The 2009 winner of the Dana Meadows Student Award for the best student paper presented at the annual conference is Timothy Taylor at the Construction Engineering and Management Program, Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University, for the paper Science, engineering, and technology in the policy process for natural systems. 2009 Honorable Mentions (equally ranked): Howard Hao-Chun Chuang at the Department of Information and Operations Management, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University for the paper Team Psychological Safety and Group Learning: Cycle-Time Reduction for IT-enabled Collaborative Product Development and Margaret Stringfellow at M.I.T., for the paper Healthcare Industry Incentive Structures Pressure System Operators to Operate in a High-risk State.
The success of many open source applications has motivated commercial firms to explore how they can benefit from opening their software platforms in hope of getting free high quality contributors and more complementary products. Yet the openness decision is tightly coupled with the pricing of the software (e.g. openness limits the price that can be charged) and the reinforcing feedback loops of network effects and complementary products. In this paper we explore how there interconnections impact the optimum pricing and openness decision for two firms in competition. Reinforcing loops increase the value of early market lead and put pressure on the competing firms to seek such advantage. We show that the competitive equilibrium under strong reinforcing loops calls for highly open software products with deep early discounts, which may significantly compromise the profitability of the players in the market. Proprietary platforms and higher prices are favored in the absence of these loops.
Steel making is an energy intensive industry and for this reason, energy prices, especially oil and natural gas prices, have an important effect on this industry. In 2008, the sharp rise of crude oil as well as iron ore price caused the sharp rise of steel price because of the rise in prices of key production factors. But Iran's producers experienced almost no rise in their production factor prices especially key factors of energy and iron ore prices. As a matter of fact, inexpensive energy and iron ore are competitive advantages of steel makers in Iran because the huge natural resources of the country let the government to provide inexpensive production factors for the industry. But these inexpensive factors have some side effects that one of them is on the stock price of steel makers in stock market.
Iran is a resource-based country and these resources have brought advantages and disadvantages for the country. It seems that disadvantages are results of mismanagement of the resources and not the existence of resources. Fuel subsidy is an example of such mismanagements. Actually while fuel subsidies are common in the Middle East, the oil-richest place of the world, Iranian domestic fuel prices are among the lowest in the world. The low fuel prices, population and urbanization growth caused growth of fuel consumption and consequently growth of subsidies. But because nothing can grow forever, two years ago the government had to start rationing plan to reduce the growth of consumption due to budget and gasoline stock limitations.
This paper provides a system approach to the analysis of the property markets by first setting out a high level model of the market. The imperfections in information and distortions in such markets are widely acknowledged and accounted for while the role of legal, financial and social institutions being emphasised. The rate of production in the property markets in most advanced economies is a function of institutional factors as developed over time representing unique and path-dependent characteristics. The paper describes the main factors that have gone into the production of a general System Dynamics simulation model of the property markets which further focuses on the characteristics of the UK housing market as a case study and provides an analysis of its current structure. The paper indicates how in the absence of reliable and sufficient information simulation modelling can aid decision making in the real estate. As an imperfect market the role and potential areas of impact of governmental policy are outlined. The effects of tightening worldwide credit regimes on the UK construction industry are included in the model. The relationships between the credit crunch and the behaviour of the construction industry are identified and are explored. The analysis presented in the paper concludes with potential scenarios for determining the future behaviour of the market.
This paper presents a brief discourse on chaotic behaviour and provides an implementation of a classical example from existing chaos theory; the Lorenz strange attractor. The implementation is carried out using standard System Dynamics software and techniques. The paper then goes on to describe a classical buffered feedback system; the Ktesibios clock. The implementation of this feedback system is again carried out using standard System Dynamics software and techniques. Both systems are then amalgamated to unite the butterfly effect of the Lorenz attractor with the buffered nature of the water clock. It is postulated that the resultant taming of the chaotic behaviour generated by the Lorenz attractor through the feedback buffer of the Ktesibios machine is common to many systems; brief examples are given. It is concluded that, in some cases at least, it is the overwhelming of the buffer that leads to a tipping point returning the whole system to a state of chaotic behaviour. Implementing a model of a natural buffered system with chaotic input is identified as an area for further work.
There are numerous discussions on possible leverage points in improving software quality and they have been placed in various context--from technical approach, improving user education to economic approach. One of central points of the discussions is on the best policy to handle vulnerability discoveries. Various approaches have been developed: from secret reporting, full-disclosure, responsible disclosure to a market approach. The dominant aspect of the latter is about the Vulnerability Black Market (VBM), which emerged due to the latter development, as an alternative for malicious hackers to sell exploits and malware that take advantage of the flaws in the software. The model in this paper draws on empirical observation on black markets and market-based approach for vulnerability discovery to generate a simple model of VBM. The model results suggest that efficient legal markets may attract malicious hackers to enter the legal markets and may reduce their likelihood to be involved in vulnerability black markets. However, better patching management may mitigate the abuse of software vulnerabilities.
In the UK, formal tertiary education comes at monetary cost to those who choose to participate. Currently 43% of young people enter universities in the belief that they will recoup the initial expense in higher salaries, later in life. Whilst this is a historically true model for the majority of graduates, many analysts believe that the Government's push for a 50% participation rate, coupled with rising costs to attend university, could affect the profitability of higher education and lead to a situation where ignorance is not only bliss but also an economically sound decision.
The Dutch Soft Drugs policy will soon be under review. Regarding Dutch Soft Drugs policy, the Dutch population and political arena could be divided into three groups: those who do not really care, those strongly in favor of legalizing cultivation and use of soft drugs, and those strongly in favor of banning soft drugs. The points of view of the two latter groups are analyzed in this paper
This paper deals with System Dynamics education at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. It focuses more specifically on the quadruple jump approach towards dealing with real-world dynamic complexity. The paper starts with an overview of the System Dynamics courses, situated within the broader curriculum. Then recent innovations in the Introductory System Dynamics course are discussed. Finally, some of the lessons learned are distilled. The rationale behind this paper are the beliefs that (higher) education determines to a large extent the quality of (the next generation) professional System Dynamics modelers, and hence, the field of System Dynamics as a whole, and that sharing (innovative and/or proven) educational practices, and exchanging actual and challenging (teaching and testing) cases may lead to further improving the quality of System Dynamics education.