Author: Imre Dimény

23 August: Mikhail Freer (QSMS seminar)

The QSMS Research Group (BME) will be hosting two seminars this August 2022. One-to-one meetings with the speakers can be arranged; please contact the seminar organizers, Dr. Noémie Cabau (cabau.noemie@gtk.bme.hu) and Dr. Arseniy Samsonov (samsonov.arseniy@gtk.bme.hu).  

Mikhail Freer from the University of Essex (Department of Economics) will be presenting his paper Constitutional Design (co-authored with César Martinelli) on the 23rd of August 2022 at 4PM, Room QA406.  

Abstract: Constitution is the cornerstone of any democracy: defining both the basic rights of citizens and the rules of the political process. However, most political economy literature frequently overlooks the constitution as a whole, focusing on bargaining between legislator and executive. This paper expands the scope and considers all three branches of power in the constitutional mechanism. First, we show that the constitutional mechanism (even with the accountability of the executive and legislator) cannot be credible without the presence of the “fourth power” (civic society). However, this fourth power is not directly governed by the constitution, and to restore the credibility of the constitution, the two key features are (1) society is affected by the outcomes of legislative bargaining, and (2) the judiciary is responsive to public opinion. However, these features are not enough to restore the “efficiency” of the constitution; to do so, we need to ensure that society does not stop pressuring the government with just the resignation of the corresponding official but gets a more direct involvement in the further legislative bargaining. 

Koltai’s paper published in The Int. J. Manag. Educ.

The paper titled “Performance evaluation of teams in business simulation games with weight restricted data envelopment analysis models.” (joint with Tamás, A.) has been published in The International Journal of Management Education.

Business simulation games are widely used in higher education, management training, and executive management development programmes. The evaluation of the performance of participants is generally subjective and is based on the trainer’s perception of the importance of several evaluation criteria. In this paper, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is proposed for such evaluation. Input-oriented constant return-to-scale DEA models are used for evaluating the performance of teams participating in business simulation games (BSG). A car engine manufacturing game played by MBA master students is used to illustrate the proposed method. Weight restrictions are applied to obtain efficiency scores which can be used as an alternative to financial measures. The relationship between the efficiency measure and the financial measure is statistically analyzed. The main conclusion of the presented research is that if weight restriction parameters are properly set, DEA results can provide reliable and detailed information about participants’ performance, about the shortcomings of decisions made during the games, and about possible ways to improve performance.

The paper presents the first application of DEA in the area of performance evaluation in BSG, consequently it can be considered a significant extension of the DEA application domain.

Koltai, T. and Tamás, A. (2022). Performance evaluation of teams in business simulation games with weight restricted data envelopment analysis models. The International Journal of Management Education, Volume 20, Issue 3, p. 17.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijme.2022.100688