The use of multi-criteria decision-making methods in the integrated assessment of climate change: implications for IA practitioners

Integrated assessment (IA) considers interactions of physical, biological, and human systems in order to assess long-term consequences of environmental and energy policies such as limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and other strategies to negate climate change. Users of IA face the daunting task of interpreting large amounts of data and uncertainties. Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods can help users process IA data, understand policy tradeoffs, and learn how their value judgments affect decisions. We held a workshop during which climate change experts tested several MCDM methods for using IA outputs to rank hypothetical policies for abating greenhouse gas emissions. Participants also evaluated several methods for visualizing tradeoffs under both certainty and uncertainty cases. This paper explores potential roles for MCDM in IA identified during the workshop, along with implications for IA design and implementation. We summarize the workshops’ results regarding intertemporal discounting (a type of MCDM weighting judgment), visualization of impacts, how MCDM methods can help users to incorporate their background knowledge, and how MCDM can improve understanding of tradeoffs and the importance of value judgments. A key result is that the interest rates IA experts recommend for discounting future impacts depend strongly on what type of impact is being discounted, as well as upon the exact phrasing of questions used to elicit rates from the experts.     

The effects of city size and moving costs on public project benefits

This paper uses a simulation model to investigate the benefits of an urban public project when the size of the system of cities (or regions) in which migration occurs can vary and when moving costs impede migration. The model captures the range of possibilities between the perfectly open and closed city cases. We find that the total number of households migrating between cities declines sharply as moving costs rise. Also the level and distribution of project benefits between renters and landowners in the project city and other cities is sensitive to both the level of moving costs and the size of the urban system. The total benefits of the project fall by half or more when moving costs are introduced, even when moving costs themselves are netted out.     

The relationship between FSI advertising style and coupon redemption

We investigate the relationship between free-standing insert advertising style and coupon redemption. Results from two experiments indicate that the propensity to clip a coupon can be enhanced by matching ad tone (emotional vs rational) to the nature of a consumer’s primary motivation with respect to coupon usage. Moreover, this result appears to hold for consumers with both procoupon and anticoupon inclinations.

Gender,Organizational Justice Perceptions,and Union Organizing

The authors examine the relationship between gender and organizational justice perceptions and the implications of this relationship for organizing women. They employ a survey study design to confirm expectations associated with the anecdotal literature on this topic, namely that women place greater value on interactional justice than on distributive or procedural justice. Results indicate that gender leads to valuing interactional justice more highly only in interaction with race. Specifically, in contrast to white women and both white and black men, black women give greater weight to being treated with dignity and respect than to the other two organizational justice dimensions.

Book Reviews

The Who Wants To Be (WWTB) game is a computer-based game that can be used in a variety of classroom settings. WWTB requires students to sit in a “hot seat” and answer a series of questions. Assistance is provided to the students in the form of “lifelines.” The lifelines include: (1) the 50/50 lifeline where two wrong answers disappear; (2) the Ask the Audience lifeline where class members vote on a correct answer; and (3) the Ask Your Team lifeline where students can verbally interact with teammates. The WWTB game is functional on most computer systems. The manner in which the game can be played, the difficulty of the game, and the rules of the game are all easily modified at the instructor's discretion. An analysis of examination scores reveals that the game has been an effective learning tool in the auditing course in which it has been incorporated. The game program and database structure are available to educators on a complimentary basis through the author's website.     

Educating winery visitors and consumers: an international perspective

In times of economic uncertainty, fluctuating currency exchange, increasing wine production and competition from new or established wine-producing regions, wineries must overcome many obstacles to produce, market and ultimately benefit from wine production. Educating winery visitors and other potential consumers is one among different key strategies wineries' management could undertake to build relationships, brand loyalty, and maximise any opportunities to obtaining benefits, including from wine tourism. In gathering data from wineries located predominantly in Italy and Spain, the study provides an international perspective on wineries' educational initiatives. Guided tours, product tastings and showcasing production processes are the most common approaches to educating their visitors and wine consumers. In spite of these initiatives, winery entrepreneurs categorise their educational efforts as modest, suggesting that these are not being fully exploited or maximised. In addition, few of the comments emphasise the importance of educational experiences with regard to the region or local tourism. Given the important role wineries have as product and service providers in many rural areas and tourist destinations, the study's findings have several important implications for winery entrepreneurship and for wine tourism.     

Geographic ‘clustering’ in the German opto electronics industry

The dynamics of industrial clustering and its implications for regional development present important challenges for research in economic geography. Awareness of the potential economic and innovative benefits from the geographic ‘clustering’ of firms in related industries is longstanding. In turn, the means of aiding and promoting such clustering forms an important focus for government agencies and other support organizations. This paper aims to explore these issues by drawing on empirical evidence from the opto–electronics industry in Germany.

In sum, the paper argues that, indeed, there appears to be geographic clustering in the opto–electronics industry in Germany, notably in the region of Thuringia, around Jena, and in the Munich area. The contrasting experiences of Jena and Munich suggest, however, that geographic clustering in high–technology industry does not necessarily lead to R&D collaboration and innovation. Further, in–depth research is required to determine the conditions under which geographic clustering is beneficial to innovation.