Proper Incentives Research Articles

Mobile Network Operator and Mobile User Cooperation for Customized D2D Data Services

The explosive growth of smart devices has led to the evolution of multimedia data (mainly video) services in mobile networks. It attracted many mobile network operators (MNO) to deploy novel network architectures and develop effective economic policies. Mobile data offloading through smart devices (SDs) by exploring device-to-device (D2D) communications can significantly reduce network congestion and enhance quality of service at a lower cost, which is the key requirement of upcoming 5G networks. This reasonable cost solution is useful for attracting mobile users to participate in the offloading process by paying them proper incentives. It is beneficial for MNOs as well as mobile users. Moreover, D2D communications promise to be one of the prominent services for 5G networks. In this paper, we present a combinatorial optimal reverse auction (CORA) mechanism, which efficiently selects and utilizes available high-end SDs on the basis of available resources for offloading purposes. It also decides the optimal pricing policy for the selected SDs. The efficiency of CORA has been realized in terms of bandwidth and storage demand. Subsequently, we implement caching in SDs, eNodeB (eNB), and evolved packet core (EPC) with the help of our novel video dissemination cache update algorithm to solve the latency or delay issues in the offloading process. Due to high popularity, we specifically focus on video data. Simulation results show that the proposed SD caching scenario curtails the delay up to 75% and the combined cache (CC) scenario slashes the delay varying from 15 to 57%. We also scruitinize the video downloading time performance of various cache scenarios (i.e., CC, EPC cache, eNB cache, and SD cache scenarios).

Incentive Compatible Decision Making: Real Options with Adverse Incentives

In this paper, we examine the real options approach to capital budgeting decision making in the presence of managerial adverse incentives. We show that real options have the potential to be value enhancing or value destroying depending on the managerial incentives that may result from having objectives different from firm value maximization. We further examine the possibility of using a generic residual income based rule of managerial compensation to induce the proper investment incentives and we seek to determine the cost-of-capital that must be employed in such a rule. Using numerical examples it is demonstrated that in general, a range of incentive compatible costs-of-capital exists across all managerial investment horizons but not across all managerial hurdle rates.

Association between social health insurance and choice of hospitals among internal migrants in China: a national cross-sectional study

ObjectivesThere is a tendency to pursue higher-level hospitalisation services in China, especially for internal migrants. This study aims to investigate the choices of hospitalisation services among internal migrants, and evaluate...

Democratic Governance Mechanisms in Cooperative Banks: A Reassessment

The governance of cooperative banks is arguably so distinctive that it cannot be properly captured by standard economic models. One of the problems that arises in the assessment of the assumed democratic governance in such banks refers to the members’ commitment to the banks. This paper considers the fact that it is not always clear whether cooperative banks’ members have the proper incentives to actively participate in making decisions that relate to bank strategies and policies. To shed light on this problem, this paper provides an improved framework of governance based on some seminal concepts by Albert O. Hirschman (1970), such as voice, exit and loyalty. Given the challenges that cooperative banks are currently facing, the arguments discussed in this paper should help illuminate the kind of reforms that such banks are expected to pursue in the coming years. Their governance model needs to be updated in practice to retain its specific features; otherwise, it may end up mirroring that of standard for-profit banks.

Charter Communications: Ensuring the Right Path Forward

This case explores the considerations of an executive compensation analyst as he finalizes a report to the compensation and benefits committee of Charter Communications (Charter), a leading broadband and communications company, on the appropriate compensation structure for Charter's CEO, Thomas Rutledge. Charter's board clearly wanted to retain Rutledge, but in the world of executive compensation, it was not enough to have the biggest payment package. Proper incentives and moving performance targets were essential for companies that wanted their executives to strike the right balance between risky maneuvers and safe, consistent success. The analyst must be careful to cover all of his bases in his report, balancing outright monetary rewards with proper long-term incentives. Excerpt UVA-F-1814 Sept. 19, 2018 Charter Communications: Ensuring the Right Path Forward Rewarding executives was something Genji Izutsu, an analyst at the executive compensation consulting firm Mercer-Wigley, was used to working out. As he put the final touches on his March 2016 report to Charter Communications' (Charter's) compensation and benefits committee, Izutsu zeroed in on the matter of balance: balance between outright monetary rewards and proper long-term incentives. The committee was charged with determining an appropriate compensation structure for Charter's CEO, Thomas Rutledge. The members of the committee—Lance Conn, Gregory Maffei, Steven Miron, Mauricio Ramos, and Eric Zinterhofer—were hardly novices at making such decisions (Exhibit 1). The combined experience of the team was tremendous. Izutsu had to be careful in compiling a report. He had to cover all his bases. By any stretch of the imagination, Rutledge was a dream-come-true CEO. Former executive of Cablevision, he took Charter's helm in 2012. By 2016, Rutledge had built it into the second-largest cable and media firm in the country, yielding only to the industry megagiant Comcast Corp. The stock price soared from $ 33 in the end of 2010 to $ 203.86 at the start of March 2016 (Exhibit 2). The board clearly wanted to retain Rutledge. But in the world of executive compensation, it was not enough to have the biggest payment package. Proper incentives and moving performance targets were essential for companies that wanted their executives to strike the right balance between risky maneuvers and safe, consistent success. Charter's board of directors and compensation committee had very clear intentions. The company wanted to structure new deals for Rutledge and several other C-level administrators in a way that would “ensure the retention of the highest caliber executives through the integration process” of recently acquired companies, and develop “a strong alignment with the long-term interests of the company's stockholders.” . . .

