Identifying Tiers of Influence in Expert Systems Research: II

In the first part of this study we described an objective, multifaceted, citation-based methodology for assessing journal influence. We applied it to the field of artificial intelligence (AI) to gauge the most influential journals for AI research. In this paper we apply the same methodology to a broadened citation base drawn from journals devoted to expert systems (ES), as well as those with a broader AI editorial scope. The result is a pair of journal tiers that reflect the special emphasis that expert system research has among AI researchers in business schools. Taken together, the AI/ES findings reported here coupled with the general AI tiers identified in Part I provide a fairly complete and insightful picture of the most influential journals impacting AI in general, and AI/ES in particular.     

Potential cost savings of frequent flyer miles for business travel

The mileage redemption strategy is a procedure used by many business firms to reduce air travel costs, in which the frequent flyer miles of traveling employees accumulated during business trips are applied to their future business trips to obtain “free” air tickets. This paper presents a framework that investigates how the frequent flyer miles can be used in the most effective way to reduce air travel costs by those firms that are either using the mileage redemption strategy or considering the use of the strategy. The framework can be implemented quite easily by a spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel.     

The Impact of Placing Adolescent Males into Foster Care on Education,Income Assistance,and Convictions

Understanding the causal impacts of taking at‐risk youth into government care is part of the evidence base for policy. Two sources of exogenous variation affecting alternative subsets of the at‐risk population provide causal impacts interpreted as local average treatment effects. Placing 16‐ to18‐year‐old males into care decreases or delays high school graduation, increases income assistance receipt, and has alternative effects on criminal convictions depending upon the instrument employed. This suggests that asking whether more or fewer children should be taken into care is insufficient; it also matters which, and how, children are taken into care.