Search Results

Tradeoffs?

Lane Kenworthy

in Progress for the Poor

If we commit to improvement in the absolute living standards of the least well-off, must we sacrifice other desirable outcomes? The comparative empirical evidence suggests not.

Chapter Chapter Understanding and Allocating Investment Risks in a Hybrid Pension Plan

Peter Albrecht, Joachim Coche, Raimond Maurer, and Ralph Rogalla

in Restructuring Retirement Risks

This chapter analyzes pension plan costs and investment strategies in the context of alternative hybrid pension plans, which are optimal either from the perspective of the plan sponsor or the ... More

This chapter analyzes pension plan costs and investment strategies in the context of alternative hybrid pension plans, which are optimal either from the perspective of the plan sponsor or the beneficiaries. It evaluates the impact of minimum and maximum limits for pension benefits as well as minimum guarantees and caps on members’ investment returns. For low/medium risk portfolios, minimum benefit guarantees tend to be more expensive than minimum return guarantees, but for the latter, costs increase exponentially with investment risk. It is also shown that the sponsor’s portfolio choice differs from that of the participants, depending on plan design and risk aversion. One way to resolve these differences is to combine minimum return guarantees and caps on investment returns, which shares investment risks and returns more equally between sponsor and beneficiaries, and keeps pension plan costs under control.Less

Mothers' Choices: Staying the Course, Opting Out, or Dropping Down

Mary Ann Mason and Eve Mason Ekman

in Mothers on the Fast Track: How a New Generation Can Balance Family and Careers

Almost all mothers consider, at least briefly, whether they can handle both a challenging career and a young family. Roughly half of women who begin a fast-track job will stay the course, but a ... More

Almost all mothers consider, at least briefly, whether they can handle both a challenging career and a young family. Roughly half of women who begin a fast-track job will stay the course, but a substantial number, mostly mothers, will drop out or drop down to a less demanding track. Doing so usually is not really a matter of choice even though some mothers believe it is. This chapter points out that working parents are forced out by backward family-leave policies, the escalating demands of the workplace, and a society which increasingly points a finger at mothers' ambitions. In this sense, the second tier and a temporary stay-at-home option are welcome alternatives to the rigid 9-to-5 track. But most mothers do not realize that dropping down will close doors permanently, even when a part-time track is advertised as a temporary alternative.Less

Repaying Darwin’s Debt to Agriculture

R. Ford Denison

in Darwinian Agriculture: How Understanding Evolution Can Improve Agriculture

This book proposes new approaches to improving agriculture based on the principles of evolutionary biology and natural selection. It argues that two popular approaches to improving agriculture, ... More

This book proposes new approaches to improving agriculture based on the principles of evolutionary biology and natural selection. It argues that two popular approaches to improving agriculture, biotechnology and traditional plant breeding, have tended to ignore evolutionary tradeoffs—that is, cases where an evolutionary change that is positive in one context is negative in another—and that both of them would benefit from greater attention to evolution. Whether we focus on genetic improvement of crops or better management of agricultural ecosystems, the book emphasizes the need to identify (and sometimes accept) tradeoffs that constrained past evolution in order to find new solutions to agricultural problems. It also considers some of the challenges facing agriculture, such as resource-use efficiency and food security. This chapter provides an overview of the book.Less

Darwinian Agriculture’s Three Core Principles

R. Ford Denison

in Darwinian Agriculture: How Understanding Evolution Can Improve Agriculture

This chapter introduces the three core principles of Darwinian agriculture. First, natural selection is fast enough, and has been improving plants and animals for long enough, that it has left few ... More

This chapter introduces the three core principles of Darwinian agriculture. First, natural selection is fast enough, and has been improving plants and animals for long enough, that it has left few simple, tradeoff-free opportunities for further improvement. Therefore, implicit or explicit acceptance of tradeoffs has been and will be key to crop genetic improvement, through biotechnology or traditional plant breeding methods. Second, competitive testing of individual adaptations by natural selection is more rigorous than nature's testing of natural ecosystems merely by endurance. Although testing by endurance shows sustainability, there may still be considerable room for improvement. Third, we should hedge our bets against future uncertainty with a greater variety of crops and of research approaches. The chapter argues that this bet-hedging will require allocating some land and other resources to crops and research programs that seem less promising today but may outperform today's winners if conditions change.Less

