Different Types Of Costs Research Articles

Social costs are an underappreciated force for honest signalling in animal aggregations

Animals in social aggregations use signals of quality or motivation to attract mates and intimidate rivals. Theory indicates that honesty can be maintained in these signals if the costs of signalling affect low-quality individuals more than they affect high-quality individuals. Considerable research has focused on identifying the nature of those costs and their ability to maintain honest signals. Much of this research, particularly in recent years, has focused on receiver-independent physiological costs of signal production. Less research attention has been paid to receiver-dependent costs that might arise from conspecific responses to signals. Here we survey the literature on these different types of costs, focusing in particular on case studies from a diversity of taxa. We find that signals often do carry significant physiological production costs, but this is not universal, as many signals appear to be physiologically inexpensive to produce. More importantly, very few studies have tested the key prediction that physiological production costs differentially affect low-quality individuals over high-quality individuals. In contrast, research from a diversity of taxa indicates that signals such as coloration and vocalizations often affect agonistic interactions, which in turn affect the production of signals, and that deceptive signallers receive more aggression than do honest signallers in at least some systems. Social costs are a plausible but understudied mechanism for maintaining honest signalling.

Trends in the use and costs of round-the-clock long-term care in the last two years of life among old people between 2002 and 2013 in Finland

BackgroundThe structure of long-term care (LTC) for old people has changed: care has been shifted from institutions to the community, and death is being postponed to increasingly old age. The aim of the study was to analyze how the use and costs of LTC in the last two years of life among old people changed between 2002 and 2013.MethodsData were derived from national registers. The study population contains all those who died at the age of 70 years or older in 2002–2013 in Finland (N = 427,078). The costs were calculated using national unit cost information. Binary logistic regression and Cox proportional hazard models were used to study the association of year of death with use and costs of LTC.ResultsThe proportion of those who used LTC and the sum of days in LTC in the last two years of life increased between 2002 and 2013. The mean number of days in institutional LTC decreased, while that for sheltered housing increased. The costs of LTC per user decreased.ConclusionsUse of LTC in the last two years of life increased, which was explained by the postponement of death to increasingly old age. Costs of LTC decreased as sheltered housing replaced institutional LTC. However, an accurate comparison of costs of different types of LTC is difficult, and the societal costs of sheltered housing are not well known.

Resilient service provisioning in cloud based data centers

Cloud service providers usually have several geo-distributed data centers to meet these increasing demands. On peak times, these data centers receive unpredictable amount of workload that might go beyond their capacity and service providers need to distribute this workload with the objective of maximizing their revenue. This objective is hard to be guaranteed given the possible incidents that may cause cloud services interruption such as power outages, security breaches, natural disasters, etc. Since cloud providers are facing serious threats to the continuation of their services offering which will cause a serious decrease in their revenues, they must have proper strategies for handling such incidents. While a rich volume of recent research works focused on optimizing cloud data centers operations in order to reduce their operational cost (OPEX), little attention has been paid to such serious incidents and how they would affect service provisioning. In this study, we use mixed integer-linear programming to model the problem of maximizing revenue of a given workload by creating/expanding/renting data centers. The model takes into account a wide range of incidents affecting the users traffic and/or the data centers service capacities. Moreover, it handles many issues such as different types of costs (capital, operational and recovery), power consumption, carbon footprint, SLA related issues such as constraints (e.g., delay) and penalties, etc. To the best of our knowledge, this formation is unique among the body of existing works. Finally, to evaluate the proposed model and the impact of different parameters on its performance, several simulation experiments are conducted.

