The Asia and Pacific region continued to grow despite a difficult external global environment. The developing member countries demonstrated considerable resilience, following the second oil shock and the international debt crisis that followed. This volume shows how the Asian Development Bank (ADB) responded to the growing diversity among its developing member countries as both membership and operations widened during decade. Considerations about ADB's priorities were ongoing and ranged across many topics. To support these discussions as well as to provide information for policy makers across the region, ADB sought to position itself as a "regional resource center" with a broader development role of providing not only financial assistance but becoming a center of new thinking on development issues in the region as well. ADB moved closer to the ground by opening its first Resident Office in Bangladesh in 1982. New products were introduced—program lending, sector lending, direct lending to private sector without government guarantees, and equity investment—to meet changing needs and expectations of countries. As the decade closed, two key historical landmarks occurred: ADB made its first loan to India, and the People's Republic of China became a member after long and difficult negotiations.
The Philippine Chairmanship of ASEAN in 2017 is an opportune time to revive the National Branding Council proposal made by the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) in 20121 to build the international image and reputation of the country. Nation Branding is an important tool in managing a country's identity across the globe forming part of public diplomacy (PD). PD covers aspects such as inducing appeal by influencing public opinion using information, education and culture. This has long been strategically employed by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA). Nation branding, on the other hand, is a related concept but not new to Philippine government agencies such as the Department of Tourism and the Department of Trade and Industry. Nation branding, however, entails knowing the country—its people, products, and how it is perceived by other publics.
The 21st edition of the G20 Monitor highlights important considerations for the G20 ahead of the 4–5 September 2016 G20 Leaders' Summit in Hangzhou, and examines some of the broader governance challenges that may feature prominently at the 7–8 July 2017 G20 Leaders' Summit in Hamburg, Germany.
In this study, we use National Sample Survey (NSS) data from surveys conducted by the Government of India. These are recall-based household surveys on multiple topics, including healthcare and consumer expenditure. More specifically, we use the 60th and 71st rounds of the NSS which included a questionnaire focused on healthcare, with questions on morbidity and the consumption of healthcare for all individuals within the surveyed households. Over the 10 years, the similarity of information collected in the two rounds of the surveys, gives us an opportunity to make scientific comparisons to understand the big changes in health and morbidity outcomes for Indian households. Our main results for health-seeking behaviour show that households still overwhelmingly depend on private providers for healthcare services. While as much as 75 per cent of out-patient care is exclusively private, 55 per cent of in-patient care is from private hospitals in India. This dependence, however, is declining and more significantly so for in-patient care. Indian households' dependence on public care has risen by 6 per cent for out-patient care and by 7 per cent for in-patient care. Most of these increases are driven by rural women seeking more public healthcare, over last 10 years. More precisely, our analysis of the data shows that the Janani Suraksha Yojana incentives led to a significant increase of 15 per cent in institutional childbirth in India with a commensurate decline in deliveries at home. The disaggregated data also shows that there was a large increase of 22 per cent in deliveries in government hospitals, which was mirrored by an 8 per cent decline in childbirth at private hospitals and a 16 per cent decline in childbirth at home. Given that the fundamental objective of the JSY was to raise institutional deliveries, the NSSO data shows that the scheme performed well over the 10 years. At the same time, it is important to note that our analysis points to the increase in public hospitalisation being incentive driven, which does not allow us to draw an inference about either the quality of services provided or the sustainability of the increase.
This paper uses the night lights (satellite imagery from outer space) approach to estimate growth in and levels of subnational 2013 gross domestic product for 47 counties in Kenya and 30 districts in Rwanda. Estimating subnational gross domestic product is consequential for three reasons. First, there is strong policy interest in how growth can occur in different parts of countries, so that communities can share in national prosperity and not get left behind. Second, subnational entities want to understand how they stack up against their neighbors and competitors, and how much they contribute to national gross domestic product. Third, such information could help private investors to assess where to undertake investments. Using night lights has the advantage of seeing a new and more accurate estimation of informal activity, and being independent of official data. However, the approach may underestimate economic activity in sectors that are largely unlit notably agriculture. For Kenya, the results of the analysis affirm that Nairobi County is the largest contributor to national gross domestic product. However, at 13 percent, this contribution is lower than commonly thought. For Rwanda, the three districts of Kigali account for 40 percent of national gross domestic product, underscoring the lower scale of economic activity in the rest of the country. To get a composite picture of subnational economic activity, especially in the context of rapidly improving official statistics in Kenya and Rwanda, it is important to estimate subnational gross domestic product using standard approaches (production, expenditure, income).
