scholarly journals Rationality in games and institutions

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe van Basshuysen
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Design ◽  
Incentive Compatibility ◽  
Social Goals ◽  
General Constraint ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
Incentive Compatible ◽  
Inclusive Concept ◽  
The One ◽  
Orthodox View

AbstractAgainst the orthodox view of the Nash equilibrium as “the embodiment of the idea that economic agents are rational” (Aumann, 1985, p 43), some theorists have proposed ‘non-classical’ concepts of rationality in games, arguing that rational agents should be capable of improving upon inefficient equilibrium outcomes. This paper considers some implications of these proposals for economic theory, by focusing on institutional design. I argue that revisionist concepts of rationality conflict with the constraint that institutions should be designed to be incentive-compatible, that is, that they should implement social goals in equilibrium. To resolve this conflict, proponents of revisionist concepts face a choice between three options: (1) reject incentive compatibility as a general constraint, (2) deny that individuals interacting through the designed institutions are rational, or (3) accept that their concepts do not cover institutional design. I critically discuss these options and I argue that a more inclusive concept of rationality, e.g. the one provided by Robert Sugden’s version of team reasoning, holds the most promise for the non-classical project, yielding a novel argument for incentive compatibility as a general constraint.

From Market Studies to Society Analysis

2005 ◽  
pp. 63-81
Author(s):  
Ya. Kouzminov ◽  
K. Bendoukidze ◽  
M. Yudkevich
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Theory ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
The Real ◽  
Economic Agents

The article examines the main concepts of modern institutional theory and the ways its tools and concepts could be applied in the real policy-making. In particular, the authors focus on behavioral assumptions of the theory that allow them to explain the imperfection of economic agents’ behavior as a reason for rules and institutions to emerge. Problems of institutional design are also discussed.

Choice Of Technique And The Volume Of Saving (A Re-Examination Of The Cobb-Douglas Model)

1968 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 606-617
Author(s):  
Mohammad Anisur Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Production Function ◽  
Development Policy ◽  
Social Goals ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Development Policy ◽  
Labour Intensity ◽  
The One ◽  
Choice Of Technique ◽  
The Relationship

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the relationship between the degree of aggregate labour-intensity and the aggregate volume of saving in an economy where a Cobb-6ouglas production function in its traditional form can be assumed to give a good approximation to reality. The relationship in ques¬tion has an obviously important bearing on economic development policy in the area of choice of labour intensity. To the extent that and in the range where an increase in labour intensity would adversely affect the volume of savings, a con¬flict arises between two important social objectives, i.e., higher rate of capital formation on the one hand and greater employment and distributive equity on the other. If relative resource endowments in the economy are such that such a "competitive" range of labour-intensity falls within the nation's attainable range of choice, development planners will have to arrive at a compromise between these two social goals.

B is for Bias

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-47
Author(s):  
Calin Valsan
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Rational Expectations ◽  
Economic Environment ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
Behavioral Biases ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Economic

Standard economic theory assumes rational agents. Individuals are expected to have rational expectations and constantly optimize their choices. Modern economic and financial theory is build under the assumption of rationality. There is plenty of evidence from psychology, however, that individuals are biased and rely heavily on heuristics in order to make decisions. Yet, this is not a mere fluke, a behavioral oddity. Because the social and economic environment in which individuals evolve is complex, behavioral biases represent evolutionary adaptations allowing economic agents to deal with undecidability and computational irreducibility.

Hierarchical and Non-Hierarchical Coordination

2018 ◽  
pp. 311-332
Author(s):  
Thomas Risse
Keyword(s):  
Social Acceptance ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Hierarchical Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
Hierarchical Governance ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
The One ◽  
Modes Of Governance ◽  
Governance Modes

This chapter focuses on hierarchical and non-hierarchical (including deliberative) governance modes in areas of limited statehood (i.e. on the ‘how’ of governance). Actorhood and modes of governance are orthogonal to each other. State actors are involved in non-hierarchical governance and non-state actors—including violent ones—sometimes exercise hierarchical control over people and territories. The effectiveness and problem-solving capacity of these modes of governance should not be underestimated. ‘New’ modes of governance appear to be more effective on average than hierarchical governance, particularly when the latter has to rely on force and coercion. Deliberative bodies, such as non-state justice institutions, can be rather effective in solving disputes and restoring peace within communities. Both hierarchical and non-hierarchical modes depend on two crucial conditions for their effectiveness, namely the social acceptance (legitimacy) of the governors and/or the governance institutions, on the one hand, and the institutional design of the governance arrangements, on the other.