Economic and Ecological Evaluation of Land Use Change: Evidence from Karelia

Land use change and a shift in economic activity often bring to unpredictable consequences for local ecosystems. There is a necessity of making preliminary evaluation and analysis of comparing the different types of economic and ecological transformation, including cost and benefit analysis, not only for business and local population, but for the whole environment. We give an example of a particular animal husbandry farm in Karelia and show how potential change in economic specialization can be effective on a 10 years horizon. Among other land use types, we chose peat mining and wetland conservation. Each type of activities was complexly evaluated with different types of costs and benefits. In the paper, we use a method of land use change evaluation including the value of ecosystem services. The monetary values of ecosystem services are given with the respect to foreign analogues and taking into account local realities and prices. Our results have shown that the most beneficial for the society and the environment is wetland conservation, due to their berries picking service, which are highly appreciated on the market, and due to low costs for the third parties, since wetlands contain regulative and refinery services for local ecosystems. As a contrary peat mining is a profitable business, but pollutes the environment because of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The current specialization for animal husbandry is neither an optimal solution because of low profitability of the chosen farm. The results of the research can be used for optimization in regional politics in the sphere of agriculture and environment economics in order to protect the ecological balance between human activities and nature.

Estimating the relative cost of track damage mechanisms: combining economic and engineering approaches.

This paper proposes a new, two-stage methodology to estimate the relative marginal cost of different types of vehicles running on the rail infrastructure. This information is important particularly where the infrastructure managers wish to differentiate the track access charges by vehicle type for the purpose of incentivizing the development and use of more track-friendly vehicles. EU legislation requires that the European infrastructure managers set the access charges based on the incremental (marginal) cost of the running trains on their networks. The novelty of the approach derives from the combination of: (1) engineering simulation methods that estimate the track damage caused by the rail vehicles; and (2) econometric methods that estimate the relationship between the actual maintenance costs and the different damage mechanisms. This two-stage approach fills an important gap in the literature, given the limitations of the existing “single-stage” engineering or econometric approaches in obtaining the relative marginal costs for different types of damage. The authors demonstrate the feasibility of the method using 45 track sections from Sweden, for which the data on maintenance costs are available together with relevant track and vehicle data for 2012 (supplied by the Swedish Transport Administration). The authors demonstrate the feasibility of producing summary, section-level damage measures for the three damage mechanisms (wear, rolling contact fatigue, and track settlement), which can be taken forward to the second stage. The econometric results of the second stage indicate that it is possible to obtain sensible relationships between cost and the different damage types, and thus produce relative marginal costs by the damage mechanism and in turn the vehicle type. Based on this feasibility study, tracksettlement has been found to be the most expensive (in terms of maintenance cost) of the three mechanisms, followed by the rolling contact fatigue and then the wear. Future applications should focus on larger datasets in order to produce the required degree of precision on the estimation of the marginal cost.

The Social Costs of Electricity Generation—Categorising Different Types of Costs and Evaluating Their Respective Relevance

Various electricity generation technologies using different primary energy sources are available. Many published studies compare the costs of these technologies. However, most of those studies only consider plant-level costs and do not fully take into account additional costs that societies may face in using these technologies. This article reviews the literature on the costs of electricity generation technologies, aiming to determine which types of costs are relevant from a societal point of view when comparing generation technologies. The paper categorises the relevant types of costs, differentiating between plant-level, system and external costs as the main categories. It discusses the relevance of each type of cost for each generation technology. The findings suggest that several low-carbon electricity generation technologies exhibit lower social costs per kWh than the currently dominant technologies using fossil fuels. More generally, the findings emphasise the importance of taking not only plant-level costs, but also system and external costs, into account when comparing electricity generation technologies from a societal point of view. The article intends to inform both policymakers and energy system modellers, the latter who may strive to include all relevant types of costs in their models.

Decarbonizing Sweden’s energy and transportation system by 2050

Decarbonizing Sweden’s transportation sector is n ecessary to realize its long-term vision of eliminating net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the energy system by 2050. Within this context, this study develops two scenarios for the transportation sector : one with high electrification (EVS ) and the other with high biofuel and biomethane utilization (BIOS). The energy system model STREAM is utilized to compute t he socioeconomic system cost and simulate an integrated transportation , electricity, gas, fuel refinery, and heat system. The results show that electrifying a high share of Sweden’s road transportation yields the least systems cost. However, in the least-cost scenario (EVS), bioenergy resources account for 57 % of the final energy use in the transportation sector. Further, a sensitivity analysis shows that the costs of different types of cars are the most sensitive parameters in the comparative analysis of the scenarios.

