A Change in Macroeconomic Thinking

Left to its own devices, Keynes felt that there was no way a free market system, even with downwardly flexible wages and prices, could guarantee full employment

Research Exchange - November 17, 2020 New Directions at MISQ with Andrew Burton-Jones, moderated by Cynthia Beath

After recently being named the new Editor in Chief at MIS Quarterly, Dr. Andrew Burton-Jones sit down with Cynthia Beath to discuss new directions at the renowned journal. Burton-Jones will be discussing the journals current vision and impact on IS scholarship and knowledge. Andrew Burton-Jones is a Professor of Business Information Systems at the UQ Business School, University of Queensland. He obtained his BCom (Hons) and M. Information Systems from the University of Queensland and his Ph.D. from Georgia State University. Prior to returning to UQ, he was an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia. Andrew conducts research on how organizations can use information systems more effectively, how to improve systems analysis and design methods, and how to improve theories and methods in the IS discipline. Recently, much of his work has focused on healthcare contexts. Andrew has taught a variety of courses in the USA, Canada, China, and Australia. He is a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems and incoming Editor-in-Chief of MIS Quarterly. Moderator Cynthia M. Beath is a Professor Emerita of Information Systems at the McCombs School of Business at UT Austin and an AIS Fellow. She received her MBA and PhD degrees from UCLA. She recently published Designed for Digital, a book about how organizations redesign themselves for the digital era, with colleagues at the Center for Information Systems Research at MIT. Her research has been published in MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Research, and she has served as senior editor for both journals. An active advocate for her professional community, she initiated the field’s first junior faculty consortium, served as chair of a division of the Academy of Management, held a number of positions on the Council of the AIS, and helped found MISQ Executive

The National Solidarity Programme: Assessing the Effects of Community-Driven Development in Afghanistan

Over the past two decades, community-based approaches to project delivery have become a popular means for governments and development agencies to improve the alignment of projects with the needs of rural communities and to increase the participation of villagers in project design and implementation. This article briefly summarizes the results of an impact evaluation of the National Solidarity Programme (NSP), a community-driven development programme in Afghanistan that created democratically-elected community development councils and funded small-scale development projects. Using a randomized controlled trial across 500 villages, the evaluation finds that NSP had a positive effect on access to drinking water and electricity, acceptance of democratic processes, perceptions of economic well-being and attitudes towards women. Effects on perceptions of local and national government performance and material economic outcomes were, however, more limited or short-lived

Techno-economic analysis of supercritical carbon dioxide power blocks

Developing highly efficient power blocks holds the key to enhancing the cost competitiveness of Concentration Solar Thermal (CST) technologies. Supercritical CO (sCO) Brayton cycles have proved promising in providing equivalent or higher cycle efficiency than supercritical or superheated steam cycles at temperatures and scales relevant for Australian CST applications. In this study, a techno-economic methodology is developed using a stochastic approach to determine the ranges for the cost and performance of different components of central receiver power plants utilizing sCO power blocks that are necessary to meet the Australian Solar Thermal Initiative (ASTRI) final LCOE target of 12 c/kWh

What Every Business Student Needs to Know About Information Systems

Whether Information Systems should or should not be part of the core business school curriculum is a recurring discussion in many universities. In this article, a task force of 40 prominent information systems scholars address the issue. They conclude that information systems is absolutely an essential body of knowledge for business school students to acquire as well as a key element of the business school\u27s long-run strategic positioning within the university. Originally prepared in response to draft accreditation guidelines prepared by AACSB International, the article includes a compilation of the concepts that the authors believe to be the core information systems knowledge that all business school students should be familiar with

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Robust design and optimisation of a radial turbine within a supercritical CO2 solar Brayton Cycle

The generation of solar thermal power is dependent upon the amount of sunlight exposure,as influenced by the day-night cycle and seasonal variations. In this paper, robust optimisation is applied to the design of a power block and turbine, which is generating 30 MWe from a concentrated solar resource of 560oC. The robust approach is important to attain a high average performance (minimum efficiency change) over the expected operating ranges of temperature, speed and mass flow. The final objective function combines the turbine performance and efficiency weighted by the off-design performance. The resulting robust optimisation methodology as presented in the paper gives further information that greatly aids in the design of non-classical power blocks through considering off-design conditions and resultant performance

Randomized Institutional Isomorphism - Evidence from Afghanistan

The dissertation compiles a series of essays which describes effects of various institutional variations randomized across a sample of 500 villages in Afghanistan in 2007. The first essay examines the institutional effects of the creation of democratically-elected, gender-balanced village development councils across 474 village councils. The creation of councils is found to have no effects on the structure and function of local governance or on how male villagers perceive local governance quality. However, council creation provokes increased local governance activity among paramilitary commanders – who experience broad-based improvements in public perceptions – and improves perceptions of local governance quality among women. The results indicate that externally-imposed de jure reforms do not substantially alter institutional outcomes, but may provoke countervailing responses by political authorities seeking to benefit from the institutional change. The second essay examines the effects of direct democracy on the alignment between public resource allocation decisions and citizen preferences. Using data from 250 villages, the study compares decision outcomes produced by secret-ballot referenda with outcomes produced by public meetings led by an elected village council. The results indicate that while elites do exert influence over outcomes produced by public meetings, their preferences do not determine the outcomes of referenda, which are influenced primarily by citizen preferences. Referenda are also found to improve citizen satisfaction, which is particularly low where elites exert undue influence over outcomes. The third essay examines whether the inclusion of villages in Afghanistan‘s largest development program affects counter-insurgency outcomes, such as individual perceptions of well-being, attitudes towards government, and the occurrence of violent incidents in surrounding areas. The program is found to affect all three measures, but only in areas with low levels of initial violence. The results indicate that development programs can limit the onset of insurgencies in relatively secure areas, but are not effective in improving attitudes to government and reducing violence where insurgents are already active.Governmen

Randomized Institutional Isomorphism - Evidence from Afghanistan

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