Improved common weight DEA-based decision approach for economic and financial performance assessment

Economic and financial performance assessment possesses an important role for efficient usage of available resources. In this study, a novel common weight multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) approach based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) is presented to identify the best performing decision making unit (DMU) accounting for multiple inputs as well as multiple outputs. The robustness of the developed model, which provides a rank-order with enhanced discriminatory characteristics and improved weight dispersion, is illustrated by two case studies that aim to provide economic and financial performance assessment. The first study presents an evaluation of Morgan Stanley Capital International emerging markets, whereas the second case study ranks the Turkish deposit banks using the proposed methodology as well as providing a comparative evaluation with several other approaches addressed in earlier works. The results indicate that the introduced approach guarantees to identify the best performing DMU without including a discriminating parameter requiring an arbitrary step size value in model formulation while also achieving an improved weight dispersion for inputs and outputs

Real options approach for valuation of enterprise resource planning systems

Günümüzde tüm dünya genelindeki sağlık kurumları, hizmet kalitelerini iyileştirmeyi ve maliyetleri düşürmeyi amaçlayan bilişim teknolojileri yatırımlarının önemini kavramışlardır. Sağlık sektörünün sürekli yükselen standartları ve sigorta sistemlerinin artan gereksinimleri karar vericileri, hastanelerde Kurumsal Kaynak Planlama (KKP) sistemlerinin sağlık sektörünün gerek ve ihtiyaçlarına göre uyarlanmış ve geliştirilmiş hali olan Hastane Bilgi Sistemi (HBS) yatırım uygulamalarını dikkate almalarını zorunlu kılmaktadır. Bu tür yatırımların ekonomik değerlemesi karmaşık yapıları nedeniyle her zaman zor olmuştur. Bununla beraber bu yatırımların, bünyelerinde barındırdığı ve firmalara rekabet ortamında avantajlar sağlayan birçok faydası da mevcuttur. Geleneksel iskontolanmış nakit akışı yöntemleri, bu sistemlerin içinde varolan ve yatırım kararını haklı çıkartacak, yönetsel ve stratejik esnekliklerin değerini dikkate almamaktadır. Reel opsiyon yaklaşımı karar vericilere, geleneksel değerleme yöntemlerindeki bu yetersizliklerin üstesinden gelme olanağını sunmaktadır. Bu çalışmada, reel opsiyonları temel alan bir yaklaşımla, birden fazla opsiyonun birarada yer aldığı bir KKP sistemi yatırımının değerlemesine imkan tanıyan bir model önerilmektedir. Binom ağacı modelini temel alarak geliştirilen değerleme modelinin yapısı KKP yatırım fırsatının bünyesindeki birleşik opsiyonları değerlemeye imkan tanıyacak şekilde genişletilmiş ve dolayısıyla karar vericilere yeni bir katma değer sunulmuştur. Geliştirilen modelin potansiyel uygulaması gerçek bir HBS yatırımı değerlemesiyle gösterilmektedir. Yapılan uygulama geleneksel değerleme yöntemlerince kabul edilir görülmeyen yatırımların bile, bünyelerinde barındırdıkları stratejik ve yönetsel unsurlar sayesinde ve gelecekte oluşması muhtemel koşullar dahilinde kabul edilebilir bir hal alabileceğini ortaya koymaktadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: KKP yatırımlarının değerlemesi, reel opsiyonlar, birleşik opsiyonlar, opsiyon değerleme modelleri.Nowadays in order to improve the quality of care delivery and reduce costs, healthcare organizations globally recognize the importance of investing in information technologies (IT). The key drivers of healthcare sector like continuous improvement of healthcare standards and insurance systems have introduced new requirements for hospitals, which in return provided a solid ground for decision-makers to consider implementing hospital information system investment. Hospital information systems (HIS) are the customized and improved versions of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, designed according to the needs and the requirements of healthcare sector. It has been always difficult to value such investments in monetary