The objective of econometrics is to study economic phenomena using statistical observations. Econometrics formalizes the economic theory in the form of relationships (models) whose unknown elements are determined by the available data. Econometrics quantifies and tests economic theories and makes those theories operational through forecasting or simulation of the impact of political or economic…
Since its early ARPANET inception during the Cold War, the Internet has grown by a staggering nine orders of magnitude. Today, the Internet and the World Wide Web pervade our lives, having fundamentally altered the way we seek, exchange, distribute, and process information. The Internet has become a powerful social force, transforming communication, entertainment, commerce, politics, medicine, …
Few would argue over the crucial role of IT in today’s economy. In our lifetime, we have witnessed IT evolve from a limited service function into a critical core competency of modern organizations. Stepping out of the shadows and into the limelight has created new challenges for IT, however. Expectations have risen dramatically throughout all levels of the organization and its ecosystem of…
By its very nature, a very large distributed,decentralized,self-organized,and evolving system necessarily yields uncertain and incomplete measurements and data.Probability and statistics are the fundamental mathematical tools that allow us to model, reason and proceed with inference in uncertain environments. Not only are probabilistic methods needed to deal with noisy measurements, but many of…
Asignificant analytical literature began to develop in the early 1970s to address a succession of macroeconomic woes that afflicted developing countries. By the 1980s, this literature had reached a level of rigor and sophistication comparable to that characteristic of macroeconomic analysis for high- income countries. However, these developments were not typically reflected in standard textbook…
The current financial crisis poses many challenges to all countries. The need for enhanced transparency and financial integrity in national financial systems is more important than ever. It is therefore critically important to have in place strong antimoney laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) oversight mechanisms, not only to protect the integrity of the financial syst…
In 1999, the multidisciplinary Tavistock group prepared a generic statement of ethical principles to govern health care systems. This paper elaborates on these principles in two directions. First, it develops a set of quality standards, based on ethical principles, intended to regulate health care delivery and service management. Second, it focuses them on ‘publicly oriented’ (not necessari…
The United States has the highest per capita spending on health care of any industrialized nation—50 percent greater than the second highest and twice as high as the average for Europe (Peterson and Burton, 2009). Current U.S. healthcare costs are projected at nearly $2.5 trillion, about 17 percent of the entire economy (Sisko et al., 2009). The Congressional Budget Office estimated that Medi…
The Institute of Medicine’s Roundtable on Value & Science-Driven Health Care has been convened to help transform the way evidence on clinical effec- tiveness is generated and used to improve health and health care. Participants have set a goal that, by the year 2020, 90 percent of clinical decisions will be supported by accurate, timely, and up-to-date clinical information, and will reflect t…
Electronic commerce, in a broad sense, is the use of computer networks to improve organizational performance. Increasing profitability, gaining market share, improving customer service, and delivering products faster are some of the organizational performance gains possible with electronic commerce. Electronic commerce is more than ordering goods from an on-line catalog. It involves all aspe…
The real options approach considers strategic management and decision-making as a process aimed at actively reducing exposition to downside risk and promoting exposition to upside opportunities. It stands at the hinge between pure finance and other areas of decision making under risk such as project evaluation, market entry and exit, organizational restructuring and re-engineering, technolo…
Electronic commerce is a revolution in business practices. If organizations are going to take advantage of new Internet technologies, then they must take a strategic perspective. That is, care must be taken to make a close link between corporate strategy and electronic commerce strategy. In this chapter, we address some essential strategic issues, describe the major themes tackled by this bo…
Reliability is defined in this report as consistency of travel times for a particular trip. Trav- elers tend to estimate how long a trip will take based on parameters such as distance, time of day, and their own experience. Impacts to the transportation network that cause unexpected delays introduce uncertainty in travel time reliability. The SHRP 2 Reliability focus area addresses reliability…