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Purpose: Sustainability has long been known to present an epistemic challenge. In the corporate setting, this challenge translates into the difficulties experienced by managers not only in devising solutions to corporate sustainability problems, but even in developing the awareness of the latter. The paper explores how these difficulties may be overcome by corporate stakeholder management policies. Design/methodology/approach: The paper develops a conceptual framework that reconstructs the Hayekian theory of market process in the context of Williamson's (1996) distinction between autonomous and cooperative adaptation. Findings: Applying the Hayekian theory of market process to the process of engagement and collaboration of corporate stakeholders, the paper shows how the latter process may address the epistemic challenge of corporate sustainability and derives implications for the design of business models for sustainability. Originality/value: The paper informs stakeholder theory in two ways: first, stakeholder theory is given a novel justification in terms of reflecting the growing prominence of cooperative adaptation and second, corporate stakeholder management is shown to be crucial for maximizing not only economic but also sustainability performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the value of gold standard in the 21st-century economy, with a focus on its advantages comparing to paper money system. It is the author's view that paper money is the main cause of speculation in capitalism, due to the possibility of manipulating the floating exchange rates. Other topics discussed include an international monetary system to promote social justice, gold reserves, and convertibility of currency.

The article focuses on the impact of high oil prices on the Katahdin paper mill in Millinocket, Maine. The author discusses how the spike in oil prices may force the paper mill to close. Also discussed are the negative impacts that the closing of the mill would have on the local economy, as well as how downsizing within the mill has affected the demographics of Millinocket.

The article presents a position paper issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Japanese encephalitis (JE) vaccines as of February 2015. It mentions that the position papers are issued to provide guidance to WHO's Member States on health policy matters, have been reviewed by WHO staff, and are endorsed by the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE). It offers information on the transmission of the disease.

The article focuses on the IMPACTPapeRec project started on 1 February 2016, which is financed by the European Union Horizon 2020 programme, and mentions that the project evolved from a commitment on separate paper collection in the organization European Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials.

The article presents the position paper issued by the World Health Organization on human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines. It offers information on HPV which is reportedly a common reproductive tract viral infection that can lead to various conditions including precancerous lesions. It explores the epidemiology of HPV-related diseases and discusses a multicentre clinical trial on the prevalence of HPV infection in heterosexual men.

The article discusses the position paper of the World Health Organization (WHO) on vaccination of Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib). It mentions that the paper replaces the 2006 WHO position paper and summarizes developments in Hib vaccine. It presents the epidemiology of the Hib infection and disease, vaccines, and WHO position. It says the WHO recommends the inclusion of conjugate Hib vaccines in infant immunization programmes, given its shown safety and efficacy.

The article reports that the White Paper sets out how the Government plans to reform further education so it supports people to get the skills the economy needs throughout their lives. Topics include considered that investing in higher-level technical qualifications that provide a valuable alternative to a university degree.

An interview with translator Eric Abrahamsen is presented. Abrahamsen discusses how he began translating Chinese language literature for English language speaking audiences, the theme of social issues in Chinese literature, and his translation of the book "Running Through Beijing" by Xu Zechen. The translator's literary website Paper Republic, difficulty translating Chinese economics, and his translation of the book "The Civil Servant's Notebook" by Wang Xiaofang are discussed.

The article focuses on impact on paper and pulp industry due to decrease in demand of newsprint and magazines, and talks of recycling of residue from paper industry, need for alternate biogenic cellulose fiber, and organization Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI).

The article provides information about the World Health Organization (WHO) position paper of January 2013 along with, some inputs on the background, effectiveness, administration and the safety guidelines concerned with the Rotavirus vaccines. The WHO position paper provides is intended to keep the WHO's member states, public health officials, managers of immunization programmes, abreast of various innovations in the field of medicine.

The article reports on a series of updated position papers issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) regarding the vaccines and combinations of vaccines against diseases like pertusis that have an international public health impact. The position papers are concerned with the use of vaccines in immunization programmes. Moreover, the papers have been reviewed by many experts within and outside the organization.

