Presence / Absence

Presence / Absence is a visual and conceptual l exploration of language and issues surrounding experiences of interpersonal relationships. In it I look at various approaches in which artists and writers have approached the subject of intimacy and coexistence as both a context and foundation for my own work addressing relationships. This body of work is specifically looks at experiences of the personally revolutionary presence of an other and the impact of their absence

An evaluation of nonselective and selective pricing strategies for finished hog producers in Tennessee

Because of the difficulties a hog producer faces with fluctuating cash markets and demands placed on him by his creditors, the goals of increasing mean net returns and reducing price risks are assumed to be widespread among hog producers. This study evaluated the use of nonse- lective (routine) and selective pricing strategies to increase a fin-ished hog producer\u27s mean profits and reduce price risk. Computer simulation models were used to perform the evaluations. The types of strategies (both routine and selective) involved the use of cash mar-kets, cash forward contracting, futures market hedging and the purchase of put options on live hog futures. The period of the study was from 1977 through 1984. Mean net returns and variance of net returns over the 92 production simulations were the main criteria for evaluating the performance of each strategy. Other values recorded for each strategy were minimum and maximum net returns and the number of noncash marketing simulations. The results indicated that mean net returns and the variance of net returns were not improved for finish hog producers by using any routine strategy. However, selective strategies involving cash con-tracting and the use of futures markets increased mean net returns while providing more protection against adverse price movements than the traditional cash marketing approach. The purchase of at-the-money put options did provide some risk protection, but mean net returns were less than a traditional cash marketing strategy. Purchase of in-the-money and out-of-the money put options (with the strike price being the nearest increment from the at-the-money strike price) also provided some risk protection, but with no significant improvements in net returns over those achieved with a traditional cash approach

STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN AN ERA OF INCREASED OPENNESS: A BACKGROUND PAPER ON THE STRUCTURE OF U.S. AGRICULTURE

Agribusiness,

CASE STUDY OF ELECTRONIC BANKING AT MERIDIAN BANCORP

The paper illustrates âbusiness value linkage impact analysisâ, a new method for measuring the business value of information technology (IT), in the context of a case study of electronic banking operations at Meridian Bancorp, a large commercial bank. Management science models were constructed to gauge the impact of automated teller machines (ATMs) on branch teller labour productivity and retail deposit market share, and the potential for substitution of labour by ATMs is shown. Econometric estimation of the models yielded the following results: the efficiency of teller labour was found to decline in the presence of a branch ATM; a bank's ATM network decision was shown to be an important determinant of the relative size of the retail deposit market it could capture in south-east Pennsylvania; membership in the regionally dominant MAC ATM network leveraged retail deposit market share when a clear majority of local branches and ATMs were members of a regionally smaller, competing network: and high-density ATM deployment did not lead to increases in the overall size of the deposit market.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

THE BUSINESS CASE FOR AUTOMATING SOFTWARE METRICS IN OBJECT-ORIENTED COMPUTER AIDED SOFTWARE ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENTS

This paper makes the business case for automating the collection of software metrics for gauging development performance in integrated computer aided software engineering (CASE) environments that are characterized by an object-oriented development methodology and a centralized repository. The automation of function point analysis is discussed in the context of such an integrated CASE environment (ICE). We also discuss new metrics that describe three different dimensions of code reuse -- leverage, value and classification -- and examine the p,ossibility of utilizing objects as means to estimate software development labor and measure productivity. We argue that the automated collection of these software metrics opens up new avenues for refining the management of software development projects and controlling stra-egic costs.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

MEASURING THE DEVELOPMENT PERFORMANCE OF INTEGRATED COMPUTER AIDED SOFTWARE ENGINEERING (I-CASE): A SYNTHESIS OF FIELD STUDY RESULTS FROM THE FIRST BOSTON CORPORATION

Information Systems Working Papers Serie

QUANTIFYING THE BUSINESS VALUE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND APPLICATION TO ELECTRONIC BANKING

Information Systems Working Papers Serie

AUTOMATED SOFTWARE METRICS, REPOSITORY EVALUATION AND SOFTWARE ASSET MANAGEMENT: NEW TOOLS AND PERSPECTIVES FOR MANAGING INTEGRATED COMPUTER AIDED SOFTWARE ENGINEERING (I-CASE)

Automated collection of software metrics in computer aided software engineering (CASE) environments opens up new avenues for improving the management of software development operations, as well as shifting the focus of management's control efforts from "software projectâ to "software assets" stored in a centralized repository. Repository evaluation, a new direction for software metrics research in the 1990s, promises a fresh view of software development performance for a range of responsibility levels. We discuss the automation of function point and code reuse analysis in the context of an integrated CASE (I-CASE) environment deployed at a large investment bank in New York City. The development of an automated code reuse analysis tool prompted us to re-think how to measure and interpret code reuse in the I-CASE environment. The metrics we propose describe three dimensions of code reuse -- leverage, value and classification -- and we examine the value of applying them on a project and a repository-wide basis.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

QUANTIFYING THE BUSINESS VALUE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE 'BUSINESS VALUE LINKAGE' FRAMEWORK

Senior management's ability to gauge the business value of investments in information technology (IT) has been seriously hampered by a lack of analytic tools to conduct sound performance assessment. In this paper, we present a conceptual framework called a "business value linkage" that is used to represent the processes by which the direct outputs of an IT are transformed within the firm and its operating environment into enhanced revenues, reduced costs and new strategic opportunities to increase market share. Utilizing appropriate modeling and econometric methods, we illustrate our approach by analyzing several hard-to-measure aspects of the business value of automated teller machines (ATMs) in retail electronic banking. The results show that the hardest to measure impacts in some cases can have the greatest business value.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

A SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO THE MEASUREMENT OF IT BUSINESS VALUE - PART I: A MANAGER'S GUIDE TO 'BUSINESS VALUE LINKAGE' IMPACT ANALYSIS

Information Systems Working Papers Serie