What Makes a Greener Building? Lessons from Taiwan

Buildings consume vast amounts of resources and energy contributing to climate change. Some countries have developed green building certification systems. Compared to other developed areas, Taiwan lags behind in green building construction and in response created its own certification for sub-tropical countries called Ecology, Energy Saving, Waste Reduction, and Health (EEWH). But what economic factors truly drive green building construction and quality? Our study sample analyzes 1355 Taiwan green building cases from 2000 to June 2018 to determine the influence of various economic, structural, and policy factors. Results suggest that while public ownership led to more green building certifications, private ownership led to a higher environment rating. Proper incentives are needed to further increase the ratings of public buildings and to expand the construction of highly rated private buildings, especially for small and medium sized buildings.

Monetary and Fiscal History of Peru 1960-2010: Radical Policy Experiments, Inflation and Stabilization

We show that Peru’s chronic inflation through the 1970s and 1980s was the result of the need for inflationary taxation in a regime of fiscal dominance of monetary policy. Hyperinflation occurred when debt accumulation became unavailable, and a populist administration engaged in a counterproductive policy of price controls and loose credit. We interpret the fiscal difficulties preceding the stabilization as a process of social learning to live within the realities of fiscal budget balance. The credibility of the policy regime change in the 1990s may be linked ultimately to the change in public opinion giving proper incentives to politicians, after the traumatic consequences of the hyperstagflation of 1987-1990. JEL Classification-JEL: E52 , E58 , E62

REUSE AND VALORIZATION OF SILT FROM AGGREGATES CRUSHING OF ALLUVIAL GRAVEL AND SAND, FOR THE MANUFACTURING OF CEMENT BASED BUILDING ELEMENTS

The development of Multi-Energy Systems (MES) or District Energy Systems (DES) requires suitable design and operation optimization tools, in order to assess their feasibility and economic profitability. These tools can be helpful in choosing the proper technologies and also in the perspective of defining proper incentive or taxation schemes. A critical result of the analysis of MES is that, when optimizing their design, the operation strategy and the part load behavior of the units must be considered in the optimization model. This way, the model is to be formulated as a two-stage problem, where the design and the operation variables are optimized in the first and in the second stage, respectively. In order to guarantee the computational tractability, the scheduling/operation problem is solved for a limited set of typical and extreme periods. We have developed a Mixed Integer Linear Programming model to solve this design optimization problem, for which we have linearized the off-design and the size effects of performances and costs for the technologies considered in the case study. The model has been applied to optimize the design of a district energy system for the University of Parma Campus in Northern Italy.

Reward-Aided Sensing Task Execution in Mobile Crowdsensing Enabled by Energy Harvesting

Mobile crowdsensing (MCS) is a new sensing framework that empowers normal mobile devices to participate in sensing tasks. The key challenge that degrades the performance of MCS is selfish mobile users who conserve the resources (e.g., CPU, battery, and bandwidth) of their devices. Thus, we introduce energy harvesting (EH) as rewards into MCS, and thus provide more possibilities to improve the quality of service (QoS) of the system. In this paper, we propose a game theoretic approach for achieving sustainable and higher quality sensing task execution in MCS. The proposed solution is implemented as a two-stage game. The first stage of the game is the system reward game, in which the system is the leader, who allocates the task and reward, and the mobile devices are the followers who execute the tasks. The second stage of the game is called the participant decision-making game, in which we consider both the network channel condition and participant’s abilities. We analyze the features of the second stage of the game and show that the game admits a Nash equilibrium (NE). Based on the NE of the second stage of the game, the system can admit a Stackelberg equilibrium, at which the utility is maximized. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed mechanism can achieve a better QoS and prolong the system lifetime while also providing a proper incentive mechanism for MCS.

