Search results

The literature on economic forecasting, is showing an increase in criticism, of the inaccuracy of forecasts, with major implications for economic, and fiscal policymaking. Forecasts are subject to the systemic uncertainty of human systems, considerable event-driven uncertainty, and show biases towards optimistic growth paths. The purpose of this study is to consider approaches to improve economic foresight.

This study describes the practice of economic foresight as evolving in two separate, non-overlapping branches, short-term economic forecasting, and long-term scenario analysis of development, the latter found in studies of climate change and sustainability. The unique case of Ireland is considered, a country that has experienced both steep growth and deep troughs, with uncertainty that has confounded forecasting. The challenges facing forecasts are discussed, with brief review of the drivers of growth, and of long-term economic scenarios in the global literature.

Economic forecasting seeks to manage uncertainty by improving the accuracy of quantitative point forecasts, and related models. Yet, systematic forecast failures remain, and the economy defies prediction, even in the near-term. In contrast, long-term scenario analysis eschews forecasts in favour of a set of plausible or possible alternative scenarios. Using alternative scenarios is a response to the irreducible uncertainty of complex systems, with sophisticated approaches employed to integrate qualitative and quantitative insights.

To support economic and fiscal policymaking, it is necessary support advancement in approaches to economic foresight, to improve handling of uncertainty and related risk.

While European Union Regulation (EC) 1466/97 mandates pursuit of improved accuracy, in short-term economic forecasts, there is now a case for implementing advanced foresight approaches, for improved analysis, and more robust decision-making.

Building economic resilience and adaptability, as part of a sustainable future, requires both long-term strategic planning, and short-term policy. A 21st century policymaking process can be better supported by analysis of alternative scenarios.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the article is original in considering the application of scenario foresight approaches, in economic forecasting. The study has value in improving the baseline forecast methods, that are fundamental to contemporary economics, and in bringing the field of economics into the heart of foresight.

To comply with the adopted Paris Agreement, global finance flows must be measured against climate scenarios consistent with possible pathways towards limiting global warming to 2°C or less. For this, there must be proven and accepted accounting principles for assessing financial plans of climate relevant actors against climate models. As there are a variety of data sources describing the financial plans of relevant actors, these principles must accommodate a variety of reported information, while still yielding relevant metrics to different stakeholders. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A set of accounting principles tested by governments, financial supervisory bodies and both institutional investors and mangers, covering global-listed equity and corporate bond investment is described.

The application illustrates that a common set of accounting principles can act across both asset classes and provide relevant metrics to multiple stakeholders.

The principles require data of varying quality and are ultimately unverified. Thus, the definitive quality of the output metrics is uncertain and is yet to be characterized. The principles are yet to be applied to the credit market as the information is seldom publicly available, but it too plays an important role in the required market transition and therefore must be incorporated into these guiding principles of analysis.

The principles allow for standardised assessment of financial flows of equity and corporate debt with global climate scenarios.

It illustrates the acceptance of a common set of accounting principles that is relevant across different actors and asset classes and summarizes the principles underlying the first climate finance scenario analyses.

This paper aims to focus on the development of a vision for the Lake Constance region, Germany, as an e-destination, i.e. a destination where tourism mobility would be predominantly electric in the future.

This paper uses a scenario analysis based on factor analysis in addition to empirical data collected in 2016 and 2017 based on surveys and interviews with tourists and stakeholders.

The scenarios contain the optimistic, pessimistic and realistic models, including one scenario called e-destination, i.e. a projection of the future where tourism mobility consists predominantly of electro-mobility (e-mobility). This specific scenario is supported by the results of the empirical data.

As the study focusses on e-mobility only, it leaves out other forms of mobility e.g. pedestrian or cycling mobility that also contribute to CO₂ reduction. The sampling methods are not strictly randomised, but the tendencies they show are clear and supporting each other.

According to the tourists and stakeholders interviewed, it is quite likely that the region will become an e-destination in the future, but only with government support.

The attitude-behaviour-gap was discussed as a possible explanation of tourists’ behaviour in the study.

Studies on e-mobility in tourism are rare. (As far as the author knows) this paper presents the first analysis of the future of e-mobility in tourism using a German lake as a destination. Thus, it adds to the existing body of knowledge different possible projections of the future regarding e-mobility in a tourism destination.

Vertical lift (VL) assets are vital and expensive resources in humanitarian missions. What and where supplies are needed evolves in short time following a disaster. The purpose of this paper is to offer analysis to understand the range of capabilities of these assets.

