Strike When the Force Is with You: Optimal Stopping with Application to Resource Equilibria

Optimal investment in a nonrenewable resource project occurs when the rate of increase of the project's forward value falls to the force of interest. This stopping rule yields a financial interpretation of resource quality as being a property of the project rather than of individual units of reserves. It also leads to re-interpretations of (a) rent as the present value of the project rather than of units of reserves and (b) Hotelling's insight as, not a rule for the path of rents, but an equilibrium algorithm for price. The analysis is extended to sequential development of pesticides, antibiotics, and forests. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.

Valuation and assessment of soil erosion costs

Soil is an essential natural resource for humans and an important part of the environment. However, soil is often used and managed inappropriately, causing its erosion and degradation, with concomitantly negative social, political and economic impacts. This study aimed to discuss sustainable development; and losses and problems caused by soil erosion, and to suggest a model for assessing erosion costs. The relevance of economic models for costing soil erosion is stressed. Based on an economic theory, it presents a procedure for assessing economic costs of soil erosion, centered on the on-site and off-site costs that are generated. The physical processes of soil erosion are described and their economic effects reviewed, drawing on theoretical and empirical sources. Limited data and information is available on the economic losses resulting from erosion, which hampers assessment and valuation

Factors Affecting the Successful Realisation of Benefits from Systems Development Projects: Findings from Three Case Studies

This article was published in the Journal of Information Technology [© Palgrave Macmillan] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx/doi.org/10.1057/jit.2011.8The return that organisations derive from investments in information systems and technology continues to disappoint. While there is a very significant body of literature on the factors that should facilitate a successful outcome from systems development, there is growing concern that these prescriptions are not having their desired effect. In this paper, we argue that the success of a systems development project should be measured in terms of its ability to deliver meaningful benefits, rather than the timely delivery of a technical artefact, and therefore organisations should adopt an explicit and proactive benefits realisation approach when investing in IT. Consequently, we sought to explore those actionable factors that might facilitate the effective realisation of benefits from systems development initiatives. Three organisations were identified that claimed to adopt a proactive approach to benefits realisation, and detailed studies of their systems development practices were conducted. Our analysis found that whilst one organisation had been successful in its adoption of a benefits realisation perspective, the other two had not, and this allowed us to identify those factors that helped to explain this difference in outcomes. In short, this paper makes an important contribution by identifying how a sub-set of traditional systems success factors might be enhanced, to give them a more explicit benefits realisation orientation. Moreover, it presents a coherent set of principles that can be used for deriving other factors and practices