Bahar Celikkol Erbas

An application of neural networks in microeconomics: Input-output mapping in a power generation subsector of the US electricity industry

The use of the artificial neural networks in economics and business goes back to 1950s, while the major bulk of the applications have been developed in more recent years. Reviewing this literature indicates that the field of business benefits from the neural networks in a wide spectrum from prediction to classification, as most of the applications in economics primarily focus on the predictive power of the neural networks. Time series analysis and forecasting, econometrics, macroeconomics constitute the main areas of economics, where there is an increasing interest in application of neural networks. Although their promising contributions to the area of microeconomics, the applications of neural networks in this area are limited in number. This study provides a microeconomic application of an artificial neural network by input-output mapping for 82 US major investor-owned electric utilities using fossil-fuel fired steam electric power generation for the year 1996. We construct a multilayer feed-forward neural network (MFNN) with back-propagation to represent the relationship between a set of inputs and an electricity production as an output. The network is trained and tested by using approximately 80 percent and 20 percent of the data, respectively. The network is trained with 97% accuracy and performance of the network in testing is 96%. Therefore, this network can be used in calculating electricity output for the given inputs in this subsector of the US electricity market, and these estimations can be employed in policy design and planning.

Software development under bounded rationality and opportunism

Due to the wicked nature of software development, it is imperative to take into consideration bounded rationality and opportunism of the agents involved in, when managing software development projects. These two concepts, which are at the foundations of transaction cost economics, have not yet been studied in relation to software engineering. In this paper, we develop transaction cost economics approach to software engineering, specifically as it relates to governance. This approach enables us better understand the strengths and weaknesses of top-down and bottom-up processes, and outlines a method to be used in choosing amongst alternative governance structures given relevant project characteristics.

On a theory of software engineering a proposal based on transaction cost economics

This article leverages the findings of the transaction cost economics field, and proposes a simple theory and associated vocabulary to serve as a foundation for a unified theory of software engineering. It characterizes software engineering as a set of transactions organized under three governance structures. The theory explains the strengths and weaknesses of these governance structures in relation to asset specificity. It takes into account the recursive nature of the notions in software engineering, and applies uniformly to various contexts at different levels of granularity. The theory not only provides an explanatory framework for some of the propositions given in the software engineering literature, but also reveals the boundaries of their applicability.

Modules and transactions: Building blocks for a theory of software engineering ☆

Abstract This article leverages the findings of the transaction cost economics field, and proposes a simple theory and associated vocabulary to serve as a foundation for a unified theory of software engineering. The theory characterizes software engineering as a set of transactions organized under a spectrum of three governance structures (top–down, bottom–up and reuse), and explains the strengths and weaknesses of these governance structures in relation to asset specificity and uncertainty. It takes into account the recursive nature of the notions in software engineering, and applies uniformly to various contexts at different levels of granularity. It sheds light both on the technical and on the human aspects of software engineering through a unified explanatory framework, without requiring a need to assemble different approaches to address each. The theory not only explains some of the propositions given in the software engineering literature but also reveals the boundaries of their applicability.