Exploration and Exploitation

Author(s):  
Daniel A. Levinthal

While traditionally processes of exploration and exploitation have been understood with respect to the novelty of the associated behavior and the a priori beliefs of the promise of these behaviors, the perspective developed here highlights the possible contestation regarding the merit and promise of a given action or initiative. An action may be viewed as exploratory from an observer’s perspective, while that same action may be considered exploitive from the perspective of the focal actor. The argument highlights the alternative beliefs and cognitive schemas by which promising behaviors and initiatives are evaluated. Validating actions to others, either ex ante or ex post, requires either the validation of particular dimensions of performance or the casting of “shadows” on the dimension of performance valued by others.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 340-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Rudik

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) are economists’ primary tool for analyzing the optimal carbon tax. Damage functions, which link temperature to economic impacts, have come under fire because of their assumptions that may be incorrect in significant but a priori unknowable ways. Here I develop recursive IAM frameworks to model uncertainty, learning, and concern for misspecification about damages. I decompose the carbon tax into channels capturing state uncertainty, insurance motives, and precautionary saving. Damage learning improves ex ante welfare by $750 billion. If damage functions are misspecified and omit the potential for catastrophic damages, robust control may be beneficial ex post. (JEL H23, Q54, Q58)


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Rudik

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) are economists’ primary tool for analyzing the optimal carbon tax. Damage functions, which link temperature to economic impacts, have come under fire because of their assumptions that may be incorrect in significant, but a priori unknowable ways. Here I develop recursive IAM frameworks to model uncertainty, learning, and concern for misspecification about damages. I decompose the carbon tax into channels capturing state uncertainty, insurance motives, and precautionary saving. Damage learning improves ex ante welfare by $750 billion. If damage functions are misspecified and omit the potential for catastrophic damages, robust control may be beneficial ex post.


CFA Digest ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 8-9
Author(s):  
Ann C. Logue
Keyword(s):  
Ex Post ◽  

1993 ◽  
Vol 108 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-138
Author(s):  
Pierre Malgrange ◽  
Silvia Mira d'Ercole
Keyword(s):  
Ex Post ◽  

Author(s):  
Richard Adelstein

This chapter elaborates the operation of criminal liability by closely considering efficient crimes and the law’s stance toward them, shows how its commitment to proportional punishment prevents the probability scaling that systemically efficient allocation requires, and discusses the procedures that determine the actual liability prices imposed on offenders. Efficient crimes are effectively encouraged by proportional punishment, and their nature and implications are examined. But proportional punishment precludes probability scaling, and induces far more than the systemically efficient number of crimes. Liability prices that match the specific costs imposed by the offender at bar are sought through a two-stage procedure of legislative determination of punishment ranges ex ante and judicial determination of exact prices ex post, which creates a dilemma: whether to price crimes accurately in the past or deter them accurately in the future. An illustrative Supreme Court case bringing all these themes together is discussed in conclusion.


Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quentin Grislain ◽  
Jeremy Bourgoin ◽  
Ward Anseeuw ◽  
Perrine Burnod ◽  
Eva Hershaw ◽  
...  

In recent decades, mechanisms for observation and information production have proliferated in an attempt to meet the growing needs of stakeholders to access dynamic data for the purposes of informed decision-making. In the land sector, a growing number of land observatories are producing data and ensuring its transparency. We hypothesize that these structures are being developed in response to the need for information and knowledge, a need that is being driven by the scale and diversity of land issues. Based on the results of a study conducted on land observatories in Africa, this paper presents existing and past land observatories on the continent and proposes to assess their diversity through an analysis of core dimensions identified in the literature. The analytical framework was implemented through i) an analysis of existing literature on land observatories, ii) detailed assessments of land observatories based on semi-open interviews conducted via video conferencing, iii) fieldwork and visits to several observatories, and iv) participant observation through direct engagement and work at land observatories. We emphasize that the analytical framework presented here can be used as a tool by land observatories to undertake ex-post self-evaluations that take the observatory’s trajectory into account, or in the case of proposed new land observatories, to undertake ex-ante analyses and design the pathway towards the intended observatory.


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