The profit as in-company evaluation of the construction site effectiveness

The paper discuss the profit made by construction sites operated by one company as a measure of their effectiveness. The different types of cost, that should have been covered by income, were described. The distinction between indirect cost made on building site and indirect cost made by headquarter of a company were shown, as well as necessity of including both on them in calculating building site effectiveness. Three different method of assigning company overhead cost to the building site were shown and discussed. Their significant influence on building site profitability was emphasised and calculated for exemplary values. The necessity of calculating full cost for each building site operating by one company was discussed in the article too, by showing which information is necessary for a company management, a building site management and for company shareholders.

Analyzing Small-Cells and Distributed Antenna Systems from Techno-Economic Perspective

The new generations of mobile networks will require economical and viable solutions in order to meet the promises raised by scientists. In this article, the authors overview the available research activities and present an architecture for DAS and femtocells and a mathematical model analyzing their costs, as they are considered technologies, that offer great advantages for mobile networks. The authors present a wide research in the solutions' parameters and prices. There are thorough experiments including several different types of costs. In particular, Capital (CAPEX), Operational (OPEX) expenditures and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) are examined for both technologies in terms of the backhauling technologies, of the size of buildings that they are implemented in and the years of investment from a telecommunication company. The main results are that femtocells are a more appealing solution when it comes to small places, while the alternative is more favorable for big infrastructures.

Probabilistic spatio-temporal resource search

In this paper, we deal with the resource search problem in a probabilistic setting. In a resource search problem, there are spatially located static resources and a mobile agent. The agent looks to obtain one of the resources while minimizing the cost. This cost may consist of different types of costs the agent has to pay, from travel time to the cost of obtaining a certain resource. We assume that the agent has no knowledge of exact availability of the resources in real-time, but some prior or partial data gives estimations of this information. This model applies to many situations that arise in urban transportation systems, such as drivers looking for street parking, taxis looking for new customers, and electric vehicles looking for charging stations. Our approach to the resource search problem only employs uncertain information about resource availability, minimizes the expected cost, and utilizes concepts from decision theory. A simulation that uses real-world data is used to compare our approach to alternatives.

Categorizing the Liability of Foreignness: Ownership, Location, and Internalization‐Specific Dimensions

Plain language summaryThis study explains the different types of additional costs faced by multinational firms when they invest abroad. We identify product adaptation cost, discrimination cost, governance cost, and appropriation hazard as important sources of the difficulties that multinationals face. We then link each of these costs to different dimensions of cross‐national distance, including economic, cultural, demographic, political, and administrative distance. Finally, we show that the importance of these different distance dimensions differ when multinationals invest abroad for different reasons including market seeking, efficiency seeking, knowledge seeking, and natural resource seeking.Technical summaryThis study bridges the literature on the liability of foreignness (LoF) and cross‐national distance. Following the ownership‐location‐internalization paradigm, we categorize the LoF into three dimensions: ownership‐specific LoF, location‐specific LoF, and internalization‐specific LoF, each of which reduces a specific advantage of the multinational firm. We first define the three dimensions of the LoF and then argue that each dimension is related to different types of costs. We further explain that different types of costs are associated with different dimensions of cross‐national distance, and firms face different types of the LoF and associated costs when they conduct different types of foreign direct investment. We test these hypotheses in the context of Chinese listed firms investing abroad, finding support for most of the predictions. Copyright © 2016 Strategic Management Society

