On the usability of RAS in manpower forecasting: An evaluation based on Indian data

Projection of changes in the occupational structure is vital for ensuring accurate manpower forecasts. Yet this is seldom attempted in a rigorous way. One of the main difficulties which a manpower planner faces—especially in a developing economy—is the paucity of reliable time series data on the occupational pattern of employment. Given this constraint, it is maintained that it is futile to consider experimentation with sophisticated statistical forecasting techniques whose data requirements may be difficult to fulfil. The RAS, on the other hand, is a relatively simple technique which has been extensively used in adjusting matrices in diverse fields with only a given initial matrix and the row and column totals for another year. This is the first detailed application of the RAS to Indian occupational data. Our results confirm the potential usefulness of the RAS as a basis for approximating temporal changes in the occupational structure. Specifically, it is demonstrated here that as compared with the errors in occupational forecasts which would result from the assumption of an unchanging occupational structure, those associated with the RAS are markedly lower. The paper concludes by pointing out that, when detailed data become available, more flexible forms of the RAS which allow for the possibility of departures from biproportionality may be utilised.     

Location of health care facilities: An analytical approach

The problem of health facilities location is explored under a mathematical optimization approach. Several models are developed for the location of a generalized health facility system in a region in a manner that the selected criteria are optimized. Locational criteria are structured as a hierarchy of social, economic and political attributes and defined analytically using economic and utility theory. A planning framework, based on the models developed, is presented to aid the health planner in the formulation of health facility location decisions.     

A multiobjective optimization approach to smart growth in land development

In this paper we apply a multiobjective optimization model of Smart Growth to land development. The term Smart Growth is meant to describe development strategies—that do not promote urban sprawl. However, the term is somewhat open to interpretation. The multiobjective aspects arise when considering the conflicting interests of the various stakeholders involved in land development decisions: the government planner, the environmentalist, the conservationist, and the land developer. We present a formulation—employing linear and convex quadratic objective functions subject to polyhedral and binary constraints for the stakeholders. The resulting optimization problems are convex, quadratic mixed integer programs that are NP-complete. We report numerical results with this model for Montgomery County, Maryland, and present them using a geographic information system (GIS).     

A taxonomy of manpower—educational planning models

In the last decade the literature has recorded several works concerned with the applications of network flow-like models to the area of manpower planning, and specifically the management manpower training program to assure that supply will meet the demand. Because the system which these models attempt to describe and/or decisions which they prescribe are rather complex in the real world, each of these models has imbedded in them certain simplifying assumptions. On the other hand, each incorporates different aspects of what is real. This paper develops a taxonomy of the landmark developments in this area. The taxonomical schema is then used to unify the models in consideration of the decision factors used. The schema envisions a general model containing all the factors which are explicitly or implicitly considered in the existing literature as being germane. The schema lends itself to both the identifying of those models which might be of interest and not available in the literature on the one hand and it shows in bold relief the similarities and differences between existing models.     

Macroeconomies as constructively rational games

Real-world decision-makers are forced to be locally constructive; that is, their decisions are necessarily constrained by their interaction networks, information, beliefs, and physical states. This study transforms an otherwise standard dynamic macroeconomic model into an open-ended dynamic game by requiring consumers and firms with intertemporal utility and profit objectives to be locally constructive. Tested locally constructive decision processes for the consumers and firms range from simple reactive reinforcement learning to adaptive dynamic programming (ADP). Computational experiments are used to explore macroeconomic performance under alternative decision-process combinations relative to a social planner benchmark solution. A key finding is that simpler decision processes can outperform more sophisticated decision processes such as ADP. However, memory length permitting some degree of adaptive foresight is critical for good performance.     

How to Pay for the NHS

The Achilles heel of the NHS is its flawed financing of personal services by taxation, which destroys information on costs, weakens incentives to economise in scarce medical manpower and resources, and removes the inducement to pay more for better services. The NHS misguidedly reconstructed the supply of medical care to remedy inefficiency in demand. Basic medical decisions must be 'economic' in the light of opportunity costs, which require knowledge of prices by charging according to value and quality of service. Here Norman McKenna, formerly Managing Director of ICI Svenska, reveals the devastating failures of state medicine and offers the constructive half-way house of charging according to income, with requisite topping-up.     

