scholarly journals Optimal Defaults with Normative Ambiguity

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Goldin ◽  
Daniel Reck
Keyword(s):  
Optimal Policy ◽  
Broad Class ◽  
Active Choice ◽  
Default Options ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Pension Contribution

Default effects are pervasive, but the reason they arise is often unclear. We study optimal policy when the planner does not know whether an observed default effect reflects a welfare-relevant preference or a mistake. Within a broad class of models, we find that determining optimal policy is impossible without resolving this ambiguity. Depending on the resolution, optimal policy tends in opposite directions: either minimizing the number of non-default choices or inducing active choice. We show how these considerations depend on whether active choosers make mistakes when selecting among non-default options. We illustrate our results using data on pension contribution defaults.

Automated Scoring of Multicomponent Tasks

2016 ◽  
pp. 627-658
Author(s):  
William Lorié
Keyword(s):  
High School Students ◽  
Broad Class ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Automated Scoring ◽  
School Students ◽  
Test Items ◽  
Performance Quality ◽  
Evaluation Functions ◽  
Assessment Tasks ◽  
Using Data

Assessment of real-world skills increasingly requires efficient scoring of non-routine test items. This chapter addresses the scoring and psychometric treatment of a broad class of automatically-scorable complex assessment tasks allowing a definite set of responses orderable by quality. These multicomponent tasks are described and proposals are advanced on how to score them so that they support capturing gradations of performance quality. The resulting response evaluation functions are assessed empirically against alternatives using data from a pilot of technology-enhanced items (TEIs) administered to a sample of high school students in one U.S. state. Results support scoring frameworks leveraging the full potential of multicomponent tasks for providing evidence of partial knowledge, understanding, or skill.

Resisting welfare conditionality: constraint, choice and dissent among homeless migrants

2019 ◽  
pp. 69-90
Author(s):  
Regina Serpa
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Behavioural Change ◽  
State Control ◽  
Active Choice ◽  
Constrained Choice ◽  
Eligibility Requirements ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Uk

This chapter examines the ways in which welfare conditionality impacts upon homeless migrants in the UK. Legal status, eligibility requirements and behavioural controls determine access to benefits, housing and State assistance, compounding the precarity of homeless migrants who are situated at the interstices of multiple (and competing) systems. The chapter looks how specific conditions both constrain the choices of homeless migrants and how efforts at behavioural change are resisted. Using data from a study of Polish rough sleepers in Scotland, this chapter asks: To what extent is non-participation a consequence of passivity or a feature of active choice? In what ways do those facing extreme precarity and constrained choice resist welfare conditionality? The study argues that for some rough sleepers, homelessness can be a form of resistance to eligibility and behavioural conditions attached to welfare and sleeping rough can be an act of dissent to forms of State control.

scholarly journals Rationalizations and Mistakes: Optimal Policy with Normative Ambiguity

2018 ◽  
Vol 108 ◽  
pp. 98-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Goldin ◽  
Daniel Reck
Keyword(s):  
Decision Maker ◽  
Health Plan ◽  
Optimal Policy ◽  
Utility Functions ◽  
Welfare Loss ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Social Programs ◽  
Default Options ◽  
Tax Salience ◽  
Plan Selection

Behavior that appears to violate neoclassical assumptions can often be rationalized by incorporating an optimization cost into decision-makers' utility functions. Depending on the setting, these costs may reflect either an actual welfare loss for the decision-maker who incurs them or a convenient (but welfare irrelevant) modeling device. We consider how the resolution of this normative ambiguity shapes optimal policy in a number of contexts, including default options, inertia in health plan selection, take-up of social programs, programs that encourage moving to a new neighborhood, and tax salience.

scholarly journals Comparison of rebreeding policies for Ontario dairy herds

1997 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. B. Plaizier ◽  
G. J. King ◽  
J. C. M. Dekkers ◽  
K. Lissemore
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support ◽  
Simulation Model ◽  
Milk Production ◽  
Reproductive Performance ◽  
Optimal Policy ◽  
Dairy Herds ◽  
Net Revenue ◽  
Dynamic Stochastic ◽  
Stochastic Simulation Model ◽  
Using Data

Net-revenues of rebreeding policies that differed in the maximum allowable days after calving for breeding were compared using data generated by a dynamic stochastic simulation model of Ontario dairy herds. Such comparisons benefit farmer decision support, as rebreeding decisions are important management choices. Rebreeding up to 168 d after calving only was least optimal. Hence, the rebreeding period should not be too short. At average and high herd fertility, a rebreeding policy under which cows with a mature equivalent milk production level lower than 80%, between 80 and 100%, and greater than 100% of the herd average were not rebred, bred up to 168 d after calving, and bred up to 250 d after calving, respectively, resulted in higher net-revenue than rebreeding policies that used a single cut-off for all cows. Differences in net-revenue between the optimal and the least optimal policy were $217.90 and $114.40 per cow per year for the lowest and highest simulated reproductive performance, respectively. At low herd fertility, rebreeding up to 364 d postpartum was optimal. However, at this level of performance emphasis should be given to improving fertility, rather than choice of rebreeding policy. Key words: Dairy cattle, simulation, economics, insemination policy, rebreeding policy

scholarly journals Social Networks and the Decision to Insure

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Cai ◽  
Alain De Janvry ◽  
Elisabeth Sadoulet
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Network Effects ◽  
Rural China ◽  
Insurance Premium ◽  
Network Effect ◽  
Purchase Decisions ◽  
Percent Reduction ◽  
Default Options ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Weather Insurance

