Business Commons^™

Who Survived The Titanic? A Logistic Regression Analysis, Lonnie K. Stevans, David Gleicher

Lonnie K. Stevans

A logistic regression analysis of an extensive data set on the Titanic passengers is presented which tests the likelihood that a Titanic passenger survived the accident--based upon passenger characteristics. The main finding is that underneath the strong overt preference afforded in the rescue by the authorities to women and children over men, there was a complex class determination of survival rates among men, on the one hand, and women and children, on the other. We hypothesize that the statistical interactions of gender and class are explained by two crucial decisions made by the ship’s authorities: 1. to encourage, and perhaps …

The Importance Of Marketing And Total Quality Management In Libraries, Rajashekhar D. Kumbar

E-JASL 1999-2009 (Volumes 1-10)

Introduction

Herb White, states in Library Journal, “... it should be fairly clear that librarians do not market and that they never have marketed.” He concludes, “What we need to tell people is not how wonderful our public libraries are but rather how wonderful they could be. The awakening of these dreams is the purpose of marketing” (Besant & Sharp, 2000). Since the 1960’s, the most widely taught marketing concept was the marketing mix theory: the 4Ps (product, price, place and promotion)—so clean, so neat, so inappropriate for libraries. Marketing theory cannot always be so succinctly described since relationships …

Technical Note: Comparative Static Analysis Of Information Value In A Canonical Decision Problem, Jeffrey Keisler

Management Science and Information Systems Faculty Publication Series

To gain insight into the behavior of the value of information, this paper identifies specific rules for a canonical decision problem: the two-act linear loss decision with normal prior probability distributions. Conditions are derived for which the expected value of perfect information increases when mean and standard deviation are both linear functions of an exogenous variable. A variety of richer decision problems can be adapted to the problem, so that the general results obtained here can be immediately applied to understand drivers of information value.

Interest Rate Parity In Excel, Tom Arnold, Bonnie Buchanan

Finance Faculty Publications

This paper develops interest rate parity in a framework that is easily implemented in Excel. The student can either be given the paper to see how the code is developed using the intuition of the interest rate parity framework or the student can be taught the interest rate parity framework and develop the Excel code as an assignment. Using either teaching method or the other exercises suggested in the paper, the student is able to understand how traders exploit violations of interest parity and become more comfortable with basic concepts, such as direct quotes and indirect quotes.

Chaos-Induced Escape Over A Potential Barrier, L. Y. Chew, Hian Ann, Christopher Ting, C. H. Lai

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the statistical parity of a class of chaos-generated noises on the escape of strongly damped particles out of a potential well. We show that statistical asymmetry in the chaotic fluctuations can lead to a skewed Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution in the well. Depending on the direction of skew, the Kramers escape rate is enhanced or suppressed accordingly. Based on the Perron–Frobenious equation, we determine an analytical expression for the escape rate’s prefactor that accounts for this effect. Furthermore, our perturbative analysis proves that in the zeroth-order limit, the rate of particle escape converges to the Kramers rate.

Technical Note: Comparative Static Analysis Of Information Value In A Canonical Decision Problem, Jeffrey Keisler

Jeffrey Keisler

To gain insight into the behavior of the value of information, this paper identifies specific rules for a canonical decision problem: the two-act linear loss decision with normal prior probability distributions. Conditions are derived for which the expected value of perfect information increases when mean and standard deviation are both linear functions of an exogenous variable. A variety of richer decision problems can be adapted to the problem, so that the general results obtained here can be immediately applied to understand drivers of information value.

Allocating Contractor Risks In The Hanford Waste Cleanup, Jeffrey M. Keisler, William A. Buehring, Peter D. Mclaughlin, Mark A. Robershotte, Ronald G. Whitfield

Management Science and Information Systems Faculty Publication Series

Organizations may view outsourcing as a way to manage risk. We developed a decision-analytic approach to determine which risks the buyer can share or shift to vendors and which ones it should bear. We found that allocating risks incorrectly could increase costs dramatically. Between 1995 and 1998, we used this approach to develop the request for proposals (RFP) for the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) privatization initiative for the Hanford tank waste remediation system (TWRS). In the model, we used an assessment protocol to predict how vendors would react to proposed risk allocations in terms of their actions and their …

Obesity, Educational Attainment, And State Economic Welfare, Martin W. Sivula Ph.D.

