Manufacturing USA Institute Evaluation: Renewal Process and Performance Standards

The Manufacturing USA Program’s 2019 reauthorization allows the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to renew Manufacturing USA institute support, subject to a “rigorous merit review.” Following an initial five to seven-year cooperative agreement in which federal support must be cost-matched by at least a 1:1 match of non-federal co-investment over the performance period of the award, NIST-funded institutes are now eligible to apply for renewal of their support. This document describes the institute renewal process, with a focus on the performance standards for the merit review.

Subgame Consistent Cooperative Behavior in an Extensive form Game with Chance Moves

We design a mechanism of the players’ sustainable cooperation in multistage n-person game in the extensive form with chance moves. When the players agreed to cooperate in a dynamic game they have to ensure time consistency of the long-term cooperative agreement. We provide the players’ rank based (PRB) algorithm for choosing a unique cooperative strategy profile and prove that corresponding optimal bundle of cooperative strategies satisfies time consistency, that is, at every subgame along the optimal game evolution a part of each original cooperative trajectory belongs to the subgame optimal bundle. We propose a refinement of the backwards induction procedure based on the players’ attitude vectors to find a unique subgame perfect equilibrium and use this algorithm to calculate a characteristic function. Finally, to ensure the sustainability of the cooperative agreement in a multistage game we employ the imputation distribution procedure (IDP) based approach, that is, we design an appropriate payment schedule to redistribute each player’s optimal payoff along the optimal bundle of cooperative trajectories. We extend the subgame consistency notion to extensive-form games with chance moves and prove that incremental IDP satisfies subgame consistency, subgame efficiency and balance condition. An example of a 3-person multistage game is provided to illustrate the proposed cooperation mechanism.

Negotiation and valuation

Chapter 10 addresses the negotiation of a cooperative agreement, and how to value your partner’s and your own prospective contributions to the joint enterprise. The chapter emphasizes that, whereas in a takeover situation the negotiators are single-mindedly concerned to achieve the best price for their company—the highest or lowest price depending on the side of the negotiating table, this is not the case in an alliance. Unless both partners are concerned that the other has a good deal, the alliance will not prosper over time. Partners need to be satisfied that they have a fair and reliable agreement on the contributions and benefits they attach to an alliance in order for their relationship to develop fruitfully. A so-called win–win situation is sought. The problem of contribution valuation, however, is in reality more an art than a science.