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on Project, Program and Portfolio Management |
| By: | Bent Flyvbjerg; Alexander Budzier |
| Abstract: | New research shows surprisingly high numbers of out-of-control tech projects - ones that can sink entire companies and careers. |
| Date: | 2013–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1304.0265&r=ppm |
| By: | Bent Flyvbjerg |
| Abstract: | Risk, including economic risk, is increasingly a concern for public policy and management. The possibility of dealing effectively with risk is hampered, however, by lack of a sound empirical basis for risk assessment and management. The paper demonstrates the general point for cost and demand risks in urban rail projects. The paper presents empirical evidence that allow valid economic risk assessment and management of urban rail projects, including benchmarking of individual or groups of projects. Benchmarking of the Copenhagen Metro is presented as a case in point. The approach developed is proposed as a model for other types of policies and projects in order to improve economic and financial risk assessment and management in policy and planning. |
| Date: | 2013–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1303.7402&r=ppm |
| By: | Bent Flyvbjerg |
| Abstract: | This paper argues, first, that a major problem in the planning of large infrastructure projects is the high level of misinformation about costs and benefits that decision makers face in deciding whether to build, and the high risks such misinformation generates. Second, it explores the causes of misinformation and risk, mainly in the guise of optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation. Finally, the paper presents a number of measures aimed at improving planning and decision making for large infrastructure projects, including changed incentive structures and better planning methods. Thus the paper is organized as a simple triptych consisting in problems, causes, and cures. |
| Date: | 2013–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1303.7400&r=ppm |
| By: | Bent Flyvbjerg; Massimo Garbuio; Dan Lovallo |
| Abstract: | The Economist recently reported that infrastructure spending is the largest it is ever been as a share of world GDP. With $22 trillion in projected investments over the next ten years in emerging economies alone, the magazine calls it the "biggest investment boom in history." The efficiency of infrastructure planning and execution is therefore particularly important at present. Unfortunately, the private sector, the public sector and private/public sector partnerships have a dismal record of delivering on large infrastructure cost and performance promises. This paper explains why and how to solve the problem. |
| Date: | 2013–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1303.7403&r=ppm |
| By: | Toshihiro Kanai (Graduate School of Business Administration, Kobe University); Noboru Matsushima (Graduate School of Business Administration, Kobe University); Mitsuhiro Urano (School of Management and Information, University of Shizuoka) |
| Abstract: | In this article, we propose that the scientific knowledge has a public nature. Our knowledge production, therefore, is inevitably connected to the realities socially constructed. We discuss how our knowledge production is connected to the management practices, according to our field research of the urgent project system in Sharp Co.. |
| Date: | 2012–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kbb:dpaper:2012-20&r=ppm |
| By: | IGAMI, Masatsura; NAGAOKA, Sadao; WALSH, John P. |
| Abstract: | How to design and manage a research team has become an increasingly important issue in knowledge creation in science. This paper aims to understand how young scholars contribute to scientific research in the context of a research team. We have found that the likelihood of the involvement of postdoctoral fellows is high in research teams working on a rapidly advancing research theme, facing competitive threat, and in those research teams with foreign-born scholars and when exploiting advanced research equipment. Focusing on the papers where the order of the authors follows contribution, the probability of postdoctoral fellows becoming the first authors is more likely to exceed that due to a random assignment in the research teams facing competitive threat, with foreign-born postdoctoral scholars and when exploiting advanced research equipment. Finally, we have found that the involvement of postdoctoral fellows is positively associated with research performance in terms of citation counts and with shorter time to the publication even if the size of project is controlled for. The finding that postdoctoral fellows accelerate the speed of research is consistent with the fact that they become more likely to be the first authors in the face of strong scientific competition. These findings illuminate how young scholars contribute to the teambased research. |
| Keywords: | Team, Young scholars, Science, First Author, Competition |
| JEL: | O30 D23 |
| Date: | 2013–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:iirwps:13-02&r=ppm |
| By: | Hannes Öhler; Peter Nunnenkamp |
| Abstract: | The regional allocation of aid within recipient countries has been largely ignored in the aid allocation literature. We use geocoded data on the location of aid projects financed by the World Bank and the African Development Bank within a sample of 27 recipient countries to assess the claim of donors that their aid targets needy population segments. We also assess whether political leaders in these countries direct aid funds to their home region, irrespective of regional needs. We do not find that the multilateral aid institutions take regional needs into account. Instead, favoritism appears to play an important role for location choices, in particular for physical infrastructure projects |
| Keywords: | aid allocation, within-country targeting, favoritism, World Bank, African Development Bank |
| JEL: | F35 F53 |
| Date: | 2013–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kie:kieliw:1838&r=ppm |
| By: | Werner Güth (Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group) |
| Abstract: | A group of actors, individuals or firms, can engage in collectively providing projects which may be costly or generating revenues and which may benefit some and harm others. Based on requirements of procedural fairness (Güth and Kliemt, 2013), we derive a bidding mechanism determining endogenously who participates in collective provision, which projects are implemented, and the positive or negative payments due to the participating members. We justify and discuss this procedural fairness approach and compare it with that of optimal, e.g. welfaristic game theoretic mechanism design (e.g. Myerson, 1979). |
| Keywords: | Procedural fairness, Mechanism design, Equality axiom, Public provision, Collective action |
| JEL: | D44 D46 D61 D62 D63 D71 D72 D73 D74 |
| Date: | 2013–03–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2013-013&r=ppm |
| By: | Antony Millner; Hélène Ollivier; Leo Simon |
| Abstract: | An incumbent political party, who cares only about voters' welfare, faces future political competition from a similarly well-intentioned party whose beliefs about the consequences of a `long-run' public policy are different from its own. We show that when the incumbent can endogenously influence whether learning occurs (active learning), future political competition gives her an incentive to distort her policy choices so as to reduce uncertainty and disagreement in the future. This incentive pushes all incumbents' policies in the same direction. We demonstrate this mechanism in a two period model of the regulation of a stock pollutant that combines the literature on uncertainty and learning in intertemporal choice with a simple model of political competition. If the interaction between active learning and political competition is strong enough, all incumbents, regardless of their beliefs, will emit more than they would like. Our model thus offers a candidate explanation for the weakness of long-run environmental policy in democracies that applies even in an ideal world in which politicians' objectives are aligned with voters'. The mechanism we identify is likely to apply in many long-run public policy contexts. |
| Date: | 2013–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lsg:lsgwps:wp104&r=ppm |