MBA Faculty Conference Papers & Journal Articles

For the first time in history, estimates of the overweight people in the world rival estimates of those malnourished. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2002) ranked obesity among the top 10 risks to human health worldwide. In the early 1960s, nearly half of the Americans were overweight and 13% were obese. Today some 64% of U.S. adults are overweight and 30.5% are obese. Even more alarming, twice as many U.S. children are overweight than were twenty years ago, a 66% increase. Non-communicable diseases impose a heavy economic burden on already strained health systems. Health is a key determinant of development …

Allocating Contractor Risks In The Hanford Waste Cleanup, Jeffrey M. Keisler, William A. Buehring, Peter D. Mclaughlin, Mark A. Robershotte, Ronald G. Whitfield

Jeffrey Keisler

Organizations may view outsourcing as a way to manage risk. We developed a decision-analytic approach to determine which risks the buyer can share or shift to vendors and which ones it should bear. We found that allocating risks incorrectly could increase costs dramatically. Between 1995 and 1998, we used this approach to develop the request for proposals (RFP) for the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) privatization initiative for the Hanford tank waste remediation system (TWRS). In the model, we used an assessment protocol to predict how vendors would react to proposed risk allocations in terms of their actions and their …

Reinventing Leadership: Blended Dualism, Andrew Sikula Sr., Chong W. Kim

Management Faculty Research

Leadership needs to be redefined and explained differently in terms of what we have learned about organizational directorship during the last few decades. In addition to a new definition, a post twentieth century model of leadership needs created with steps and parameters opposite from pre-2000 thinking and philosophy. This article presents a new leadership definition and model, plus it identifies leadership parameters, steps, and lessons. Furthermore, it introduces a new concept into management/leadership/organization literature called Blended Dualism which incorporates the very latest supervisory thinking into a holistic, integrated amalgam of what initially appears to be contradictory or at least paradoxical …

Solving Hierarchical Constraints Over Finite Domains With Local Search, Martin Henz, Roland H.C. Yap, Yun Fong Lim, Seet Chong Lua, J. Paul Walser, Xiao Ping Shi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Many real world problems have requirements and constraints which conflict with each other. One approach for dealing with such over-constrained problems is with constraint hierarchies. In the constraint hierarchy framework, constraints are classified into ranks, and appropriate solutions are selected using a comparator which takes into account the constraints and their ranks. In this paper, we present a local search solution to solving hierarchical constraint problems over finite domains (HCPs). This is an extension of local search for over-constrained integer programs WSAT(OIP) to constraint hierarchies and general finite domain constraints.The motivation for this work arose from solving large airport gate …

Journal Of Actuarial Practice, Volume 11, 2004, Colin Ramsay , Editor

Journal of Actuarial Practice (1993-2006)

ARTICLES (the entire volume)

Product Innovation in Financial Services: A Survey • Christopher O'Brien 5

Phased Retirement for Defined Benefit Plan Participants • Patricia L. Scahill and Jonathan Barry Forman . 43

The Actuarial Value of Life Insurance Backdating • James M Carson and Krzysztof M Ostaszewski . 63

Decision Tree Analysis of Terminated Life Insurance Policies • Robert Keng Heong Lian, Yuan Wu, and Hian Chye Koh . 79

A Comparative Study of Parametric and Nonparametric Estimators of Old-Age Mortality in Sweden • Peter Fledelius, Montserrat Guillen, Jens Perch Nielsen, and Kitt Skovsø Petersen 103

Estimation of Complete …

Measuring Cognitive Ability With The Overclaiming Technique, Delroy L. Paulhus, Peter D. Harms

Leadership Institute: Faculty Publications

The overclaiming technique requires respondents to rate their familiarity with a list of general knowledge items (persons, places, things). Because 20% of the items are foils (i.e., do not exist), the response pattern can be analyzed with signal detection methods to yield the accuracy and bias scores for each respondent. In Study 1, the accuracy index showed strong associations with two standard IQ tests (β = .50–.59). Study 2 replicated the validity of the accuracy index with IQ and showed coherent associations with school grades, peer ratings, and self-ratings. Study 3 ensured that the validity of the accuracy index is …

A Paradigm For Spreadsheet Engineering Methodologies, Thomas A. Grossman Jr., O Ozluk

Business Analytics and Information Systems

Spreadsheet engineering methodologies are diverse and sometimes contradictory. It is difficult for spreadsheet developers to identify a spreadsheet engineering methodology that is appropriate for their class of spreadsheet, with its unique combination of goals, type of problem, and available time and resources. There is a lack of well-organized, proven methodologies with known costs and benefits for well-defined spreadsheet classes. It is difficult to compare and critically evaluate methodologies. We present a paradigm for organizing and interpreting spreadsheet engineering recommendations. It systematically addresses the myriad choices made when developing a spreadsheet, and explicitly considers resource constraints and other development parameters. This …

Aggregate Consumption Spending, The Stock Market, And Asymmetric Error Correction, Lonnie K. Stevans

