The intent of this dissertation is to generate a set of non-dominated finite-memory policies from which one of two agents (the leader) can select a most preferred policy to control a dynamic system that is also affected by the control decisions of the other agent (the follower). The problem is described by an infinite horizon total discounted reward, partially observed Markov game (POMG). Each agent’s policy assumes that the agent knows its current and recent state values, its recent actions, and the current and recent possibly inaccurate observations of the other agent’s state. For each candidate finite-memory leader policy, we assume the follower, fully aware of the leader policy, determines a policy that optimizes the follower’s criterion. The leader-follower assumption allows the POMG to be transformed into a specially structured, partially observed Markov decision process that we use to determine the follower’s best response policy for a given leader policy. We then present a value determination procedure to evaluate the performance of the leader for a given leader policy, based on which non-dominated set of leader polices can be selected by existing heuristic approaches. We then analyze how the value of the leader’s criterion changes due to changes in the leader’s quality of observation of the follower. We give conditions that insure improved observation quality will improve the leader’s value function, assuming that changes in the observation quality do not cause the follower to change its policy. We show that discontinuities in the value of the leader’ criterion, as a function of observation quality, can occur when the change of observation quality is significant enough for the follower to change its policy. We present conditions that determine when a discontinuity may occur and conditions that guarantee a discontinuity will not degrade the leader’s performance. This framework has been used to develop a dynamic risk analysis approach for U.S. food supply chains and to compare and create supply chain designs and sequential control strategies for risk mitigation.

Industry 4.0 is one of the fastest growing topics amongst both practitioners and academics. To this day, no definition of Industry 4.0 has reached consensus. However, some definitions can be considered more correct than others and the most accurate one is summarized as “Industry 4.0 is a concept for creating value throughout the whole value-chain”. This has been made possible through digital solutions, advanced technologies, which often are associated with Industry 4.0. This thesis started off finding the key aspects of Industry 4.0 and through a literature review it was concluded to be Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) which will bring new innovative Business Models. The fundamental aspect of Industry 4.0 is data, data which has become available through the usage of CPS, data which will transform how business are conducted. This thesis aims to develop a better understanding for how CPS affects the Business Model. The thesis started with a literature review, investigating the value of information in a digitalized era. It was established that the value is found in the capability to monitor, remote control, optimize, and automate products and machines. Furthermore, it was also established through the literature review that manufacturing industries are becoming more services-focused and that value-creation is done through networking. Moreover, the Business Model Canvas was embraced as theoretical framework for what a business model should consist of. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with experts on the subject of Industry 4.0 and digitalization. The data was then compared to the theoretical framework. The results showed that CPS will not affect business models in any direct way as it is very well founded that the business model always should be based on the customer segment. However, CPS did have an indirect impact on business models i.e. through expected changes in customer relationships and distribution channels, but foremost, through changes regarding specialization and partnerships.

O cenário atual da gestão da informação é de extrema complexidade. A multiplicidade de ambientes computacionais gera extensos volumes de dados, mas nem sempre garante informações de qualidade. Elas embasam a maioria dos processos de tomadores de decisões. Nesse sentido, o presente estudo busca compreender a percepção da qualidade das informações entre profissionais e usuários de sistemas de informação. Além disso, desenvolve uma proposta de dimensões da qualidade baseadas no contexto de uso que, apesar de serem mais difíceis de mensurar, sustentam outras formas de qualidade da informação, adotadas ou não pelas organizações. O trabalho está dividido em duas partes. Primeiramente, levanta informações sobre a percepção da qualidade da informação entre os profissionais da informação, divididos em três perfis - produtores, consumidores e gestores da informação. Em seguida, avalia a classificação das dimensões propostas, considerando a importância de cada dimensão e a sua correspondente valorização para as organizações, na visão dos profissionais da informação. Os resultados do estudo podem orientar as organizações e, principalmente, os profissionais da área de Tecnologia da Informação, em relação à importância de adotarem práticas de melhoria da qualidade da informação. As dimensões propostas nesta classificação são baseadas no contexto de uso e, portanto, são as que estão mais próximas da realidade dos indivíduos que lidam com as informações, no dia a dia das organizações. / The present scenario of information management is extremely complex. The multitude of computing environments generates large volumes of data, but does not always guarantee quality information. They underlie most processes of decision makers. On this way, this work aims to understand the perception of the information quality for the professionals and users of information systems. Also, the work develops a classification proposal of quality dimensions based on the context of use. These, though harder to measure, maintain all other forms of information quality, used or not by organizations. The work has two specific objectives. First, gathering information on the perceived quality of information among information professionals, shared in three profiles - producers, consumers and managers of information. Secondly, assessing the classification of the dimensions proposed, considering the importance of each dimension and its corresponding value for the organizations, in accordance to the view of information professionals. The results of this work can guide organizations and especially the professionals, about the importance of adopting practices to improve the quality of information. The proposed classification is based on the context, therefore, although they are difficult to be measured, they are also those which are closest to the reality of individuals who deal with the information, every days in the organizations.