terms due to their complex nature. This type of investments also has many inherent benefits that can provide significant competitive advantages. These inherent benefits can only be viable for decision support if strategic and managerial flexibilities can be utilized. However, traditional capital budgeting techniques, such as net present value (NPV), do not enable decision-makers to consider these flexibilities. Due to its idle valuation approach, NPV only considers a static scenario that ignores the possible dynamic changes in the market affecting future cash flows and interest rates. NPV's passive commitment strategy also forces the decision-makers pre-committing today to a "go" or "no-go" decision considering information only available today. Thus, it is clear that the traditional NPV methods ignore the value of managerial and strategic flexibility inherent in the investments which undermines a company's strategic opportunities. Investment science experts agreed that it is a must to integrate financial and strategic issues and study them together for making an investment decision. Recognizing the shortcomings of traditional NPV methods, real options (RO) technique has been suggested as an alternative approach. RO whose methodology is based upon financial options theory enable the decisions makers to analyze the true value of a real life investment opportunity through better modeling of the uncertainty within the investment. RO method does not only value the managerial flexibility through the investment horizon, it also supports and expands the firm's strategic frame. It gives a road map to the managers to optimize the medium and long-term strategies according to the expectations. RO can be categorized to six main managerial options according to the flexibility they have: option to defer, option to stage, option to expand/contract, option to abandon, option to switch and growth option. In a real-life investment scenario it is usually viable to have more than one real option concurrently. The first applications of real options are about mining and operating natural resource investments. Besides, the new application areas for RO are growing rapidly. Regardless of an industry, it can be used in many cases like entering a new market, deciding the initial scale of an investment, scaling up or down in the future according to the needs, managing multi-staged complex projects, and freezing up or completely ending an investment. Developing with dynamic market conditions due to the continuous improvements, IT investments are also an appropriate application area for RO. This study introduces a RO based methodology that enables decision-makers to value an ERP system investment incorporating multiple options. The option valuation model developed in this study extends the binomial lattice framework to model an ERP investment opportunity with compound options. The potential application of the proposed model is presented to evaluate an HIS implementation project of a Turkish health care organization. For this purpose, considering the ever changing dynamics of the market affecting possible cash flows, a computer-based decision support framework is developed to provide a flexible and efficient solution to decision-makers. In this manner, for simulating various possible future market conditions, different scenarios are generated via triggering conditional changes in model variables and parameters. Results are interpreted with tables and graphs for submitting a thorough road map to decision-makers that can be utilized as a managerial asset for understanding the interactions between model parameters. Further investigations have shown that even an investment that is not approved to be undertaken with traditional valuation methods, can be valuable for a firm considering the strategic and managerial flexibilities inherent in the investment, with the effect of the possible market conditions in the future. Thus, it is also emphasized that real options approach generally presents a new point of view for valuing IT investment projects. Keywords: Evaluation of ERP investments, real options, compound options, option valuation models

