Economic Decisions (economic + decision)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


A portfolio approach to maintenance: a case study of a residential estate

QUALITY AND RELIABILITY ENGINEERING INTERNATIONAL, Issue 3 2008
L. K. Chu
Abstract The choice between repairing and replacing a defective piece of equipment is an economic decision that is faced by all maintenance managers, including housing estate managers. Such decisions need to be made within the limits and constraints set by maintenance expenditure budgets and by manpower availability. Our particular problem is concerned with the development of a maintenance policy for a residential estate of the Hong Kong Housing Authority. Our approach is to treat the numerous housing systems as a portfolio and to exploit flexibilities in performing or delaying the repair/replacement of these systems. The cost of a repair/replacement plan for the portfolio is formulated as an integer programme and genetic algorithms (GAs) are employed to generate optimal and sub-optimal solution plans. The novel features of the approach are the model developed and use of GAs in this particular optimization context. The results and discussion of the case study will help practitioners to better understand the difficulties involved in collecting relevant cost data and in formulating repair/replacement plans for a group of buildings. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Coping Strategies Developed as a Result of Social Structure and Conflict: Kosovo in the 1990s

DISASTERS, Issue 2 2000
Kate Ogden
The end of 1989 brought with it political and economic decisions which resulted in Kosovo being stripped of its autonomy and the Albanian population being expelled from their jobs. These facts combined with ethnic tensions created a decade of conflict and oppression affecting hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Thousands of Kosovars moved overseas to seek work to support families at home, altering the way of life of the population of Kosovo irredeemably. The loss of income had serious repercussions on food security throughout the 1990s; possibilities of purchasing food were diminished, control on goods in 1998 reduced availability of foodstuffs, conflict affected accessibility to markets and shops and consequently food intake and nutritional status was compromised. The most vulnerable were those who had no family members overseas. Mass displacement of population due to ethnic cleansing during the war of spring 1999, further jeopardised food security status. Destruction at this time rendered large parts of Kosovo useless and resulted in a shift in the determinant of vulnerability in the post-war period: destruction of houses, land, livestock and agricultural products as well as loss of family members, became a far more pertinent indicator of food insecurity. The strong and clear links between conflict, socio-economic issues and food security are highlighted and discussed in this paper. [source]


Political consumerism between individual choice and collective action: social movements, role mobilization and signalling

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSUMER STUDIES, Issue 5 2006
Boris HolzerArticle first published online: 9 AUG 200
Abstract The notion of political consumerism has two implications. First, consumers wield some kind of power that they can use to effect social change through the marketplace. Second, political consumerism refers to and somehow combines the rationalities of two subsystems, politics and the economy. Yet regarding their everyday, individualized shopping decisions, consumers do not appear to command a great deal of power. What kind of influence, then, can individual economic decisions have on producers? Is that influence robust enough to attribute power to consumers? And if consumers do indeed have power, how can we conceive the implied translation of political concerns into the monetary logic of the economy? An answer to those questions needs to take into account the societal context of political consumerism. This paper analyses how political consumerism relates to the functional differentiation of modern society and how social movements are fundamental to understanding it. Through what I shall call role mobilization, social movements turn the role sets of their supporters into transmission belts for political objectives, and by authoritatively communicating those objectives, they provide signals to producers, who otherwise would not know a great deal about their consumers' preferences. [source]


Forecasting changes in UK interest rates

JOURNAL OF FORECASTING, Issue 1 2008
Tae-Hwan Kim
Abstract Making accurate forecasts of the future direction of interest rates is a vital element when making economic decisions. The focus on central banks as they make decisions about the future direction of interest rates requires the forecaster to assess the likely outcome of committee decisions based on new information since the previous meeting. We characterize this process as a dynamic ordered probit process that uses information to decide between three possible outcomes for interest rates: an increase, decrease or no change. When we analyse the predictive ability of two information sets, we find that the approach has predictive ability both in-sample and out-of-sample that helps forecast the direction of future rates. Copyright © 2008 John wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


A multidimensional framework for financial,economic decisions

JOURNAL OF MULTI CRITERIA DECISION ANALYSIS, Issue 3 2002
Winfried Hallerbach
Abstract Most financial,economic decisions are made consciously, with a clear and constant drive to ,good', ,better' or even ,optimal' decisions. Nevertheless, many decisions in practice do not earn these qualifications, despite the availability of financial economic theory, decision sciences and ample resources. We plea for the development of a multidimensional framework to support financial economic decision processes. Our aim is to achieve a better integration of available theory and decision technologies. We sketch (a) what the framework should look like, (b) what elements of the framework already exist and which not, and (c) how the MCDA community can co-operate in its development. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Agroecosystem modeling and optimal economic decisions: Implications for sustainable agriculture

OPTIMAL CONTROL APPLICATIONS AND METHODS, Issue 1 2008
Craig A. Bond
Abstract We adapt a biogeochemical model of an agroecosystem to account for optimal economic behavior on the part of agricultural producers. Two institutional management regimes are considered: one in which a representative producer does not account for stock pollution caused by use of agricultural inputs, and one in which the externality is internalized. Comparative statics of the steady state of the former problem are analyzed in order to gain insight into the effects of potential policy and technological changes. Results show that a more realistic ecosystem component that includes nutrient cycling can qualitatively change optimal management practices relative to a one-state representation, potentially rendering systems ,unsustainable' under some criteria and leading to policy instruments that exacerbate, rather than mitigate, external damages or the resource base. Moreover, the qualitative effect of changes in model parameters are not necessarily uniform across different agricultural systems, implying that a prescription for the so-called ,sustainable' management under one system may have unintended consequences under another system. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]