The Right Choice at the Right Time: A Herding Experiment in Endogenous Time

Herding describes the phenomenon in decision-making where an economic agent disregards his own private information to follow the actions of his predecessors as in Banerjee (1992). With later decision-makers simply copying earlier decisions their private information cannot be inferred by other decision-makers and will be forever lost. There is some experimental evidence on simple sequential herding of this type in the literature, notably Anderson and Holt (1997). This paper differs by allowing subjects to delay their decision-making in order to benefit from observing others' actions as in more recent herding models such as Chamley and Gale (1994). The results in this paper suggest that subjects will indeed delay when their private information is not sufficiently strong. Despite this ability to wait, as predicted in the theoretical literature, cascades remained ubiquitous and more worrying still, reverse-cascades occurred in which incorrect decisions made by early decision-makers produced informational cascades on the wrong action. In an alternative design, informing subjects that they had made incorrect choices only made matters worse as subjects moved further away from rational behavior.     

Regulation of relationships between heterogeneous farmers and an aquifer accounting for lag effects

Many environmental problems are due to damage caused by pollutants that accumulate with a time lag following their emission. In this study, we focus on nitrates used in agriculture, which can pollute groundwater many years after their initial application. A dynamic optimal control problem with heterogeneous farmers is proposed. The usual structural parameters such as the discount rate, the natural clearing rate and the lagged time interval between the occurrence of soil‐level pollution and the impact on groundwater are taken into account. We also examine pollution as caused by a continuous set of farms characterised by their individual performance index and by their individual marginal contribution to the pollution. The issue is further investigated by taking account of change in the information context, successively related to perfect information and to asymmetric information. As a result, when the delay between the spreading of N‐fertilizer and the impact on the aquifer increases, that is, the longer the lag, the steady‐state pollution stock and the steady‐state shadow price of the stock both increase. Moreover, we show that the optimal regulation may require a decreasing amount of fertilizer over time, even in the case of initial underpollution.     

Collaborative delay management towards demand-capacity balancing within User Driven Prioritisation Process

The concept of User Driven Prioritisation Process (UDPP) was introduced to give Airspace Users (AUs) more flexibility under demand-capacity imbalance. This paper presents two UDPP-DCB models, built on the UDPP principle, using the Selective Flight Protection (SFP) approach to minimize the total delay cost. AUs are enabled to adapt their operations in a more cost-efficient way in the presence of capacity constraints in airspace, optimizing their flights to keep the priorities track. Then, ATFM integrates the AUs’ decision to reassign the time slots and the preferred rerouting trajectories. Results suggest that the delay cost for AUs can be largely reduced through applying the UDPP-DCB models proposed in this paper, while allowing rerouting proves effective in reducing the system delay cost.     

IMMEDIATE SETTLEMENT OR ENDURING A STRIKE: THE CHOICE OF SIGNALS

Some labour contract negotiations involve strikes while most conclude with immediate settlement. This article offers a model of union‐firm negotiation with private information to show that either strikes or immediate settlement will take place in the equilibrium. Different from most signalling literature where the signals are exogenously given, this article endogenizes the choice of signals. We compare two signals, the employment level and the strategic delay. We show that the low‐revenue firm will choose the signal which gives it higher payoff while separating itself from the high‐revenue firm.     

上海市交通拥堵成本测算及对策研究

依据美国德克萨斯运输学院交通拥挤外部成本的经典测算模型，将交通运输拥挤成本分为时间延误成本、额外燃油消耗成本、环境污染物排放成本和噪音成本三个方面，对于2015年上海市工作日高峰期交通拥挤的外部成本进行了详细的测算。结果表明，交通拥堵的外部成本约占当年上海市GDP的0.63%。最后，对于交通拥堵成本较高的现状提出了包括对上海市部分高度拥堵路段或区域收取拥堵费、大力发展上海市公共交通和发展交通快慢型出行方式共存在内的相关政策和建议。     

Modelling airline flight cancellation decisions

In order to predict airline responses to Traffic Management Initiatives (TMIs), and reveal the underlying preference structures that shape these responses, we study US domestic airlines’ cancellation decisions in response to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)’s TMIs, in particular, to Ground Delay Programs (GDPs). By observing the actual flight-cancellation choices made by airline dispatchers, the airlines’ cancellation utility functions can be inferred through the use of binary choice models. The model captures how delays to a given flight and potential delay savings to other flights affect flight cancellation decisions. We also find larger, fuller, less frequent, shorter-distance, and spoke-bound flights are less likely to be cancelled, and that there is inter-airline variation in flight cancellation behaviour.     

基于信息不对称的物流金融风险缓释探讨

风险是目前物流金融的关键问题。文章以增强物流金融的实用性为出发点,采用三维立体图分析得出了信息不对称下物流金融的九大风险。针对这些风险,文章进行了基于物联网的可视化设计,并提出了相应的风险管理方法,为信息不对称下物流金融风险的缓释提供了建议与意见。     

TD-LTE各种上下行配置的性能比较

TD-LTE是我国拥有核心自主知识产权的下一 代无线通信技术标准,共有7种不同的上下行配置,以灵活支持不同的上下行业务需求。通 过研究不同上下行配置对应的各种时序,得出不同上下行配置对上下行时延的影响。通过分 析在不同上下行配置下信道质量反馈、上行探测信号、混合自适应重传等技术的配置,研究 了不同上下行配置对上下行吞吐量及频谱效率的影响。同时利用系统仿真验证了以上分析结 果,给出了不同上下行配置性能下时延、吞吐量、频谱效率性能。研究结果为不同业务和组 网要求下 上下行配置的选择提供了参考依据。     

Dynamic routing of time-sensitive air cargo using real-time information

The route planning of time-sensitive air-cargo is becoming more important with the growing air-network congestion and delays. We consider a freight forwarder’s routing of a time-sensitive air-cargo in the presence of real-time and historical information regarding flight availability, departure delays and travel times. A departure delay estimation model is developed to account for real-time information inaccuracy. A novel Markov decision model is formulated and solved with online backward induction. Through synthetic experiments and case studies, we demonstrate that dynamic routing with real-time information can improve delivery reliability and reduce expected cost.     

一类具有无界时滞的微分不等式

本文建立了一类具有无界时滞微分不等式,将有界时滞微分不等式推广到无界时滞微分不等式,并得到其解的指数估计和渐近估计.