Non-cooperative matching games

Consider a market in which two distinct groups of agents face each other. Every agent can improve upon his status quo if he is matched with a member of the opposite group and if he agrees with his partner how to split the realized gain. The paper presents two non-cooperative games in which the agents construct the allocation without the help of an auctioneer. In the first game the set of equilibria coincides with the cooperative “stable solutions” which are well-established in this context. In the second game it is shown that a change of the order of the moves is sufficient to arrive at a unique equilibrium payoff.     

Monotonicity and Market Equilibrium

Economic theory relates prices to quantities via ” market curves.” Typically, such curves are monotone, hence they admit functional representations. The latter invoke linear pricing of quantities so as to obtain market values. Specifically, if higher prices call forward greater supply, a convex function, bounded below by market values, represents the resulting supply curve. Likewise, if demand decreases at higher prices, a concave function, bounded above by market values, represents the attending demand curve. In short, grantedmonotonicity, market curves are described by bivariate functions, either convex or concave, appropriately bounded by linear valuations of quantities. The bounding supply (demand) function generates ask (resp. bid)valuations. Exchange and trade, as modelled here, are driven by valuation differentials, called bid-ask spreads. These disappear, and market equilibrium prevails, if all ”inverse market curves” intersect in a common price. A main issue is whether and how market agents, by themselves, may reach such equilibrium. The paper provides positive and constructive answers. As vehicle it contends with bilateral transactions.     

Model predictive control,the economy,and the issue of global warming

This study is motivated by the evidence of global warming, which is caused by human activity but affects the efficiency of the economy. We employ the integrated assessment Nordhaus DICE-2007 model (Nordhaus, A question of balance: economic modeling of global warming, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2008). Generally speaking, the framework is that of dynamic optimization of the discounted inter-temporal utility of consumption, taking into account the economic and the environmental dynamics. The main novelty is that several reasonable types of behavior (policy) of the economic agents, which may be non-optimal from the point of view of the global performance but are reasonable form an individual point of view and exist in reality, are strictly defined and analyzed. These include the concepts of “business as usual”, in which an economic agent ignores her impact on the climate change (although adapting to it), and of “free riding with a perfect foresight”, where some economic agents optimize in an adaptive way their individual performance expecting that the others would perform in a collectively optimal way. These policies are defined in a formal and unified way modifying ideas from the so-called “model predictive control”. The introduced concepts are relevant to many other problems of dynamic optimization, especially in the context of resource economics. However, the numerical analysis in this paper is devoted to the evolution of the world economy and the average temperature in the next 150 years, depending on different scenarios for the behavior of the economic agents. In particular, the results show that the “business as usual”, although adaptive to the change of the atmospheric temperature, may lead within 150 years to increase of temperature by 2°C more than the collectively optimal policy.     

The extended serial correspondence on a rich preference domain

We study the problem of assigning objects to a set of agents. We focus on probabilistic solutions that only take agents’ preferences over objects as input. Importantly, agents may be indifferent among several objects. The “extended serial correspondence” is proposed by Katta and Sethuraman (J Econ Theory 131:231–250, 2006) to solve this problem. As a follow-up to Liu and Pycia (Ordinal efficiency, fairness, and incentives in large markets. Mimeo, 2012) who introduce the notion of profiles with “full support”, we work with two interesting classes of preference profiles: profiles that (i) have rich support on a partition or (ii) are single-peaked with rich support on a partition. For each profile in these classes, an assignment matrix is selected by the extended serial correspondence if and only if it is sd-efficient and sd envy-free. We also provide an asymptotic result.     