Over 13 months in 2016-17 the U.S. Federal Communications Commission conducted an "incentive auction" to repurpose radio spectrum from broadcast television to wireless internet. In the end, the auction yielded $19.8 bn, $10.05 bn of which was paid to 175 broadcasters for voluntarily relinquishing their licenses across 14 Ultra High Frequency (UHF) channels. Stations that continued broadcasting were assigned potentially new channels to fit as densely as possible into the channels that remained. The government netted more than $7 bn (used to pay down the national debt) after covering costs (including retuning). A crucial element of the auction design was the construction of a solver, dubbed SAT-based Feasibility Checker (SATFC), that determined whether sets of stations could be "repacked" in this way; it needed to run every time a station was given a price quote. This paper describes the process by which we built SATFC. We adopted an approach we dub "deep optimization," taking a data-driven, highly parametric, and computationally intensive approach to solver design. More specifically, to build SATFC we designed software that could pair both complete and local-search SAT-encoded feasibility checking with a wide range of domain-specific techniques, such as constraint graph decomposition and novel caching mechanisms that allow for reuse of partial solutions from related, solved problems. We then used automatic algorithm configuration techniques to construct a portfolio of 8 complementary algorithms to be run in parallel, aiming to achieve good performance on instances that arose in proprietary auction simulations. To evaluate the impact of our solver in this paper, we built an open-source reverse auction simulator. We found that within the short time budget required in practice, SATFC solved more than 95% of the problems it encountered. Furthermore, the incentive auction paired with SATFC produced nearly optimal allocations in a restricted setting and substantially outperformed other alternatives at national scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents updated papers by the World Health Organization (WHO) on vaccines and combination of vaccines against diseases that have international public health impact. It states that influenza-associated diseases and deaths worldwide represent a public health problem with socioeconomic implications. WHO recommends seasonal influenza vaccination for pregnant women followed by children, the elderly, individuals with chronic conditions and health-care workers.

The article focuses on a research paper by the World Health Organization (WHO) on pneumococcal vaccines. As stated, incorporating the most recent developments in the field of pneumococcal vaccines the research focuses on the currently available 10-valent and 13-valent conjugate vaccines. It states that pneumococcal infections include serious diseases such as meningitis, bacteraemia, and pneumonia and its causative agent is streptococcus pneumonia.

The article presents a position paper on vaccines against tick-borne encephalitis from the World Health Organization (WHO). It examines the use of vaccines in immunization programmes as well as highlights the formation of the disease. A brief overview of development of vaccines against tick-borne encephalitis is provided. It discusses the immunogenecity and effectiveness of vaccines and mentions the policy of WHO on its usage.

The article presents a position paper on human rabies vaccines from the World Health Organization (WHO). It tackles the use of vaccines in large-scale immunization programmes, and explores combinations of vaccines that have an international public health impact. It incorporates developments in human rabies vaccine and provides grading tables that evaluate the quality of its scientific evidence.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to construct a frequency-domain framework to study the asymmetric spillover effects of international economic policy uncertainty on China's stock market industry indexes. Design/methodology/approach: This paper follows the time domain spillover model, asymmetric spillover model and frequency domain spillover model, which not only studies the degree of spillover in time domain but also studies the persistence of spillover effect in frequency domain. Findings: It is found that China's economic policy uncertainty plays a dominant role in the spillover effect on the stock market, while the global and US economic policy uncertainty is relatively weak. By decomposing realized volatility into quantified asymmetric risks of "good" volatility and "bad" volatility, it is concluded that economic policy uncertainty has a greater impact on stock downside risk than upside risk. For different time periods, the sensitivity of long-term and short-term spillover economic policy impact is different. Among them, asymmetric high-frequency spillover in the stock market is more easily observed, which provides certain reference significance for the stability of the financial market. Originality/value: The originality aims at extending the traditional research paradigm of "time domain" to the research perspective of "frequency domain." This study uses the more advanced models to analyze various factors from the static and dynamic levels, with a view to obtain reliable and robust research conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that Dutch Presidency of the Council of the European Union organised a field trip for the working group members of the Industry and Environment Council to illustrate the circular economy of paper mill.

