Evolutionary strategies of consumer federation and manufacturer under recall mechanism

Based on an unqualified product recalling process in a supply chain, this paper establishes an evolutionary game model between consumer federation and manufacturer, as well as analyzes the effects of manufacturer’s pricing strategy and consumer federation’s supervision on the decision-making and dynamic tendency. Under this structure, the manufacturers’ pricing strategies on recalls mechanism have two scenarios: the high penalty and low penalty from consumer federation. Results shows that, when the consumer federation adopts high penalty measures, there will be an ESS for consumer federation that can both minimize the cost and protect consumers’ rights. Further, the probability of manufacturer adopting “recall” strategy is positively correlated with the change in the product price, and both the probability of consumer federation adopting “regulate” strategy and manufacturer adopting “recall” strategy are positively correlated with the penalty coefficient.

Interpersonal brain synchronization under bluffing in strategic games

People commonly use bluffing as a strategy to manipulate other people’s beliefs about them for gain. Although bluffing is an important part of successful strategic thinking, the inter-brain mechanisms underlying bluffing remain unclear. Here, we employed a functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning technique to simultaneously record the brain activity in the right temporal-parietal junction in 32 pairs of participants when they played a bluffing game against each other or with computer opponents separately. We also manipulated the penalty for bluffing (high vs low). Under the condition of high relative to low penalty, results showed a higher bluffing rate and a higher calling rate in human-to-human as compared to human-to-computer pairing. At the neural level, high relative to low penalty condition increased the interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) in the right angular gyrus (rAG) during human-to-human as compared to human-to-computer interaction. Importantly, bluffing relative to non-bluffing, under the high penalty and human-to-human condition, resulted in an increase in response time and enhanced IBS in the rAG. Participants who bluffed more frequently also elicited stronger IBS. Our findings support the view that regions associated with mentalizing become synchronized during bluffing games, especially under the high penalty and human-to-human condition.

Default Behaviors of Contractors under Surety Bond in Construction Industry Based on Evolutionary Game Model

In construction projects, some contractors will take default actions against the contracts to obtain maximum profits and damage the owners’ benefits as a result. In the construction markets where effective supervision is not performed well, contractors have more opportunities to default. Surety bonds were designed to solve the default problems and promote the sustainable development of the construction markets. This paper was proposed to explore the interactions between owners and contractors and investigate the influence of surety bonds (high penalty and low penalty) on the default behavior of contractors based on a static and dynamic evolutionary game analysis model. The results showed that applying the surety bond strategy is effective at decreasing the probability of the contractors’ default behavior when the credit system based on a surety bond system is well developed in the construction industry and the cost of the surety bond is low enough. Therefore, government strategies such as a better development of the credit system driven by surety bonds and the subsidies on surety bonds to reduce the cost can mitigate the contractors’ default behavior and keep the sustainability of the construction markets.

Tradeoff between Default Risk and Efficiency Loss

The study characterizes an equilibrium bid function with three bidders in an average bid auction (ABA), where a winning bid is the one closest to an average of all submitted bids, when a cost overrun can occur, and an insolvent winner is penalized. First of all, every bidder bids an identical amount in the absence of the penalty. Meanwhile, when the penalty is charged high enough to prevent all bidders from breaching the contract due to cost overruns, either some bidders bid identically and the rest follow a strictly increasing bidding strategy, or all bidders place an identical bid. Based on the characterization, the ABA is compared to the first price reverse auction (FPA) in terms of a buyer’s benefit. The ABA could be more beneficial to the buyer without any penalty in spite of an insolvent winner’s default. If nobody defaults on his bid due to the high penalty, however, the FPA is good to the buyer. This result partly explains the rationale for the ABA in Italy. (JEL codes: C78, D82)

Using PERT to Optimise the Completion Time of Air-Conditioning and Mechanical Ventilation (ACMV) Project