Logic of agreement: Foundations,semantic system and proof theory

In this paper a multi-valued propositional logic — logic of agreement — in terms of its model theory and inference system is presented. This formal system is the natural consequence of a new way to approach concepts as commonsense knowledge, uncertainty and approximate reasoning — the point of view of agreement. Particularly, it is discussed a possible extension of the Classical Theory of Sets based on the idea that, instead of trying to conceptualize sets as “fuzzy” or “vague” entities, it is more adequate to define membership as the result of a partial agreement among a group of individual agents. Furthermore, it is shown that the concept of agreement provides a framework for the development of a formal and sound explanation for concepts (e.g. fuzzy sets) which lack formal semantics. According to the definition of agreement, an individual agent agrees or not with the fact that an object possesses a certain property. A clear distinction is then established, between an individual agent — to whom deciding whether an element belongs to a set is just a yes or no matter — and a commonsensical agent — the one who interprets the knowledge shared by a certain group of people. Finally, the logic of agreement is presented and discussed. As it is assumed the existence of several individual agents, the semantic system is based on the perspective that each individual agent defines her/his own conceptualization of reality. So the semantics of the logic of agreement can be seen as being similar to a semantics of possible worlds, one for each individual agent. The proof theory is an extension of a natural deduction system, using supported formulas and incorporating only inference rules. Moreover, the soundness and completeness of the logic of agreement are also presented.     

Core and competitive equilibria with indivisibilities

The paper presents a model of an exchange economy with indivisible goods and money. There are a finite number of agents, each one initially endowed with a certain amount of money and at most one indivisible good. Each agent is assumed to have no use for more than one indivisible good. It is proved that the core of the economy is nonempty. If utility functions are increasing in money, and if the initial resources in money are in some sense “sufficient” the core allocations coincide with the competitive equilibrium allocations. With restrictions on the set of feasible allocations, the same model is used to prove the existence of stable solutions in the generalized “marriage problem”. However it is shown that, even if money enters the model, these solutions cannot generally be obtained as competitive equilibria.     

Unawareness with “possible” possible worlds

Logical structures for modeling agents’ reasoning about unawareness are presented where it can hold simultaneously that: (i) agents’ beliefs about whether they are fully aware need not be veracious with partitional information; and (ii) the agent is fully aware if and only if she is aware of a fixed domain of formulae. In light of (ii), all states are deemed “possible”. Semantics operate in two stages, with belief in the second stage determined by truth in the first stage. Characterization theorems show that, without the first stage, the structures validate the same conditions as those of Halpern and Rego (2009).     

Random walk of a “drunk company”

We study the collective behavior of a system of Brownian agents each of which moves orienting itself to the group as a whole. This system is the simplest model of the motion of a “united drunk company.” For such a system, we use the functional integration technique to calculate the probability of transition from one point to another and to determine the time dependence of the probability density to find a member of the “drunk company” near a given point. It turns out that the system exhibits an interesting collective behavior at large times and this behavior cannot be described by the simplest mean-field-type approximation. We also obtain an exact solution in the case where one of the agents is “sober” and moves along a given trajectory. The obtained results are used to discuss whether such systems can be described by different theoretical approaches.     

Simulation-based optimization of social security systems under uncertainty

This paper analyzes optimization-based approaches for a social security simulation model under demographic and economic uncertainties. The model is a compromise between a purely actuarial model and an overlapping generations general equilibrium model. It deals with production and consumption processes coevolving with “birth-and-death” processes of involved agents, e.g., region-specific households subdivided into single-year age groups, firms, governments, financial intermediaries, including pension systems and insurance. The production function of the model allows to track incomes expenditures, savings and dissavings of agents, as well as intergenerational and interregional transfers of wealth. The proposed approach combines the actuarial and the economic growth simulation models in a single stochastic optimization model which explicitly and realistically treats the underlying uncertainties with the goal to satisfy reasonable and secure consumption of agents. The design of optimal robust strategies is achieved by an adaptive simulation-based optimization procedure defined by non-smooth risk functions. Numerical solution is discussed.     