Towards Incentive Management Mechanisms in the Context of Crowdsensing Technologies based on TrackYourTinnitus Insights

The increased use of mobile devices has led to an improvement in the public health care through participatory interventions. For example, patients were empowered to contribute in treatment processes with the help of mobile crowdsourcing and crowdsensing technologies. However, when using the latter technologies, one prominent challenge constitutes a continuous user engagement. Incentive management techniques can help to tackle this challenge by motivating users through rewards and recognition in exchange of task completion. For this purpose, we aim at developing a conceptual framework that can be integrated with existing mHealth mobile crowdsourcing and crowdsensing platforms. The development of this framework is based on insights we obtained from the TrackYourTinnitus (TYT) mobile crowdsensing platform. TYT, in turn, pursues the goal to reveal insights to the moment-to-moment variability of patients suffering from tinnitus. The work at hands presents evaluated data of TYT and illustrates how the results drive the idea of a conceptual framework for an incentive management in this context. Our results indicate that a proper incentive management should play an important role in the context of any mHealth platform that incorporates the idea of the crowd.

Hybrid genetic dragonfly algorithm based optimal power flow for computing LMP at DG buses for reliability improvement

This paper proposes an hybrid method to compute locational marginal price at distributed generation (DG) buses in order to improve reliability in radial distribution system (RDS). This method consists of optimal power flow based on hybrid genetic dragonfly algorithm which provides incentives to each DG unit based on its contribution to reliability improvement. In this paper expected energy not supplied has been used as a reliability measuring index. The proposed method enables the distribution company (DISCO) to operate the network with more reliability by providing proper incentives to DG owners. The proposed method has been implemented on 38 bus RDS and pacific gas and electric company (PG&E) 69 bus RDS under MATLAB environment. It has been observed from the analytical study on both test systems that by providing proper incentives to DG units, reliability of the network can be vastly improved.

The current situation of human resources for health in the province of Cabinda in Angola: is it a limitation to provide universal access to healthcare?

BackgroundAngola is among sub-Saharan African countries dealing with a crisis of Human Resources for Health (HRH). The province of Cabinda, besides the efforts, still suffers from both HRH shortage and a badly distributed health workforce. In Cabinda, one can find urban concentration and rural shortages of healthcare professionals, many rural areas’ healthcare facilities often secured only by basic or medium level HRH; and difficulties in developing HRH retention strategies in rural areas where most services are covered by foreign HRH. This study aims at analysing the situation of HRH in the province of Cabinda. It considers organizational issues, policies and practices resulting from the HRH strategy followed in the recent years, moreover the creation of a medical school. The context that affects the distribution of the health workforce is analysed to contribute to the development of evidence-based policies that promote a better HRH allocation in the poorest and distant villages in the province.MethodsA mixed-methods study was developed, combining a quantitative and qualitative approach to analyse HRH situation in the province of Cabinda. Data was collected from key informants, selected by intentional sampling from public and private health organizations, to respond to a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. Quantitative and qualitative data was analysed with descriptive and inferential statistics and content analysis respectively. The study was complemented by a comprehensive desk review.ResultsResults show a clear change in HRH data from 2011 to 2015 with significant fluctuations due to variations in retirement, migration and lack of regular public HRH recruitment tenders. HRH density is apparently better in rural when compared with urban areas. However, one should bear in mind that often HRH allocated to rural areas do not stay there, which leads to real geographical imbalances. Factors like lack of proper incentives for HRH retention and social support goes against significant HRH management efforts contributing to this result. Whereas HRH are financed by the State General Budget, the majority of health facilities are still dependent on the Provincial Health Secretariat budget.ConclusionThe study provides a broader view of the current HRH situation in Cabinda Province. Geographical imbalances and other issues with impact in delivering universal access to healthcare are highlighted.