Manpower targets and educational investments

Quadratic programming can be useful to compute the optimal investment trajectory for an education system which is planned on the base of manpower targets. The computation of optimal investments required to approach manpower targets more closely becomes non trivial if the budget available is insufficient to meet manpower targets exactly, or if the manpower target trajectory is erratic.The quadratic programming problem consists of three components: (1) an optimization criterion which reflects the objective to minimize the squared deviation of actual manpower available from the manpower target; (2) a set of time difference equations which reflect the flow of students, the manpower stock flow and the flow of investments in the education subsystem; (3) a constraint on the budget, available for this branch of education over a planning period.This education investment problem is worked out for middle level technical manpower training in Bangladesh.     

从经济学管理学角度浅谈在项目中采用独立策划师

一个项目的成功与否,关键在于项目是否满足了业主的需求.业主的需求。由业主的价值体系来反映,如何将业主的价值转译到项目中去,这就是策划师的任务。独立的策划师可以更好地完成这项工作。并从经济学管理学角度,讨论了为什么采用独立策划师。     

Physician location and distribution: a social systems approach

A social systems model of the health services system serving the state of Indiana is presented. The model specifies the causal relationships hypothesized as existing among a set of social, demographic and economic variables known to be related to the supply of health manpower and facilities. Inclusion of feedback into the model as well as lagged values of physician supply variables permits the examination of the dynamic behavior of the social system over time. Estimates of the model parameters are based on data obtained from the U.S. census, the American Medical Association's physician distribution series and the annual guide issue of Hospitals, the journal of the American Hospital Association.Methods for deriving the reduced form and the final form of the structural model are presented along with the reduced and final form equations. These equations provide valuable information for policy decisions regarding the likely consequences of changes in the structure of the population and in the supply of health manpower and facilities. The structural and reduced forms of the model have been used to examine the likely consequences of several proposed policies that would affect the delivery of health services in the state of Indiana.     

A scenario-based integrated approach for modeling carbon price risk

Carbon prices are highly dependent on government emission policies and local industrial compositions. When historical data does not exist or limited price data can only be sourced from another country, scenario analysis becomes the only tool for the modelling of future carbon prices. However, various plausible but equally possible scenarios can produce large variations in forecast carbon prices. In a traditional approach of scenario analysis, investment decisions or risk management strategies are proposed and analysed for each given scenario, optimal solutions are determined. However, when the number of scenarios becomes large, it often becomes too complex and intractable to have a clear view on the selection of investment decisions or risk-management strategies because these decisions and strategies are closely linked with each of the many scenarios. In this paper, it is proposed to use a stochastic mean-reversion model to represent future carbon price movements, but this model is calibrated to the forecast carbon prices of all the scenarios. In this approach, a single model is used to capture the underlying uncertainty and expectation of the stochastic carbon prices as projected by all the scenarios, carbon price risk can thus be modeled and analysed without the need for direct references to any specific scenarios. The modelling and management of long-term carbon-price risk are therefore purely dependent on future carbon price levels and volatilities of these scenarios, instead of on the scenarios themselves. Through such an approach, the optimization of investment decisions and risk management solutions can be much simpler because the forecasted carbon prices are the only input data.      

Statistical Network Analysis: A Review with Applications to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

As the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak evolves, statistical network analysis is playing an essential role in informing policy decisions. Therefore, researchers who are new to such studies need to understand the techniques available to them. As a field, statistical network analysis aims to develop methods that account for the complex dependencies found in network data. Over the last few decades, the area has rapidly accumulated methods, including techniques for network modelling and simulating the spread of infectious disease. This article reviews these network modelling techniques and their applications to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.     

Dynamic Spatial Monopoly with Product Development

Abstract

The optimal R&D investment in product innovation of a profit-seeking monopolist is characterized vs that of a social planner in a spatial market with transportation disutility, under full market coverage. It is shown that the planner's incentive to innovate is always weaker than the monopolist's, since the planner trades off the minimization of the social cost of transportation against the cost of R&D.     

Perfect Bayesian implementation when the planner is a player

The paper contributes to the perfect Bayesian implementation problem when the planner selects an outcome after agents send a signal profile. In our problem, the planner always selects the outcomes that maximize her expected utility, given her posterior belief about the state. The paper explicitly models the problem and shows a full characterization of SCF set that can be perfect Bayesian implemented in FGP equilibrium.     

