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The purpose of the paper is 1) to address the importance of contingency at the right level when defining project control baseline, including cost reserves / “room to manoeuvre” and 2) present proactive uncertainty management as a regime to ensure cost effective management of project reserves and contribute to project success.

The paper is a combination of literature study and quantitative research on how contingency develops during the lifetime of a case project. The investigation into the case project includes document study into quantitative material from the case project. The combination of empirical material and theory makes the discussion robust.

Unrealistic low cost uncertainty will lead to unrealistic low contingency. The case study from a Norwegian mega project shows a contingency of 15 per cent in addition to expected costs. The case study shows that by continuous opportunity management and risk reduction, the needs for management reserves are systematically reduced and the contingency is controlled.

This research is limited to one case study. A higher number of cases are necessary to generalise the findings. However, the authors would claim that the systematic mapping of need for management reserve towards the project contingency, and a continuous uncertainty management system will help to obtain cost effective management. The findings from the case study could be applied on similar cases.

The case study shows a way of setting contingencies and managing contingencies through systematic uncertainty management.

Improved management of project provisions will increase the value of future projects.

Course Notes

The authors examine how different exchange patterns affect structurally disadvantaged actors' interactional justice evaluations and group identification in situations characterized by reciprocal and negotiated exchange.

Laboratory experiment.

Although results replicate prior work finding that disadvantaged individuals view their exchange partners as less fair when exchanging via negotiation rather than reciprocation, they also show the value of considering the pattern of exchange. Indeed, both the form of exchange and the pattern of exchange prompt exchange behaviors that shape how disadvantaged actors view the exchange experience, such that much of the direct effect of the form of exchange is offset by indirect paths, especially when the disadvantaged actor remains committed to their more advantaged partner. These fairness evaluations matter because as the authors show, they affect perceptions of group identification.

Future work should more explicitly consider how emotions as well as different levels of inequality might modify the processes described.

This chapter highlights the need to consider both the form of exchange and the relative stability of exchange when considering the fairness perceptions and group identification of disadvantaged individuals.

The authors use laboratory experiments to test two self-assessment tax mechanisms for facilitating land assembly. One mechanism is incentive compatible with a complex tax function, while the other uses a flat tax rate to mitigate implementation concerns. Sellers publicly declare a price for their land. Overstating its true value is penalized by using the declared price to assess a property tax; understating its value is penalized by allowing developers to buy the property at the declared price. The authors find that both mechanisms increase the rate of land assembly and gains from trade relative to a control in which sellers’ price declarations have no effect on their taxes. However, these effects are statistically insignificant or transitory. The assembly rates in our self-assessment treatments are markedly higher than those of prior experimental studies in which the buyer faces bargaining frictions, such as costly delay or capital constraints.

This chapter examines the legal and scientific approaches taken in the United States for computing economic damages due to personal injury and wrongful death. The U.S. law of tort damages conforms to a general economic valuation of reduced or lost productivity due to injury under the goal of assigning tort damages optimally so that harm in the society is minimized. Today, “economic damages” are defined in every U.S. jurisdiction, and the field of forensic economics has produced a body of literature concerned with accurately measuring them.

This essay is a response to Zak Cope’s defense of the “labor aristocracy” theory of working class reformism and conservatism. Specifically, the essay engages Cope’s claims that British colonialism, imperialist investment, and transnational “monopoly” corporations have accrued “surplus-profits” that have underwritten the existence of a “labor aristocracy” historically, and that “unequal exchange” today has transformed almost the entirety of the working classes of the global North into a labor aristocracy. We conclude with a presentation of an alternative explanation of working class reformism and conservatism.

To critically assess the contribution of community-based logging, low-carbon emission non-timber activities, and direct payment for environmental services in building sustainable rural livelihoods in the Amazon.

Fieldwork undertaken in 2008, 2010, and 2013 on sources of income for 110 interviewed families living in and around three different types of conservation units located on the advancing frontier in western Pará State.

Three scenarios identified with very different socio-environmental outcomes, (1) the multi-functional combination of agricultural and non-agricultural activities replaces frontier farming, reduces deforestation and carbon emissions, increases income, and promotes social inclusion, (2) the mere juxtaposition of green alternative activities alongside unsustainable frontier farming has limited regional impact, and (3) environmental restrictions interfere with rural livelihoods to the point that people to leave the countryside.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of GO and NGO policies in one of the poorest and environmentally problematic regions of Brazil.

First-hand information at the family farmer level concerning sources of income from conventional and green land use systems which is essential for formulating viable socio-environmental policy capable of reducing deforestation and carbon emissions which negatively impact global climate change.