An Incentive Framework for Mobile Data Offloading Market Under Price Competition

Mobile data offloading can help the mobile network operator (MNO) cope with the explosive growth of cellular traffic, by delivering mobile traffic through third-party access points. However, the access point owners (APOs) would need proper incentives to participate in data offloading. In this paper, we consider a data offloading market that includes both price-taking and price-setting APOs. We formulate the interactions among the MNO and these two types of APOs as a three-stage Stackelberg game, and study the MNO’s profit maximization problem. Due to a non-convex strategy space, it is in general a non-convex game. Nevertheless, we transform the strategy space into a convex set and prove that a unique subgame perfect equilibrium exists. We further propose iterative algorithms for the MNO and price-setting APOs to obtain the equilibrium. Employing the proposed algorithms, the APOs do not need to obtain full information about the MNO and other APOs. Through numerical studies, we show that the MNO’s profit can increase up to three times comparing with the no-offloading case. Furthermore, our proposed incentive mechanism outperforms an existing algorithm by 18 percent in terms of the MNO’s profit. Results further show that price competition among price-setting APOs drives the equilibrium market prices down.

The Application of Social Networks in Assisting out-of-class Interactions: A case Study of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Dalat University

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the application of social networks in assisting out-of-class interactions in the context of Vietnam. A group of lecturers and students from the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Dalat University was chosen to participate in a pilot scheme, using a social network called Edmodo to assist the out-of-class interactions between lecturers and students in the courses in charge in one academic year. The results show that the social network improves the efficiency of out-of-class interactions among participants and receive positive feedbacks from both students and lecturers. The results also indicate that the use of social networks in education is feasible and will improve the teaching and learning efficiency. However, the results also suggest that lecturers should carefully plan academic activities and provide students with proper incentives to motivate their participation into the class online interactive activities.

Video Delivery Architecture for Hierarchical HetNet: HH-D2D Caching

ABSTRACTOver the last few years, smart devices and mobile devices drive the wide growth in mobile data communications. This increase is a major challenge for mobile network operators (MNOs). The MNOs are forced to operate with their maximum capacity limits and this growth needs mobile data offloading to accomplish the capacity demands. The mobile data offloading through device-to-device (D2D) communication can help to reduce the network congestion at low operational and capital expenses. The data offloading through D2D attracts the mobile users to participate, by paying them proper incentives in returns of their services. The offloading requires mutual agreement and benefits both the parties, MNOs and mobile users. In this paper, we categorize the smart devices (SDs) on the basis of their storage and methoding capabilities. Furthermore, we create the hierarchy of SDs to utilize the available resources efficiently with minimum cost and higher benefits. We present a main node–friend node (MNFN) selection and matching mechanism, which efficiently selects and utilizes available high-end SDs (HSDs) on the basis of available resources for offloading purpose. It also decides the optimal pricing policy for the selected SDs. The efficiency of MNFN has been realized in terms of bandwidth and storage demand. Subsequently, we implement caching in MNs, and FNs with the help of our novel hierarchical heterogeneous D2D (HH-D2D) caching-based video dissemination architecture to solve the bit rate issues in the mobile network. The particular focus of our work is on video data, due to high demands. Simulation results show that FN caching increases bit rate up to ∼26 times, while MNFN caching improves bit rate up to ∼40 times.

NEW PLANT VARIETY PROTECTION IN CHINA FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF FOOD SECURITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

China is facing increasing challenges in food security and environmental protection, and the plant breeding has made enormous contribution to solving the problems. The legal protection of new plant varieties has the important function of encouraging innovations in the field of plant breeding. However, the widely use of modern biotechnology has caused great controversy in society, and some people propose to limit the scope of plant variety right, especially for Genetically Modified Organisms (hereinafter “GMOs”). When designing and interpreting the regulations on the protection of new plant varieties, we should keep in mind that the plant variety right is a private right aiming to encourage innovation, and take the principles and relationships in the field of innovation into consideration. Proper regulation and incentives for innovation are both the essential themes in the fields of modern technologies. Intellectural property (hereinafter “IP”) laws should focus on encouraging innovation, while the law system, including the Seed Law, the Food Safety Law and the Environmental Protection Law, should provide systematic, scientific and strict regulations on the research, propagation and marketing of new plant varieties. The whole law system and the market can function together to guide the plant breeders to be committed to breeding new varieties that meet the needs of food security, food safety and environmental protection.

Optimal Leniency Programs When Firms Have Cumulative and Asymmetric Evidence

An antitrust authority deters collusion with the use of fines and a leniency program. Firms have imperfect cumulative evidence of the collusion. That is, cartel conviction is not automatic if one firm reports. Reporting makes conviction only more likely: the more that firms report, the more likely is conviction. Furthermore, the evidence is distributed asymmetrically among firms. This set-up allows us meaningfully to analyze three typical features of leniency programs: minimum-evidence standards; ringleader discrimination; and marker systems. Minimum-evidence standards provide high-evidence firms with proper incentives to report. They are better at deterring than is ringleader discrimination. Under a marker system only one firm reports so that the antitrust authority never gets the entire available evidence. Appropriate minimum-evidence standards make a marker system redundant.