This article announces the purchase of the nonprofit Paper Mill Playhouse theater by the town of Millburn, New Jersey. Mark W. Jones, the executive director of Paper Mill, discusses his support for the acquisition. Also discussed is the need for the theater to pay off a loan from Investors Savings Bank.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to whether competition between platforms can be effective, thus leading to efficient allocations. Design/methodology/approach: Based on the classic linear Hoteling model, this paper builds a two-period competition model for two competing platforms using two variants, namely, a discrimination pricing model and a unified pricing model. Findings: In the case of the discrimination pricing model, the competition is moderate, and the two platforms split the market evenly in the first stage, while both platforms tended to offer preferential treatment to new users and set higher prices for regular customers in the second stage. Compared to the unified pricing model, in the first stage, the platform can provide a higher price that depends on the cross-network effect when it implements discrimination, and thus, obtains higher profits. However, in the second stage, fierce competition leads to the release of benefits, new and regular customers obtain lower prices and the platforms lose higher profits. In the long-run, discriminatory pricing is not the best option due to lower total profits. The two platforms will implement cooperative pricing or one platform becomes dominant. Originality/value: Instead of focusing on the cross-network effects, this paper emphasizes the role of the same-side network effect on price discrimination regarding the platforms' competition. The same-side network effects are investigated in relation to a discrimination pricing strategy and compared to a unified pricing strategy. Another innovative aspect is the study of these network effects in a dynamic setting based on a two-period competition model for two platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale risk events in the venture capital (VC) market can easily lead to systemic risk in the financial market. This paper collects the comprehensive dataset of Chinese VC market from 1999 to 2020, and constructs the multi-layer networks of VC market. After that, a risk contagion model of venture capital market is designed considering both the capital loss transmission and social relations effect (investor herd behavior). By simulating various situations with different risk origins and scales, the speed of risk contagion and the total impacts on the overall stability of the market (network) are compared. We find that the herd behavior of the market will generally aggravate the consequences of risk contagion. Compared with unicorns, the failure of a leading VC firm can cause a wider range of risk contagion. The contagion consequences caused by the failure of random financing companies are more serious than those caused by random VC firms. Moreover, we identify that telecommunications services and information technology are high-risk industries in VC market. Based on the empirical results, this article provides policy implications for the market regulatory sectors to prevent VC market risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a theoretical case study for a student competition sponsored by the Institute of Management Accountants called The 2000 Student Case Competition, meant to promote financial analysis and presentation skills. A situation in which a paper company's board of directors has required the presentation of a cost system pilot study is examined.

Purpose: Customer-intensive services refer to the service that a provider needs to invest in customers with high patience and experience. Within a certain rate range, the slower service rate and the longer service time, the higher customer's utility; however, this may cause queue congestion. And the advertising of service provider will affect the revenue. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of advertising on the optimal price, service rate and the optimal revenue of such service provider at different development stages. Design/methodology/approach: This paper investigates the service strategies of service provider based on advertising effects. The authors first divide service provider into insufficient customers or sufficient customers according to the development stage, then analyze the impact of advertising at different stages. The authors focus on the formulation of the optimal price, service rate and the optimal revenue of service provider at different stages. Findings: This paper finds that in the insufficient customers stage, the service provider's strategy of "small profits but quick turnover" is conducive to quickly accumulating customers. With the development of service provider, the advertising indirectly increases the revenue of service provider by maintaining popularity. The result also shows that with the development of service provider, the initiative of such service market has gradually been mastered by service provider, from "buyer market" to "seller market." Originality/value: The finding provides an alternative explanation for the impact of advertising on service provider's optimal strategies; it also solves the settings of service price and rate of customer-intensive service provider at different development stages. This study is essential to create the optimal revenue and solve supply–demand conflicts (such as doctor–patient conflict) between service provider and customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the causes of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and focuses on the moral, ethical, and religious repercussions of consumerism and greed. Idolatry involving the financial markets and the effects of speculation on environmental degradation are also discussed. The author proposes that consumers, banks, and other financial and governmental institutions behave fairly and responsibly while promoting equity and sustainability.