Evaluating the efficiencies of alternative energy resources for electricity generation in Turkey

Birden çok girdi ve çıktıya sahip karar birimlerinin göreli performanslarının ölçülmesi için kullanılan klasik Veri Zarflama Analizi (VZA) modellerinde yalnızca kesin sayısal veriler kullanılabilir. Oysa gerçek hayattaki birçok uygulamada karar birimlerinin kullanıldığı girdiler ve ürettiği çıktılar belirsiz, aralıklar halinde veya sözel olarak ifade edilmiş olabilir. Enerji kaynak alternatiflerinin etkinlik analizindeki uzman görüşleri sözel olarak, maliyet girdisi de belirsiz olduğu için bulanık sayılarla ifade edilmektedir. Bu çalışmada, Türkiye’de elektrik üretimi için kullanılabilecek enerji kaynak alternatiflerinin etkinliğinin ölçülmesi için Bulanık VZA (BVZA) kullanılmıştır. Makalede, Charnes vd. (1978) tarafından geliştirilen klasik VZA modelinin (CCR modeli) dual formunu temel alan yeni bir bulanık VZA formülasyonu (Dual Bulanık Veri Zarflama analizi–DBVZA) önerilmektedir. Bulanık model, α-kesmeleri yaklaşımı kullanılarak doğrusallaştırılmıştır. DBVZA modelinde, diğer bulanık VZA modellerinden farklı olarak, Karar Birimlerinin (KB) etkinliği ölçülürken, bulanık girdi ve çıktı değerlerinin α-kesmelerinin uç noktaları yerine, tüm α-kesmeleri performans ölçümünde kullanılmakta ve böylelikle aralığın içindeki verilerin de etkinlik analizinde dikkate alınması sağlanmaktadır. DBVZA’nın karar vericilere sağladığı bir diğer avantaj, tüm α seviyelerinde etkinlik sınırında yer alan, bir başka deyişle %100 etkin olan KB sayısının diğer bulanık VZA yöntemlerine göre düşük olmasıdır. Bu durum KB’lerin etkinliklerine göre sıralanmasını kolaylaştırmaktadır. Ayrıca DBVZA ile yapılan uygulamalarda karar birimlerinin etkinliklerine göre sıralanabilmesi için herhangi bir bulanık sıralama yöntemine ihtiyaç duyulmamaktadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Veri zarflama analizi, bulanık matematik programlama, etkinlik analizi, enerji alternatifleri, elektrik üretimi.With the beginning of 21st century, the consumption of energy all over the world is increasing far more rapidly than in the last century. Today, energy is the most important basic input for economical and industrial development. Especially for developing countries like Turkey, alternative energy resources for power plants have very high strategic importance. In Turkey, like many other countries, the generation of electric power is based on fossil fuels. The volatility of oil prices, the exhaustibility of fossil fuels and environmental issues force developing industries to revise their alternatives for electricity generation. Now, it is the time to give more attention to stable, reliable and non-polluting energy resources. Most forms of alternative energy resources are dependent on geographical and environmental factors which vary from country to country. Every country has to determine its energy policy considering its specific conditions like demand and supply equilibrium, dependency on other countries, geographical conditions, variations of population, etc.Turkey is a country that lacks sufficient conventional energy resources and is importing oil and natural gas from other countries. As an emerging country, Turkey has been one of the fastest growing energy markets in the world. Turkey's share in total OECD production is expected to increase from 2% in 1995 to 7% in 2020s, making Turkey a significant economic power within the OECD countries but this will be possible only with a proper energy policy and efficient selection of alternative energy resources. Selecting among different resource alternatives is a very difficult task as the factors which affect the efficiency of energy resources are imprecise and require expert knowledge. The criteria, such as sustainability, security etc. are defined in linguistic form as it is impossible to quantify them. As a result, some of the criteria of efficiency have to be introduced in analysis as fuzzy data. The performance assessment methods which enable us to use fuzzy inputs and outputs are suitable for the evaluation of energy alternatives efficiencies. The potentially viable electricity resources considered for Turkey are oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear power, hydropower, wind power, solar power and biomass power. For the evaluation criteria of these energy resources and their values, we refer to expert opinions. The details about efficiency criteria and results of the analysis can be found in the application. The energy resources are ranked by their efficiency scores as follows: Wind, natural gas, hydropower, biomass, coal, oil, solar power and nuclear power. The existing data envelopment analysis (DEA) models for measuring the relative efficiencies of a set of decision making units (DMUs) using various inputs to produce various outputs are limited to crisp data.  However, the data acquired from expert opinions for evaluating the efficiencies of alternative energy resources is generally in linguistic form. This paper proposes a fuzzy DEA formulation based on dual form of the DEA model developed by Charnes et al. (1978) to deal with imprecise or linguistic data that we frequently come across in real-world applications. The model is transformed into a family of crisp linear problems using the "-cut approach. In dual fuzzy DEA formulation, the entire "-cut interval is taken into account unlike many other fuzzy DEA formulations which use the boundary points of "-cuts when calculating the efficiency scores of DMUs. Dual fuzzy DEA is suitable to rank every DMU in all "-levels as we are not faced with the problem of having too many DMUs on the efficient frontier. Another advantage of the dual fuzzy DEA formulation is that, it does not require any fuzzy ranking method to rank the DMUs. As the result, dual fuzzy DEA can be very useful in performance evaluation, especially when decision makers or researchers have few DMUs and a large number of decision criteria (inputs and outputs) as they will be able to rank all DMUs according their efficiency scores. The paper is organized as follows: A literature survey of fuzzy DEA models is followed by the presentation of the classical DEA model (CCR formulation), dual form of the CCR formulation and fuzzy DEA model. Then, the linearization of dual fuzzy DEA by ?-cut approach and variable alterations is introduced. After a real life application concerning the assessment of energy alternatives for electricity production in Turkey, the paper ends with the conclusion. Keywords: Data envelopment analysis, fuzzy mathematical programming, efficiency analysis, energy alternatives, electricity generation