What Won’t Work: Tradeof-Blind Biotechnology

R. Ford Denison

in Darwinian Agriculture: How Understanding Evolution Can Improve Agriculture

This chapter considers the challenge of improving crop resource-use efficiency using biotechnology or traditional plant breeding. It argues that some of biotechnology's stated goals, such as more ... More

This chapter considers the challenge of improving crop resource-use efficiency using biotechnology or traditional plant breeding. It argues that some of biotechnology's stated goals, such as more efficient use of water by crops, are unlikely to be achieved without tradeoffs. After providing an overview of crop genetic improvement via traditional plant breeding or biotechnology, the chapter discusses the importance of greater resource-use efficiency and increasing yield potential. It then explains how natural selection has improved the efficiency of photosynthesis as well as water-use efficiency and how tradeoffs limit biotechnology improvement of crop water use. It also assesses the potential of genetic engineering to improve nutrient-use efficiency and asserts that near-term benefits of biotechnology have been exaggerated. The chapter concludes with a review of biotechnology's possible benefits and risks.Less

What Has Worked: ImproviNg Cooperation within Species

R. Ford Denison

in Darwinian Agriculture: How Understanding Evolution Can Improve Agriculture

This chapter discusses approaches that have worked in the past in improving cooperation within species. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, with evolutionary biology at the center, it argues that we ... More

This chapter discusses approaches that have worked in the past in improving cooperation within species. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, with evolutionary biology at the center, it argues that we need to pay particular attention to tradeoffs. The chapter first considers the Green Revolution, which it claims was based on reversing past natural selection, before looking at past evolutionary arms races and how they have resulted in plants, and even chickens, that compete vigorously with their neighbors for resources, even when that competition reduces their collective productivity. The chapter examines the ideas of Colin Donald and the case of the Australian wheat variety called Drysdale, and solar tracking by leaves. It also explores the tradeoff between the yield potential of a crop genotype and its ability to suppress weeds based on cooperation, group selection as a strategy for crop genetic improvement, and the role of biotechnology in understanding how plants detect crowding.Less

What Could Work Better: Cooperation betwen Two Species

R. Ford Denison

in Darwinian Agriculture: How Understanding Evolution Can Improve Agriculture

This chapter examines cooperation between two species and how cooperation among related individuals of one species can also help maintain cooperation between species. It presents some examples of ... More

This chapter examines cooperation between two species and how cooperation among related individuals of one species can also help maintain cooperation between species. It presents some examples of between-species cooperation, the evolutionary tradeoffs that can undermine such cooperation, and opportunities for improvement. The chapter begins by showing that cooperation and so-called cheating commonly occur between two species. It then considers how conflict evolves and how two-species partnerships may be improved such that they will be useful in agriculture. It also explores symbiotic nitrogen fixation and the dilemma termed “tragedy of the commons,” the link between kin selection and within-species cooperation, and microbial analogs of kin selection and rhizobial mutualism. Finally, the chapter discusses the sanctions hypothesis that explains the nature of microbial cooperation with plants, along with other opportunities for improved two-species cooperation.Less

Diversity, Bet-hedging, and Selection among Ideas

R. Ford Denison

in Darwinian Agriculture: How Understanding Evolution Can Improve Agriculture

This chapter summarizes the book's main conclusions and cautions against exclusive reliance on any single approach. The book's central thesis is that nature's wisdom is found primarily in ... More

This chapter summarizes the book's main conclusions and cautions against exclusive reliance on any single approach. The book's central thesis is that nature's wisdom is found primarily in competitively tested individual adaptations, in wild species and sometimes still in cultivated ones, rather than in the overall structure of natural ecosystems. It notes how some biotechnology advocates underestimate the perfection of existing individual adaptations and suggests that most near-term opportunities for genetic improvement of crops or livestock will involve tradeoffs that had constrained natural selection in the past. The chapter considers two basic approaches to the problem of varying environments: phenotypic plasticity and bet-hedging. It also discusses bet-hedging in food production, the bet-hedging benefits of organic farming and animal agriculture, and the use of diversity for bet-hedging in agricultural research. Finally, it describes traditional agricultural sciences that have been more receptive to input from evolutionary biology than biotechnology has.Less