The article offers information on the rescuing newspaper business industry. It further discusses revenue from digital advertising has failed to offset the profit draining out of print; platforms such as Google and Facebook have become the new moguls of the media landscape; and the underlying economics of the global newspaper industry; and real failure is that papers have lost control of distribution to Google and Facebook, making it harder to monetise the traffic.

Purpose: This paper aims to present reflections on the COVID-19 pandemic impacts in the search for the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 8 (SDG 8) disseminated by the United Nations. These reflections are made considering the Brazilian scenario. Design/methodology/approach: As this paper is a viewpoint, several information presented here are based on authors' opinion. However, to enhance the information basis and present examples, a bibliographic research was also conducted. Findings: Analyzing the targets of SDG 8 and the probable crisis in the Brazilian economy as a consequence of the pandemic, the authors believe that this crisis will impact the achievement of these targets. Practical implications: The reflections presented here can contribute with the debates about the search for decent work in Brazil. It is worth to remember that the development of actions aligned with SDG 8 targets generates more than only economic gains, as these contribute for building a more just, egalitarian and inclusive society. Originality/value: This viewpoint calls attention to issues that demand urgent public policies; otherwise, these issues can generate losses to an entire generation of Brazilians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the newspaper industry in the United States as of May 7, 2001. Impact of a decline in advertising and a rise in the cost of newsprint on the publishing industry; Decrease in the sales of print materials; Differences between the 'San Francisco Chronicle' and other newspapers.

The article discusses how inadequate funding has forced schools to ask donation from parents for basic school supplies including teaching equipment and toilet papers. It states that surveys of parents by PTA UK reported the pressure felt by parents to donate toward school fund. Comments by acting CEO of PTA UK Michelle Doyle Wildman and Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Asso­ciation of School and College Leaders, are included.

Purpose: This paper aims to study the pricing strategies of an online trading platform with indirect network externalities by considering heterogeneous trading behavior in the downstream market and the long tail. Design/methodology/approach: The game theory, optimization and comparative static are used in this research. The equilibria are derived from the game theory, and with them, the authors optimize the platform's profit function. Comparative static is used to study pricing strategies. Findings: It is found that with heterogeneous trading behavior, the transaction-based model is more profitable than the subscription-based model by reason of the feasibility of "price discrimination". However, with certain advantages of subscription fees such as avoiding offline transactions, the subscription-based model is better with a concentrated distribution of sellers' revenues (the Gini coefficient is small). With a lucrative long tail, the platform should set a low price to attract small sellers in the long tail. Besides, if the Gini coefficient is large, the effects of the market entry barrier of sellers on the optimal price in each model may be opposite. Research limitations/implications: It implies that the choice of revenue models and pricing strategies are influenced by the Gini coefficient or the long tail. The exogenous setting in which buyers can use the platform for free needs further extension. Practical implications: The authors provide insights on how to choose revenue models and how to price the sellers with the long tail phenomenon. Originality/value: This paper emphasizes the role of the long tail on pricing strategies and the effect of heterogeneous trading behavior on model selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author comments on the decline in the financial fortunes of U.S. newspapers. He does not agree with pundits who declare that newspapers are essential to the conduct of political life in the United States and that such publications should be considered moral arbiters and forces for good. He asserts that newspaper publishers are more interested in profit than in covering local news or in investigative reporting.