On the differentiability of a class of stationary gaussian processes

For a stationary Gaussian process either almost all sample paths are almost everywhere differentiable or almost all sample paths are almost nowhere differentiable. In this paper it is shown by means of an example involving a random lacunary trigonometric series that “almost everywhere differentiable” and “almost nowhere differentiable” cannot in general be replaced by “everywhere differentiable” and “nowhere differentiable”, respectively.     

Multi-criteria modelling of irrigation water market at basin level: A Spanish case study

This paper develops a multi-criteria methodology to simulate irrigation water markets at basin level. For this purpose it is assumed that irrigators try to optimise personal multi-attribute utility functions via their productive decision making process (crop mix), subject to a set of constraints based upon the structural features of their farms. In this sense, farmers with homogeneous behaviour regarding water use have been grouped, such groups being established as “types” to be considered in the whole water market simulation model. This model calculates the market equilibrium through a solution that maximises aggregate welfare, which is quantified as the sum of the multi-attribute utilities reached by each of the participating agents. This methodology has been empirically applied for the Duero Basin (Northern Spain), finding that the implementation of this economic institution would increase economic efficiency and agricultural labour demand, particularly during droughts.     

FISHERY REGULATION UNDER RATIONAL EXPECTATIONS AND COSTLY DYNAMIC ADJUSTMENT

The regulation of a fishery is examined when firms' decision rules are not invariant to regulatory intervention. When faced with internal dynamic costs, firms have incentives to forecast future regulatory actions. The regulatory “game” becomes one between intelligent agents, not one between an intelligent regulator and “nature”—agents who behave as automatons. Regulations feed back on decisions of agents; this alters the characteristics of the equilibrium time paths of the fish harvest and thus, of the optimal regulatory interventions. Within such a framework equilibrium is characterized and alternative policy interventions are evaluated.     

战略性新兴产业创新金融支持机理及两阶段演化博弈分析

为了研究金融支持如何影响战略性新兴产业创新主体培育的问题,在剖析金融支持主体间双螺旋耦合机理基础上,构建了战略性新兴产业金融支持两阶段演化博弈模型,运用动态系统的相平面理论求取两阶段ESS近似解析解,并借助MATLAB实现两阶段演化博弈模型的数值仿真,分析不同参数赋值对两阶段ESS演进的影响。研究发现:(1)存在机会主义(补贴创新利润率T₁<创新外活动利润率T₂)和非机会主义行为(k>T₂)两种对立占优情境;(2)机会主义行为(或非机会主义)占优情境下,金融支持主体的期望社会效用越小(或越大)、适度减小(或增加)补贴金额,越有利于提升战略性新兴产业创新主体接受补贴的积极性;(3)战略性新兴产业创新主体的自有资金R对其积极性影响不大,而补贴资金利率a越稳定越有利于提高其积极性。基于上述结论,本文最后构建了战略性新兴产业金融支持两阶段ESS演进实现框架,并探究其“累积式”、“悖论式”、“累积—悖论式”递进功能路径,为政府制定提升创新主体培育金融支持效率的相关政策提供了理论支持。     

Something out of nothing: a Bayesian learning computational model for the social construction of value

ABSTRACT

This article develops a formalism for the social construction of value. Using a model based on Bayesian agents, it demonstrates how “something” arises out of “nothing” via the emergence of durable value conventions and shows how the developed framework can be used to investigate socially constructed valuations under a variety of circumstances. The resulting analysis clarifies why assumptions that collectives will converge upon the “intrinsic” (i.e., non-socially originating) value of an object (e.g., market efficiency) may not hold for mixed social and non-social valuation regimes, explains the dependency of socially constructed valuations on early accidents, demonstrates the effects of confident actors on constructed values, and identifies the production of time-dependent ratcheting effects from the interaction of bubbles with value conventions.     