Lonnie K. Stevans

In this study, we show how changes in wealth resulting from unanticipated changes in the value of equity holdings begin a process whereby households alter consumption growth in order to close the gap between actual and target spending. Because of changing uncertainty or equity price volatility over the stock market cycle, we found the time path of this adjustment to exhibit near random walk behavior during stock market downturns. Conversely, during “boom” periods, e.g. when the value of equities held by households was greater than the threshold, the growth in consumer spending was quick to eliminate the disparity between actual …

The Creation And Growth Of Ict Based Industrial Clusters: The New Zealand Case, Malcolm J. Fraser, Stephen Kelly

Malcolm Fraser

This paper provides an exploratory review of current global research on industrial clusters, and seeks to identify the key success components of these clusters. It then discusses these attributes in terms of their implication for New Zealand ICT industrial clusters. It is argued that by reviewing the success attributes underpinning industrial clusters a baseline can be established for decision-making in both the commercial activities of industry vertical groups, as well as local/central government economic policy formulation. The paper identifies the key success factors as the presence of large pillar firms that intact with strong local demand via a sophisticated work …

Teaching Decision Making With Baseball Examples, J. Eric Bickel

Eric Bickel

Sports examples can be wonderful vehicles for teaching OR/MS concepts. Baseball is particularly well suited to teaching statistics/probability, Markov decision processes, and decision analysis. This paper details a baseball example I developed to teach fundamental decision making skills. This example has been used successfully to teach decision making to undergraduates and graduates in technical and non-technical disciplines. It has also been used effectively in industry for training new MBAs and seasoned executives.

Effective Work Practices For Software Engineering: Free/Libre Open Source Software Development, Kevin Crowston, Hala Annabi, James Howison, Chengetai Masango

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

We review the literature on Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development and on software development, distributed work and teams more generally to develop a theoretical model to explain the performance of FLOSS teams. The proposed model is based on Hackman's [34] model of effectiveness of work teams, with coordination theory [52] and collective mind [79] to extend Hackman's model by elaborating team practices relevant to effectiveness in software development. We propose a set of propositions to guide further research.

Journal Of Actuarial Practice - Volume 11 (2004) - Contents And Masthead

Journal of Actuarial Practice (1993-2006)

Contents

Editorial Policy: Topics suitable for this journal include AIDS, annuity products, asset-liability matching, cash-flow testing, casualty rate making, credibility theory, credit insurance, disability insurance, expense analysis, experience studies, FASB issues, financial reporting, group insurance, health insurance, individual risk taking, insurance regulations, international issues, investments, liability insurance, loss reserves, marketing, pensions, pricing issues, product development, reinsurance, reserving issues, risk-based capital, risk theory, social insurance, solvency issues, taxation, valuation issues, and workers' compensation

Review Process

Editor - Colin Ramsay, University of Nebraska

Associate Editors: Robert Brown, University of Waterloo ○ Cecil Bykerk, Mutual of Omaha ○ Ruy Cardoso, …

Estimation Of Complete Period Life Tables For Singaporeans, Siu-Hang Li, Wai-Sum Chan

Journal of Actuarial Practice (1993-2006)

Complete period life tables, with death rates for every year of age, are not available in Singapore. This study constructs such tables for Singaporeans from the limited mortality information contained in the abridged life tables provided by the Singapore Department of Statistics. We find that linear interpolation, Whittaker graduation, and the Coale-Kisker method together can generate complete life tables that are smooth and continuous. The validity of the complete life tables generated by our method is further confirmed by (1) comparing the life expectancies calculated from our estimated life tables with those provided by the Singapore Department of Statistics, and …

Rapid Calculation Of The Price Of Guaranteed Minimum Death Benefit Ratchet Options Embedded In Annuities, Eric R. Ulm

Journal of Actuarial Practice (1993-2006)

This paper presents a new method of obtaining quick and accurate values and deltas for discrete look back options using Taylor series expansions. This method is applied to the case of ratchet guaranteed minimum death benefits attached to annuity contracts, and the method is extended to include annuities where a fixed fund is attached to the variable account. Finally, both the speed and the accuracy of the method are compared to Monte Carlo simulation and the exact analytic solution. The Taylor expansion method is shown to be faster and, in most cases, more accurate than the alternative methods.

