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20-12-2013
MODEST
international working
group on
MODelling of Economies and Societies
in Transition
Co-ordinators:
Zbigniew Nahorski and Jan W. Owsiński
nahorski@ibspan.waw.pl
owsinski@ibspan.waw.pl
Newelska 6, 01-447 Warszawa, Poland; Facsimile: (48 22)
38 10 105
Newsletter
sent out irregularly, mainly
on the basis of what's new
Edited etc. by Jan Owsiński
Issue no. 13, Spring 2010
Feel cordially invited to MODEST 2010 in Bydgoszcz,
Poland.
The deadline for sending in the papers is June
15th, 2010!!! (see also below)
Contents:
1. MODEST 2008 meeting in Warsaw and two publications thereof – once again
2. Next MODEST meeting, September 2010 – ampler information
3. Proposals and suggestions
4. A reminder: the book published by Palgrave
1. MODEST 2008 meeting in Warsaw and the
publications thereof
As announced previously, the consecutive meeting in our series, the MODEST
2008 Workshop, took place on September 19th-20th, 2008, in Rembertów by
Warsaw, within the campus of the National Defence Academy. It was, according
to the rule, affiliated with the bi-annual conference of the Polish
Operational and Systems Research Society (BOS 2008), having taken place on
18th-20thSeptember.
The proper MODEST meeting in the framework of the BOS conference was a joint
undertaking of MODEST and the Polish chapter of INFORMS. A number of
interesting papers were presented, and a vivid discussion followed.
The papers from the BOS conference, including those, resulting from the
MODEST meeting, which passed the refereeing procedure and were accordingly
modified, were published in three books, being three successive volumes (62,
63 and 64) in the series of “Systems Studies”, which is being published by
the Systems Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, one of the
co-organisers of the BOS conference series. The three volumes contain close
to 100 papers from the BOS 2008 meeting.
Notwithstanding these three volumes two special issues of two different
journals have been prepared as a follow-up. Both of them are largely due to
the activity of the MODEST group, and this fact shall be duly acknowledged
in the respective publications.
One is a special issue of the Journal of Organisational Transformation and
Social Change, published by Intellect in the United Kingdom, and the
tentative title of this special issue is “Corruption and Good Governance”.
This issue is guest edited by Jan W. Owsiński, and the authors of the
finally accepted papers are: M. Yolles and O. Savagvudcharee (paper on
generic theory of corruption with a case illustration from Thailand), J. W.
Owsiński (a remake of an old paper on the “Herring Barrel Metaphor”, being a
very telling model of the communist, or the real-socialist system, based on
institutionalised corruption), H. Lindskog, S. Brege and P.-O. Brehmer (on
public procurement process, as distinct from private purchasing, and the
inherent risks of corruption), I. Woroniecka-Leciejewicz (on the game
between the government and the central bank and the cases when coordination
is necessary and when it is not necessary), K. Cichocki (describing a model
for managing local authority finance, with special emphasis on debt
management, and the use of this model), and A. P. Wierzbicki (on the
perspectives for and the challenges to the systems and operational sciences
in the era of knowledge economy and knowledge civilisation). This special
issue should go out of print in 2010, hopefully before Summer.
The other is a special, English-language issue of the Polish journal Badania
Operacyjne i Decyzje (Operations Research and Decisions), published by the
University of Technology in Wrocław. The title of this issue is “Decisions
in Politics, Economics and Business”, and the guest editor is, again, Jan W.
Owsinski. This issue, no. 4/2009, is composed of papers, dealing with game
theory, optimisation, stochastic models and various operations research
methods in decision making in political bodies (F. Turnovec for the European
level and J. Mercik for the veto power of the Polish President, H. Bury and
D. Wagner for group decisions), in production and pricing (S. Bylka, I.
Żółtowska and E. Toczyłowski, M. Kaleta and E. Toczyłowski), in
environmental issues – related to greenhouse gases and the respective
emission market (P. Nowak and M. Romaniuk, J. Stańczak), as well as
simulation of customer behaviour (A. Kowalska-Styczeń).
2. Next MODEST meeting, September 2010 – ampler information
The subsequent MODEST Workshop shall take place affiliated to the next BOS
conference, BOS 2010, which will take place on September 20-22 (Monday
through Wednesday) 2010 in Bydgoszcz, an important city in central-northern
Poland (some 200 km to the North of Warsaw). This meeting is organised
jointly with the Systems Research Institute of the Polish Academy of
Sciences and the University of Technical and Natural Sciences in Bydgoszcz.
