Procedural Meaning Explicatures in the Development of New Subordination Strategies in Romance

The sociocultural changes that led to the genesis of Romance languages widened the gap between oral and written patterns, which display different discoursive and linguistic devices. In early documents, discoursive implicatures connecting propositions were not generally codified, so that the reader should furnish the correctinterpretation according to his own perception of real facts; which can still be attested in current oral utterances. Once Romance languages had undergone several levelling processes which concluded in the first standardizations, implicatures became explicatures and were syntactically codified by means of univocal new complexconjunctions. As a consequence of the emergence of these new subordination strategies, a freer distribution of the information conveyed by the utterances is allowed. The success of complex structural patterns ran alongside of the genesis of new narrative genres and the generalization of a learned rhetoric. Both facts are a spontaneous effect of new approaches to the act of reading. Ancient texts were written to be read to a wide audience, whereas those printed by the end of the XV th century were conceived to be read quietly, in a low voice, by a private reader. The goal of this paper is twofold, since we will show that: a) The development of new complex conjunctions through the history of Romance languages accommodates to four structural patterns that range from parataxis tohypotaxis. b) This development is a reflex of the well known grammaticalization path from discourse to syntax that implies the codification of discoursive strategies (Givón 2 1979, Sperber and Wilson 1986, Carston 1988, Grice 1989, Bach 1994, Blackemore 2002, among others]

Meaning of the λ parameter of skew–normal and log–skew normal distributions in fluid geochemistry

The literature related to skew–normal distributions has grown rapidly in recent yearsbut at the moment few applications concern the description of natural phenomena withthis type of probability models, as well as the interpretation of their parameters. Theskew–normal distributions family represents an extension of the normal family to whicha parameter (λ) has been added to regulate the skewness. The development of this theoreticalfield has followed the general tendency in Statistics towards more flexible methodsto represent features of the data, as adequately as possible, and to reduce unrealisticassumptions as the normality that underlies most methods of univariate and multivariateanalysis. In this paper an investigation on the shape of the frequency distribution of thelogratio ln(Cl−/Na+) whose components are related to waters composition for 26 wells,has been performed. Samples have been collected around the active center of Vulcanoisland (Aeolian archipelago, southern Italy) from 1977 up to now at time intervals ofabout six months. Data of the logratio have been tentatively modeled by evaluating theperformance of the skew–normal model for each well. Values of the λ parameter havebeen compared by considering temperature and spatial position of the sampling points.Preliminary results indicate that changes in λ values can be related to the nature ofenvironmental processes affecting the data

Neuronal adaptation effects in decision making

Recently, there has been an increased interest on the neural mechanisms underlying perceptual decision making. However, the effect of neuronal adaptation in this context has not yet been studied. We begin our study by investigating how adaptation can bias perceptual decisions. We considered behavioral data from an experiment on high-level adaptation-related aftereffects in a perceptual decision task with ambiguous stimuli on humans. To understand the driving force behind the perceptual decision process, a biologically inspired cortical network model was used. Two theoretical scenarios arose for explaining the perceptual switch from the category of the adaptor stimulus to the opposite, nonadapted one. One is noise-driven transition due to the probabilistic spike times of neurons and the other is adaptation-driven transition due to afterhyperpolarization currents. With increasing levels of neural adaptation, the system shifts from a noise-driven to an adaptation-driven modus. The behavioral results show that the underlying model is not just a bistable model, as usual in the decision-making modeling literature, but that neuronal adaptation is high and therefore the working point of the model is in the oscillatory regime. Using the same model parameters, we studied the effect of neural adaptation in a perceptual decision-making task where the same ambiguous stimulus was presented with and without a preceding adaptor stimulus. We find that for different levels of sensory evidence favoring one of the two interpretations of the ambiguous stimulus, higher levels of neural adaptation lead to quicker decisions contributing to a speed–accuracy trade off.

Symbolic meaning of local identity – A case study on Barcelona place brand representation

The core objective of this research process was to design an operational tool for place brand analysis. By modelling the emotional significance and the deeper-lying symbols associated to a specific place identity I expected to create a semiotic tool that could be applied, mutatis mutandis, on other similar place brands. As a field case study to develop the instrument, my choice of the research arena was Barcelona city, the capital of Catalonia Autonomous Community, Spain. Barcelona brand identity was approached in the line of the Chicago Urban Anthropology School. The research methods were designed according to the prescriptions of the urban anthropology, namely qualitative methods: in-depth interviews and discourse analysis. The final research outcome was a model summarizing a range of specific emotional values that support a place brand to position in the collective mindset and to assume a positively valued status and identity in the world order.

The Law of Impersonal Transactions: Meaning and Difficulties

Most economic interactions happen in a context of sequential exchange in which innocent third parties suffer information asymmetry with respect to previous "originative" contracts. The law reduces transaction costs by protecting these third parties but preserves some element of consent by property right holders to avoid damaging property enforcement-e.g., it is they as principals who authorize agents in originative contracts. Judicial verifiability of these originative contracts is obtained either as an automatic byproduct of transactions or, when these would have remained private, by requiring them to be made public. Protecting third parties produces a sort of legal commodity which is easy to trade impersonally, improving the allocation and specialization of resources. Historical delay in generalizing this legal commoditization paradigm is attributed to path dependency-the law first developed for personal trade-and an unbalance in vested interests, as luddite legal professionals face weak public bureaucracies.

Policy Making in Divided Government. A Pivotal Actors Model with Party Discipline.