Tradeoffs and biodiversity

David M. Wilkinson

in Fundamental Processes in Ecology: An earth systems approach

Tradeoffs are a fundamental aspect of biodiversity as they prevent a few species from monopolizing the planet. Well-known ecological concepts, such as the niche, only make sense in the context of ... More

Tradeoffs are a fundamental aspect of biodiversity as they prevent a few species from monopolizing the planet. Well-known ecological concepts, such as the niche, only make sense in the context of this more fundamental idea of tradeoff. The resulting biodiversity will have a positive Gaian effect, that is, it will tend to make an ecological community more stable than if it was composed of a smaller number of species. Biodiversity does not evolve to help stabilize the system (except in the limited sense that taxon poor systems may be more prone to extinction), it is an inevitable by-product of tradeoffs and other processes such as geographical isolation. One potentially important way to think about the Gaian effect of biodiversity is the idea of the ‘portfolio effect’ from economics, although other ideas, such as Grime's ‘transient species’ are also important.Less

Design Tradeoffs

Richard M. Murray

in Biomolecular Feedback Systems

This chapter describes some of the design tradeoffs arising from the interaction between synthetic circuits and the host organism. It first considers the effects of competition for shared cellular ... More

This chapter describes some of the design tradeoffs arising from the interaction between synthetic circuits and the host organism. It first considers the effects of competition for shared cellular resources on circuits' behavior. In particular, circuits (endogenous and exogenous) share a number of cellular resources. The insertion or induction of synthetic circuits in the cellular environment changes for these resources, with possibly undesired repercussions on the functioning of the circuits. Independent circuits may become coupled when they share common resources that are not in overabundance. This fact leads to constraints among the concentrations of proteins in synthetic circuits, which should be accounted for in the design phase. Next, the chapter looks at the effect of biological noise on the design of devices requiring high gains. Specifically, the chapter illustrates possible design tradeoffs between retroactivity attenuation and noise amplification that emerge due to the intrinsic noise of biomolecular reactions.Less

Scope

Gary Goertz and James Mahoney

in A Tale of Two Cultures: Qualitative and Quantitative Research in the Social Sciences

This chapter focuses on scope conditions in qualitative and quantitative research. It begins with a simple example, Hooke's law from physics, to illustrate the concept of “scope.” It then considers ... More

This chapter focuses on scope conditions in qualitative and quantitative research. It begins with a simple example, Hooke's law from physics, to illustrate the concept of “scope.” It then considers some of the most popular “within-model” responses to causal heterogeneity problems, showing that the option of changing the causal model to address causal heterogeneity issues is more attractive to quantitative researchers than to qualitative researchers. It also examines how the existence of causal complexity and concerns about fit with data can lead scholars to use scope conditions. Finally, it discusses the relationship between empirical testing and the proposed scope of theories and suggests that issues of scope raise Fundamental Tradeoffs in social science research, including tradeoffs concerning the tension between generality and parsimony, and between generality and issues of model fit.Less

 Wage Compression and the Unemployment Crisis: Labor Market Institutions, Skills, and Inequality‐Unemployment Tradeoffs

David R. Howell and Friedrich Huebler

in Fighting Unemployment: The Limits of Free Market Orthodoxy

At the core of the orthodox view is the belief that policy makers face an ineluctable choice between employment and equality. With data from the OECD for the major affluent OECD countries, empirical ... More

At the core of the orthodox view is the belief that policy makers face an ineluctable choice between employment and equality. With data from the OECD for the major affluent OECD countries, empirical support for a variety of tradeoffs is explored: between unemployment rates and earnings inequality; between the change in unemployment rates and the growth in earnings inequality; between unemployment inequality (high vs. low skill) and earnings inequality; and between employment rate inequality (high vs. low skill) and earnings inequality. The authors find little evidence for these predicted tradeoffs. The chapter also looks at skill distributions and finds that differences in institutions, not skill distributions, are the main source of cross-country differences in earnings inequality. They conclude that the labor market institutions that clearly compress wages do not appear to have similarly clear and substantial adverse effects on employment performance.Less

The Tradeoffs

Jacob N. Shapiro

in The Terrorist's Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations

This chapter begins with a discussion of how the covert nature of terrorism inevitably creates opportunities for operatives to expropriate organizational resources for their own purposes, leading to ... More

