Organization: Graduate School of Business & Public Policy (GSBPP)
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Efficient probability sequences
A probability sequence is an ordered set of probability forecasts for the same event. Although single-period probabilistic forecasts and methods for evaluating them have been extensively analyzed, we are not aware of any prior work on evaluating probability sequences. This paper proposes an efficiency condition for probability sequences and shows properties of efficiency forecasting systems, including memorylessness and increasing discrimination. These results suggest tests for efficiency and remedial interventions for inefficient systems.
The Performance Information Processing Framework: Four cognitive models of performance information use
The question of how public managers use public sector performance information received significant scholarly attention in recent years. The promise of performance management systems was to rationalize the decision making process by creating objective performance metrics that citizens, political officials, and public managers could use to assess the performance of public organizations. Some theoretical work suggests, however, that there is a certain subjectivity to these data, which arises from an individual’s role in their organization or broader political environment. Furthermore, a recent spate of experimental work in this area suggests subjectivity might also arise, at the individual level, through cognitive bias. I bridge these two bodies of scholarship with a framework of performance information processing, which incorporates four models of political information use into the story of how public managers use performance information. I suggest that cognitive bias can contribute to the subjectivity of performance information when public managers process performance information. In other words, a model of meaning avoidance suggests that managers accurately receive performance information from management systems, but that cognitive biases influence the ways in which they interpret or act upon that information. In this essay, I provide empirical evidence for this model. I show that despite different presentations, public managers can accurately recount the objective information they saw when asked to recall it. I also provide evidence that despite being equally aware of objective raw performance metrics, public managers exhibit evidence of cognitive bias when asked to interpret the meaning of that information. This study contributes to the broader discussion of how individuals use performance information.
Offsets and Defense Procurement in Czech Republic: A Case Study
This study examines the issues the Czech Republic faces in implementing defense offsets. The paper will briefly outline the history of the Czech Republic's participation in offsets and its current policy towards offset practices. The Czech Republic is a NATO, as well as EU, member and therefore is obliged to follow policies implemented by these institutions. The offsets for the Gripen Program will be used to illustrate the implementation of defense procurement offsets by Czech Republic MoD under its Industrial Participation Program.
Evaluating the Tradeoffs Between Dollars Spent and Lives Saved in Military Settings
A fundamental tenant of economics is that actions should be evaluated in terms of benefits and costs, including actions aimed at reducing military or civilian casualties. Safety improvements only expand individual or social welfare if the benefits of the improvements exceed their costs. Monetary costs of safety programs are generally determined through engineering or accounting studies and are fairly non-controversial. Against their costs, must be weighed the value of fewer fatalities and injuries, which requires both an accurate assessment of the fatalities and injuries eliminated and a monetary value of the lives saved and injuries avoided. Some argue that no monetary value can be placed on human life so any effort that improves safety is worthwhile. Clearly, the military cannot operate as if human life had infinite value. The focal message of our chapter is that choices must be made because complete safety is impossible and approving every advancement in armament, technology, or training that would reduce causalities or injuries would soon exhaust the military budget and leave no resources available for the core activities of defending the country.
The Effect of Cigarette Taxation on Prices: An Empirical Analysis using Local-Level Data
This paper combines new, author-collected tax data with data both from the American Chamber of Commerce Researchers Association (ACCRA) cost of living index (COLI) and from the Tax Burden on Tobacco (TBT) to measure the relative effects of city, county and state excise cigarette taxation on cigarette prices. The results indicate that a $1 increase in the state excise cigarette tax increases cigarette prices between $1.10 and $1.14, but that a $1 increase in a city or county-level excise tax increases prices by $1.07. These findings are similar between premium and generic cigarette brands. Additionally, urban areas located near states with lower cigarette taxes tend to have lower cigarette prices relative to urban areas located near states with the same or higher tax rates.
The Role of Historical Malaria in Institutions and Contemporary Economic Development
This research examines the causal impact of institutional quality on economic development from a novel perspective. At the country level, we exploit variation in the malaria prevalence in 1900, just before vector-control methods were developed, to instrument for institutional quality using a two-stage least squares instrumental variables framework. Our instrument is a population-weighted average of malaria endemicity estimates for the year 1900 developed by the WHO in the 1960s. We argue that this measure of historical malaria offers more expansive geographic information about the disease environment than other metrics, and our baseline IV estimates reveal that greater institutional quality causes greater contemporaneous economic growth. Next, we investigate the robustness of these baseline results to alternative explanations, including the role of geography and early colonizers’ experiences, as the causal link between the early disease environmental, institutional quality and contemporary growth. As an additional test of the explanatory power of malaria endemicity, we replace our instrument for settler mortality and replicate the core results from the seminal study on the colonial origins of comparative development by Acemoglu et al. (2001). In summary, we propose that malaria endemicity, estimated for 1900, holistically explains the legacy of early disease on institutional quality development and contemporary economic development.
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