교량 유지관리 의사결정 지원을 위한 개축비용 산정모델 개발

교량의 유지관리 비용은 교량 건설 후 주기적으로 발생하게 되며 교량의 상태, 환경 조건 등 여러 요인들이 복합적으로 고려되어야 한다. 개축은 유지관리 단계에서 발생하는 조치 중 가장 최종적이며 대규모 비용이 투입되는 조치로서 교량 유지관리 의사 결정 지원을 위해서는 기본적인 개축 비용 산정 모델의 수립이 필수적이다. 본 연구에서는 교량의 개축 비용 산정을 위한 회귀 모델을 개발하였다. 이를 위해 교량관리시스템(Bridge Management System) 데이터베이스(database) 상의 교량 기본 제원을 분석하여 교량 형식별, 구성 요소별 대표 표본과 주요 영향 인자들을 정의하였다. 각 표본별 비용 산정변수를 고려하여 내역 작업을 수행하였다. 비용 산정 변수에 따른 대표 표본의 적산 결과를 회귀분석하여 상부구조, 하부구조, 기초 등의 신설 비용과 가교 설치 비용, 해체 폐기 비용에 대한 비용 모델을 도출하였다. 개발된 비용 모델을 활용하여 공용 중인 교량 형식별 개축 비용을 도출하고 단가를 산출하여 기존 문헌과의 비교 검토를 수행하였으며, 유지관리 의사결정에 효과적으로 활용될 것으로 기대된다. The periodic maintenance of bridges is necessary once they have been constructed and its cost depends on various factors, such as their condition, environmental conditions and so on. To make a decision support system, it is essential to establish a basic reconstruction cost model. In this study, a regression model is suggested for calculating the reconstruction cost for typical cases and influential factors, depending on the type of bridge and its components, by analyzing the basic bridge specifications based on the data of the Bridge Management System (BMS). The details for each case were estimated in consideration of the cost calculation variables. The details for each case were estimated in consideration of the cost calculation variables. The cost model for the new construction of the superstructure, substructure and foundation and the temporary bridge construction and demolition costs were drawn from the regression analysis of the estimation results of typical cases according to the cost calculation variables. The reconstruction costs for different types of bridge were obtained using the cost model and compared with those in the literature. The cost model developed herein is expected to be utilized effectively in maintenance decision making.

CEOs’ appraisals of venture capitalists’ external and internal support: a transaction cost economics perspective

Previous research has established that, in addition to provision of financing, venture capitalists (VCs) may add value to new ventures via different types of management support. In this paper, we propose that transaction cost economics (TCE) may complement other theoretical frameworks (e.g., agency theory, the resource-based view, knowledge-based theory, and resource dependence perspective) in explaining CEOs’ polar and ambivalent appraisals of the benefits and costs of different types of VC support and the overall value of VC assistance. Following TCE, we approach VC-funded new ventures as hybrids of markets and hierarchies. Hence, we assume that VCs help their portfolio companies both to externalize, or learn to better operate under the market mode of governance, and internalize, or learn to better operate under the hierarchy mode of governance. We propose that VCs use external support to facilitate venture externalization and use internal support to facilitate venture internalization. Based on structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis of data from an online survey that generated 104 valid responses from CEOs of VC-funded new ventures, we establish that CEOs associate VCs’ external support positively with the perceived benefits of VC assistance and negatively with the perceived costs of VC assistance. In contrast, CEOs associate VCs’ internal support positively both with the perceived benefits and costs of VC assistance. We also demonstrate that CEOs’ assessments of the perceived benefits and costs of VC assistance are, respectively, associated positively and negatively with their appraisals of the overall value of VC assistance. Finally, we ascertain that CEO experience is related negatively to CEOs’ appraisals of the overall value of VC assistance. Implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.