Using data from a randomized experiment in rural China, we study the influence of social networks on weather insurance adoption and the mechanisms through which they operate. To quantify network effects, the experiment provides intensive information sessions about the product to a random subset of farmers. For untreated farmers, the effect of having an additional treated friend on take-up is equivalent to granting a 13 percent reduction in the insurance premium. By varying the information available about peers’ decisions and randomizing default options, we show that the network effect is driven by the diffusion of insurance knowledge rather than purchase decisions. (JEL G22, O12, O16, P36, Q12, Q54, Z13)

Default Options to Foster Policy Ratings and their Attractiveness on People's Preferences

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Mohammed Ziaul Hoque
Keyword(s):  
Free Choice ◽  
Survey Design ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Active Choice ◽  
Default Options ◽  
Pros And Cons ◽  
Choice Option ◽  
Experience Difficulty ◽  
Structured Questionnaire

The present study explains how default choices are easy when compared with the alternate and free choices based on three survey design. In doing so, the study examines the effects of the default option on people's preferences towards various issues concerning governmental and marketing policy. Three-hundred respondents were randomly selected and interviewed with the structured questionnaire. To test the hypotheses of the study, the study has used the tools of descriptive statistics, combined means, and correlation of the data. The results of the study show that status-quo-labelled (current) policies are preferred over a change of setting, but negatively phrased policies do not show this status quo (SQ) effect. The results also demonstrate that the default setting, or SQ, has enhanced a policy's rating and attractiveness over the free and active choice. If people have to choose a policy when there is no default available, they experience difficulty in choosing and it takes them more time. In the case of the free choice option, people report more pros and cons of the policy issue than in the SQ and NSQ setting.

Polar Magnetic Field Reversals of the Sun in Maunder Minimum

2000 ◽  
Vol 179 ◽  
pp. 193-196
Author(s):  
V. I. Makarov ◽  
A. G. Tlatov
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Field ◽  
Maunder Minimum ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Annual Rings ◽  
Field Reversal ◽  
Polar Magnetic Field ◽  
Pine Trees ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Magnetic Field Reversal

AbstractA possible scenario of polar magnetic field reversal of the Sun during the Maunder Minimum (1645–1715) is discussed using data of magnetic field reversals of the Sun for 1880–1991 and the14Ccontent variations in the bi-annual rings of the pine-trees in 1600–1730 yrs.

Contrast From Point Defects in The Infinitesimal Approximation

1980 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 350-351
Author(s):  
L. J. Sykes ◽  
J. J. Hren
Keyword(s):  
Electron Microscope ◽  
Point Defects ◽  
Broad Class ◽  
Stacking Fault ◽  
Crystalline Solids ◽  
Dislocation Loops ◽  
Analytical Expression ◽  
Stacking Fault Tetrahedra

In electron microscope studies of crystalline solids there is a broad class of very small objects which are imaged primarily by strain contrast. Typical examples include: dislocation loops, precipitates, stacking fault tetrahedra and voids. Such objects are very difficult to identify and measure because of the sensitivity of their image to a host of variables and a similarity in their images. A number of attempts have been made to publish contrast rules to help the microscopist sort out certain subclasses of such defects. For example, Ashby and Brown (1963) described semi-quantitative rules to understand small precipitates. Eyre et al. (1979) published a catalog of images for BCC dislocation loops. Katerbau (1976) described an analytical expression to help understand contrast from small defects. There are other publications as well.

Accent Policy and Accent Modification Enterprises as Potential Indicators of Intercultural Power Relations: A Call for an Updated Research Agenda

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brynne D. Ovalle ◽  
Rahul Chakraborty
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Cultural Organization ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

This article has two purposes: (a) to examine the relationship between intercultural power relations and the widespread practice of accent discrimination and (b) to underscore the ramifications of accent discrimination both for the individual and for global society as a whole. First, authors review social theory regarding language and group identity construction, and then go on to integrate more current studies linking accent bias to sociocultural variables. Authors discuss three examples of intercultural accent discrimination in order to illustrate how this link manifests itself in the broader context of international relations (i.e., how accent discrimination is generated in situations of unequal power) and, using a review of current research, assess the consequences of accent discrimination for the individual. Finally, the article highlights the impact that linguistic discrimination is having on linguistic diversity globally, partially using data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and partially by offering a potential context for interpreting the emergence of practices that seek to reduce or modify speaker accents.

Modeling Self-Determination Theory Motivation Data by Using Unfolding IRT

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Philipp A. Freund ◽  
Annette Lohbeck
Keyword(s):  
Ideal Point ◽  
Self Determination Theory ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Dominance Model ◽  
Irt Model ◽  
Autonomous Behavior ◽  
Location Parameters ◽  
Unfolding Models ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Item Location

Abstract. Self-determination theory (SDT) suggests that the degree of autonomous behavior regulation is a characteristic of distinct motivation types which thus can be ordered on the so-called Autonomy-Control Continuum (ACC). The present study employs an item response theory (IRT) model under the ideal point response/unfolding paradigm in order to model the response process to SDT motivation items in theoretical accordance with the ACC. Using data from two independent student samples (measuring SDT motivation for the academic subjects of Mathematics and German as a native language), it was found that an unfolding model exhibited a relatively better fit compared to a dominance model. The item location parameters under the unfolding paradigm showed clusters of items representing the different regulation types on the ACC to be (almost perfectly) empirically separable, as suggested by SDT. Besides theoretical implications, perspectives for the application of ideal point response/unfolding models in the development of measures for non-cognitive constructs are addressed.

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