Resource Allocation Modalities

Findings regard the strategic allocation of educational resources by stakeholder, for improvement of church-founded secondary schools in Uganda (and the world at large) for their effectiveness and quality.<br>

Resource Allocation Modalities

Findings regard the strategic allocation of educational resources by stakeholder, for improvement of church-founded secondary schools in Uganda (and the world at large) for their effectiveness and quality.<br>

Predicted Utility Modulates Working Memory Fidelity in the Brain

The predicted utility of information stored in working memory (WM) is hypothesized to influence the strategic allocation of WM resources. Prior work has shown that when information is prioritized, it is remembered with greater precision relative to other remembered items. However, these paradigms often complicate interpretation of the effects of predicted utility on item fidelity due to a concurrent memory load. Likewise, no fMRI studies have examined whether the predicted utility of an item modulates fidelity in the neural representation of items during the memory delay without a concurrent load. In the current study, we used fMRI to investigate whether predicted utility influences fidelity of WM representations in the brain. Using a generative model multivoxel analysis approach to estimate the quality of remembered representations across predicted utility conditions, we observed that items with greater predicted utility are maintained in memory with greater fidelity, even when they are the only item being maintained. Further, we found that this pattern follows a parametric relationship where more predicted utility corresponded to greater fidelity. These precision differences could not be accounted for based on a redistribution of resources among already-remembered items. Rather, we interpret these results in terms of a gating mechanism that allows for pre-allocation of resources based on predicted value alone. This evidence supports a theoretical distinction between resource allocation that occurs as a result of load and resource pre-allocation that occurs as a result of predicted utility.

Weighting on waiting: Willpower and attribute weighting models of decision making

Willpower is often conceptualized as incorporating effortful and momentary suppression of immediate but ultimately inferior rewards. Yet, growing evidence instead supports a process of attribute weighting, whereby normatively optimal choices arise from separable evaluation of different attributes (e.g., time and money). Strategic allocation of attention settles conflicts between competing choice-relevant attributes, which could be expanded to include self-referential predictions (“resolve”).

An Offer You Can Refuse: A Host Country's Strategic Allocation of Development Financing

Hydropower projects are one of the leading energy sectors being developed in Africa. In the past two decades, this demand has been increasingly met by Chinese financing and Chinese contractors, creating an impression that host countries have no choice but to accept Chinese advances against their preferences. This essay demonstrates through the case study of the Mount Coffee hydropower project in Liberia that host countries strategically allocate financing from different sources to different projects, based on domestic development needs, administrative capacity, flexibility of financiers, and institutional memory between the host and the financiers. This essay also shows that concerns over Chinese contractors' environmental- and social-impact records reflect a combination of host enforcement, financier self-sorting, and Chinese contractors' own perceptions of their comparative advantage. More broadly, this case study provides empirical observations of host countries' agency and strategic calculus in the financier-host relation, as well as the limits of China's role in Africa's hydropower sector.

Management Effectiveness Assessment for Ecuador’s National Parks

Ecuador belongs to the group of 17 megadiverse countries on the planet, and the Ecuadorian national system of protected areas covers around 20% of the country’s territory. Despite some initiatives for protected areas management effectiveness evaluation, the information on this matter is scarce and a general overview is missing. In this context, this study aims at investigating problems faced by National Parks in Ecuador and developing a base level management effectiveness evaluation for possible comparative assessments in the future. Focusing on all 12 legally established National Parks, this study used the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT), an internationally consecrated methodology based on a scorecard questionnaire that includes six elements of management cycle: context, planning, inputs, processes, outputs and outcomes. The questionnaire was applied to Ecuadorian National Parks management teams through face-to-face interviews. The resulted overall management effectiveness indices are between 40.6% and 99.0%. The general condition of biodiversity value was considered as good in line with the legal status and National Parks design but topics related to budget allocation, tourism arrangements, communities and indigenous people received lower scores. The low enforcement emphasis is not necessarily the best way to improve management effectiveness; the identified issues should be addressed by including communities and indigenous people in the decision making and benefits sharing as well as strategic allocation of budgetary resources, with proper adaptation to Natural Parks’ specific conditions.