Risk Analysis: Celebrating the Accomplishments and Embracing Ongoing Challenges

As part of the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Society for Risk Analysis and Risk Analysis: An International Journal, this essay reviews the 10 most important accomplishments of risk analysis from 1980 to 2010, outlines major accomplishments in three major categories from 2011 to 2019, discusses how editors circulate authors’ accomplishments, and proposes 10 major risk-related challenges for 2020–2030. Authors conclude that the next decade will severely test the field of risk analysis.     

The value of being precise

This study investigates how individuals assess imprecise information. We focus on two essential dimensions of decision under uncertainty, outcomes and probabilities, and their respective precision. We believe the precision of information is highly relevant in the investment setting, as reflected in the well-known “home (familiarity) bias”, and the outcome and probability dimensions, separately or jointly, may affect investors’ knowledge of uncertainty and perceived risk of the investment options, and subsequently affect investors’ choices. To test this conjecture, we conducted three experiments. Our results show that 1) participants demonstrate a pattern of preference for precision and aversion of extreme vagueness and associate vagueness with higher perceived risk and lower investment (experiments one and two); 2) participants prefer vague outcome information to vague probability information (experiment two); 3) familiarity indeed positively affects the precision of estimated values, but this association is stronger for the outcome dimension than for probabilities (experiment three). Our results confirm that precision in information, especially in the outcome dimension has an impact on investors’ resource allocation choices.     

互联网深化、信息不确定性与企业出口平稳性

互联网作为信息搜寻和传播的重要渠道,有利于缓解国际市场不确定性对企业出口决策的影响,从而有助于稳定企业出口预期,保障出口企业的持续生存。本文首先基于Fernandes 和 Tang(2014)的研究框架将互联网深化程度和出口集聚同时纳入到异质性贸易企业模型,在剥离出口集聚对企业出口行为影响的基础上,从理论视角揭示了互联网深化程度提高影响企业出口行为特别是出口持续生存的内在机理与方向。研究发现,不同于出口集聚会同时影响企业的需求冲击和成本冲击,互联网深化带来的信息溢出效应会通过贝叶斯法则(Bayesian Rule)使得企业修正其对国际市场不确定性的预期,提高其对目的国市场成本冲击的估计精度,从而在互联网深化程度较高的城市,企业进入出口市场的临界生产率较低,有利于其出口参与度和出口稳定性的提高。然而互联网深化程度提高不影响企业在目的国市场产品出口的集约边际。本文使用2000-2013 年中国工业企业数据库、中国海关数据库和中国城市统计年鉴数据库的匹配数据从企业-目的国-产品层面实证检验了本文的理论命题。研究表明,我国政府应充分发挥互联网发展降低信息不确定性的微观机制,以推动外贸的平稳增长。     

高校师资管理中的矛盾关系探讨

高校师资队伍建设是一个至关重要的问题。在师资的引进、使用、考核和培养过程中,经常会遇到如何处理诸如比较优秀的关键性人才与基本群体、教学与科研、稳定与流动、专职与兼职等关系问题,这些矛盾的妥善解决,会较大地调动教师的积极性、主动性、创造性,有利于教学、科研水平的提升。     

浅析电子商务中的信息安全风险评估

本文结合电子商务自身特点,从对信息资产风险对象的确定、风险评估方法选择、评估的具体指标评价和结果的分析后,确定信息资产的风险控制策略。同时从投入与收益的比较选择中,简单分析控制措施选择与成本预算方面的关系。     

Chemical risk communication through the Internet in Spain

In this work, some corporate websites of the chemical industry of Tarragona (Spain) are studied, analysing how the chemical trade associations and companies present information and/or encourage dialogue with the community on issues relating to the chemical risk and their environmental, health and safety (EHS) performance. The results suggest that the chemical industry in Tarragona uses the corporate websites mainly to disseminate information about its EHS commitments and performance, but they do not encourage dialogue with the community through the Internet.     

Wer das Stabilisieren vergisst: Warum eine schöne Abschlusspräsentation noch kein gutes Ende bedeutet

Many organizational change projects fail — despite a well thought out concept, professional project management and a binding implementation timetable. The reason why the expected success doesn’t materialize often lies with the missing maintenance. Once the project is officially completed and the client and project manager withdraw, the manner in which the organization will take up these changes is seldom systematically dealt with. Difficulties often arise when no discrete stabilizing measures are planned. We have derived four central action areas which will be clarified by way of practical examples. It will also be shown what is important to pay attention to in the stabilization phase so that a lasting success of the organizational change project can be ensured.     

A modified random-effect procedure for combining risk difference in sets of 2×2 tables from clinical trials

Summary Meta-analyses of sets of clinical trials often combine risk differences from several 2×2 tables according to a random-effects model. The DerSimonian-Laird random-effects procedure, widely used for estimating the populaton mean risk difference, weights the risk difference from each primary study inversely proportional to an estimate of its variance (the sum of the between-study variance and the conditional within-study variance). Because those weights are not independent of the risk differences, however, the procedure sometimes exhibits bias and unnatural behavior. The present paper proposes a modified weighting scheme that uses the unconditional within-study variance to avoid this source of bias. The modified procedure has variance closer to that available from weighting by ideal weights when such weights are known. We studied the modified procedure in extensive simulation experiments using situations whose parameters resemble those of actual studies in medical research. For comparison we also included two unbiased procedures, the unweighted mean and a sample-size-weighted mean; their relative variability depends on the extent of heterogeneity among the primary studies. An example illustrates the application of the procedures to actual data and the differences among the results. This research was supported by Grant HS 05936 from the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research to Harvard University.     

Statistics for weighing benefits and harms in a proposed genetic substudy of a randomized cancer prevention trial

Summary.  When evaluating potential interventions for cancer prevention, it is necessary to compare benefits and harms. With new study designs, new statistical approaches may be needed to facilitate this comparison. A case in point arose in a proposed genetic substudy of a randomized trial of tamoxifen versus placebo in asymptomatic women who were at high risk for breast cancer. Although the randomized trial showed that tamoxifen substantially reduced the risk of breast cancer, the harms from tamoxifen were serious and some were life threaten-ing. In hopes of finding a subset of women with inherited risk genes who derive greater bene-fits from tamoxifen, we proposed a nested case–control study to test some trial subjects for various genes and new statistical methods to extrapolate benefits and harms to the general population. An important design question is whether or not the study should target common low penetrance genes. Our calculations show that useful results are only likely with rare high penetrance genes.     

进一步完善现代技术在招生工作中的功用

针对近几年高校教育的发展趋势,介绍现代管理技术在招生管理工作中的基本表现形式,分析了现代管理技术在招生管理工作中的作用及其发展的不平衡与障碍,并就进一步完善现代技术在招生管理工作中的功用提出看法。