Aligning ERP systems with companies’ real needs: an ‘Operational Model Based’ method

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems offer standard functionalities that have to be configured and customised by a specific company depending on its own requirements. A consistent alignment is therefore an essential success factor of ERP projects. To manage this alignment, an ‘Operational Model Based’ method is proposed. It is based on the design and the matching of models, and conforms to the modelling views and constructs of the ISO 19439 and 19440 enterprise-modelling standards. It is characterised by: (1) a predefined design and matching order of the models; (2) the formalisation, in terms of modelling constructs, of alignment and misalignment situations; and (3) their association with a set of decisions in order to mitigate the misalignment risk. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of the alignment management during ERP projects is given. Unlike existing methods, this one includes decisions related to the organisational changes an ERP system can induce, as well as criteria on which the best decision can be based. In this way, it provides effective support and guidance to companies implementing ERP systems, as the alignment process is detailed and structured. The method is applied on the ERP project of a Small and Medium Enterprise, showing that it can be used even in contexts where the ERP project expertise level is low.     

从人力资本角度论"共"有制

马克思理论认为社会主义取代资本主义的表现形式为产权的私有制转变为公有制,其最高表现形式为共产主义。当前我国在全面建设社会主义市场经济的同时,人们似乎在有意无意地回避共产主义,这种信仰危机将危及人们对马克思理论的理解,从而歪曲并最终放弃马克思理论。本文拟从人力资本角度探讨传统资本主义时代不对等契约下物质股权资本对人力资本的"寻租"与"准租",新经济时代人力资本对经济主体的专用性增强使得人力资本由债权性资本转为股权性资本,物质股权资本与人力资本共同享有剩余收益的索取权,从而在实质上实现"共"有制。     

Goal programming applied to police patrol allocation

This paper describes the development of a decision-making methodology to aid the police patrol planner in resolving the patrol allocation problem. The methodology developed provides information to assist in two major decision areas: staff sizing and vehicle requirement schedules. This research uses a queuing based simulation model to derive expected service levels for a number of different performance measures. Given these results, tradeoff curves are mapped between specified performance measures and utilization rates of patrol vehicles. With this information the patrol planner specifies limiting levels for both performance measures and other managerial constraints which, in turn, are inputted into a goal programming algorithm to determine appropriate staff sizes and vehicle requirements. The primary output provided the patrol planner is the required amount of patrol vehicle hours to allocate to each watch per day per precinct in order to satisfy a designated set of performance measure levels and managerial constraints. The methodology presented in this research was developed in conjunction with the Columbus, Ohio, Police Department with data being provided by the Research and Planning Division.     

Equivalence of optimal noisy-ranking contests and Tullock contests

We analyze a noisy-ranking contest in which participants compete in several dimensions. The organizer randomly samples a number of dimensions and awards a prize to the most productive agent. When the contest is optimally designed, we establish a structural equivalence between this family of noisy-ranking contests and contests built upon Tullock contest success functions. Our result also shows that in this class of noisy-contests, the profit-maximization problem of the planner can be turned into a stochastic choice problem for a planner who has some deterministic preferences over the contestants’ win probabilities.     

人力资本专用性与创意型企业融资行为研究

创意型企业就是典型的人力资本密集型企业.在讨论创意型企业的融资问题时,必须将创意型企业的人力资本纳入考虑范围,以分析人力资本本质对创意型企业融资的影响.本文以人力资本专用化程度和模块化程度作为判断创意型企业的融资方式选择的两个维度,构建了一个四分图,为分析创意型企业融资行为提供了一个统一的分析框架.     

人力资本价值实现与政策的关系研究

人力资本理论提出后,人力资本价值特别是异质型的企业家价值逐渐受到社会的关注和重视。在我国建立现代企业制度的改革进程中,年薪制,职工持股制,股权奖励多种新的收入分配形式出现在工资制度中。企业工资制度的改革,显示了政策对人力资本收益权的支持力度,按生产要素进行分配的趋势。政策的支撑,使人力资本的收益渐趋近于人力资本的真实价值。     

PERFORMANCE IMPLICATIONS OF STRATEGIC COALIGNMENT: A METHODOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Strategic coalignment - viewed in terms of internal consistency among key strategic decisions or the alignment between strategic choices and critical contingencies posed by either environmental or organizational contexts - is an important theoretical perspective in strategic management. However, extant research is characterized by both poor clarifications of the theoretical meanings of coalignment as well as inappropriate statistical modelling. This article adopts a methodological orientation to examining a general proposition of the performance implications of strategic coalignment among three generic strategy dimensions: marketing, manufacturing and administrative. Such a proposition is evaluated using three seemingly complementary perspectives of statistical modelling: (a) interactionist; (b) profile-derivation; and (c) covariation, and data collected from two hundred business units. The analysis and results generally support the proposition using two of three perspectives, thus raising critical methodological issues relating to multiple specifications of the statistical form of coalignment.