The last eight years since the global financial crisis have been quite eventful and challenging for everyone, especially policy makers. Crises, one after the other, have tested the 'too-big-to-fail' perception, challenged existing policies and led to the adoption of unconventional ones. Several attempts at policy reorientation have put the economy back on the growth path, but the recovery remains weak. The leaders' level G20 has been an instrumental platform for integrated and coordinated discussions on global economic and financial issues since the global financial crisis of 2008. With a focus on reducing risk and volatility in international financial markets, controlling unemployment, supporting an open trade and investment regime, the G20 has been working towards achieving its objective of strong, sustainable and balanced growth. In 2014 the finance ministers of the G-20 set themselves an objective of increasing world GDP by 2 percentage points—or about $1.5 trillion—over the next five years, over and above the current "business as usual" trend.
The public rhetoric of the Abbott government suggests that Australia is presently comfortable with Indonesia's rise, with the prime minister commenting in positive terms that "Indonesia is an incredibly important country to Australia given its proximity, its size and its potential." In recent times, Abbott has welcomed the "wave of confidence and renewal sweeping Indonesia" with the hope that the country under Joko Widodo whom Abbott praised as a "charismatic and inspirational figure" will allow Australia "opportunities to take part in the renewal and the reinvigoration of this important neighbour and partner." Such comfort stems in part from the relatively smooth and bloodless transfer of power from Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) to Jokowi despite the protestations of the defeated presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto – signalling that Indonesia has become a significantly different country to what it was under Sukarno. Even so, Australia is well aware that Indonesia's democratic transition is far from irreversible or permanent and that the future political direction of Indonesia is not assured or set in stone. In reality, Australia's current comfort with Indonesia's rise is also largely based on Canberra's assessment that the preferred 'Goldilocks' point has been reached for the foreseeable future – that Indonesia is neither too strong to threaten Australia's strategic interests nor too weak or divided a country to pose headaches for Canberra.
The Asian Development Review (ADR) is a professional journal that publishes research on development issues relevant to the countries of the Asia and Pacific region, specifically members of the Asian Development Bank. The ADR publishes high-quality empirical papers, survey articles, historical analyses, and policy-oriented work. The ADR bridges theoretical work and rigorous empirical studies that advance the understanding of Asia's development; and it is open to discussions of alternative perspectives on all aspects of development, including globalization, inequality, structural transformation, and poverty. The ADR aims to disseminate the best research, with contributions from scholars in all fields, with the objective of providing the knowledge necessary for designing, implementing, and sustaining effective development policies. Its intended audience comprises a worldwide readership of economists and other social scientists.
In this paper, we bring to light the link between immigration in France and the appeal to its welfare system: familial assistance, retirement, health, housing assistance, unemployment benefits and RMI (the French Minimum Guaranteed Income). Our results show that when we control for differences in characteristics between natives and immigrants, the over representation of mi grants among the beneficiaries of social protection is noticed only for unemployment benefits and for the RMI (in addition to an over representation also on housing assistance, in particular for the populations born in North Africa.
This paper investigates the patterns of capital entry barriers and capital returns in informal Micro and Small Enterprises (MSE's) using a unique micro data set seven West-African countries. The author's findings support the view of a heterogeneous informal sector that is not primarily host to subsistence activities. While an assessment of initial investment identifies some informal activities with negligible entry barriers, a notable cost of entry is associated to most activities. The authors find very heterogeneous patterns of capital returns in informal MSE's. At very low levels of capital, marginal returns are extremely high- often exceeding 70 percent per month. Above a capital stock of 150 international dollars, marginal returns are found to be relatively low at around 4 to 7 percent monthly. The authors provide some evidence that the high returns at low capital stocks reflect high risks. At the same time, most MSE's appear to be severely capital constrained.