The authors use scenario analysis to investigate the tradeoff between two key capabilities of VL, agility and speed. The authors do this by generating loads and distances randomly, based on historical data. In post hoc analysis, based on different factors, the authors investigate the impact of configuration of Expeditionary Strike Force (ESG) on providing disaster relief.

The authors find the most effective deployment of VL in a HADR mission is in supplying essentials to victims in a focused region. Delivering sustainment requirements leads to substantial shortfall for survival needs. If the configuration of the ESGs were changed for HADR, it would better-meet the demand.

Cargo capacity is modeled assuming every aircraft type was equal, in terms of mean and variance of cargo-capacity utilization. Detailed information on cargo-bay configurations was beyond the scope of our model and data. However, this means the benefit of standardizing cargo load-outs and the variability associated with randomized load-outs may be understated in the results.

The analysis presents decision-makers with projections of VL asset performance in the early stages of disaster relief, to assist in planning and contingency planning.

This research deals exclusively with the most critical but expensive capabilities for HADR: VL. The in-depth analysis illustrates the limitations and benefits of this capability.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the years the European Muslim population will be majority among 30 European countries.

The methodology/approach is to forecast the population of 30 European countries with wavelet analysis combined with the Burg model which fits a pth order autoregressive model to the input signal by minimizing (least squares) the forward and backward prediction errors while constraining the autoregressive parameters to satisfy the Levinson–Durbin recursion, then relies on an infinite impulse response prediction error filter. Three scenarios are considered: the zero-migration scenario where the authors assume that the Muslim population has a higher fertility (one child more per woman, on average) than other Europeans, mirroring a global pattern; a 2017 migration scenario: to the Muslim population obtained in the zero-migration scenario, the authors add a continuous flow of migrants every year based on year 2017; the mid-point migration scenario is obtained by averaging the data of the two previous scenarios.

Among three scenarios, the most likely mid-point migration scenario identifies 13 countries where the Muslim population will be majority between years 2085 and 2215: Cyprus (in year 2085), Sweden (2125), France (2135), Greece (2135), Belgium (2140), Bulgaria (2140), Italy (2175), Luxembourg (2175), the UK (2180), Slovenia (2190), Switzerland (2195), Ireland (2200) and Lithuania (2215). The 17 remaining countries will never reach majority in the next 200 years.

The growing Muslim population will change the face of Europe socially, politically and economically. This paper will provide a better insight and understanding of Muslim population dynamics to European governments, policymakers, as well as social and economic planners.

To support the standardized evaluation of bicyclist automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems, test scenarios, test procedures and test system hardware and software tools have been investigated and developed by the Transportation Active Safety Institute (TASI) at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. This paper aims to focus on the development of test scenarios and bicyclist surrogate for evaluating vehicle–bicyclist AEB systems.

The harmonized general estimates system (GES)/FARS 2010-2011 crash data and TASI 110-car naturalistic driving data (NDD) are used to determine the crash geometries and environmental factors of crash scenarios including lighting conditions, vehicle speeds, bicyclist speeds, etc. A surrogate bicyclist including a bicycle rider and a bicycle surrogate is designed to match the visual and radar characteristics of bicyclists in the USA. A bicycle target is designed with both leg pedaling and wheel rotation to produce proper micro-Doppler features and generate realistic motion for camera-based AEB systems.

Based on the analysis of the harmonized GES/FARS crash data, five crash scenarios are recommended for performance testing of bicyclist AEB systems. Combined with TASI 110-car naturalistic driving data, the crash environmental factors including lighting conditions, obscuring objects, vehicle speed and bicyclist speed are determined. The surrogate bicyclist was designed to represent the visual and radar characteristics of the real bicyclists in the USA. The height of the bicycle rider mannequin is 173 cm, representing the weighted height of 50th percentile US male and female adults. The size and shape of the surrogate bicycle were determined as 26-inch wheel and mountain/road bicycle frame, respectively. Both leg pedaling motion and wheel rotation are suggested to produce proper micro-Doppler features and support the camera-based AEB systems.

The results have demonstrated that the developed scenarios, test procedures and bicyclist surrogate will provide effective objective methods and necessary hardware and software tools for the evaluation and validation of bicyclist AEB systems. This is crucial for the development of advanced driver assistance systems.

The Norwegian travel industry faces decline in important international tourism segments and needs an industry wide and future‐oriented strategy to face these challenges. Accordingly, a common understanding of future drivers and different scenarios for the industry is needed. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Using the process of scenario analysis and drawing upon the involvement of the tourism industry, this paper describes the method, drivers, scenarios, and implications.