Approximating The Bias And Variance Of Chain Ladder Estimates Under A Compound Poisson Model, Janagan Yogaranpan, Sue Clarke, Shauna Ferris, John Pollard

Journal of Actuarial Practice (1993-2006)

We consider the problem of estimating the outstanding claims produced by a homogeneous general insurance portfolio. The specific model considered in this paper is one where the number of claims in any loss period follows a Poisson distribution, settlement delays follow the same multinomial distribution, and settlements are single lump sums that are independent identically distributed random variables. Simulations using this model reveal that the development ratios and the outstanding claims estimates produced using the chain ladder method are positively biased. We obtain approximate formulas for the biases using Taylor series expansions of the random variables about their means. The …

Phased Retirement For Defined Benefit Plan Participants, Patricia L. Scahill, Jonathan Barry Forman

Journal of Actuarial Practice (1993-2006)

The demographic makeup of the U.S. workforce is changing. The population between ages SS and 64 is projected to increase significantly by 2020, but employment rates for this age group have not been increasing. Employers will likely need to encourage critical employees in this age group to delay retirement. Phased retirement is one tool for delaying retirement, while also not continuing full-time employment, so it can be a compromise for employers and employees. Both Congress and two administrative agencies have begun to consider changes in pension laws and regulations that would be needed to accommodate phased retirement for employers who …

A Genetic Algorithm Assisted Hybrid Approach To Web Information Integration, Jia-Lang Seng, Ming-Hsiung Ying

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

No abstract provided.

The Demand For Information Technology Knowledge And Skills: An Exploratory Investigation, Stuart D. Galup, Ronald Dattero, Jim J. Quan

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Organizations are always in search of appropriate information technology knowledge and skills to carry out normal business operations. Such demand is directly impacted by the overall economic conditions. During stressful economic times, managers, facing tough budgetary pressure, are forced to examine more thoroughly what knowledge and skills are needed to survive. This paper investigates the desired information technology knowledge and skills that employers are searching for in these turbulent times. We examine the content of job advertisements for information technology professionals placed in an online job placement website over a 2 year period, 2001-2002.

The Ecology Of Interorganizational Information Sharing, Jane Fedorowicz, Janis L. Gogan, Amy W. Ray

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Increasingly, companies use interorganizational information systems to support business process partnerships, such as automatic replenishment systems and other supply chain initiatives, invoicing and payments, and insurance claims processing. Inter-firm networking in turn can increase the visibility of information generated and used by business partners. These business partners may experience intended and unintended impacts from the changes in the partnering relationship, in effect altering the ecology of the organization. Yet IT researchers rarely study an organization’s ecology, focusing instead on impacts upon internal processes. Our goal in this paper is to propose a definition of interorganizational information ecology, to provide IT …

Customer Relationship Management (Crm): A Comparative Study Between U.S.A. And Spain, Jesus Garcia De Madariaga

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This paper surveys the marketing executives of the top companies in Spain with more than 100 million euros on net sales and reports the status of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions in their companies. The results are compared with the U.S.A. status reported by a previous study developed by InformationWeek Research in 2000 with a sample based on Fortune 500. One hundred and thirty-six companies participated in this study. The data provides insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the CRM in Spain in comparison with USA. Some viable actions are recommended to improve the usage of CRM and to …

Information Systems Service Quality Measurement: The Evolution Of The Servqual Instrument, Dwayne Whitten

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Due to the increasing service component of information technology, service quality measurement has become increasingly important as IS practitioners attempt to increase service quality to customers. The measurement of service quality in IS evolved from the research done in the marketing literature. The SERVQUAL instrument has evolved to become the most commonly used measurement instrument in both IS and marketing. Although commonly used, the SERVQUAL instrument is not without criticism. This paper describes the SERVQUAL instrument, its criticisms and support, and finally the SERVPERF instrument, a variation of the SERVQUAL instrument which is an attempt at improving upon the SERVQUAL …

Review Of The Opnet It Guru Software, Jeng-Chung Victor Chen

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The OPNET IT GURU has been in existence for years and designed to be used for the industry and the academics. The simulation software is now in version 10.0 and equipped with abundant features such as: modeling network topology and traffic, application impact assessment, and server capacity planning. The features of modeling network topology and traffic are ideal for network engineers to experiment different kinds of scenarios before implementation of any networks, which in turn could cost the organizations less on the IT budget. The application impact assessment is useful when measuring the end-to-end time of the deployed or to-be-deployed …

The Impacts Of Conflicts On Requirements Uncertainty And Project Performance, Houn-Gee Chen, James J. Jiang, Jun-Cheng Chen, J T. Shim

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Conflict is a pervasive phenomenon that permeates information systems development and implementation. The literature has indicated that conflicts, due to their association with negative emotion, will negatively influence IS project development, even after controlling for the effects of conflict management and resolution; however, the negative emotional characteristic of conflict alone has a limited explanatory power of IS project success. The purpose of this study is to provide additional insight, by including requirement uncertainty as the mediator variable, of the impacts of conflicts on project performance. Surveys were sent to Taiwan’s top 1600 companies and the results support the hypotheses. The …