scholarly journals An Evaluation of Crop Forecast Accuracy for Corn and Soybeans: USDA and Private Information Agencies

2003 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thorsten M. Egelkraut ◽  
Philip Garcia ◽  
Scott H. Irwin ◽  
Darrel L. Good
Keyword(s):  
Private Information ◽  
Forecast Accuracy ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Forecast Errors ◽  
Recent Period ◽  
Soybean Production ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Highly Correlated ◽  
Public Decision

Using 1971-2000 data, we examine the accuracy of corn and soybean production forecasts provided by the USD A and two private agencies. All agencies improved their forecasts as the harvest progressed, and forecast errors were highly correlated and unbiased. The relative forecast accuracy of the agencies varied by crop and month. For corn, USDA's forecasts ranked as most accurate of the three agencies in all periods except for August during the recent period and improved most markedly as harvest progressed. For soybeans, forecast errors were very similar, with the private agencies ranking as most accurate for August and September and making largest relative improvements for August during the recent period. The USDA forecasts were dominant for October and November. Our findings identify several patterns of relative forecast accuracy that have implications for private and public decision makers.

scholarly journals “Economic Correctness” and Agricultural Economics

1993 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph D. Christy
Keyword(s):  
Private Sector ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Strategic Behavior ◽  
Agricultural Economics ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Competitive Markets ◽  
Imperfectly Competitive ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Public Decision

AbstractThis address is directed toward applied economists as they provide information to private and public decision makers. Central to this discussion is the role of markets as institutions in achieving society's desired ends. Current “economic correctness”–the view that unfettered markets are superior in achieving efficiency, growth, and welfare-has attempted to return a larger role to the private sector, but the relative roles of market-oriented versus government-oriented solutions to problems are often not well appraised. Views presented herein calls for agricultural economists to move simultaneously toward an understanding of the strategic behavior of firms in imperfectly competitive markets and toward an adoption of policy analysis consistent with a socially complex and globally integrated economy.

scholarly journals Die proses van partikuliere en openbare besluitneming

1983 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 80-87
Author(s):  
S. S. Brand
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Public ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
The One ◽  
Two Sectors ◽  
Public Decision ◽  
Public Decision Making

Private and public decision-making The interaction between the private and public sectors is important in South Africa. Much criticism is expressed by the one sector against the other. This can be partly attributed to an incomplete understanding of the processes of decision-making in the two sectors, and of the differences between them. A comparison is drawn between the most important elements of the decision-making processes in the two sectors. Public decision-making deals mostly with matters concerning the community and the economy as a whole, whereas private decision-making is concerned mostly with parts of the whole. The aims at which decision-making in the two sectors are directed, differ accordingly, as do the perceptions of the respective decision-makers of the environment in which they make decisions. As a consequence, the criteria for the success of a decision also differ substantially between the two sectors. The implications of these differences between private and public decision-making for the approach to inflation and the financing of housing, are dealt with as examples. Finally, differences between the ways in which decisions are implemented in the two sectors, also appear to be an important cause of much of the criticism from the private sector about decision-making in the public sector.

scholarly journals Proceed with Caution

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Annette Zimmermann ◽  
Chad Lee-Stronach
Keyword(s):  
Procedural Justice ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Structural Injustice ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Similarity Judgments

Abstract It is becoming more common that the decision-makers in private and public institutions are predictive algorithmic systems, not humans. This article argues that relying on algorithmic systems is procedurally unjust in contexts involving background conditions of structural injustice. Under such nonideal conditions, algorithmic systems, if left to their own devices, cannot meet a necessary condition of procedural justice, because they fail to provide a sufficiently nuanced model of which cases count as relevantly similar. Resolving this problem requires deliberative capacities uniquely available to human agents. After exploring the limitations of existing formal algorithmic fairness strategies, the article argues that procedural justice requires that human agents relying wholly or in part on algorithmic systems proceed with caution: by avoiding doxastic negligence about algorithmic outputs, by exercising deliberative capacities when making similarity judgments, and by suspending belief and gathering additional information in light of higher-order uncertainty.

