Secure Implementation Experiments: Do Strategy-proof Mechanisms Really Work?

Strategy-proofness, requiring that truth-telling is a dominant strategy, is a standard concept used in social choice theory. Saijo et al. (2003) argue that this concept has serious drawbacks. In particular, announcing one's true preference may not be a unique dominant strategy, and almost all strategy-proof mechanisms have a continuum of Nash equilibria. For only a subset of strategy-proof mechanisms do the set of Nash equilibria and the set of dominant strategy equilibria coincide. For example, this double coincidence occurs in the Groves mechanism when preferences are single-peaked. We report experiments using two strategy-proof mechanisms where one of them has a large number of Nash equilibria, but the other has a unique Nash equilibrium. We found clear differences in the rate of dominant strategy play between the two.

Imbalance of World Heritage List: did the UNESCO strategy work?

The official intention of the UNESCO World Heritage List is to protect the global heritage. However, the imbalance of the distribution of Sites according to countries and continents is striking. Consequently, the World Heritage Committee launched the Global Strategy for a Balanced, Representative and Credible World Heritage List in 1994. To date, there have not been any empirical analyses conducted to study the impact of this strategy. This paper shows that the imbalance did not decrease and perhaps increased over time, thus reflecting the inability of the Global Strategy to achieve a more balanced distribution of Sites.UNESCO, international organizations, international political economy, global public goods, world heritage

Migration for Hard Work: A Reluctant Livelihood Strategy for Poor Households in West Bengal, India

projects to promote poverty reduction globally. DFID provided funds for this study as part of that goal but the views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) alone

The Need and Requirements to a Strategy Ontology

The importance of strategy and strategy construct is not a new phenomenon. However as strategy work becomes less tangible, concerns with understanding, describing, and managing strategies develops into an increasingly complex subject. Current strategy concepts are dispersed and lack integration. Moreover, the enablement of modelling practices around strategy concepts considering the entire strategy lifecycle are also missing. Consequently, this paper focuses on issues with strategy in theory and practice, why a strategy ontology is needed and how this can be developed

Screening, Competition, and Job Design

In recent decades, many firms offered more discretion to their employees, often increasing the productivity of effort but also leaving more opportunities for shirking. These “high-performance work systems” are difficult to understand in terms of standard moral hazard models. We show experimentally that complementarities between high effort discretion, rent-sharing, screening opportunities, and competition are important driving forces behind these new forms of work organization. We document in particular the endogenous emergence of two fundamentally distinct types of employment strategies. Employers either implement a control strategy, which consists of low effort discretion and little or no rent-sharing, or they implement a trust strategy, which stipulates high effort discretion and substantial rent-sharing. If employers cannot screen employees, the control strategy prevails, while the possibility of screening renders the trust strategy profitable. The introduction of competition substantially fosters the trust strategy, reduces market segmentation, and leads to large welfare gains for both employers and employees

A biologically inspired meta-control navigation system for the Psikharpax rat robot

A biologically inspired navigation system for the mobile rat-like robot named Psikharpax is presented, allowing for self-localization and autonomous navigation in an initially unknown environment. The ability of parts of the model (e. g. the strategy selection mechanism) to reproduce rat behavioral data in various maze tasks has been validated before in simulations. But the capacity of the model to work on a real robot platform had not been tested. This paper presents our work on the implementation on the Psikharpax robot of two independent navigation strategies (a place-based planning strategy and a cue-guided taxon strategy) and a strategy selection meta-controller. We show how our robot can memorize which was the optimal strategy in each situation, by means of a reinforcement learning algorithm. Moreover, a context detector enables the controller to quickly adapt to changes in the environment-recognized as new contexts-and to restore previously acquired strategy preferences when a previously experienced context is recognized. This produces adaptivity closer to rat behavioral performance and constitutes a computational proposition of the role of the rat prefrontal cortex in strategy shifting. Moreover, such a brain-inspired meta-controller may provide an advancement for learning architectures in robotics

The application of performance measures in the UK retail sector: an exploratory analysis

Abstract: An empirical investigation of the use of performance measurement by small and medium sized online retailers in the UK. The purpose of the study is to investigate type and range of performance measures applied and extent to which measures are likely to affect business performance and strategy development. The key findings are that whilst a good range of measures are applied, the measures are more likely to be used for checking strategy implementation rather than strategy formulation or for informing corrective action to ensure longer term strategic success. Further work is required to explore relationships between strategy and business performance

Disease Surveillance Networks Initiative Asia: Final Evaluation

The DSN Initiative was launched in 2007 under the new strategy of the Rockefeller Foundation. The initiative intends:[1] To improve human resources for disease surveillance in developing countries, thus bolstering national capacity to monitor, report, and respond to outbreaks;[2] To support regional networks to promote collaboration in disease surveillance and response across countries; and[3] To build bridges between regional and global monitoring effortsThe purpose of the DSN evaluation in the Mekong region was twofold:[1]To inform the work and strategy of the Foundation, its grantees, and the broader field of disease surveillance, based on the experience of DSN investments in the Mekong region. More specifically, the evaluation will inform future directions and strategies for current areas of DSN Initiative work, particularly in Asia, and will highlight potential new areas of work and strategy; and[2] To provide accountability to the Rockefeller Foundation's board, staff, and stakeholders for the DSN funds spent in the Mekong region