The article offers information on a nation's economy is described in numbers, but academicians use words to explain those numbers. It discusses that Scholarly papers forecasting the state of the economy are more than equally matched with opinion pieces in the daily press that also attempt to forecast the state of the economy; and mentions that EconLit, the primary database covering the scholarly literature of economics, is produced by the American Economic Association (AEA).

The purpose of this paper is to address the procedure envisaged for the liquidation of the matrimonial property regime in cases where, effectively pre-existing the conjugal bond, there is a common mass composed of goods and rights, burdens and obligations, and there is no agreement between the parties concerned on the distribution. Similarly the procedure for winding up the economic regime for the separation of assets and the specific featureit presents are analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This paper aims to explain the modern unintended human-personal self-destruction and the importance of diverse society-specific holistic cultures ("native cultures") and social value systems as the remedy.Design/methodology/approach This paper is a viewpoint, as both the explanation and the proposed remedy are based on the present author's historical, theoretical and normative considerations.Findings First, the author's interpretation of pre-modern to modern Western societies reveals that some important pre-modern Western values are given to the modern era as part of the market value system. Second, some Mercantilist ideas have strong influences on Classical economic theory and methodology. Third, the modern Western value system – the market value system – corresponds to the Core Synergism of Modern Civilization or the complex driving force of Modern Civilization.Social implications This paper is designed to facilitate reflection on the excessive emphasis on economic/market values.Originality/value The present author's normative framework for social value system ("integral harmony") is used for explaining a likely remedy of the unintended human-personal self-destruction. Also, for solving the human-personal predicament, this article integrates native culture, balance and harmony into economic thinking to promote sustainable development for a viable human future. Concluding remarks provide a summary for clarification of the remedy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early 2010, Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff published an analysis of economic data from many countries and concluded that when debt levels exceed 90 percent of gross national product, a nation's economic growth is threatened. With debt that high, expect growth to become negative, they argued. □ This analysis was done shortly after the 2008 recession, so it had enormous relevance to policymakers, many of whom were promoting high levels of debt spending in the interest of stimulating their nations' economies. At the same time, conservative politicians, such as Olli Rehn, then an EU commissioner, and U.S. congressman Paul Ryan, used Reinhart and Rogoff's findings to argue for fiscal austerity. □ Three years later, Thomas Herndon, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, discovered an error in the Excel spreadsheet that Reinhart and Rogoff had used to make their calculations. The significance of the blunder was enormous: When the analysis was done properly, Herndon showed, debt levels in excess of 90 percent were associated with average growth of positive 2.2 percent, not the negative 0.1 percent that Reinhart and Rogoff had found. □ Herndon could easily test the Harvard economists' conclusions because the software that they had used to calculate their results—Microsoft Excel—was readily available. But what about much older findings for which the software originally used is hard to come by? □ You might think that the solution—preserving the relevant software for future researchers to use—should be no big deal. After all, software is nothing more than a bunch of files, and those files are easy enough to store on a hard drive or on tape in digital format. For some software at least, the all-important source code could even be duplicated on paper, avoiding the possibility that whatever digital medium it's written to could become obsolete. □ Saving old programs in this way is done routinely, even for decades-old software. You can find online, for example, a full program listing for the Apollo Guidance Computer—code that took astronauts to the moon during the 1960s. It was transcribed from a paper copy and uploaded to GitHub in 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In a recent paper (Asker, 2007) [1] a dynamic Cournot oligopoly game is proposed and it is claimed that this model represents competition among firms that exploit a common access natural resource. According to the author’s claim, the feature that relates the model with renewable natural resource harvesting is given by the presence of a particular cost function where the total cost of each fisherman is proportional to the square of the own quantity of harvesting and inversely proportional to the total harvesting quantity. In contrast, the usual function used in the literature on the exploitation of natural resources (such as fisheries) is inversely proportional to the available resource stock, and not to the total harvesting. This, in some sense, assumes exactly the opposite (as the available resource is inversely proportional to the total harvesting). So, we believe that the paper (Asker, 2007) [1] contains an error which is probably due to a misunderstanding or a misreading and misinterpretation of the (well-established) literature on bioeconomic modelling, but nevertheless misleading to researchers interested in bioeconomic modelling. The aim of this short note is to explain the mistake and to summarize the correct derivation and interpretation of the cost function. Our goal is to avoid the propagation of a subtle (but nevertheless misleading) error. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In theological discourse about voluntary assisted dying, two of the most contested areas are those that relate broadly to matters of individualism, autonomy and rights, and those that are concerned with interpretations around the sanctity of human life given by God. These two areas represent unavoidably difficult theological spaces, with profound implications for Christian theology, especially for theological anthropology and for theologies of death. Drawing upon a range of sources mostly from Christian traditions, this essay locates these two concerns in a broader milieu and engages in some critical discussion around their theological complexities. It argues that fidelity to competing theological commitments is a form of resistance to the temptation to make the terrain of relevant moral judgements absolute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obesity is a compelling example of the challenges of championing and mobilizing a response that involves the whole of government and all of society. This paper discusses the need for economic rationales to strengthen the case for government intervention on obesity, with a view to better engaging the expertise and resources of nonhealth sectors. The paper also briefly reviews economic theory and evidence that could support an integrated multisectoral rationale for action, noting opportunities to expand the integration of economic evidence in the Americas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing prevalence of variable-supply electricity production, dynamic market structures, including time-varying prices and/or peak demand charges are becoming more common for electricity consumers. This framework requires consumers to consider both the time-varying amount of electricity (i.e., energy) consumed throughout the day as well as the maximum rate of electricity purchase (i.e., power) over a given period, typically a month. Because of this complexity, online optimization techniques such as economic model predictive control (MPC) are a natural tool for consumers to use to minimize cost. However, while closed-loop optimization of these pricing structures is already being proposed for various applications, little has been established about stability or performance properties of the closed-loop system. Due in particular to the peak penalty (which violates the principle of optimality if naively included in the objective function), this theoretical gap leaves the potential for pathological closed-loop behavior despite high-quality open-loop solutions. In this paper, we derive asymptotic performance and stability results for general time-varying economic MPC. We then present a novel extended-state formulation to convert peak demand charges into a time-varying stage cost that can be optimized using economic MPC. In addition, we give a terminal cost and constraint for the augmented system that avoids reducing the feasible set in the original space. Finally, we demonstrate these structures and the closed-loop properties that they satisfy via two illustrative examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The time-varying economic dispatch over a network is considered where both the cost function and the equality constraint are time-varying. A distributed algorithm is first designed combing the prediction-correction framework and the consensus + innovations approach. In the prediction steps, the sensitivity analysis method is introduced to calculate the shift between the estimated and the exact optimization solution of the correction steps. Afterwards, the overall optimal errors in two steps are calculated by the sub-optimal analysis method. The convergence analysis shows that the dispatch errors are bounded and the convergence process is Q-linear. A dynamic prediction-correction algorithm is then presented to improve the accuracy at every time instant. Finally, numerical examples using the IEEE 118-bus system are presented to illustrate the validity of the algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the P.T. Riau Andalan pulp mill being built near Pekanbaru on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. How the $1.3 billion dollar project will become one of the largest pulp mills in the world; Economic impact on Sumatra; Foreign investment attractions of the island; Barriers to Sumatra becoming the next economic power in the region; Land rights, legal issues, labor unrest, and educational deficiencies; Environmental concerns.

