Alternative futures for communities

Scenario building is an essential element for working on, and creating, alternative futures. This paper, based on the work at the Institute of Alternative Futures, discusses the use of scenarios in the context of community development and explores three basic types of scenarios—‘the official future', ‘hard times' and paradigm shift or visionary scenarios. With examples from Washington and elsewhere, the paper tries to show how communities can reinvent themselves and meet the challenges of the future with the aid of scenarios.     

Design futures in action: Documenting experiential futures for participatory audiences

The futures field demonstrates a willing openness in embracing methodologies, approaches, and influences from a diversity of disciplines and perspectives. This plurality of practice is evidenced in a growing body of work that increasingly embodies futures thinking in the design of everyday material and networked experiences. The intersection of design and futures produces artifacts, applications and interactions created to provoke dialog in an accessible manner. As part of the Futures special issue on the Emerge: Artists and Scientists Redesign the Future event, this article describes the documentation and public representation of the creative outcomes from nine Emerge design futures workshops. These workshops provided a rich opportunity to study how designers and futurists collaboratively engage, implement and communicate alternative futures. The goal of the documentation effort described is to capture the experience of creating experiential futures and extend the capacity for developing social foresight through a participatory exhibit and online social platform.     

Fed funds futures variance futures

We develop a novel contract design, the fed funds futures (FFF) variance futures, which reflects the expected realized basis point variance of an underlying FFF rate. The valuation of short-term FFF variance futures is completely model-independent in a general setting that includes the cases where the underlying FFF rate exhibits jumps and where the realized variance is computed by sampling the FFF rate discretely. The valuation of longer-term FFF variance futures is subject to an approximation error which we quantify and show is negligible. We also provide an illustrative example of the practical valuation and use of the FFF variance futures contract.     

New challenges for futures studies

Challenges coming from futures studies to other disciplines because of the rapidity and inter-relatedness of changes for which no discipline on its own can face the different correlated and global challenges, will be examined mainly in relation to social sciences. social sciences on the other hand reflect the need to overcome fragmentation within each discipline and between the various social sciences, in an effort at least of interdisciplinarity to face the growing uncertainty in decision making at every level: local, national and international. Social sciences are also slowly realising that a future oriented perspective is needed to empower analysis and actually reflect society in its continuous dynamicity. Citizens need the possibility to live within the rapidity of changes in the Information Society through the availability of futures studies in different forms as well as social analysis that is dynamic and interdisciplinary. The special link between society and ecological issues in a future oriented perspective will be the specific area to express the relevancy of the correlation between futures studies and social sciences.     

An agenda for futures research

Is there an identity crisis in futures research ? The author reviews the character of the discipline in the light of its ten years of development and maintains that futures research is empirical, “pre-scientific” and in the category of operations research. The scope for a scientific approach is therefore in forming a coherent methodological body of principles. The author identifies specific tasks in 21 areas, related to data collection, model construction, experimentation, systems analysis, exploratory and normative applications, which seem to him to be particularly in need of such attention.     

Setting the futures margin with price limits: the case for single-stock futures

Price limits are artificial boundaries established by regulators to establish the maximum price movement permitted in a single day. We propose using a new censoring method that incorporates the effect of price limits on the futures price distribution and investigates how to set an appropriate daily margin level using single-stock futures in Taiwan. We compare our estimations with those obtained using the method in Longin (J Bus 69:383–408, 1999). The results show that (1) the margin levels derived from the Longin method, which ignore price limits in the estimation, are lower than those in our censoring method; and (2) the legal margin for single-stock futures set at 13.5 % by the Taiwan Futures Exchange to avoid default risk appears to be too high.     

Cross-commodity hedging for illiquid futures: Evidence from China's base metal futures market

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of cross-commodity hedging between China's base metal spot and futures markets, using daily data of metal spot and futures prices in the Shanghai Futures Exchange. The main findings suggest that, compared to unhedged spot portfolios, a naïve hedge increases risk exposure, while static and dynamic hedges can significantly reduce the risk of holding spot assets. Zinc futures and nickel futures outperform other base metal futures in individually hedging lead spot and tin spot respectively, while copper futures constitute a moderately optimal instrument to hedge both lead and tin spot assets.     

Expert judgement elicitation for risk assessments of critical infrastructures

Governmental bodies and companies are confronted with the problem of achieving rational consensus in the face of substantial uncertainties. The subject area of this special issue (risk and vulnerability assessments and management of critical infrastructures) might be a good example as are risk management of chemical installations and accident consequence management for nuclear power plants. Decisions with regard to infrastructures functioning and possible malfunctioning must be taken on the basis of predictions of technical and organizational system behaviour. These predictions use mathematical models containing scores of uncertain parameters. Decision makers want to take, and want to be perceived to take, these decisions in a rational manner. The question is, how can this be accomplished in the face of large uncertainties? One available source is experts in the many fields of interest within infrastructures. This paper describes the use of structured expert judgement in a formal manner. The paper refers to the Procedures Guide published by the European Union as EUR 18820. This Procedures Guide addresses two methods for using expert judgements developed at Delft University of Technology. The paired comparisons method is particularly suitable to identify the relative importance of attributes in the risk management arena, while the Classical Model, apt to arrive at subjective probability assessments, is particularly suitable to derive uncertainty distributions over model parameters. Examples will be referred to for further illustration of applications relevant in the field of risk assessment and risk management.     

Alternative futures for a multi-civilizational Europe

This article discusses the alternative futures for a multi-civilizational European Union; in other words, its capacity to embrace non-Western civilizations such as the Indian, Islamic, Chinese and others. It brings out three scenarios: (1) a Eurocentric future; (2) a pragmatically multi-civilizational European Union; and (3) a multi-civilizational European Union. Normatively, the third scenario, a genuinely multi-civilizational future appears the most preferred alternative for the rise of European Union as a respected and credible global actor, which plays a significant role in the stabilization and development of its neighbourhood regions and in the resolution of global level issues. Along with incentives, barriers, as discussed in relevant sections, are also explicit which might lead to two other scenarios if not eliminated. Practically, the article concludes that the co-existence of European and other civilizations within the European Union is more likely to lead to a multi-civilizational future than any attempt to integrate those civilizations within the dominant European tradition.     

Dilemmas for renewal of futures methodology

Using the so-called Transition Paradox for methodological renewal in futures studies, this article derives one paradox plus six dilemmas. The analysis concludes that methodological renewal should be embedded in the renewal of science. The power of new paradigms depends on how much they serve the long run welfare, stability and existence of the whole world population. Methods — and the breakthrough strategies of the East-Central European countries — are intended not only for outlining visions, but also for creating their technological, institutional and other foundations so that they do not remain merely utopias.     

股指期货会计处理

股指期货作为衍生金融工具,其确认和计量的具体账务处理,涉及新的《金融工具确认和计量》、《金融资产转移》、《套期保值》和《金融工具列报》等几个准则及其应用指南,以及应用指南所附＂会计科目和主要账务处理”的“衍生工具”、“套期工具”等若干会计科目的使用说明。     

Preparing for the professional futures field:: Observations from the UHCLC futures program

The futures field is an arena of increasing interest and activity. This article seeks to: (1) provide general information about key information sources for directed inquiry into futures studies; (2) sketch the origins and current status of the graduate program in Studies of the Future offered by the University of Houston at Clear Lake City—currently the largest and most comprehensive program of its kind; (3) Describe the methodology used in a recent strategic planning and program development project to update the UHCLC program; and (4) convey some guiding observations on teaching and research in futures studies, and on helping students find appropriate employment.