O cenário atual da gestão da informação é de extrema complexidade. A multiplicidade de ambientes computacionais gera extensos volumes de dados, mas nem sempre garante informações de qualidade. Elas embasam a maioria dos processos de tomadores de decisões. Nesse sentido, o presente estudo busca compreender a percepção da qualidade das informações entre profissionais e usuários de sistemas de informação. Além disso, desenvolve uma proposta de dimensões da qualidade baseadas no contexto de uso que, apesar de serem mais difíceis de mensurar, sustentam outras formas de qualidade da informação, adotadas ou não pelas organizações. O trabalho está dividido em duas partes. Primeiramente, levanta informações sobre a percepção da qualidade da informação entre os profissionais da informação, divididos em três perfis - produtores, consumidores e gestores da informação. Em seguida, avalia a classificação das dimensões propostas, considerando a importância de cada dimensão e a sua correspondente valorização para as organizações, na visão dos profissionais da informação. Os resultados do estudo podem orientar as organizações e, principalmente, os profissionais da área de Tecnologia da Informação, em relação à importância de adotarem práticas de melhoria da qualidade da informação. As dimensões propostas nesta classificação são baseadas no contexto de uso e, portanto, são as que estão mais próximas da realidade dos indivíduos que lidam com as informações, no dia a dia das organizações. / The present scenario of information management is extremely complex. The multitude of computing environments generates large volumes of data, but does not always guarantee quality information. They underlie most processes of decision makers. On this way, this work aims to understand the perception of the information quality for the professionals and users of information systems. Also, the work develops a classification proposal of quality dimensions based on the context of use. These, though harder to measure, maintain all other forms of information quality, used or not by organizations. The work has two specific objectives. First, gathering information on the perceived quality of information among information professionals, shared in three profiles - producers, consumers and managers of information. Secondly, assessing the classification of the dimensions proposed, considering the importance of each dimension and its corresponding value for the organizations, in accordance to the view of information professionals. The results of this work can guide organizations and especially the professionals, about the importance of adopting practices to improve the quality of information. The proposed classification is based on the context, therefore, although they are difficult to be measured, they are also those which are closest to the reality of individuals who deal with the information, every days in the organizations.

In this study, value of demand information and the importance of option contracts are investigated for a supply chain consisting of a buyer and two suppliers in a single period setting. One supplier is cheap but prone to disruptions whereas the other one is perfectly reliable but expensive. At the beginning of the period, buyer orders from the unreliable supplier and reserves from the reliable supplier through a contract that gives buyer an option to use reserved units after getting disruption information of first supplier. We introduce three models which differ in terms of the level of information available when the ordering decisions are made. In the full information model, the options are exercised after getting disruption and demand information / in the partial information model, the options are exercised after getting disruption information before demand information. In the no information model, there is no options contract and units are ordered from the reliable supplier when buyer has no information about demand and disruption. Through the analysis of these models, we explore the value of advance demand and disruption information in the presence of an options contract.

