Committees versus individuals: an experimental analysis of monetary policy decision-making

We report the results of an experimental analysis of monetary policy decision-making under uncertainty. A large sample of economically literate students from the London School of Economics played a simple monetary policy game, as both individuals and committees of five players. Our findings - that groups make better decisions than individuals - accord with previous work by Blinder and Morgan. The experiment also attempted to establish why group decision-making is superior: although some improvement was related to committees taking decisions by majority voting, a significant additional committee benefit was associated with members being able to share information and observe each other's voting behaviour.monetary policy, experimental economics, central banking, uncertainty

Student wellbeing through teacher wellbeing: A Study with law teachers in the UK and Australia

Research confirms law students and lawyers in the US, Australia and more recently in the UK are prone to symptoms related to stress and anxiety disproportionately to other professions. In response, the legal profession and legal academy in Australia and the UK have created Wellness Networks to encourage and facilitate research and disseminate ideas and strategies that might help law students and lawyers to thrive. This project builds on that research through a series of surveys of law teachers in the UK and Australia on the presumption that law teachers are in a strong position to influence their students not only about legal matters, but on developing attitudes and practices that will help them to survive and thrive as lawyers. The comparative analysis reveals several differences, but also many similarities with law teachers in both countries reporting negative effects from neoliberal pressures on legal education programs that impact their wellbeing, performance as teachers and ability to adequately respond to student concerns

The transportation of Narain Sing: punishment, honour and identity from the Anglo–Sikh Wars to the Great Revolt

This paper examines fragments from the life of Narain Sing as a means of exploring punishment, labour, society and social transformation in the aftermath of the Anglo–Sikh Wars (1845–1846, 1848–1849). Narain Sing was a famous military general who the British convicted of treason and sentenced to transportation overseas after the annexation of the Panjab in 1849. He was shipped as a convict to one of the East India Company's penal settlements in Burma where, in 1861, he was appointed head police constable of Moulmein. Narain Sing's experiences of military service, conviction, transportation and penal work give us a unique insight into questions of loyalty, treachery, honour, masculinity and status. When his life history is placed within the broader context of continuing agitation against the expansion of British authority in the Panjab, we also glimpse something of the changing nature of identity and the development of Anglo–Sikh relations more broadly between the wars of the 1840s and the Great Indian Revolt of 1857–1858

Overlooked examples of cloud self-organization at the mesoscale

Stratocumulus clouds are common in the tropical and subtropical marine boundary layer, and understanding these clouds is important due to their significant impact on the earth's radiation budget. Observations show that the marine boundary layer contains complex, but poorly understood processes, which, from time to time, result in the observable self-organization of cloud structures at scales ranging from a few to a few thousand kilometers. Such shallow convective cloud features, typically observed as hexagonal cells, are known generally as mesoscale cellular convection (MCC). Actinoform clouds are rarer, but visually more striking forms of MCC, which possess a radial structure. Because mesoscale cloud features are typically too large to be observed from the ground, observations of hexagonal cells historically date only to the beginning of satellite meteorology. Examples of actinoform clouds were shown in the venerable “Picture of the Month” series in Monthly Weather Review in the early 1960s, but these clouds were generally forgotten as research focused on hexagonal cells. Recent high-resolution satellite images have, in a sense, “rediscovered” actinoform clouds, and they appear to be much more prevalent than had been previously suspected. We show a number of examples of actinoform clouds from a variety of locations worldwide. In addition, we have conducted a detailed case study of an actinoform cloud system using data from the Multiangle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES), including analysis of cloud heights, radiative properties, and the time-evolution of the cloud system. We also examine earlier theories regarding actinoform clouds in light of the new satellite data

Committees Versus Individuals: An Experimental Analysis of Monetary Policy Decision Making

We report the results of an experimental analysis of monetary policy decision making under uncertainty. A large sample of economics students played a simple monetary policy game, both as individuals and in committees of five players. Our findings - that groups make better decisions than individuals - accord with previous work by Blinder and Morgan. We also attempt to establish why this is so. Some of the improvement is related to the ability of committees to strip out the effect of bad play, but there is a significant additional improvement, which we associate with players learning from each other’s interest rate decisions.Monetary policy; experimental economics; central banking; uncertainty

Management of lower urinary tract symptoms in men : summary of NICE guidance

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Building Intellectual Capital in Incubated Technology Firms

Purpose: The value of relational capital generated by entrepreneurs with their internal and external environment (Hormiga, Batista-Canino and Sanchez-Medina, 2011), provides considerable resources when properly leveraged. It is particularly important in environments such as the high tech sector of incomplete information and weak economic markets such as new products, markets or technologies (Davidsson, and Honig, 2003). The paper examines how incubated technology entrepreneurs build relational capital for a new venture formation in the social context of a Higher Education Institution. Design/methodology/approach: Our study took a qualitative approach based on content analysis of business plans and in-depth interviews with twenty-five technology entrepreneurs on an incubation programme – South East Enterprise Platform Programme - for technology graduates in the South East of Ireland. Findings: Our study found that technology entrepreneurs during new venture formation engaged in four types of relational capital activities, namely, development of networks and contacts, relationship building, accessing and leveraging knowledge experts and members of associations. Practical Implications: Incubator programmes need to actively support social building activities of technology entrepreneurs. HEI knowledge assets and networks are critical elements in supporting incubator technology entrepreneurs. Originality/Value: Our study identified four types of relational capital building. We also found using Evans Jones (1995) categorization of technology entrepreneurs that users, producers, opportunists and non–technical entrepreneurs engaged in client focused relational capital building, whereas researcher types networked with service providers and displayed arms length relational capital building styles

Piloting Multimodal Learning Analytics using Mobile Mixed Reality in Health Education

© 2019 IEEE. Mobile mixed reality has been shown to increase higher achievement and lower cognitive load within spatial disciplines. However, traditional methods of assessment restrict examiners ability to holistically assess spatial understanding. Multimodal learning analytics seeks to investigate how combinations of data types such as spatial data and traditional assessment can be combined to better understand both the learner and learning environment. This paper explores the pedagogical possibilities of a smartphone enabled mixed reality multimodal learning analytics case study for health education, focused on learning the anatomy of the heart. The context for this study is the first loop of a design based research study exploring the acquisition and retention of knowledge by piloting the proposed system with practicing health experts. Outcomes from the pilot study showed engagement and enthusiasm of the method among the experts, but also demonstrated problems to overcome in the pedagogical method before deployment with learners