scholarly journals Testing for Changes in the Price Elasticity of Residential Electricity Demand

1986 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Stevens ◽  
Gail Adams
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Price Elasticity ◽  
Forecast Accuracy ◽  
Electricity Demand ◽  
Recent Period ◽  
Residential Sector ◽  
Real Price ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Residential Electricity

The demand for electricity in the residential sector is estimated to have become less elastic for the recent period of rising real prices as compared to earlier periods of stable or falling real price. Several possible reasons for this are investigated and we conclude that demand appears to be asymmetric with respect to price in both the short and long run. We then examine whether or not this is an important factor for forecast accuracy and public policy.

scholarly journals Can Financial Engineering Cure Cancer?

2013 ◽  
Vol 103 (3) ◽  
pp. 406-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E Fagnan ◽  
Jose Maria Fernandez ◽  
Andrew W Lo ◽  
Roger M Stein
Keyword(s):  
Financial Engineering ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Capital Requirements ◽  
Debt Financing ◽  
Investment Projects ◽  
Time Horizons ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Public Equity ◽  
Highly Correlated

Traditional financing sources such as private and public equity may not be ideal for investment projects with low probabilities of success, long time horizons, and large capital requirements. Nevertheless, such projects, if not too highly correlated, may yield attractive risk-adjusted returns when combined into a single portfolio. Such “megafund” portfolios may be too large to finance through private or public equity alone. But with sufficient diversification and risk analytics, debt financing via securitization may be feasible. Credit enhancements (i.e., derivatives and government guarantees) can also improve megafund economics. We present an analytical framework and illustrative empirical examples involving cancer research.

scholarly journals Seeking Consensus: A New Approach

2010 ◽  
Vol 138 (12) ◽  
pp. 4402-4415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J. Roebber
Keyword(s):  
Minimum Temperature ◽  
Forecast Accuracy ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Absolute Error ◽  
Electricity Production ◽  
Forecast Errors ◽  
Consensus Forecasts ◽  
Temperature Forecast ◽  
Model Output Statistics ◽  
The Individual

Abstract Simulated evolution is used to generate consensus forecasts of next-day minimum temperature for a site in Ohio. The evolved forecast algorithm logic is interpretable in terms of physics that might be accounted for by experienced forecasters, but the logic of the individual algorithms that form the consensus is unique. As a result, evolved program consensus forecasts produce substantial increases in forecast accuracy relative to forecast benchmarks such as model output statistics (MOS) and those from the National Weather Service (NWS). The best consensus produces a mean absolute error (MAE) of 2.98°F on an independent test dataset, representing a 27% improvement relative to MOS. These results translate to potential annual cost savings for electricity production in the state of Ohio of the order of $2 million relative to the NWS forecasts. Perfect forecasts provide nearly $6 million in additional annual electricity production cost savings relative to the evolved program consensus. The frequency of outlier events (forecast busts) falls from 24% using NWS to 16% using the evolved program consensus. Information on when busts are most likely can be provided through a logistic regression equation with two variables: forecast wind speed and the deviation of the NWS minimum temperature forecast from persistence. A forecast of a bust is 4 times more likely to be correct than wrong, suggesting some utility in anticipating the most egregious forecast errors. Discussion concerning the probabilistic applications of evolved programs, the application of this technique to other forecast problems, and the relevance of these findings to the future role of human forecasting is provided.

scholarly journals Characterizing the Atmospheric Conditions Leading to Large Error Growth in Volcanic Ash Cloud Forecasts

2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 1011-1019 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. F. Dacre ◽  
N. J. Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Flow Separation ◽  
Volcanic Ash ◽  
Dispersion Model ◽  
Forecast Accuracy ◽  
Large Error ◽  
Ensemble Member ◽  
Forecast Errors ◽  
Atmospheric Conditions ◽  
Wind Fields ◽  
Ensemble Forecasts

