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1. Learning from regulatory failure: How Ostrom’s restorative justice design principle helps naïve groups create wiser enforcement systems to overcome the tragedy of the commons

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307832  

   DeCaro, Daniel A; DeCaro, Marci S; Janssen, Marco A; Lee, Allen; Graci, Alanea; Flener, Devin (August 2024, PLOS ONE)

   Munteanu, Ionela (Ed.)

   Rule enforcement is critical in democratic, self-governing societies. Many political disputes occur when citizens do not understand the fundamental rationales for enforcement (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic). We examined how naïve groups learn and develop wise enforcement systems. Based on theories from behavioral economics, political science, psychology, and education, we predicted that groups need to experience failure of an enforcement system, but be guided on restorative justice principles to collectively learn from this failure. Undergraduate students (N= 288) from a Midwestern U.S. metropolitan university self-governed a simulated common-pool resource with real financial payoffs. Groups began with one of three conditions designed to create different experiences with enforcement and regulatory failure: (a) no enforcement (no communication or peer sanctioning), (b) lax enforcement (communication with peer-sanctioning), or (c) regulatory abuse (peer sanctioning without communication). Half then received facilitated guidance on restorative justice principles (e.g., discuss whether/why to use sanctions). To examine cooperation, we measured how well participants maintained the resource. To examine group learning, we created a novel coding system, which tracked groups’ constitutional decisions about conservation agreements and enforcement, conceptual understanding, and the enforcement systems they created. The no-enforcement and lax-enforcement conditions quickly yielded moderate cooperation via voluntary agreements. However, such agreements prevented groups from discovering how and why to use enforcement (peer sanctioning) to improve performance. Initial exposure to regulatory failure had different effects depending on facilitation. Unfacilitated groups fixated on initial misconceptions, causing them to abandon or create less sophisticated enforcement systems, hindering cooperation. Facilitated groups learned from prior failure—discovering principles of wise enforcement (e.g., collective efficiency, self-restraint)—and created more sophisticated enforcement systems (e.g., coordinated sanctions) that improved cooperation. Guidance on restorative justice principles and experience with regulatory abuse may be necessary preconditions for naïve individuals to understand and develop wiser collective enforcement systems. 

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2. Toward Automated Enforcement of Radio Interference

   https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3749751  

   Bustamante, Pedro; Das, Debarun; Rose, J Stephanie; Gomez, Marcela; Weiss, Martin B.; Park, Jung-Min; Znati, Taieb (December 2020, SSRN Electronic Journal)

   In many countries, sharing has become a significant approach to problems of spectrum allocation and assignment. As this approach moves from concept to reality, it is reasonable to expect an increase in interference or usage conflict events between sharing parties. Scholars such as Coase, Demsetz, Stigler, and others have argued that appropriate enforcement is critical to successful contracts (such as spectrum sharing agreements) and Polinsky, Shavell, and others have analyzed enforcement mechanisms in general. While many ex-ante measures may be used, reducing the social costs of ex-ante enforcement means shifting the balance more toward ex-post measures. Ex post enforcement requires detection, data collection, and adjudication methods. At present, these methods are ad hoc (operating in a decentralized way between parties) or fairly costly (e.g., relying on the FCC Enforcement Bureau). The research presented in this paper is the culmination of an NSF-funded inquiry into how and what enforcement functions can be automated. 

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3. Toward Automated Enforcement of Radio Interference

   Bustamante, Pedro; Das, Debarun; Rose, J. Stephanie; Gomez, Marcela; Weiss, Martin B.H.; Park, Jung-Min; Znati, Taieb (February 2021, Telecommunications Policy Research Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   n many countries, sharing has become a significant approach to problems of spectrum allocation and assignment. As this approach moves from concept to reality, it is reasonable to expect an increase in interference or usage conflict events between sharing parties. Scholars such as Coase, Demsetz, Stigler, and others have argued that appropriate enforcement is critical to successful contracts (such as spectrum sharing agreements) and Polinsky, Shavell, and others have analyzed enforcement mechanisms in general. While many ex-ante measures may be used, reducing the social costs of ex-ante enforcement means shifting the balance more toward ex-post measures. Ex post enforcement requires detection, data collection, and adjudication methods. At present, these methods are ad hoc (operating in a decentralized way between parties) or fairly costly (e.g., relying on the FCC Enforcement Bureau). The research presented in this paper is the culmination of an NSF-funded inquiry into how and what enforcement functions can be automated. 

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4. Mechanisms for Outsourcing Computation via a Decentralized Market

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3401025.3401737  

   Eisele, Scott; Eghtesad, Taha; Troutman, Nicholas; Laszka, Aron; Dubey, Abhishek (January 2020, International Conference on Distributed and Event Based Systems 2020)

   As the number of personal computing and IoT devices grows rapidly, so does the amount of computational power that is available at the edge. Since many of these devices are often idle, there is a vast amount of computational power that is currently untapped, and which could be used for outsourcing computation. Existing solutions for harnessing this power, such as volunteer computing (e.g., BOINC), are centralized platforms in which a single organization or company can control participation and pricing. By contrast, an open market of computational resources, where resource owners and resource users trade directly with each other, could lead to greater participation and more competitive pricing. To provide an open market, we introduce MODiCuM, a decentralized system for outsourcing computation. MODiCuM deters participants from misbehaving-which is a key problem in decentralized systems-by resolving disputes via dedicated mediators and by imposing enforceable fines. However, unlike other decentralized outsourcing solutions, MODiCuM minimizes computational overhead since it does not require global trust in mediation results. We provide analytical results proving that MODiCuM can deter misbehavior, and we evaluate the overhead of MODiCuM using experimental results based on an implementation of our platform. 

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5. A Pool Strategy of Microgrid in Power Distribution Electricity Market

   https://doi.org/10.1109/TPWRS.2019.2916144  

   Wu, Yiwei; Barati, Masoud; Lim, Gino (June 2019, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems)

   This paper discusses a market-based pool strategy for a microgrid (MG) to optimally trade electric power in the distribution electricity market (DEM). The increasing penetration levels of distributed energy resources (DERs) and MGs in distribution system (DS) stress distribution system operator (DSO) and require higher levels of coordinated control strategies. The distribution system operator has limited visibility and control over such distributed resources. To reduce the complexity of the system and improve the efficiency of the electricity market operation, we propose a decentralized pool strategy for an MG to integrate with a distribution system through a market mechanism. A market-based interactions procedure between MGs and DS is developed for MGs as price-makers to find an optimal bidding/offering strategy efficiently. To achieve a market equilibrium among all entities, we initially cast this problem as a bi-level programming problem, in which the upper level is an MG optimal scheduling problem and the lower level presents a DEM clearing mechanism. The proposed bi-level model is converted to a single mix-integer model which is easier to solve. Uncertainties associated with MG's rivals' offers and demands' bids are considered in this problem. The solution results from a modified IEEE 33-Bus distribution system are presented and discussed. Finally, some conclusions are drawn and examined. 

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