Effects of provider incentives in integrated healthcare delivery system reform: a quasi-experiment on patients with chronic diseases in rural China

Background: Provider incentive was a key strategy in facilitating the integrated healthcare delivery reform, however information about the appropriate form and evidence was insufficient in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). From July 2012 to December 2014, we implemented a multi-faceted intervention in Qianjiang County in Chongqing Municipality of Southwestern China, to realize and prove the effectiveness of an integrated care model among patients with chronic diseases, and to compare the effects with/without provider incentives. Methods: A quasi-experiment was performed with 2 treatment groups and one control group. One treatment group was intervened with multi-disciplinary team (MDT) together with other strategies to improve the continuity of care (COC) between primary-secondary-tertiary care, and the physicians in the other treatment group was additionally provided with financial incentives besides the integrated delivery intervention, in the form of performance-based prospective payment system. The control group conducted usual care without any inter-professional collaboration and implemented traditional “fee-for-service” system. In total, 6 towns were randomized into these 3 groups and 1641 patients with hypertension and 332 with Type 2 Diabetes were enrolled under stratified sampling strategy. Data including health outcomes, medical expenses and provider behaviors were collected at the baseline study and followed up for 30 months based on the official health records, questionnaires and claims data. Results：Compared to the control group, the blood pressure (BP) was decreased by 6.7% in double treated group and 5.9 % in single treated group; the health related quality of life (HRQoL) was increased by 15.5% and 8.2% in double and single treated group, respectively. The COC was increased by 10.4% in both groups after intervention, and another 26.9% increase in double treated group compared to single treated. Doctors’ willingness to cooperate was increased by 13.1% and the likelihood of using an upper level hospitalization service was reduced by 0.16% compared to single treated group. Reimbursed inpatient spending was reduced by 12.43%. All P Discussion: The integrated healthcare delivery model improved both the health outcomes of patients with chronic diseases and professional collaborative behaviors from multi-institutions, while reducing the potential medical expenses by lowering the likelihood of using upper level services – which was much more expensive. And the provider incentives had been proved with marginal effects in the above areas. Conclusions: Policy makers in LMICs are suggested to implement proper provider incentives system when conducting integrated healthcare delivery system reform. Lessons learned: The doctors were the most difficult stakeholders to be influenced by the policy, which reminded us the necessity of fully negotiation (usually several rounds) with the policy executors before a reform was completely initiated. Limitations: The trial implementation was not perfect and the results were contaminated to some extent. By process evaluation of trial exposure , enrollment, reach and following up, we had found out that the effective implementation to be 60% upmost, which might suggest that the actual effect might be underestimated. Suggestions for future research: The trial driven cost may hinder many potential reforms in LMICs. Therefore economic evidence such as cost-effectiveness analysis may be needed before generalization.

Identifying Computer-Generated Portraits: The Importance of Training and Incentives

The past two decades have seen remarkable advances in photo-realistic rendering of everything from inanimate objects to landscapes, animals, and humans. We previously showed that despite these tremendous advances, human observers remain fairly good at distinguishing computer-generated from photographic images. Building on these results, we describe a series of follow-up experiments that reveal how to improve observer performance. Of general interest to anyone performing psychophysical studies on Mechanical Turk or similar platforms, we find that observer performance can be significantly improved with the proper incentives.

Quality of Sensing Aware Budget Feasible Mechanism for Mobile Crowdsensing

In a mobile crowdsensing system, the platform utilizes ubiquitous smartphones to perform sensing tasks. For a successful mobile crowdsensing application, the consideration of the heterogeneity of quality of sensing from different users as well as a proper incentive mechanism to motivate users to contribute to the system are essential. In this paper, we introduce the quality of sensing into incentive mechanism design. Under a budget constraint, the platform aims to maximize the valuation of the performed tasks, which depends on the quality of sensing of the users. We propose ABSee, an auction-based budget feasible mechanism, which consists of a winner selection rule and a payment determination rule. ABSee is designed by adopting a greedy approach. We obtain the approximation ratio of ABSee, which significantly improves the approximation ratio of the existing budget feasible mechanisms in many cases. We further show that the approximation ratio approaches $\frac {2e}{e-1}$ when a large number of smartphone users participate in the system. ABSee also satisfies the properties of computational efficiency, truthfulness, individual rationality, and budget feasibility. Extensive simulation results show that ABSee provides a higher valuation to the platform when compared with existing budget feasible mechanisms in the literature.