In this paper we bring together institutional, contextual, and behavioral perspectives in a comprehensive model that explores determinants of executive and legislative approval based on economic performance in Brazil and Chile. Our main question is, do voters attribute responsibility for the state of the economy to their representatives in the Legislative Branch as they apparently do to officeholders in the Executive Branch? We search for answers to this question with an eye on how active the distinct branches of government are in economic policy-making and voters' levels of political sophistication. Our main hypothesis is that less sophisticated voters will blame politicians indiscriminately for the state of the economy, independent of how influential each branch of government is on economic policy. More sophisticated voters will better discern the role each branch plays in economic policy-making and will not blame representatives in the Legislative Branch for the state of the economy when Congress is not active in economic policy-making. The cases of Brazil and Chile under Cardoso and Lagos offer the perfect opportunity to test this hypothesis, which is confirmed by our data. (GIGA)
In: Decision analysis: a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, INFORMS, Band 7, Heft 4, S. 404-410
ISSN: 1545-8504
Ali Abbas (" From the Editors… ") is an associate professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He received an M.S. in electrical engineering (1998), an M.S. in engineering economic systems and operations research (2001), a Ph.D. in management science and engineering (2003), and a Ph.D. (minor) in electrical engineering, all from Stanford University. He worked as a lecturer in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford and worked in Schlumberger Oilfield Services from 1991 to 1997, where he held several international positions in wireline logging, operations management, and international training. He has also worked on several consulting projects for mergers and acquisitions in California, and cotaught several executive seminars on decision analysis at Strategic Decisions Group in Menlo Park, California. His research interests include utility theory, decision making with incomplete information and preferences, dynamic programming, and information theory. Dr. Abbas is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). He is also an associate editor for Decision Analysis and Operations Research and coeditor of the DA column in education for Decision Analysis Today. Address: Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 117 Transportation Building, MC-238, 104 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801; e-mail: aliabbas@uiuc.edu . Matthew D. Bailey (" Eliciting Patients' Revealed Preferences: An Inverse Markov Decision Process Approach ") is an assistant professor of business analytics and operations in the School of Management at Bucknell University, and he is an adjunct research investigator with Geisinger Health System. He received his Ph.D. in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan. His primary research interest is in sequential decision making under uncertainty with applications to health-care operations and medical decision making. He is a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) and the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE). Address: School of Management, Bucknell University, 308 Taylor Hall, Lewisburg, PA 17837; e-mail: matt.bailey@bucknell.edu . Anthony M. Barrett (" Cost Effectiveness of On-Site Chlorine Generation for Chlorine Truck Attack Prevention ") is a risk analyst at ABS Consulting in Arlington, Virginia. He holds a Ph.D. in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University, and he also was a postdoctoral research associate at the Homeland Security Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) at the University of Southern California. His research interests include risk analysis, risk management, and public policies in a wide variety of areas, including terrorism, hazardous materials, energy and the environment, and natural hazards. Address: ABS Consulting, 1525 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 625, Arlington, VA 22209; e-mail: abarrett@absconsulting.com . Manel Baucells (" From the Editors… ") is a full professor at the Department of Economics and Business of Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. He was an associate professor and head of the Managerial Decision Sciences Department at IESE Business School. He earned his Ph.D. in management from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and holds a degree in mechanical engineering from Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC). His research and consulting activities cover multiple areas of decision making including group decisions, consumer decisions, uncertainty, complexity, and psychology. He acts as associate editor for the top journals Management Science, Operations Research, and Decision Analysis. He has received various prizes and grants for his research. In 2001, he won the student paper competition of the Decision Analysis Society. He is the only IESE professor having won both the Excellence Research Award and the Excellence Teaching Award. He has been visiting professor at Duke University, UCLA, London Business School, and Erasmus University. Address: Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Ramon Trias Fargas 25-27, 08005 Barcelona, Spain; e-mail: manel.baucells@upf.edu . J. Eric Bickel (" Scoring Rules and Decision Analysis Education ") is an assistant professor in both the Operations Research/Industrial Engineering Group (Department of Mechanical Engineering) and the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. In addition, Professor Bickel is a fellow in both the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy and the Center for Petroleum Asset Risk Management. He holds an M.S. and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University and a B.S. in mechanical engineering with a minor in economics from New Mexico State University. His research interests include the theory and practice of decision analysis and its application in the energy and climate-change arenas. His research has addressed the modeling of probabilistic dependence, value of information, scoring rules, calibration, risk preference, education, decision making in sports, and climate engineering as a response to climate change. Prior to joining the University of Texas at Austin, Professor