ABSTRACTVolcanic ash poses an ongoing risk to safety in the airspace worldwide. The accuracy with which volcanic ash dispersion can be forecast depends on the conditions of the atmosphere into which it is emitted. In this study, meteorological ensemble forecasts are used to drive a volcanic ash transport and dispersion model for the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland. From analysis of these simulations, the authors determine why the skill of deterministic-meteorological forecasts decreases with increasing ash residence time and identify the atmospheric conditions in which this drop in skill occurs most rapidly. Large forecast errors are more likely when ash particles encounter regions of large horizontal flow separation in the atmosphere. Nearby ash particle trajectories can rapidly diverge, leading to a reduction in the forecast accuracy of deterministic forecasts that do not represent variability in wind fields at the synoptic scale. The flow‐separation diagnostic identifies where and why large ensemble spread may occur. This diagnostic can be used to alert forecasters to situations in which the ensemble mean is not representative of the individual ensemble‐member volcanic ash distributions. Knowledge of potential ensemble outliers can be used to assess confidence in the forecast and to avoid potentially dangerous situations in which forecasts fail to predict harmful levels of volcanic ash.

Green IT Project Management

2013 ◽  
pp. 1072-1103
Author(s):  
Nathalie Bachour
Keyword(s):  
Project Management ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Green Technology ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
It Projects ◽  
Green It ◽  
It Project ◽  
Sustainable Value ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
And Performance

With the constant evolution of technology and the world critical environmental status, all private and public Information Technology (IT) businesses are moving towards sustainability. Faced with influences from government regulations, market competition and constraints, as well as watchdogs, IT decision makers within organizations are forced to ride the green technology wave with a challenging and uncertain approach. This chapter defines methods to optimize Green IT projects for sustainable value creation within organizations. It only focuses on economic viability and environmental impact, but could be stretched out in the future to social aspects. The contributions of this chapter allow the project management community and decision makers to follow a framework for Green IT project success evaluation and performance follow-up throughout the project life cycle and the three levels of the organization: operational, tactical, and strategic. A macro-model is also developed to aid them in successfully selecting, prioritizing, managing, and aligning their Green IT projects with the corporate and environmental strategies.

Green IT Project Management

2012 ◽  
pp. 146-178
Author(s):  
Nathalie Bachour
Keyword(s):  
Project Management ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Green Technology ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
It Projects ◽  
Green It ◽  
It Project ◽  
Sustainable Value ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
And Performance

With the constant evolution of technology and the world critical environmental status, all private and public Information Technology (IT) businesses are moving towards sustainability. Faced with influences from government regulations, market competition and constraints, as well as watchdogs, IT decision makers within organizations are forced to ride the green technology wave with a challenging and uncertain approach. This chapter defines methods to optimize Green IT projects for sustainable value creation within organizations. It only focuses on economic viability and environmental impact, but could be stretched out in the future to social aspects. The contributions of this chapter allow the project management community and decision makers to follow a framework for Green IT project success evaluation and performance follow-up throughout the project life cycle and the three levels of the organization: operational, tactical, and strategic. A macro-model is also developed to aid them in successfully selecting, prioritizing, managing, and aligning their Green IT projects with the corporate and environmental strategies.

Determinants and Consequences of Citizens' E-Participation

2022 ◽  
pp. 1567-1592
Author(s):  
Raul Machado ◽  
António Azevedo
Keyword(s):  
Place Identity ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Digital Citizenship ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Citizenship Behaviors ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
The City ◽  
Attachment Dimensions ◽  
Public Decision

This article aims to discuss the determinants of digital active citizenship behaviors such as the e-participation using reporting urban apps. The article makes a comparative analysis between two groups of citizens: a) 98 users of a reporting app (MyHomeCity) who were selected for the case study); and b) 148 non-users of reporting apps. Users of MyHomeCity revealed higher scores for the satisfaction for life in the city, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and perceived happiness, for all place attachment dimensions and all digital citizenship dimensions except for political activism (online and offline) and critical perspective. The probability of being an app user is predicted by satisfaction for living in the city, place identity (attachment), and digital citizenship dimensions. The implications for public decision makers, app developers, and citizens' organizations are discussed.

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