The research identified six important drivers with predictable outcomes: uneven global economic development, digitalization, climate change, consumer demand – return on time, centralization, and demography. The Norwegian economy and Norwegian politics were the two drivers that stood out as the most significant for the tourism industry, with a very uncertain outcome, and constituted the two axes of the scenarios. This resulted in four scenarios: Money Rules, The Urban Diamond, Opportunities for All, and Master Plan.

The four scenarios represent different economic value of international tourism in Norway. The Opportunities for All and Master Plan scenarios represent the greatest economic value for Norwegian tourism. They indicate great opportunities for tourism to become the “new oil” in Norway if the oil economy declines. The two scenarios differ with respect to the degree of governance control vs market liberalization. The scenarios will be used to identify implications and risks for different parts of the tourism industry, and to further explore how governance control and market liberalization may be combined.

The research identified six drivers which are significant for the Norwegian tourism industry. This resulted in four scenarios which are used to identify implications and risks for different parts of the industry.

Although Public Research Institutions (PRIs) are large technology producers, they lack automated information tools that follow technical and scientific criteria for assessing and valuing patents. The assessment and valuation processes are stages of technology transfer (TT) that make it possible to obtain productive arrangements and guide the efforts of those involved in the development, maintenance and negotiation. This study aims to analyze the hybrid model of assessment and valuation of technologies by Soares (2018), applying the ‘Valorativo' software. In addition to patent value and indicator scores, the methods allow an understanding of the technology portfolio and its management.

This research is quali-quantitative, following an approach of applied nature and descriptive objectives. The research has bibliographical, documental and case study features based on the software development methodologies described in the study and the theoretical framework.

The Valorativo software assisted in the analysis of ten patents on PRIs. With the data collection and patent analysis, PAT1 scored highest among engineering patents, PAT3 scored highest among pharmaceutical patents and PAT10 scored highest among biotechnology patents. Five of the assessed patents resulted in a surplus of net present value (NPV), final net present value (NPVF) and royalties; revenue expectations outpaced investments.

The authors based the developed software on Soares’s (2018) methodology, with additional calculations and graphs. The Web software and the spreadsheet with Visual Basic for Application (VBA) were developed to deal with the patents assessment and valuation, helping in the analysis of their Legal Value, Technological Value and Market Conditions in the assessment process, and the Discounted Cash Flow and NPV in the valuation process.

The software helps with patent analysis and can generate indicators for traders, technology holders and researchers. Thus, it was necessary to understand and develop a theoretical-applied framework to outline and replicate the methodology clearly and easily.

Among various distinctive formulations that have been developed simultaneously in East Asia as of 2009, this paper selected three major paths, ASEAN+3, ASEAN+6 and APEC, to quantitatively examine the economic impacts of Asian regionalization with the CGE model. This paper confirmed previous findings such as the magnitude of economic impact being proportional to the size of membership and the existence of trade diversion effect within all trade blocs. The subsequent KORUS and Korea-EU FTA imposition upon the built CGE base models further verified the effects of hub-and-spoke-ism in East Asia. Jointly, the simulation results implied that the economic impacts of a trade arrangement heavily depend on the subject economy’s reliance on trade with the participating states. It was also found that the impacts were directly proportional to the accrued trade balance of the subject spoke country with both the hub state and the hub-destination. This could have been exaggerated as the scope of this study was limited to East Asia where KORUS FTA was found to be more influential than Korea-EU FTA due to its exceptionally high reliance on the US. On the course of this research to verify the aforementioned findings, however, both GTAP 6 and 7 were adopted, and hence, the economic impacts of China’s accession to the WTO in the global trade system were also empirically proven.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the changes of dental caries status among Thai adults and elderly under the different policy options using system dynamics modeling.

A multi-sector system dynamics model was developed to capture the dynamic interrelationship between dental caries status changes and oral health behavior – including self-care, dental care utilization and sugar consumption. Data used to populate the model was obtained from the Thai national oral health survey in 2000, 2006, 2012 and Thailand Official Statistics Registration. Three policy scenarios were experimented in the model: health promotion policy, dental personnel policy and affordable dental care service policy.

Dental caries experiences among Thai adults and elderly were projected to increase from now to 2040, as the elderly population increases. Among all policies experimented herein, the combined policies of health promotion, increased affordability and capacity of dental health service were found to produce the highest improvement in dental caries status with 3.7 percent reduction of population with high decayed, missing and filled teeth (DMFT) and 5.2 percent increase in population with very low DMFT.

This study is the first comprehensive simulation model that attempts to explore the dynamic interrelationship among dental caries experiences and behavioral factors that impact on oral health outcomes. In addition, the simulation model herein offers a framework for policy experimentation that provides policymakers with additional insights to inform health policy planning.