Three essays on crisis management under uncertainty : drought, climate change, and pandemic
department or school: Business, Sauder School of
department or school: Strategy and Business Economics, Division of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Siami, Navid
issued: 2021-12-07T21:20:01Z
issued: 2021
related degree: Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: This dissertation is a collection of three essays that studies decision-making under uncertainty in a crisis context. The first essay examines the rational behavior of decision-making authority in providing water to a municipality facing drought. The forward-looking decision-making authority optimally chooses the size and time of building a desalination plant. The essay formulates the question as a dynamic programming problem with uncertainty in rainfall. By solving the problem numerically, the essay studies the behavior of the model through simulation. The correlation patterns produced by the simulations from the model are consistent with the correlation patterns observed in real-world data. The second essay examines the interactions of three different green innovations to combat climate change. It revisits Jevons’ paradox, which states that if demand is sufficiently elastic, an improvement in the fuel efficiency (FE) increases the flow of fuel consumption and, in the modern context of climate change, the flow of carbon emissions. An improvement in fuel efficiency also increases the stock of total carbon emissions. However, with carbon capture and storage (CCS), the effect on the total carbon emissions stock depends on the time pattern of emissions. Strong enough innovation in CCS reverses the paradoxical impact of FE. A similar (but reversed) logic holds for innovation in clean energy (CE) backstops. CE innovations reduce the stock of total carbon emissions. However, the improving CCS technology reduces the benefits of clean energy innovation, and strong enough, CCS reverses their beneficial impact. The third essay examines the interaction of re-election pressure and asymmetric information in politicians’ decision-making. Politicians and voters update their beliefs in a Bayesian way. Politicians have asymmetric information and seek re-election. The closer the election, the more the incumbent politicians refrain from implementing the welfare-maximizing policy and d…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/80389
note: Three Essays on Crisis Managementunder UncertaintyDrought, Climate Change, and PandemicbyNavid SiamiBSc, Sharif University of Technology, 2012MSc, The University of British Columbia, 2016A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OFTHE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OFDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHYinThe Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies(Business Administration - Strategy and Business Economics)THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA(Vancouver)December 2021© Navid Siami 2021The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Facultyof Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled:Three essays on crisis management under uncertainty: drought, climate change, and pandemicsubmitted by Navid Siami in partial fulfillment of the requirements forthe degree of Doctor Of Philosphyin Business Administration - Strategy and Business EconomicsExamining CommitteeJames Brander, Business Administration - Strategy and Business Economic, UBCCo-supervisorRalph Winter, Business Administration - Strategy and Business Economic, UBCCo-supervisorWerner Antweiler, Business Administration - Strategy and Business Economic, UBCUniversity ExaminerBrian Copeland, Economics, UBCUniversity ExaminerPaul Schrimpf, Economics, UBCSupervisory Committee MemberAdditional Supervisory Committee Members:Alvaro Parrra, Business Administration - Strategy and Business Economic, UBCSupervisory Committee MemberiiAbstractThis dissertation is a collection of three essays that studies decision-making under uncer-tainty in a crisis context.The first essay examines the rational behavior of decision-making authority in providingwater to a municipality facing drought. The forward-looking decision-making authorityoptimally chooses the size and time of building a desalination plant. The essay formulatesthe question as a dynamic programming problem with uncertainty in rainfall. By solvingthe problem numerically, the essay studies the behavior of the model through simulation.The …
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2022-05
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0404504
language: eng
degree discipline: Business Administration - Strategy and Business Economics
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
contributor: Brander, James A.
contributor: Winter, Ralph Albert
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/80389