This paper investigates distributed control and incentive mechanisms to coordinate distributed energy resources (DERs) with both continuous and discrete decision variables as well as device dynamics in distribution grids. We formulate a multiperiod social welfare maximization problem, and based on its convex relaxation propose a distributed stochastic dual gradient algorithm for managing DERs. We further extend it to an online real-time setting with time-varying operating conditions, asynchronous updates by devices, and feedback being leveraged to account for nonlinear power flows as well as reduce communication overhead. The resulting algorithm provides a general online stochastic optimization algorithm for coordinating networked DERs with discrete power setpoints and dynamics to meet operational and economic objectives and constraints. We characterize the convergence of the algorithm analytically and evaluate its performance numerically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, data have played an increasingly important role in the economy as a good in its own right. In many settings, data aggregators cannot directly verify the quality of the data they purchase, nor the effort exerted by data sources when creating the data. Recent work has explored mechanisms to ensure that the data sources share high-quality data with a single data aggregator, addressing the issue of moral hazard. Oftentimes, there is a unique, socially efficient solution. In this paper, we consider data markets where there is more than one data aggregator. Since data can be cheaply reproduced and transmitted once created, data sources may share the same data with more than one aggregator, leading to free-riding between data aggregators. This coupling can lead to nonuniqueness of equilibria and social inefficiency. We examine a particular class of mechanisms that have received study recently in the literature, and we characterize all the generalized Nash (GN) equilibria of the resulting data market. We show that, in contrast to the single-aggregator case, there is either infinitely many GN equilibria or none. We also provide necessary and sufficient conditions for all equilibria to be socially inefficient. In our analysis, we identify the components of these mechanisms that give rise to these undesirable outcomes, showing the need for research into mechanisms for competitive settings with multiple data purchasers and sellers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utility is an important concept in Economics. A variety of applications consider utility in real-life situations, which has lead to the emergence of utility-oriented mining (also called utility mining) in the recent decade. Utility mining has attracted a great amount of attention, but most of the existing studies have been developed to deal with itemset-based data. Time-ordered sequence data is more commonly seen in real-world situations, which is different from itemset-based data. Since they are time-consuming and require large amount of memory usage, current utility mining algorithms still have limitations when dealing with sequence data. In addition, the mining efficiency of utility mining on sequence data still needs to be improved, especially for long sequences or when there is a low minimum utility threshold. In this paper, we propose an efficient Pro jection-based U tility M ining (ProUM) approach to discover high-utility sequential patterns from sequence data. The utility-array structure is designed to store the necessary information of the sequence-order and utility. ProUM can significantly improve the mining efficiency by utilizing the projection technique in generating utility-array, and it effectively reduces the memory consumption. Furthermore, a new upper bound named sequence extension utility is proposed and several pruning strategies are further applied to improve the efficiency of ProUM. By taking utility theory into account, the derived high-utility sequential patterns have more insightful and interesting information than other kinds of patterns. Experimental results showed that the proposed ProUM algorithm significantly outperformed the state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of execution time, memory usage, and scalability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful tool to perform data-driven optimal control without relying on a model of the system. However, RL struggles to provide hard guarantees on the behavior of the resulting control scheme. In contrast, nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) and economic NMPC (ENMPC) are standard tools for the closed-loop optimal control of complex systems with constraints and limitations, and benefit from a rich theory to assess their closed-loop behavior. Unfortunately, the performance of (E)NMPC hinges on the quality of the model underlying the control scheme. In this paper, we show that an (E)NMPC scheme can be tuned to deliver the optimal policy of the real system even when using a wrong model. This result also holds for real systems having stochastic dynamics. This entails that ENMPC can be used as a new type of function approximator within RL. Furthermore, we investigate our results in the context of ENMPC and formally connect them to the concept of dissipativity, which is central for the ENMPC stability. Finally, we detail how these results can be used to deploy classic RL tools for tuning (E)NMPC schemes. We apply these tools on both, a classical linear MPC setting and a standard nonlinear example, from the ENMPC literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a new framework for model-predictive control (MPC) with generalized zone tracking. The proposed zone MPC tracks a generalized target set of system state and input which is not