scholarly journals State-Dependent Utility

2009 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime A. Londoño
Keyword(s):  
General Setting ◽  
Optimal Consumption ◽  
Investment Strategies ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
State Dependent ◽  
Portfolio Problem ◽  
Functional Forms ◽  
Secondary Result ◽  
The One ◽  
Optimal Consumption And Investment

We propose a new approach to utilities in (state) complete markets that is consistent with state-dependent utilities. Full solutions of the optimal consumption and portfolio problem are obtained in a very general setting which includes several functional forms for utilities used in the current literature, and consider general restrictions on allowable wealths. As a secondary result, we obtain a suitable representation for straightforward numerical computations of the optimal consumption and investment strategies. In our model, utilities reflect the level of consumption satisfaction of flows of cash in future times as they are (uniquely) valued by the market when the economic agents are making their consumption and investment decisions. The theoretical framework used for the model is the one proposed in Londoño (2008). We develop the martingale methodology for the solution of the problem of optimal consumption and investment in this setting.

scholarly journals DISAGREEMENT AND EASY BOOTSTRAPPING

Episteme ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Eyal Tal
Keyword(s):  
Irrational Belief ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Rational Beliefs ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Epistemic Akrasia ◽  
First Response ◽  
The One

ABSTRACTShould conciliating with disagreeing peers be considered sufficient for reaching rational beliefs? Thomas Kelly argues that when taken this way, Conciliationism lets those who enter into a disagreement with an irrational belief reach a rational belief all too easily. Three kinds of responses defending Conciliationism are found in the literature. One response has it that conciliation is required only of agents who have a rational belief as they enter into a disagreement. This response yields a requirement that no one should follow. If the need to conciliate applies only to already rational agents, then an agent must conciliate only when her peer is the one irrational. A second response views conciliation as merely necessary for having a rational belief. This alone does little to address the central question of what is rational to believe when facing a disagreeing peer. Attempts to develop the response either reduce to the first response, or deem necessary an unnecessary doxastic revision, or imply that rational dilemmas obtain in cases where intuitively there are none. A third response tells us to weigh what our pre-disagreement evidence supports against the evidence from the disagreement itself. This invites epistemic akrasia.

Democratising the global order: from communicative freedom to communicative power

2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 431-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES BOHMAN
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
The Other ◽  
Global Order ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One ◽  
Communicative Power

AbstractWhile there is much discussion of the need for democracy in transnational institutions, there is less discussion of the conditions for their democratisation. To address this deficit, a general account of democratisation is necessary. I propose that democratisation is dependent on the joint realisation of two conditions: communicative freedom and communicative power. Democratisation thus requires, first, publics and associations in which communicative freedom is realised on the one hand; and, second, institutions that link such freedom to the exercise of communicative power to decision making on the other. In order for these conditions to be met, civil society must be expanded into the public sphere. The transformation of communicative freedom into communicative power can be promoted only by institutions that recognise the decisional status of publics, which in turn depend on civil society to generate the deliberative benefits of the plurality of perspectives. Communicative power is not merely spontaneously generated through publics, but also through publics expressly formed through democratic institutional design.

scholarly journals Predictions vs. Preliminary Sample Estimates: The Case of Eurozone Quarterly GDP

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 499-520
Author(s):  
Enrico D’Elia
Keyword(s):  
Euro Area ◽  
Data Dissemination ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Economic Indicators ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
Final Data ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Statistical Viewpoint

