Amended final-offer arbitration over an uncertain value: A comparison with CA and FOA

Arbitration is increasingly employed to resolve disputes. Two arbitration mechanisms, conventional arbitration (CA) and final-offer arbitration (FOA) are commonly utilized, but previous theoretical and empirical research has found that they are unsatisfactory. Several alternative mechanisms have been proposed, but ultimately laboratory research has found that they do not offer an improvement. An exception is amended final-offer arbitration (AFOA), which not only has desirable theoretical properties but also has been demonstrated to outperform FOA in the laboratory. This study provides a direct laboratory comparison of AFOA with CA. Also, by utilizing an environment with an uncertain payoff to one of the parties, this study tests the robustness of AFOA’s performance relative to FOA. The results indicate that AFOA does outperform FOA, but that AFOA is only weakly better than CA. JEL Classification C7, C9, J5, K4     

Education Dashboards for Enhanced Learning: A Singapore Experience

Educators continue to utilize add-ons, extensions, or replacements to traditional Learning Management Systems (LMSs) to supplement capabilities and improve the classroom experience. This work resulted in the design and development of the Education Dashboards for Enhanced Learning (EDEL) template. The EDEL template enables faculty members to create dynamic web spaces called Knowledge Portals (KPortals). A semester-long introduction of KPortals proved to be positive and useful. Students tended to view the KPortal as a “go-to” webspace. The authors hope to refine the template in future studies and examine its usefulness in other countries.     

Leisure in Living Local through Food and Farming

This article reflects on aligning leisure research with the local foods movement while placing the local foods movement into the larger framework of sustainability and the fields of leisure and recreation. The local foods movement has persisted during difficult economic times; growth in local foods venues and young people endeavoring to establish small-scale sustainable farms continues to flourish. Given the history of leisure research and its continued success alleviating participation barriers and constraints, the need for leisure researchers to focus on local food systems is imperative and timely. This essay highlights the notion of leisure in living through local foods and the serious leisure aspects of small-scale sustainable agriculture. This article also encourages leisure researchers to explore and assess the relationships between the local foods movement and small-scale farming as embedded in the larger framework of sustainability.     

Superexponential long-term trends in information technology

Moore's Law has created a popular perception of exponential progress in information technology. But is the progress of IT really exponential? In this paper we examine long time series of data documenting progress in information technology gathered by [1]. We analyze six different historical trends of progress for several technologies grouped into the following three functional tasks: information storage, information transportation (bandwidth), and information transformation (speed of computation). Five of the six datasets extend back to the nineteenth century. We perform statistical analyses and show that in all six cases one can reject the exponential hypothesis at statistically significant levels. In contrast, one cannot reject the hypothesis of superexponential growth with decreasing doubling times. This raises questions about whether past trends in the improvement of information technology are sustainable.     

Looking back at looking forward: A check of some fortune forecasts

We will have to wait to see how good our present forecasting methodologies are, but we can test futurologists of earlier times. The author has checked a selection of Fortune's forecasts as far back as 1933. Examination reveals that predictions were on target in three areas-technology, general trends, and structural change in the economy. They fell far short of the mark, however, in the areas of legal, political, and international constraints; the personal impact of economic factors; and the personal impact of various innovations. But the failures were often not too far off and the correct ones, if heeded, could have saved us time and money. Unfortunately, the people problems that plagued the Fortune forecasts are still unsolved today.     

Rainfall variability in tropical Africa: Some implications for policy

Rain is the basic ingredient for the existence of Africa and its people. This article introduces the ‘baseline’ rainfall climatology of Africa and looks at examples of fluctuations in the last 50 years. The author then puts forward some suggestions on the implications of such variability for planning and policy making.     

Financial Integration and EMU’s External Imbalances in a Two-Country OLG Model

The pronounced increase in external imbalances in the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) during the years running up to 2008 is traditionally explained by financial integration through the common currency. This paper examines in a one-good, two-country overlapping generations’ model, with production, capital accumulation and public debt, the effects of financial integration on the net foreign asset positions of initially low-interest and high-interest rate EMU countries. We find that a lower savings rate and government expenditure quota, together with a higher capital production share in the latter can in fact be transformed into the observed external imbalances when interest rates converge.     

Incorporating distributional considerations in the safe minimum standard approach: endangered species and local impacts

Explicitly incorporating current distributional concerns into the safe minimum standard (SMS) approach is the objective of this study. The SMS approach is a collective choice process that prescribes protecting a minimum level of a renewable natural resource unless the social costs of doing so are somehow excessive or intolerably high. More complete implementation of an SMS approach, if it is to be a pragmatic policy tool, requires that distributional considerations be included in determining whether the economic consequences of preservation actions are intolerable. Two case studies involving the US Endangered Species Act are used to illustrate how distributional concerns might be incorporated into the SMS approach.