An air-conditioning and mechanical ventilation (ACMV) construction project involved many interrelated construction activities with varying durations and multiple dependencies. This paper focuses on the development of a best possible project planning and scheduling technique that can help the project manager to manage and complete the ACMV project in optimal time. The program evaluation and review technique (PERT) is used in this research. The PERT technique helps to determine the probabilities of various stages of the project by specified deadlines and identify the activities on the critical path that have high potential for causing delays in the project completion time. The completion times of 72, 76, 79, and 80 weeks were taken for the PERT analysis. Deadline of 72 weeks is the contractual period of the ACMV project as specified in the contract. Completion time of 76 weeks is the critical path of the project as analyzed by the PERT technique. The deadline of 79 weeks is the proposed completion time for the ACMV project whereas 80 weeks are the actual completion date of the project. The PERT analysis revealed that the project completion time of 72 weeks, which is as stated in the contractual completion time, yielded the probability of completion of 2.67% only. This analysis shows that the contractual period is impossible to be achieved and it is an unrealistic time setting. Further negotiation is required including changing or extending of the contractual completion time. The other completion times are able to be achieved but the company may need to face the high penalty costs due to the delays in completion time.

The Truth About Property Rules: Some Obstacles to the Economic Analysis of Remedies

2 Washington University Jurisprudence Review 39 (2010)Property Rules, as famously described by Calabresi and Melamed, are remedial rules that place a prohibitively high penalty on violations of rights. This essay examines two aspects of property rules. In each case, the form of the rule is critically important. The first question addressed is the capacity of property rules to affect behavior that takes place outside the context of litigation. Most economic analysis assumes that when a right is protected by a property rule, the property rule will guide private decisionmaking at the time of a contemplated violation, and possibly before that time. Yet, to have this effect, property rules (and liability rules) must be embodied in a set of determinate legal rules defining not only the penalty imposed on violation, but also the entitlements protected and the conditions on which the property-rule remedy is available. Property rules, in other words, must be rules.In fact, "true property rules" that meet this description are scarce. This casts some doubt on the predictions made in literature on the subject. Theory and doctrine may or may not be reconcilable, depending on the desirability and feasibility of determinate rules in the area of remedies.In existing law, most true property rules protect property rights. This leads to the second question addressed here: what relationship, if any, do property rules bear to property? After examining several theories others have proposed to explain the association between property rules and property rights, I suggest that property rules are connected to property in two ways. First, deterrent property rules ensure the continuity that makes property rights valuable to owners and to society. Second, once property rights are securely in place, the value they generate makes property rules a more efficient response to the possibility of unilateral taking. To achieve these results, however, both property rights and property rules must be implemented by general, determinate, and authoritative legal rules.

THE PENAL CODE REFORMULATION IN ERADICATION OF NARCOTICS CRIME

The high penalty of imposed fines aims to provide a deterrent effect and fear, both for the perpetrator of the criminal itself and for others. However, with the formulation of high penalty penalty threats and the granting of the possibility by the Act to replace the implementation of a fine with a subpoena of imprisonment in a short time cause the fine penalty in Law Number 35 Year 2009 is not effective.

A Quadratic Contact Element Passing the Patch Test

For the two dimensional contact modeling, the standard node-to-segment quadratic contact elements are known to exhibit oscillations of the contact pressure. This situation is particularly critical when using the penalty method with a high penalty parameter because the amplitude of the oscillations increase with increasing penalty parameter. The aim of this article is to present a method for removing the oscillations of contact pressure observed while using quadratic contact element. For this purpose, the nodal forces at the slave and at the master nodes need to be evaluated appropriately. One possibility is to develop a suitable procedure for computing the nodal forces. In that sake, we selected the approach first proposed in [35] in an appropriate manner. After presenting the improved quadratic contact element, some numerical examples are illustrated in this paper to comparethe standard quadratic node-to-segment element with the proposed element. The examples show that the proposed element can strongly reduce the oscillating contact pressure for both plane and curved contact surfaces.

Impact of New Water Sources on the Overall Water Network: An Optimisation Approach

A mathematical programming problem is formulated for a water network with new water sources included. Salinity and water hardness are considered in the model, which is later solved using the Max-Min Ant System (MMAS) to assess the impact of new water sources on the total cost of the existing network. It is efficient to include new water sources if the distances to them are short or if there is a high penalty associated with failure to meet demand. Desalination unit costs also significantly affect the decision whether to install new water sources into the existing network while softening costs are generally negligible in making such decisions. Experimental results show that, in the example considered, it is efficient to reduce number of desalination plants to remain with one central plant. The Max-Min Ant System algorithm seems to be an effective method as shown by least computational time as compared to the commercial solver Cplex.