Bickel was an assistant professor at Texas A&M University and a senior engagement manager for Strategic Decisions Group. He has consulted around the world in a range of industries, including oil and gas, electricity generation/transmission/delivery, energy trading and marketing, commodity and specialty chemicals, life sciences, financial services, and metals and mining. Address: Graduate Program in Operations Research, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station, C2200, Austin, TX 78712-0292; e-mail: ebickel@mail.utexas.edu . Vicki M. Bier (" From the Editors… ") holds a joint appointment as a professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the Department of Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she has directed the Center for Human Performance and Risk Analysis (formerly the Center for Human Performance in Complex Systems) since 1995. She has more than 20 years of experience in risk analysis for the nuclear power, chemical, petrochemical, and aerospace industries. Before returning to academia, she spent seven years as a consultant at Pickard, Lowe and Garrick, Inc. While there, her clients included the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Department of Energy, and a number of nuclear utilities, and she prepared testimony for Atomic Safety and Licensing Board hearings on the safety of the Indian Point nuclear power plants. Dr. Bier's current research focuses on applications of risk analysis and related methods to problems of security and critical infrastructure protection, under support from the Department of Homeland Security. Dr. Bier received the Women's Achievement Award from the American Nuclear Society in 1993, and was elected a Fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis in 1996, from which she received the Distinguished Achievement Award in 2007. She has written a number of papers and book chapters related to uncertainty analysis and decision making under uncertainty, and is the author of two scholarly review articles on risk communication. She served as the engineering editor for Risk Analysis from 1997 through 2001, and has served as a councilor of both the Society for Risk Analysis and the Decision Analysis Society, for which she is currently vice president and president elect. Dr. Bier has also served as a member of both the Radiation Advisory Committee and the Homeland Security Advisory Committee of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Science Advisory Board. Address: Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1513 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706; e-mail: bier@engr.wisc.edu . Samuel E. Bodily (" Darden's Luckiest Student: Lessons from a High-Stakes Risk Experiment ") is the John Tyler Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business and has published textbooks and more than 40 articles in journals ranging from Harvard Business Review to Management Science. His publications relate to decision and risk analysis, forecasting, strategy modeling, revenue management, and eStrategy. He has edited special issues of Interfaces on decision and risk analysis and strategy modeling and analysis. Professor Bodily has published well over 100 cases, including a couple of the 10 best-selling cases at Darden. He received the Distinguished Casewriter Wachovia Award from Darden in 2005 and three other best case or research Wachovia awards. He is faculty leader for an executive program on Strategic Thinking and Action. He is the course head of, and teaches in, a highly valued first-year MBA course in decision analysis, has a successful second-year elective on Management Decision Models, and has taught eStrategy and Strategy. He is a past winner of the Decision Sciences International Instructional Award and has served as chair of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society. He has taught numerous executive education programs for Darden and private companies, has consulted widely for business and government entities, and has served as an expert witness. Professor Bodily was on the faculties of MIT Sloan School of Management and Boston University and has been a visiting professor at INSEAD Singapore, Stanford University, and the University of Washington. He has a Ph.D. degree and an S.M. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.S. degree in physics from Brigham Young University. Address: Darden School of Business, 100 Darden Boulevard, Charlottesville, VA 22903; e-mail: bodilys@virginia.edu . David Budescu (" From the Editors… ") is the Anne Anastasi Professor of Psychometrics and Quantitative Psychology at Fordham University. He held positions at the University of Illinois and the University of Haifa, and visiting positions at Carnegie Mellon University, University of Gotheborg, the Kellog School at Northwestern University, the Hebrew University, and the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion). His research is in the areas of human judgment, individual and group decision making under uncertainty and with incomplete and vague information, and statistics for the behavioral and social sciences. He is or was on the editorial boards of Applied Psychological Measurement; Decision Analysis; Journal of Behavioral Decision Making; Journal of Mathematical Psychology; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition (2000–2003); Multivariate Behavioral Research; Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (1992–2002); and Psychological Methods (1996–2000). He is past president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making (2000–2001), fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, and an elected member of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychologists. Address: Department of Psychology, Fordham University, Bronx, New York, NY 10458; e-mail: budescu@fordham.edu . John C. Butler (" From the Editors… ") is a clinical associate professor of finance and the academic director of the Energy Management and Innovation Center in the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, and the secretary/treasurer of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society. Butler received his Ph.D. in management science and information systems from the University of Texas in 1998. His research interests involve the use of decision science models to support decision making, with a particular emphasis on decision and risk analysis models with multiple performance criteria. Butler has consulted with a number of organizations regarding the application