Transport costs seen through the lens of residential self-selection and mobility biographies

This position paper places transport costs in a longitudinal, life-course oriented perspective. It argues that travel behaviour and the choice of residence may be considered two intertwined decision frameworks made by individuals/households that in turn can be understood within the broader context of mobility biographies. The interrelations between mobility biographies and transport costs are on multiple levels. Firstly, they refer to different types of cost, including user costs, costs for transport provision and external costs. Secondly, mobility biographies and, specifically, residential self-selection may be affected by transport (user) costs, while at the same time they work as input factors for transport costs on all cost levels. The paper outlines these thoughts and discusses the consequences for spatial planning and transport planning. It suggests a strong planning system in which guidelines for travel and residential choice are set by public planning organisations rather than by the market. This is likely to help spare future households increasing transport costs, and costs for transport provision and external costs will be reduced as well. Further, it argues for a shift away from the happiness debate and towards the notion of dignity in transport studies.

Economic Burden in Chinese Patients with Diabetes Mellitus Using Electronic Insurance Claims Data.

BackgroundThere is a paucity of studies that focus on the economic burden in daily care in China using electronic health data. The aim of this study is to describe the development of the economic burden of diabetic patients in a sample city in China from 2009 to 2011 using electronic data of patients’ claims records.MethodsThis study is a retrospective, longitudinal study in an open cohort of Chinese patients with diabetes. The patient population consisted of people living in a provincial capital city in east China, covered by the provincial urban employee basic medical insurance (UEBMI). We included any patient who had at least one explicit diabetes diagnosis or received blood glucose lowering medication in at least one registered outpatient visit or hospitalization during a calendar year in the years 2009–2011. Cross-sectional descriptions of different types of costs, prevalence of diabetic complications and related diseases, medication use were performed for each year separately and differences between three years were compared using a chi-square test or the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis H test.ResultsOur results showed an increasing trend in total medical cost (from 2,383 to 2,780 USD, p = 0.032) and diabetes related cost (from 1,655 to 1,857 USD) for those diabetic patients during the study period. The diabetes related economic burden was significantly related to the prevalence of complications and related diseases (p<0.001). The overall medication cost during diabetes related visits also increased (from 1,335 to 1,383 USD, p = 0.021). But the use pattern and cost of diabetes-related medication did not show significant changes during the study period.ConclusionThe economic burden of diabetes increased significantly in urban China. It is important to improve the prevention and treatment of diabetes to contribute to the sustainability of the Chinese health-care system.

Regulatory capital and social trade-offs in planning of smart distribution networks with application to demand response solutions

Under the current UK regulatory framework for electricity distribution networks, asset upgrades are planned with the objectives of minimising both capital costs (and thus customer fees) and social costs such as those associated with carbon emissions and customer interruptions. This approach naturally results in economic trade-offs as network solutions meant to reduce social costs typically increase (sometimes significantly) capital costs, and vice versa. This can become an issue in a smart grid context where new operational solutions such as Demand Response (DR) may emerge. More specifically, even though there is a general belief that smart solutions will only provide benefits due to their potential to displace investments in costly assets (e.g., lines and substations), they may also introduce trade-offs associated with increased operational expenditure, power losses and emissions compared with networks with upgraded assets. On the other hand, the flexibility inherent in smart solutions could be used to balance the different types of costs, leading to attractive cost trade-offs if properly modelled, quantified and regulated. However, given the fundamental “non-asset” nature of DR, properly quantifying the resulting trade-offs so as to perform a like-for-like comparison with traditional planning strategies is a grand challenge. In this light, this article proposes a methodology to explicitly model and quantify capital and social cost trade-offs in distribution network planning, which can be incorporated into the existing regulatory framework. The results, based on real UK distribution networks, show that our proposed methodology can be used to explicitly model and regulate cost trade-offs. By doing so, it is possible to encourage more efficient levels of capital expenditure and social benefits by deploying the right mix of traditional asset-based and smart DR-based solutions.

