De/construction sites: Romans and the digital playground

The Roman world as attested to archaeologically and as interacted with today has its expression in a great many computational and other media. The place of visualisation within this has been paramount. This paper argues that the process of digitally constructing the Roman world and the exploration of the resultant models are useful methods for interpretation and influential factors in the creation of a popular Roman aesthetic. Furthermore, it suggests ways in which novel computational techniques enable the systematic deconstruction of such models, in turn re-purposing the many extant representations of Roman architecture and material culture

The valuation of self-funded retirement villages in Australia

Changing demographics will see an increasing demand for self-funded sector retirement villages in Australia. As such, valuers can expect to be more involved in providing valuation advice in this sector, although the central issue remains that retirement villages are complex businesses. They have been described as management intensive operating businesses with a substantial real estate element. As a result the valuation process in this sector requires a different type of analysis, in comparison to the traditional real estate based investment.This paper provides an analysis of recent trends in the demand for retirement villages and examine current practise with respect to valuation thereof. It emphasises the need for a greater awareness of the &lsquo;business enterprise value&rsquo; component and provides a framework within which the components of value can be better understood. The purpose of the paper is to provide a foundation for a greater reliability with respect to valuation advice.<br /

Bounded Rationality and Consumer Research: Lessons From a Study of Choices of Mobile Phone Service Contracts

This paper draws lessons about the allocation of resources to research aimed at studying the efficiency of consumer decision making in complex, fast-moving markets. These lessons emerged during research involving a large-sample survey of choices of mobile phone service plans by Australian consumers. In this kind of market, researchers will run into difficulties in collecting and evaluating data, and market conditions will not stand still while they address these problems. It is even possible that what seems suboptimal to researchers will sometimes actually be highly appropriate choice for consumers. The paper concludes by advocating the use of simpler methods to approximate the prevalence of decision-making inefficiency—such as collaborative work with owners of websites that try to assist consumers—as knowledge of optimal choices is not essential for understanding the sources of inefficiency or devising methods by which better choices might be made.

Capability prerequisites and the competitive process

It is argued that the competitive process and processes of economic development may be understood better if economists focus on the role played by barriers to substitution caused by the use of trade-off-preventing decision rules and the production processes that require specific human and physical resources. Job selection criteria embody this via 'essential' requirements, but non-negotiable requirements of workers may result in poor structural adjustment. Production systems involve prerequisites and co-requisites but though firms can trade in factor markets this does not guarantee them instant means to achieving particular performance standards that potential customers demand

Behavioral Economics and the Economics of Regulation

Behavioural economics draws upon fieldwork, experiments and research in disciplines such as psychology for building blocks to construct economic analysis that is more descriptively realistic and both augments and qualifies traditional economics as a tool for designing policy. Though behavioural economics has attracted much attention and respectability in the past decade or so, its roots date back to work undertaken in Europe a century ago and in the US in the middle of the twentieth century. Whereas economists traditionally have seen choice as an optimising activity subject to given preferences and a well-defined budget constraint, behavioural economics sees everyday life as a process in which humans with limited cognitive capacity try to cope with both information overload and the absence of relevant information and knowledge by evolving targets for what seems feasible and systems of rules for trying to find ways of meeting these targets. Some decision rules may be fast and frugal means of arriving at choices that do not result in needlessly poor attainments. However, much of what is known about how people actually behave implies that many people could be doing a lot better for themselves in many situations if only they were aware of the limitations of their ways of coping with the world and were motivated to find and apply improved decision rules. Poor search strategies limit the competitive pressures faced by firms and hence may have longer-term impacts on welfare via reduced productivity growth or innovation. However, in designing policies to promote better search by consumers one must remember that many consumers are also workers: higher productivity and better or cheaper goods may sometimes come at the cost of people having to work harder. To the extent that firms are aware of shortcomings of consumers' decision-making processes, they may be in a position to apply this knowledge to manipulate choices, for example by how they frame information that is presented to consumers. Tendencies for consumers to lack self-control and to fail to reflect on the longer-term implications of their choices can very easily result in poor choices when credit is easily available. Regulatory policies could do more to promote careful reflection by consumer by erecting hurdles to delay choice, as well as by measures to make it easier for consumers to make comparisons and see the financial implications of particular choices. In designing such policies there is scope for integrating them with policies aimed at the promotion of self-funded retirement and environmental wellbeing. The paper ends with detailed case study discussions of problems of choice in the markets for building renovation services and financial services. In the former, problems of finding good value for money are increased by the one-off nature of much of the work and by combination of shortages of trades-people relative to demand and large numbers of potential suppliers to approach for quotations. The environment is also conducive to consumers ending up overcapitalising in their renovations. In the market for financial services, the balance of risk-taking with property speculation and suchlike is stacked in favour of the loan providers, whilst the chances of inexperienced speculators getting into difficulties are enhanced because they are prone to use decision rules they have picked up from others belatedly and in simplified form. The implications of borrowing and superannuation choices should be made much more transparent to consumers, along with the futility of trying to beat the market rather than investing in market index funds

The economic rationale of universities : a reconsideration

This paper is an attempt to make a contribution to current debates about the reform of higher education by using the work of Ronald Coase on 'the nature of the firm' as a framework for considering alternative institutional structures for delivering educational services. Attention is focused particularly on rival ways of coordinating the delivery of educational services and guaranteeing standards. Extreme market-based scenarios involving freelance academics and itemised billing for specific services are contrasted with the present system involving very incomplete contracts for academic employees and 'banquet-style' purchases of degrees by students. Costs and benefits of different institutional structures are examined. The role of academic professionalism in limiting opportunistic behaviour is considered in relation to policies that involve an increase in auditing of tertiary institutions

Bounded rationality and decomposability: The basis for integrating cognitive and evolutionary economics

This paper explores the interconnections between two of Herbert Simon's key concepts, bounded rationality and decomposability, and show how this unity provides the starting point for merging cognitively focused approaches to behavioral economics with evolutionary/institutional economics into a coherent single framework. It does this by showing how the authors' ways of looking at the world were influenced by Simon's thinking: in the case of Earl, this led initially to a check-list view of choice that helped to make sense of the role of non-price factors in international trade and the de-industrialization problem in the UK in the 1970s, while the notion that resilient systems tend to be structurally decomposable helped make sense of why sharp rises in prices of 'basic' products can produce crises. Potts came to see the economic system as a multi-level system of partially decomposable systems that agents developed as a means of coping with bounded rationality. The paper ends by reflecting on potential for instability as the world economy becomes increasingly globalized and its web of connections potentially more intricate