of decision analysis tools to a variety of practical problems. Most of his consulting projects involve use of Visual Basic for Applications and Excel to implement complex decision science models in a user-friendly format. Address: Center for Energy Management and Innovation, McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1178; e-mail: john.butler2@mccombs.utexas.edu . Philippe Delquié (" From the Editors… ") is an associate professor of decision sciences at the George Washington University and holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Delquié's teaching and research are in decision, risk, and multicriteria analysis. His work focuses on the interplay of behavioral and normative theories of choice, with the aim of improving managerial decision making and risk taking. His research addresses issues in preference assessment, value of information, nonexpected utility models of choice under risk, and risk measures. Prior to joining the George Washington University, he held academic appointments at INSEAD, the University of Texas at Austin, and École Normale Supérieure, France, and visiting appointments at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Address: Department of Decision Sciences, George Washington University, Funger Hall, Suite 415, Washington, DC 20052; e-mail: delquie@gwu.edu . Zeynep Erkin (" Eliciting Patients' Revealed Preferences: An Inverse Markov Decision Process Approach ") is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her M.S. and B.S. degrees in industrial engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and Middle East Technical University, Turkey, in 2008 and 2006, respectively. Her research interests include maintenance optimization and medical decision making. Address: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, 3600 O'Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15261; e-mail: zee2@pitt.edu . Peter I. Frazier (" Paradoxes in Learning and the Marginal Value of Information ") is an assistant professor in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell University. He received a Ph.D. in operations research and financial engineering from Princeton University in 2009. His research interest is in the optimal acquisition of information, with applications in simulation, medicine, operations management, neuroscience, and information retrieval. He teaches courses in simulation and statistics. Address: School of Operations Research and Information Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853; e-mail: pf98@cornell.edu . L. Robin Keller (" From the Editors… ") is a professor of operations and decision technologies in the Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. She received her Ph.D. and M.B.A. in management science and her B.A. in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has served as a program director for the Decision, Risk, and Management Science Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Her research is on decision analysis and risk analysis for business and policy decisions and has been funded by NSF and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Her research interests cover multiple-attribute decision making, riskiness, fairness, probability judgments, ambiguity of probabilities or outcomes, risk analysis (for terrorism, environmental, health, and safety risks), time preferences, problem structuring, cross-cultural decisions, and medical decision making. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of Decision Analysis, published by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). She is a Fellow of INFORMS and has held numerous roles in INFORMS, including board member and chair of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society. She is a recipient of the George F. Kimball Medal from INFORMS. She has served as the decision analyst on three National Academy of Sciences committees. Address: The Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697-3125; e-mail: lrkeller@uci.edu . Lisa M. Maillart (" Eliciting Patients' Revealed Preferences: An Inverse Markov Decision Process Approach ") is an associate professor in the Industrial Engineering Department at the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, she served on the faculty of the Department of Operations in the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. She received her M.S. and B.S. in industrial and systems engineering from Virginia Tech, and her Ph.D. in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan. Her primary research interest is in sequential decision making under uncertainty, with applications in medical decision making and maintenance optimization. She is a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), the Society of Medical Decision Making (SMDM), and the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE). Address: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, 3600 O'Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15261; e-mail: maillart@pitt.edu . Jason R. W. Merrick (" From the Editors… ") is an associate professor in the Department of Statistical Sciences and Operations Research at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has a D.Sc. in operations research from the George Washington University. He teaches courses in decision analysis, risk analysis, and simulation. His research is primarily in the area of decision analysis and Bayesian statistics. He has worked on projects ranging from assessing maritime oil transportation and ferry system safety, the environmental health of watersheds, and optimal replacement policies for rail tracks and machine tools, and he has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Federal Aviation Administration, the United States Coast Guard, the American Bureau of Shipping, British Petroleum, and Booz Allen Hamilton, among others. He has also performed training for Infineon Technologies, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and Capital One Services. He is an associate editor for Decision Analysis and Operations Research. He is the information officer for the Decision Analysis Society. Address: Department of Statistical Sciences and Operations Research, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284; e-mail: jrmerric@vcu.edu . Phillip E. Pfeifer (" Darden's Luckiest Student: Lessons from a High-Stakes Risk Experiment ") is the Richard S. Reynolds Professor of Business at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, where he teaches courses in decision analysis and direct marketing. A graduate