, to obtain simultaneously the multi-recursive policy characteristics of a real viable system operating in real time under highly dynamical load (threat/opportunity) conditions. It accomplishes this by considering player movement as being representative of the output of the policy function of the viable system model that they, hence their whole team, are each mapped to. As each player decides what they must do at any moment, or might need to do in the immediate future, this is set against their capabilities to deliver against that. This can be said of every player during every stage of any match. As such, their actions (their policies as viable systems) inform, and are informed by, the actions of others. This results in the teams of players behaving in a self-organising manner. Accordingly, in spatially varying player location, one has a single metric that characterises player, hence team function, and ultimately whole team policy as the policy of a viable system, that is amenable to analysis. A key behavioural characteristic of a self-organising system is a power law. Accordingly, by searching for, and obtaining, a power law associated with player movement one thereby obtains the output of the policy function of that whole team as a viable system, and hence the viable system model that the team maps to. At the heart of such activity is communication between the players as they proceed to do what they need to do at any given time during a match. This has offered another unique opportunity to measure the amount of spatially underpinned Information exhibited by the opposing teams in their entirety and to set those in juxtaposition with their respective power law characteristics and associated match outcomes. This meant that the power law characteristic that represents the policy of the viable system, and the amount of Information associated with that could be, and was, examined in the context of success or failure outcomes (as criteria of viability) to discern if some combinations of both were more profitable than not. This was accomplished in this work by using player position data from an anonymous member of the English Premier Football League playing in an unknown season to provide a quantitative analysis accordingly

Algorithms For Community Identification In Complex Networks

First and foremost, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Professor Narsingh Deo, for his excellent guidance and encouragement, and also for introducing me to this wonderful science of complex networks. Without his support this dissertation would not have been possible. I would also like to thank the members of my research committee, professors Charles Hughes, Ratan Guha, Mainak Chatterjee and Yue Zhao for their advice and guidance during the entire process. I am indebted to the faculty and the staff of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science for providing me the resources and environment to perform this research. I am grateful to my colleagues in the Parallel and Quantum computing lab for the stimulating discussions and support. I would also like to thank Dr. Hemant Balakrishnan and Dr. Sanjeeb Nanda for their valuable suggestions and guidance. My heartfelt thanks to my parents, Vasudevan and Raji, who have always been supportive of my decisions and encouraged me with their best wishes. I would also like to thank my sister Gomathy, for her words of care and affection during tough times. Special thanks to my friends in Orlando for being there when I needed the

Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Software Engineering Workshop

Topics covered in the workshop included studies and experiments conducted in the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL), a cooperative effort of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Maryland, and Computer Sciences Corporation; software models; software products; and software tools