This chapter begins with a discussion of how the covert nature of terrorism inevitably creates opportunities for operatives to expropriate organizational resources for their own purposes, leading to the security-efficiency tradeoff. It then turns to an analysis of the security-control tradeoff, modeling the tradeoff as arising from an unusual agency problem in which principals are better informed than their agents about which actions will best serve the political goal. The chapter also looks at how this tradeoff plays out, since communicating with these agents creates security risks and sanctioning them for misbehaving is costly. The game-theoretic analysis provides rich intuition for what one should expect to see in terms of differences between organizations that vary in distinct ways on the key variables of discrimination, uncertainty, preference divergence, and security.Less

Setting Objectives, Facing Trade-Offs

Gary S. Fields

in Working Hard, Working Poor: A Global Journey

This chapter makes six points. First, policy makers have identified four key labor market policy objectives—create more jobs, raise the earnings of those working, increase social protection, and ... More

This chapter makes six points. First, policy makers have identified four key labor market policy objectives—create more jobs, raise the earnings of those working, increase social protection, and ensure that core labor standards are honored—and should keep all four in mind and not go after just one heedless of the other three. Second, while each of these four objectives is important in its own right, the overriding objective in the author's view is reducing poverty to the maximum extent possible. Third, policies aimed at helping advance one labor market policy objective may be harmful to another; tradeoffs on the policy side need to be faced explicitly. Fourth, resources always have alternative uses; tradeoffs on the budgetary side also need to be faced explicitly. Fifth, a good way to bring all of these considerations together is to ask about the size of the extra social benefits, the size of the extra social costs, and how they compare for one or more uses of a development budget; it is better to answer the right questions approximately than to answer the wrong questions precisely. And sixth, when the right questions are asked but the answers are not known, it would be good to carry out in-depth research to find out the answers; econometric studies and randomized experiments both have an important place in discovering what matters.Less

Pioneering Peer-to-Peer and Other Disruptive Dual-Use Technologies

Michael A. Carrier

in Innovation for the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law

This chapter examines dual-use technologies such as the VCR, computer, CD burner, iPod, TiVo, and peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. It discusses the case of Sony Corporation of America v. Universal ... More

This chapter examines dual-use technologies such as the VCR, computer, CD burner, iPod, TiVo, and peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. It discusses the case of Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, in which the Supreme Court held that the manufacturer of the Betamax VCR was not liable for contributory copyright infringement. Given the importance of P2P software to current dual-use debates, the chapter introduces the technology and three judicial treatments of it (Napster, Aimster, and Grokster). It shows that the tradeoff between innovation and creativity is not as intractable as most courts and scholars have previously thought. The reason is that innovation, but not creativity, is drastically threatened by the selected test. The chapter introduces three dangers facing innovation: (i) an innovation asymmetry downplays new technologies' future benefits and overemphasizes copyright owners' present losses; (ii) an error-costs asymmetry reveals that a technology's abandonment has a far more drastic effect than its wrongful continuation; and (iii) a litigation asymmetry ensnares small technology makers in a web of complex tests and unaffordable lawsuits. The chapter explores the benefits of P2P technology, including distribution, the “long tail,” and promotion, and it's potentially serving as a counterbalance to the Google search engine and cloud computer. The chapter concludes by recommending a return to the Sony test, as this would foster innovation.Less

Family Fertility

C. Y. Cyrus Chu and Ruoh‐Rong Yu

in Understanding Chinese Families: A Comparative Study of Taiwan and Southeast China

This chapter studies various aspects of family fertility in Taiwan and China, including the age of marriage, the duration from marriage to the first birth, mandatory vs. voluntary family planning, ... More

This chapter studies various aspects of family fertility in Taiwan and China, including the age of marriage, the duration from marriage to the first birth, mandatory vs. voluntary family planning, the contraceptive practices, the preferences for sons, the newborn sex ratio, and the quantity‐quality tradeoffs. With respect to basic statistics, various measures against the degree of urbanization and the educational level of wives are cross‐tabulated. Concerning quantity‐quality tradeoffs, the instrumental variable method was applied and it was found that there does not exist a negative relationship between sibship size and educational attainment, for both Taiwan and China. Finally, the analysis on birth duration shows that co‐residing with the husband's parents shortens the first two birth durations in Taiwan.Less