of Lehigh University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, his teaching has won student awards and has been recognized in Business Week's Guide to the Best Business Schools. He is an active researcher in the areas of decision making and direct marketing, and he currently serves on the editorial review board of the Journal of Interactive Marketing, which named him their best reviewer of 2008. In 2004 he was recognized as the Darden School's faculty leader in terms of external case sales, and in 2006 he coauthored a managerial book, Marketing Metrics: 50+ Metrics Every Executive Should Master, published by Wharton School Publishing, which was named best marketing book of the year by Strategy + Business. Address: Darden School of Business; 100 Darden Boulevard; Charlottesville, VA 22903; e-mail: pfeiferp@virginia.edu . Warren B. Powell (" Paradoxes in Learning and the Marginal Value of Information ") is a professor in the Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1981. He is the director of CASTLE Laboratory (Princeton University), which specializes in the development of stochastic optimization models and algorithms with applications in transportation and logistics, energy, health, and finance. The author or coauthor of more than 160 refereed publications, he is an INFORMS Fellow, and the author of Approximate Dynamic Programming: Solving the Curses of Dimensionality, published by John Wiley and Sons. His primary research interests are in approximate dynamic programming for high-dimensional applications and optimal learning (the efficient collection of information), and their application in energy systems analysis and transportation. He is a recipient of the Wagner prize and has twice been a finalist in the Edelman competition. He has also served in a variety of editorial and administrative positions for INFORMS, including INFORMS Board of Directors, area editor for Operations Research, president of the Transportation Science Section, and numerous prize and administrative committees. Address: Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544; e-mail: powell@princeton.edu . Mark S. Roberts (" Eliciting Patients' Revealed Preferences: An Inverse Markov Decision Process Approach "), M.D., M.P.P., is professor and chair of health policy and management, and he holds secondary appointments in medicine, industrial engineering, and clinical and translational science. A practicing general internist, he has conducted research in decision analysis and the mathematical modeling of disease for more than 25 years, and he has expertise in cost effectiveness analysis, mathematical optimization and simulation, and the measurement and inclusion of patient preferences into decision problems. He has used decision analysis to examine clinical, costs, policy and allocation questions in liver transplantation, vaccination strategies, operative interventions, and the use of many medications. His recent research has concentrated in the use of mathematical methods from operations research and management science, including Markov decision processes, discrete-event simulation, and integer programming, to problems in health care. Address: Department of Health Policy and Management, University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Public Health, 130 De Soto Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15261; e-mail: robertsm@upmc.edu . Ahti Salo (" From the Editors… ") is a professor of systems analysis at the Systems Analysis Laboratory of Aalto University. His research interests include topics in portfolio decision analysis, multicriteria decision making, risk management, efficiency analysis, and technology foresight. He is currently president of the Finnish Operations Research Society (FORS) and represents Europe and the Middle East in the INFORMS International Activities Committee. Professor Salo has been responsible for the methodological design and implementation of numerous high-impact decision and policy processes, including FinnSight 2015, the national foresight exercise of the Academy of Finland and the National Funding Agency for Technology and Innovations (Tekes). Address: Aalto University, Systems Analysis Laboratory, P.O. Box 11100, 00076 Aalto, Finland; e-mail: ahti.salo@tkk.fi . Andrew J. Schaefer (" Eliciting Patients' Revealed Preferences: An Inverse Markov Decision Process Approach ") is an associate professor of industrial engineering and Wellington C. Carl Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh. He has courtesy appointments in bioengineering, medicine, and clinical and translational science. He received his Ph.D. in industrial and systems engineering from Georgia Tech in 2000. His research interests include the application of stochastic optimization methods to health-care problems, as well as stochastic optimization techniques, in particular, stochastic integer programming. He is interested in patient-oriented decision making in contexts such as end-stage liver disease, HIV/AIDS, sepsis, and diabetes. He also models health-care systems, including operating rooms and intensive-care units. He is an associate editor for INFORMS Journal on Computing and IIE Transactions. Address: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, 3600 O'Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15261; e-mail: Schaefer@pitt.edu . George Wu (" From the Editors… ") has been on the faculty of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business since September 1997. His degrees include A.B. (applied mathematics, 1985), S.M. (applied mathematics, 1987), and Ph.D. (decision sciences, 1991), all from Harvard University. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Chicago, Professor Wu was on the faculty at Harvard Business School. Wu worked as a decision analyst at Procter & Gamble prior to starting graduate school. His research interests include descriptive and prescriptive aspects of decision making, in particular, decision making involving risk, cognitive biases in bargaining and negotiation, and managerial and organizational decision making. Professor Wu is a coordinating editor for Theory and Decision, an advisory editor for Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, on the editorial boards of Decision Analysis and Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, and a former department editor of Management Science. Address: Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, 5807 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637; e-mail: wu@chicagobooth.edu .