necessarily control-invariant. In this context, the classical MPC theory no longer applies because the target zone may not be stable in the sense of Lyapunov. We extend LaSalle's invariance principle and develop new theories for stability analysis of zone MPC. It is proved that under the zone MPC design, the system converges to the maximal control invariant set in the target zone. Sufficient conditions for asymptotic stability of the maximal control-invariant set are also discussed. By tracking the generalized target zone, the proposed zone MPC is able to: (i) yield smaller zone tracking errors than all existing methods which essentially track some steady-state subset of the target zone, and (ii) allow more admissible operations and release more degrees of freedom to achieve other economic objectives. Further discussions are made on extending the prediction horizon of the zone MPC based on an auxiliary control law as well as handling a secondary economic objective via a second-step economic optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controlling complex systems to desired states is of primary importance in science and engineering. In the classical control framework, the plants to be controlled usually do not have their own payoff or objective functions; however, this is not the case in many practical situations in, for examples, social, economic, and “intelligent” engineering systems. This motivates our introduction of the game-based control system (GBCS), which has a hierarchical decision-making structure: one regulator and multiple agents. The regulator is regarded as the global controller that makes decision first, and then, the agents try to optimize their respective objective functions to reach a possible Nash equilibrium as a result of noncooperative dynamic game. A fundamental issue in the GBCS is: Is it possible for the regulator to change the macrostates by regulating the Nash equilibrium formed by the agents at the lower level? This leads to the investigation of controllability of the Nash equilibrium of the GBCS. In this paper, we will first formulate this new problem in a general nonlinear framework and then focus on linear systems. Some explicit necessary and sufficient algebraic conditions on the controllability of the Nash equilibrium are given for a linear GBCS, by solving the controllability problem of the associated forward and backward dynamic equations, which is a key technical issue and has rarely been explored in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a first-order extremum-seeking algorithm to solve the resource allocation problem, where the specific expression form and gradient information of the local cost functions are not required. Agents take advantage of measurements of local cost functions to minimize the sum of their cost functions while satisfying the resource constraint, where agents exchange the estimated decisions with their neighbors under an undirected and connected graph. Making use of the Lyapunov stability theory and the average analysis method, the convergence of the proposed algorithm to the neighborhood of the optimal solution is presented. In addition, it is obtained that the designed algorithm is semiglobally practically asymptotically stable. Then, the first-order algorithm is extended to the second-order algorithm with low-pass filters, which achieves better convergence performance than the first-order algorithm. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is illustrated by numerical examples and its application to economic dispatch in smart grids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a dual-objective nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) algorithm for stabilizing a target neighborhood of a state-space manifold of a nonlinear dynamical system and for concurrently optimizing an economic objective in this neighborhood. The control design is based on the transverse normal form description of the system dynamics. The NMPC scheme solves two optimal control problems (OCPs) in sequence, the first (transversal) OCP provides conditions for the convergence to the target neighborhood. The second (tangential) OCP optimizes the economic objective without compromising the convergence. The stability and performance properties of the resulting control scheme are discussed and its efficacy is illustrated in a tutorial example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the problem of placing energy storage resources in a power network when all storage devices are optimally controlled to minimize system-wide costs. We propose a discrete optimization framework to accurately model heterogeneous storage capital and installation costs as these fixed costs account for the largest cost component in most grid-scale storage projects. Identifying an optimal placement strategy is challenging due to the combinatorial nature of such placement problems, and the spatial and temporal transfers of energy via transmission lines and distributed storage devices. To develop a scalable near-optimal placement strategy with a performance guarantee, we characterize a tight condition under which the placement value function is submodular by exploiting our duality-based analytical characterization of the optimal cost and prices. The proposed polyhedral analysis of a parametric economic dispatch problem with optimal storage control also leads to a simple but rigorous verification method for submodularity, and the novel insight that the spatiotemporal congestion pattern of a power network is critical to submodularity. A modified greedy algorithm provides a $(1-1/e)$ -optimal placement solution and can be extended to obtain risk-aware placement strategies when submodularity is verified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]