Brain Neuronal CB2 Cannabinoid Receptors in Drug Abuse and Depression: From Mice to Human Subjects

BACKGROUND: Addiction and major depression are mental health problems associated with stressful events in life with high relapse and reoccurrence even after treatment. Many laboratories were not able to detect the presence of cannabinoid CB2 receptors (CB2-Rs) in healthy brains, but there has been demonstration of CB2-R expression in rat microglial cells and other brain associated cells during inflammation. Therefore, neuronal expression of CB2-Rs had been ambiguous and controversial and its role in depression and substance abuse is unknown. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In this study we tested the hypothesis that genetic variants of CB2 gene might be associated with depression in a human population and that alteration in CB2 gene expression may be involved in the effects of abused substances including opiates, cocaine and ethanol in rodents. Here we demonstrate that a high incidence of (Q63R) but not (H316Y) polymorphism in the CB2 gene was found in Japanese depressed subjects. CB2-Rs and their gene transcripts are expressed in the brains of naïve mice and are modulated following exposure to stressors and administration of abused drugs. Mice that developed alcohol preference had reduced CB2 gene expression and chronic treatment with JWH015 a putative CB2-R agonist, enhanced alcohol consumption in stressed but not in control mice. The direct intracerebroventricular microinjection of CB2 anti-sense oligonucleotide into the mouse brain reduced mouse aversions in the plus-maze test, indicating the functional presence of CB2-Rs in the brain that modifies behavior. We report for the using electron microscopy the sub cellular localization of CB2-Rs that are mainly on post-synaptic elements in rodent brain. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our data demonstrate the functional expression of CB2-Rs in brain that may provide novel targets for the effects of cannabinoids in depression and substance abuse disorders beyond neuro-immunocannabinoid activity

Fit between humanitarian professionals and project requirements: hybrid group decision procedure to reduce uncertainty in decision-making

Choosing the right professional that has to meet indeterminate requirements is a critical aspect in humanitarian development and implementation projects. This paper proposes a hybrid evaluation methodology for some non-governmental organizations enabling them to select the most competent expert who can properly and adequately develop and implement humanitarian projects. This methodology accommodates various stakeholders’ perspectives in satisfying the unique requirements of humanitarian projects that are capable of handling a range of uncertain issues from both stakeholders and project requirements. The criteria weights are calculated using a two-step multi-criteria decision-making method: (1) Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process for the evaluation of the decision maker weights coupled with (2) Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to rank the alternatives which provide the ability to take into account both quantitative and qualitative evaluations. Sensitivity analysis have been developed and discussed by means of a real case of expert selection problem for a non-profit organisation. The results show that the approach allows a decrease in the uncertainty associated with decision-making, which proves that the approach provides robust solutions in terms of sensitivity analysis