A further clarification of OCRA and its properties in response to Wang and Wang (2005)

This is an exposition written in response to the claims in Wang and Wang (2005) about the problems with the method of OCRA, operational competitiveness rating analysis, for gauging the relative performances of a set of operating entities. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of cognitive styles on 2D drafting and design performance in digital media

This paper investigates the interactions between design students’ cognitive styles, as measured by Riding’s Cognitive Styles Analysis, and performance in 2D drafting and design tasks in digital media. An empirical research revealed that Imager students outperformed Verbalisers in both drafting and creativity scores. Wholist–Analytic cognitive style dimension was found to be independent from drafting and design performance. The study suggests that examining the cognitive styles of students in Computer Aided Design (CAD) education deserves further attention and may facilitate for improvements in learning processes.     

New evidence on taxes and portfolio choice

Identifying the effect of differential taxation on portfolio allocation requires exogenous variation in marginal tax rates. Marginal tax rates vary with income, but income surely affects portfolio choice directly. In systems of individual taxation – like Canada's – couples with the same household income can face different effective tax rates on capital income when labor income is distributed differently within households. Using this source of variation we find portfolio responses to taxation among more affluent households. The estimated effects are statistically significant but economically modest. In a “placebo” test, using data from the U.S. (which has joint taxation), we find no effect of the intra-household distribution of labor income on portfolios.     

Future of North Cyprus: An economic-strategic appraisal

Based on qualitative methods of study of the future, including experts interviews and the deliberations of a symposium, this paper analyses the shape of things to come for North Cyprus in the light of its historical backlog and the present scenarios. It argues that the impact of globalisation is becoming very decisive in this part of the world: there are important players including the US, Russia, Turkey, Greece, European Union, Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots in this strategic region with their vested interests and plans which will be deterministic for the fate of the Island. One of the most crucial of these plans is the Greater Middle East Initiative developed by the US. Given the vectors of forces now active in the political horizon, the future of North Cyprus to be an independent sovereign state looks within reach if Muslim countries continue recognising it.     

The role of lender behavior in international project finance

Summary. A sovereign borrower seeks to raise funds internationally to finance a fixed-size project, which no single lender can finance alone. Lenders cannot lend more than their endowments, which are private information. A coordination failure arises; therefore, some socially desirable projects may not be financed, even if ex post feasible. There are multiple equilibria, and a conflict exists between lenders about which equilibrium to coordinate on. When endowments are volatile, some lenders prefer an equilibrium in which the project is financed with probability , even if ex post feasible. The government eliminates such equilibria by offering a sufficiently high return, only if endowment volatility is small. Received: June 1, 1999; revised version: December 4, 2000     

State estimation of a shop floor using improved resampling rules for particle filtering

Operational inefficiencies in supply chains cost industries millions of dollars every year. Much of these inefficiencies arise due to the lack of a coherent planning and control mechanism, which requires accurate yet timely state estimation of these large-scale dynamic systems given their massive datasets. While Bayesian inferencing procedures based on particle filtering paradigm may meet these requirements in state estimation, they may end up in a situation called degeneracy, where a single particle abruptly possesses significant amount of normalized weights. Resampling rules for importance sampling prevent the sampling procedure from generating degenerated weights for particles. In this work, we propose two new resampling rules concerning minimized variance (VRR) and minimized bias (BRR). The proposed rules are derived theoretically and their performances are benchmarked against that of the minimized variance and half-width based resampling rules existing in the literature using a simulation of a semiconductor die manufacturing shop floor in terms of their resampling qualities (mean and variance of root mean square errors) and computational efficiencies, where we identify the circumstances that the proposed resampling rules become particularly useful.     

Aggregate Information and Organizational Structures*

We study information flows in an organization with a top management (principal) and multiple subunits (agents) with private information that determines the organization's overall efficiency. Under centralized communication, eliciting the agents' information may induce the principal to manipulate aggregate information, which obstructs an effective use of information. Under hierarchical communication, the principal concedes more information rent due to loss of control, but is able to use the agents' information more effectively. The trade-off between the organizational structures depends on the likelihood that the agents are efficient. Centralized communication is optimal when such likelihood is low. Hierarchical communication, by contrast, is optimal when it is high.     

Individual Differences in Within-Person Variability in Personality Positively Predict Economic Gains and Satisfaction in Negotiations

Group Decision and Negotiation - Prior research on the value of personality traits for predicting negotiation outcomes is rather inconclusive. Building on prior research and in light of recent...