Abstract Economic agents are aware of incurring a loss in basing their decisions on their own extrapolations instead of on sound statistical data, but this loss may be smaller than the one related to waiting for the dissemination of the final data. Broad guidelines on deciding when statistical offices should release preliminary and final estimates of the key statistics may come from comparing the loss attached to users’ predictions with the loss associated to possible preliminary estimates from incomplete samples. Furthermore, the cost of delaying decisions may support the dissemination of very early estimates of economic indicators, even if their accuracy is not fully satisfactory from a strict statistical viewpoint. Analysing the vintages of releases of quarterly Euro area GDP supports the view that even very inefficient predictions may beat some official preliminary releases of GDP, suggesting that the current calendar of data dissemination requires some adjustment. In particular, actual “flash” estimates could be anticipated, while some later intermediate releases are likely less informative for the users.

scholarly journals Uma Plataforma Escalável de Alta Disponibilidade para Monitoramento, Armazenamento e Recuperação de Vídeos da TV por Assinatura

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (49) ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
Dênio Mariz Timóteo ◽  
Giuliano Maia Castro ◽  
Diego Rosa Pessoa ◽  
Chistian Miziara ◽  
Daniel Caetano
Keyword(s):  
Continuous Monitoring ◽  
Free Access ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
The Public ◽  
Access Service ◽  
National Production ◽  
Pay Tv ◽  
The One ◽  
Production Industry ◽  
Monitoring Platform

The production industry and the market for the distribution of audiovisual content is regulated in different ways by different countries, which, on the one hand, want to protect, develop and foster national audiovisual production, but on the other, want to allow free access for the public to foreign content. National legislation and regulatory policy in countries often pose challenges to IT governance, as well as requiring practical efforts in building and maintaining tools that can assist in monitoring the audiovisual market. This paper presents technical aspects of the Conditioned Access Service Monitoring Platform (MP-SeAC), a software designed, built and operated by Ancine in Brazil as a tool to assist compliance with Law 12.485/2011 that regulates the performance of economic agents in pay-TV market. MP-SeAC software captures, processes, records, indexes and retrieves videos from 200 pay-TV channels, allowing for continuous monitoring of programming and enforcement of effective compliance and promotion of national production. In the future, the recorded video collection will also serve the education and research community and society at large.

scholarly journals Coexistence of Cooperative Models as Structural Answer to Lock-Ins in Diversification Pathways: The Case of the Walloon Dairy Sector

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Véronique De Herde ◽  
Philippe V. Baret ◽  
Kevin Maréchal
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
New Institutional Economics ◽  
Product Diversification ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
Dairy Cooperatives ◽  
The One ◽  
Hybrid Actors ◽  
Cooperative Models

Drawing on an analysis of the Walloon dairy sector, this paper aims at bringing novel insights on the coexistence issue in agrifood transition studies. Whereas most studies explore the coexistence of farm models, our study focuses on value chains, in particular on cooperatives. In the Walloon Region, new dairy cooperatives emerged, as substitute or as complement to the incumbent vertically integrated dairy cooperatives. This paper focuses on the coexistence of dairy cooperative models as enabler of transition toward product diversification. Dairy cooperatives are hybrid actors: economic agents on the market on the one hand, structure of collective agency on the other hand. Williamson's framework of New Institutional Economics acknowledges that the allocation of resources by cooperatives depends on governance processes and on the wider institutional context in which the cooperatives evolve. Within the broader frame of the Multi-Level Perspective, this approach allows to consider the socio-technical coherence in which the cooperatives evolve, the effects of this coherence on their pathways of development, and the complementarity of the cooperative models. This qualitative analysis builds on semi-directed interviews with actors of the Walloon dairy sector. The results outline distinctions between the new cooperative models and mainstream dairy cooperatives in market approach, definition of milk quality, distribution of added value, governance, and interactions with partners. Both models evolve within a distinct socio-technical coherence, holding, in the case of the mainstream dairy cooperatives, lock-ins to diversification related to the relationship with the farmer-members and the milk they produce in the industrial vertically integrated model. The new cooperative models circumvent these lock-ins through de-integration and externalization of initiatives, remuneration, and risk. They allow specific groups of actors—still related or unrelated to the mainstream dairy cooperative—to explore new market pathways in accordance with their potential, and to mutually agree on criteria qualifying milk. This research draws the picture of a possible reconfiguration of the dairy landscape toward a more diversified ecosystem of actors and invites to consider structures of governance in collective action as a cornerstone issue, because of their significant role in terms of enablement, coexistence, and complementarity throughout the transition process.

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