Cartels via the modiclus

We discuss market games or linear production games with finite sets of players. The representing distributions of initial assignments are assumed to have disjoint carriers. Thus, the agents decompose into finitely many disjoint groups each of which hold a corner of the market. In such a market traditional solution concepts like the core tend to favor the short side of the market excessively. We exhibit a solution concept which is more sensitive with respect to the preventive power of the long side. Thereby, profits of the long side are now feasible. This concept is the modified nucleolus or modiclus. Within certain limits, it predicts cartelization and assigns a “fair share” for cartels on the long side of the market. Also, it organizes the internal distribution for a specific cartel according to the “contested garment solution” of Aumann–Maschler.     

Stable and Pareto optimal group activity selection from ordinal preferences

In several situations agents need to be assigned to activities on basis of their preferences, and each agent can take part in at most one activity. Often, the preferences of the agents do not depend only on the activity itself but also on the number of participants in the respective activity. In the setting we consider, the agents hence have preferences over pairs “(activity, group size)” including the possibility “do nothing”; in this work, these preferences are assumed to be strict orders. The task will be to find stable assignments of agents to activities, for different concepts of stability such as Nash or core stability, and Pareto optimal assignments respectively. In this respect, particular focus is laid on two natural special cases of agents’ preferences inherent in the considered model, namely increasing and decreasing preferences, where agents want to share an activity with as many (as few, respectively) agents as possible.     

Equilibrium in semimonotone market games

This paper analyzes the existence of equilibrium for a class of market games in which agents are allowed to follow different patterns of behaviour, including cases where the strategy sets are neither compact nor convex. Agent’s behaviour is modelled in terms of “inverse reply correspondences” (mappings that associate to each agent’s strategy those outcomes that she finds acceptable). Sufficient conditions for an equilibrium to exist are provided     

具有有穷个模态辞的模态系统

<正> 在真值逻辑系统中如果加入“可能”“必然”等模熊概念,所得的逻辑系统叫做模态系统(modal system).如果该真值系就为伟统的二值系统,特名曰传统模态系统(下文的讨论不限于传统模态系统).纯由命题变元以及“～”(非)“◇”(可能)“口”(必然)三运算而组成的命题叫做模态辞(modality).若只经奇数次～运算的名曰负模态辞,经偶数次(包括0次)～运算的名曰正模态辞.     

Boundary Spanners as Bridges of Student and School Discourses in an Urban Science and Mathematics High School

A key to improving urban science and mathematics education is to facilitate the mutual understanding of the participants involved and then look for strategies to bridge differences. Educators need new theoretical tools to do so. In this paper the argument is made that the concept of “boundary spanner” is such a tool. Boundary spanners are individuals, objects, media, and other experiences that link an organization to its environment. They serve critical communicative roles, such as bridges for bringing distinct discourses together, cultural guides to make discourses of the “other” more explicit, and change agents for potentially reshaping participants' discourses. This ethnographic study provides three examples of boundary spanners found in the context of an urban public high school of science, mathematics, and technology: boundary media, boundary objects, and boundary experiences. The analysis brings to the foreground students' and teachers' distinct discourses about “good student identity,”“good student work,” and “good summer experience” and demonstrates how boundary spanners shaped, were shaped by, and sometimes brought together participants' distinct discourses. An argument is made for boundary spanners' practical and theoretical utility: practically, as a tool for enhancing meaning‐making between diverse groups, and theoretically, as a heuristic tool for understanding the reproductive and transformative aspects of urban science education.     

Agent-based approach to complex systems modeling

In this paper, we propose a method for detection of local system structures in a complex database. The complex database is viewed as consisting of mixed numeric and nominal attributes, and the local system structure as expressed by “if–then” rules. The detection of local system structures is an important task, and is concerned with inter-dependent issues. The issues involved in the detection of “if–then” rules include finding the objects that share common interests and then finding if–then rules that characterize those objects. To deal with these issues, an agent-based approach is proposed. Each agent has the role of collecting data points (objects) based on their similarity, for mixed data and detecting a rule. The similarity is introduced so that the agent can handle a mixed database. Each agent will occupy a part of the database as its territory according to the predefined algorithm with which agents try to expand or reduce their territories.