On the use of IT investment assessment methods in the area of spatial data infrastructure

Abstract One of the important issues concerning development of spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) is the carrying out of economic and financial analysis. It is essential to determine expenses and also assess effects resulting from the development and use of infrastructures. Costs and benefits assessment could be associated with assessment of the infrastructure effectiveness and efficiency as well as the infrastructure value, understood as the infrastructure impact on economic aspects of an organisational performance, both of an organisation which realises an SDI project and all users of the infrastructure. The aim of this paper is an overview of various assessment methods of investment as well as an analysis of different types of costs and benefits used for information technology (IT) projects. Based on the literature, the analysis of the examples of the use of these methods in the area of spatial data infrastructures is also presented. Furthermore, the issues of SDI projects and investments are outlined. The results of the analysis indicate usefulness of the financial methods from different fields of management in the area of SDI building, development and use. The author proposes, in addition to the financial methods, the adaptation of the various techniques used for IT investments and their development, taking into consideration the SDI specificity for the purpose of assessment of different types of costs and benefits and integration of financial aspects with non-financial ones. Among the challenges are identification and quantification of costs and benefits, as well as establishing measures which would fit the characteristics of the SDI project and artefacts resulting from the project realisation. Moreover, aspects of subjectivity and variability in time should be taken into account as the consequences of definite goals and policies as well as business context of organisation undertaking the project or using its artefacts and also investors.

Knowledge Generation Strategies: Empirical Analysis of Industrial Enterprises

The aim of the research is to develop theory and practice of strategic planning in the field of knowledge generation as competitiveness factors of economic entities. The paper presents results of empirical researches of knowledge generation strategies that the Russian industrial enterprises realise. This study focuses on analysis of microdata (enterprise level) as the key instrument to reveal facts and hypotheses describing the innovation activities depending on different types of changed resource, quantity of new products made by the company, structure of costs for different types of knowledge, profit growth. The idea locates about strategies generation of different types of knowledge (operational, structural, functional) considerably differ. The authors prove that effective innovative company development, particularly in the difficult economic condition, stresses the importance of organising optimal cost structure for different types of knowledge. It is strategic knowledge management based on company strategy, its aims and growth trends that gives the most significant effect in the field of providing competitiveness.

Designing a whole-life building cost index in Singapore

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the whole-life costs of non-residential green-rated building developments in Singapore to derive useful information for research and practice. When industry stakeholders like building owners, architects, engineers, quantity surveyors, builders and facility managers have detailed information about the initial and operating costs of different types of buildings, they will be able to apply whole-life costing to their existing or new projects with the intention of achieving value for money, as well as environmental sustainability. The developed index is useful to green policymakers and building owners. Design/methodology/approach – Data are collected from building projects certified by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) of Singapore under the Green Mark scheme, starting from 2005. Statistical analysis is performed on the collected data to generate the information required to build the index as well as cost database. The Paasche price index method is used to produce a weighted composite index for Singapore’s non-residential building sector. Findings – The results show the classification of whole-life costs components by two main groups – “development and construction costs”, and “operating and maintenance costs”. There are a total of 68 cost significant items selected from 13 construction work categories. Comparing the weights for three non-residential building types, the highest is obtained for industrial building, which is followed by institutional and commercial buildings. Research limitations/implications – Without data, the description of the research has primarily dealt with the formulation of the proposed index because designing an appropriate methodology is key to ensure widespread acceptance and use. Practical implications – Prospective users have to be aware that the index cannot provide information about change in absolute terms and is not very accurate as such in reflecting the actual level of costs or prices of the variable of interest. However, it is a good indicator of the relative change over time in the level of costs or prices. Originality/value – It is expected that this method contributes additional information to BCA’s existing tender price index about a building’s operating costs as well since the proposed index is a measure of change in the average whole life-cycle costs of buildings over time.

V—Dimensions of Demandingness

The Demandingness Objection is the objection that a moral theory or principle is unacceptable because it asks more than we can reasonably expect. David Sobel, Shelley Kagan and Liam Murphy have each argued that the Demandingness Objection implicitly – and without justification – appeals to moral distinctions between different types of cost. I discuss three sets of cases each of which suggest that we implicitly assume some distinction between costs when applying the Demandingness Objection. We can explain each set of cases, but each set requires appeal to a separate dimension of the Demandingness Objection.