Project Proposals Development – Entrepreneurship and Reflection in Teaching Information Technology

This work presents a model for development of project proposals by students as an approach to teaching information technology while promoting entrepreneurship and reflection. In teams of 3 to 5 participants, students elaborate a project proposal on a topic they have negotiated with each other and with the teacher. The project domain is related to the practical application of state-of-theart information technology in areas of substantial public interest or of immediate interest to the participants. This gives them ample opportunities for reflection not only on technical but also on social, economic, environmental and other dimensions of information technology. This approach has long been used with students of different years and programs of study at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Plovdiv University “Paisiy Hilendarski”. It has been found to develop all eight key competences for lifelong learning set forth in the Reference Framework and procedural skills required in real life

Information design

In many economic and social settings one person or institution is in charge of communicating with and disclosing information to multiple agents who are engaged in a strategic interaction. This communication takes the form of information provision about an issue or an object of common interest – the fundamental – which impacts the payoffs of the interaction

Conceptualizing visual metaphors in high tech products advertising: Results and conclusions from an empirical research

The use of visual metaphors is a popular method of advertising nowadays. This paper briefly reviews the theoretical framework of metaphorical expression in advertising, and particularly the use of visual metaphors. It then continues with presenting results and findings from an empirical study on the use of visual metaphors in the ads of high-tech products. Given the nature of metaphors, the analysis is based on both qualitative and quantitative readings of the data, in order to reach more insightful conclusions. Based on the research findings and following the theoretical introduction, the paper concludes with implications and guidelines for the marketing utility of exploring the meaning and other features of visual metaphors

Awareness, Co-operation, Tackling to Stop Sexual Bullying: An empowerment pack for young people and the people working with them (The ACT Pack).

Available in English, Bulgarian, Slovenian and Italia

Essays on information and mechanism design

textMy dissertation studies the optimal design of institutions and information structures for different objectives of a designer or a social planner. The questions addressed are interesting both from a theoretical point of view, and in terms of their real-life applications. The first chapter of the dissertation focuses on supermodular mechanism design in environments with arbitrary finite type spaces and interdependent valuations. In these environments, the designer may have to use Bayesian equilibrium as a solution concept, because ex post implementation may not be possible. We propose direct Bayesian mechanisms that are robust to certain forms of bounded rationality while controlling for equilibrium multiplicity. In quasi-linear environments with informational and allocative externalities, we show that any Bayesian mechanism that implements a social choice function can be converted into a supermodular mechanism that also implements the original decision rule. The proposed supermodular mechanism can be chosen in a way that minimizes the size of the equilibrium set, and we provide two sets of sufficient conditions to this effect: for general decision rules and for decision rules that satisfy a certain requirement. This is followed by conditions for supermodular implementation in unique equilibrium. The second chapter looks at the incentives of a revenue-maximizing seller (designer) who discloses information to a number of interacting bidders (agents). In particular, the designer chooses the level of precision with which agents can infer the quality of a common-value object from their privately observed signals. We restrict attention to the second-price sealed-bid auction format. If the seller has perfect commitment power and can choose the precision level before observing the quality of the object, in the presence of any small cost to precision it is ex ante optimal for her to choose completely uninformative signals. For the case when the seller chooses the precision level after observing the quality of the object, we characterize pooling, partial pooling, and separating equilibria. We show that in this setting the cost associated with precision can be viewed as a form of commitment device: if costs are too low, the best pooling equilibrium ceases to exist as the high type seller is too tempted to separate. Thus, the seller ends up with a lower ex ante expected payoff than in the case when cost parameters are above a certain threshold. The third chapter of this dissertation studies the optimal choice of information structure from the perspective of a designer maximizing a certain objective function. Generally speaking, there are two ways of creating incentives for interacting agents to behave in a desired way. One is by providing appropriate payoff incentives, which is the subject of mechanism design. The other is by choosing the information that agents observe, which we refer to as information design. We consider a model of symmetric information where a designer chooses and announces the information structure about a payoff relevant state. The interacting agents observe the signal realizations, update their beliefs, and take actions which affect the welfare of both the designer and the agents. We characterize the general finite approach to deriving the optimal information structure --- the one that maximizes the designer's ex ante expected utility subject to agents playing a Bayes Nash equilibrium. We then apply the general approach to a symmetric two state, two agent, and two actions environment in a parameterized underlying game and fully characterize the optimal information structure. It is never strictly optimal for the designer to use conditionally independent private signals. The optimal information structure may be a public signal, or may consist of correlated private signals. Finally, we examine how changes in the underlying game affect the designer's maximum payoff. This exercise provides a joint mechanism/information design perspective.Economic

The role of strategic human resource management in late career

The urgent need to manage an increasingly ageing workforce has prompted rigorous multi-disciplinary research across the world. A plethora of studies focuses on the best ways in which both organisations and employees can support employees’ well-being and high performance in late career. From this perspective, the key role of strategic Human Resource Management is a topic of strong interest. Recent findings suggest that, in contrast to traditional views, older workers (those aged 55 years and over) are interested and capable of development. Hence, management practices that allow and encourage development opportunities in late career may be highly beneficial for both employers and employees

What is psychological well-being and how it changes throughout the employment cycle?

Nowadays, there is much evidence about the importance of psychological well-being in the workplace. Research has demonstrated consistently that employee’s well-being is positively associated with physical health and is a strong predictor of high individual work performance as well as of some outcomes at organisational level (e.g. customer satisfaction, productivity, profitability and employee turnover). Overall, it is known that employees with high levels of psychological well-being perform better at work than those with lower levels of psychological well-being. However, researchers do not always agree on what exactly well-being means and how it can be measured

The study of higher harmonics imported by a variable frequency converter of the AC engines

Harmonic currents generated by power electronics based devices create serious power quality problems in facilities. This paper presents the results of the Asynchronous engine control via variable frequency converter and focuses on the network pollutions generated by this device. An analysis of measured values of voltage and current of 5th and 7th harmonics is presented. The study was conducted using an experimental simulation System for Monitoring of the Qualitative and Quantitative Indicators of Electricity Networks, equipped with two AC engines