The themes, envisaged for the MODEST meeting are:
-
"ICT and (local) development" - largely based on
the already existing bilateral Polish-French cooperation, but, of course,
all of those interested are cordially invited to join in!
-
"Banking & finance: trust, connectivity and
resilience" - against the background of the recent and the currently
looming international crises, but not only...
-
"Environment & economy: getting rid of paradoxes,
political agenda and the dirt?" - have we learned anything new as of
late?
Papers have already been announced and quite an
interesting program is under preparation. The deadline for sending in the
papers is June 15th, 2010. The registration fee, including student hostel
accommodation, shall not exceed 250 €, and shall depend on the number of
days, for which you register. Further information, with more details
(transport, location fee) shall be sent out at around June 10th, 2010.
3. Proposals and suggestions
In the previous Newsletters we forwarded some suggestions concerning the
potential fields of collaboration, e.g. within the framework of bilateral or
European projects. We now return to these ideas, by inserting some
additional information, and adding one more domain of potential joint work.
Let us emphasise that in all those fields not only definite research work is,
of course, being carried out, but, actually, some collaborative work is, as
well, underway.
These activities, and the related ideas, concentrate around the following
four themes (which, of course, do by no means limit the potential scope of
concepts for future collaborative work):
-
modeling for the evaluation of the consequences of
and design of changes in the Common Agricultural Policy; there are
already a number of models that supposedly do the job, but what
virtually all of them lack is the micro- or landscape, or community
dimension (or, at a bare minimum – the one of a municipality); on the
other hand there is also a gap on the real macro scale meaning aggregate
effects for the EU and the world; in conditions of the current crisis
the knowledge of potential consequences of various policies and
instruments at the scale of the real processes, and not only somewhat
abstract aggregates, becomes even more important;
-
assessing and modeling the role of ICT in
development (place and role in the feedback loop), especially in terms
of development dynamics from various starting points, and the
possibility of short-cuts; here, as well, the local and regional
dimension is of importance; again, this applies equally to the macro-
and the real micro- dimensions, in economic and spatial terms;
-
modeling the consequences of policies related to
the “green paths”, and the possibility of making (or leaving open and
effectively available) the truly “optimum” choices and avoiding the
“green paradoxes”, without bearing too much of economic and social costs
that would impair short - and medium-term competitiveness; this involves
an intricate interplay of time horizons, investment and risk, mainly
associated with energy; the recent events on the world scene, oil prices
and global-warming-related undertakings included, show it very clearly
that the respective models are indeed necessary, and, at that, a variety
of them, that could grasp the different aspects and perspectives on
these issues;
-
development of the methodologies related to
decision making under uncertainty in situations of emergency, with the
use of decision rules, decision trees, fuzzy and intuitionistic logic,
and respective linguistic representations; this set of methodological
tools might be of high value in devising decision support systems for
the high-risk operations with limited information and high uncertainty.
Should you be interested in collaboration on these
themes, or in coining other ones of potential interest to members of MODEST,
please, contact us about it.
4. A reminder: the book published by Palgrave
In 2007 a book was published by Palgrave Macmillan, very closely associated
with the activity of MODEST. An important aspect of this book is the
contribution of the 2007 Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics, late Leonid
Hurwicz. Here is the complete information on the book and its contents:
Zbigniew Nahorski, Jan W. Owsiński and Tomasz Szapiro, eds., The
Socio-Economic Transformation. Getting Closer to What? Palgrave
Macmillan, Houndmills – New York, 2007, ISBN 13: 978-0-230-00794-9; ISBN 10:
0-230-00794-5 (hardback).
Contents:
List of Tables and Figures / Preface / Notes on the Contributors
Some Remarks on the Study of Transformation Processes, Zbigniew Nahorski,
Jan W. Owsiński and Tomasz Szapiro
-
An Essay in Modelling of Institutional Change,
Leonid Hurwicz
-
When Do Stakes in Restructuring Put
Restructuring at Stake, Philipp J.H. Schröder
-
Privatization, Efficiency, and Economic Growth,
Thorvaldur Gylfason
-
How the System Worked, or: The Herring Barrel
Metaphor, Jan W. Owsiński
-
Transition and Stability of Redistribution
Policies, Jean-Luc Schneider
-
Fiscal Policy and Transition: The Case of Poland,
Scott L.
-
Baier and Gerhard Glomm Knowledge Management and
the Strategies of Global Business Education: From Knowledge to Wisdom,
Milan Zeleny
-
Modelling of the Labour Market in a Transition
Economy, Mikhail Mikhalevich
Index
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