This thesis studies the impact of sequential auction design on participant behavior from both a theoretical and an empirical viewpoint. In the first of the two analyses, three sequential auction designs are characterized and compared based on expected profitability to the participants. The optimal bid strategy is derived as well. One of the designs, the alternating design, is a new auction design and is a blend of the other two. It assumes that the ability to bid in or initiate an auction is given to each side of the market in an alternating fashion to simulate seasonal markets. The conditions for an equilibrium auction design are derived and characteristics of the equilibrium are outlined. The primary result is that the alternating auction is a viable compromise auction design when buyers and suppliers disagree on whether to hold a sequence of forward or reverse auctions. We also found the value of information on future private value for a strategic supplier in a two-period case of the alternating and reverse auction designs. The empirical work studies the cause of low aggregation of timber supply in reverse auctions of an online timber exchange. Unlike previous research results regarding timber auctions, which focus on offline public auctions held by the U.S. Forest Service, we study online private auctions between logging companies and mills. A limited survey of the online auction data revealed that the auctions were successful less than 50% of the time. Regression analysis is used to determine which internal and external factors to the auction affect the aggregation of timber in an effort to determine the reason that so few auctions succeeded. The analysis revealed that the number of bidders, the description of the good and the volume demanded had a significant influence on the amount of timber supplied through the online auction exchange. A plausible explanation for the low aggregation is that the exchange was better suited to check the availability for custom cuts of timber and to transact standard timber.

An important element of successful engineering design is the effective management of resources to support design decisions. Design decisions can be thought of as having two phasesa formulation phase and a solution phase. As part of the formulation phase, engineers must decide how much information to collect and which models to use to support the design decision. Since more information and more accurate models come at a greater cost, a cost-benefit trade-off must be made. Previous work has considered such trade-offs in decision problems when all aspects of the decision problem can be represented using precise probabilities, an assumption that is not justified when information is sparse. In this thesis, we use imprecise probabilities to manage the information cost-benefit trade-off for two decision problems in which the quality of the information is imprecise: 1) The decision of when to stop collecting statistical data about a quantity that is characterized by a probability distribution with unknown parameters; and 2) The selection of the most preferred model to help guide a particular design decision when the model accuracy is characterized as an interval. For each case, a separate novel approach is developed in which the principles of information economics are incorporated into the information management decision. The problem of statistical data collection is explored with a pressure vessel design. This design problem requires the characterization of the probability distribution that describes a novel material's strength. The model selection approach is explored with the design of an I-beam structure. The designer must decide how accurate of a model to use to predict the maximum deflection in the span of the structure. For both problems, it is concluded that the information economic approach developed in this thesis can assist engineers in their information management decisions.

In this study we consider a two-echelon supply chain with a nonstationary demand process. The retailer batches the customer demand for a predetermined number of periods before placing an order to the supplier. We show that the demand process for the supplier is more variable than that for the retailer. It is observed that the supplier can reduce the variability of orders by tracking the exogenous demand occurring at the retailer&#039 / s side.

In the age of Web 2.0 users contribute to platforms success by providing personal information by actively uploading information (e.g. messages, preferences, biographies) and also by leaving traces of their online behavoiour as can be derived from their clicks, navigation paths, etc. While there is a market for trading such information among companies, there is little knowledge about how users actually value their personal information. In an online survey-based experiment we have asked 1.045 Facebook users how much they would be willing to pay for keeping their personal information. Surprisingly, 48.1 percent of participants are not willing to pay a single Euro, - thus, valuing their information at zero. Results indicate that people that show 'spamming' behaviour and users that use Facebook for 'diary keeping' are significantly more willing to pay a certain amount higher than zero to be able to keep their personal Facebook information. Interestingly, having analysed various kinds of user behaviour, the regression model still explains no more than 14.2 percent of variance. Additionally, this article discusses four different method manipulations for eliciting people's willingness to pay for personal information and provides methodical guidance for future research in the field.

In this dissertation, I investigate the value of information to consumers, the pricing of chicken, and the value of shopping lists to consumers. My first essay finds that across 14 different product categories and seven types of information, information about price and origin are the most important and information about social and environmental impacts are the least important. Our estimates also suggest consumers are willing to wait a large amount of time to obtain the most vs. least desirable types of information prior to making a non-hypothetical product choice. My second essay relates to price indices used to value chicken in the United States. There were two main price indices commonly used by the industry in recent history: the USDA 12-City Price Index and the Georgia Dock Price. We find that there was a long standing equilibrium relationship between these two price indices that shifted across time. Additionally, our analysis shows that there was a structural break between these two price indices around 2000. After this structural break, the analysis suggests Georgia Dock prices were about $0.047/lb higher than they would have been without the break. Last, my third essay aims to determine the impact of shopping lists on consumer spending and healthy shopping behaviors. We find that after controlling for conscientiousness, consumers willingness-to-accept to give up their shopping list is $5.05, while the equivalent gain to write a shopping list is $3.87. We did not find a significant difference in the healthiness of the purchases made by consumers using a shopping list versus those who shopped without a list.