This article presents a formal model of policy decision-making in an institutional framework of separation of powers in which the main actors are pivotal political parties with voting discipline. The basic model previously developed from pivotal politics theory for the analysis of the United States lawmaking is here modified to account for policy outcomes and institutional performances in other presidential regimes, especially in Latin America. Legislators' party indiscipline at voting and multi-partism appear as favorable conditions to reduce the size of the equilibrium set containing collectively inefficient outcomes, while a two-party system with strong party discipline is most prone to produce 'gridlock', that is, stability of socially inefficient policies. The article provides a framework for analysis which can induce significant revisions of empirical data, especially regarding the effects of situations of (newly defined) unified and divided government, different decision rules, the number of parties and their discipline. These implications should be testable and may inspire future analytical and empirical work.

A new method for constructing exact tests without making any assumptions

We present a new method for constructing exact distribution-free tests (and confidence intervals) for variables that can generate more than two possible outcomes.This method separates the search for an exact test from the goal to create a non-randomized test. Randomization is used to extend any exact test relating to meansof variables with finitely many outcomes to variables with outcomes belonging to agiven bounded set. Tests in terms of variance and covariance are reduced to testsrelating to means. Randomness is then eliminated in a separate step.This method is used to create confidence intervals for the difference between twomeans (or variances) and tests of stochastic inequality and correlation.

Policy making in divided government. A pivotal actors model with party discipline

This article presents a formal model of policy decision-making in an institutional framework of separation of powers in which the main actors are pivotal political parties with voting discipline. The basic model previously developed from pivotal politics theory for the analysis of the United States lawmaking is here modified to account for policy outcomes and institutional performances in other presidential regimes, especially in Latin America. Legislators' party indiscipline at voting and multi-partism appear as favorable conditions to reduce the size of the equilibrium set containing collectively inefficient outcomes, while a two-party system with strong party discipline is most prone to produce 'gridlock', that is, stability of socially inefficient policies. The article provides a framework for analysis which can induce significant revisions of empirical data, especially regarding the effects of situations of (newly defined) unified and divided government, different decision rules, the number of parties and their discipline. These implications should be testable and may inspire future analytical and empirical work.

Gender gaps in policy making: Evidence from direct democracy in Switzerland

In spite of increasing representation of women in politics, little is known about their impact onpolicies. Comparing outcomes of parliaments with different shares of female members does not identifytheir causal impact because of possible differences in the underlying electorate. This paper usesa unique data set on voting decisions to sheds new light on gender gaps in policy making. Ouranalysis focuses on Switzerland, where all citizens can directly decide on a broad range of policiesin referendums and initiatives. We show that there are large gender gaps in the areas of health,environmental protection, defense spending and welfare policy which typically persist even conditionalon socio-economic characteristics. We also find that female policy makers have a substantial effect onthe composition of public spending, but a small effect on the overall size of government.

Econometrics and decision making: Effects of presentation mode

Much of empirical economics involves regression analysis. However, does thepresentation of results affect economists ability to make inferences for decision makingpurposes? In a survey, 257 academic economists were asked to make probabilisticinferences on the basis of the outputs of a regression analysis presented in a standardformat. Questions concerned the distribution of the dependent variable conditional onknown values of the independent variable. However, many respondents underestimateduncertainty by failing to take into account the standard deviation of the estimatedresiduals. The addition of graphs did not substantially improve inferences. On the otherhand, when only graphs were provided (i.e., with no statistics), respondents weresubstantially more accurate. We discuss implications for improving practice in reportingresults of regression analyses.

Exact tests for correlation and for the slope in simple linear regressions without making assumptions

We present an exact test for whether two random variables that have known bounds on their support are negatively correlated. The alternative hypothesis is that they are not negatively correlated. No assumptions are made on the underlying distributions. We show by example that the Spearman rank correlation test as the competing exact test of correlation in nonparametric settings rests on an additional assumption on the data generating process without which it is not valid as a test for correlation.We then show how to test for the significance of the slope in a linear regression analysis that invovles a single independent variable and where outcomes of the dependent variable belong to a known bounded set.

The impact of gender composition on team performance and decision-making: Evidence from the field

We investigate whether the gender composition of teams affect theireconomic performance. We study a large business game, played in groups ofthree, where each group takes the role of a general manager. There are twoparallel competitions, one involving undergraduates and the other involvingMBAs. Our analysis shows that teams formed by three women aresignificantly outperformed by any other gender combination, both at theundergraduate and MBA levels. Looking across the performancedistribution, we find that for undergraduates, three women teams areoutperformed throughout, but by as much as 10pp at the bottom and by only1pp at the top. For MBAs, at the top, the best performing group is two menand one woman. The differences in performance are explained bydifferences in decision-making. We observe that three women teams are lessaggressive in their pricing strategies, invest less in R&D, and invest more insocial sustainability initiatives, than any other gender combination teams.Finally, we find support for the hypothesis that it is poor work dynamicsamong the three women teams that drives the results.

Giffen goods and market making

This paper shows that information effects per se are not responsible forthe Giffen goods anomaly affecting competitive traders demands in multi-asset, noisy rational expectations equilibrium models. The role thatinformation plays in traders strategies also matters. In a market withrisk averse, uninformed traders, informed agents havea dual motive for trading: speculation and market making. Whilespeculation entails using prices to assess the effect of private signalerror terms, market making requires employing them to disentangle noisetraders effects in traders aggregate orders. In a correlated environment,this complicates a trader s signal-extraction problem and maygenerate upward-sloping demand curves. Assuming either (i) that competitive,risk neutral market makers price the assets, or that (ii) the risktolerance coefficient of uninformed traders grows without bound, removesthe market making component from informed traders demands, rendering themwell behaved in prices.

A model of market-making

The two essential features of a decentralized economy taken intoaccount are, first, that individual agents need some informationabout other agents in order to meet potential trading partners,which requires some communication or interaction between theseagents, and second, that in general agents will face tradinguncertainty. We consider trade in a homogeneous commodity. Firmsdecide upon their effective supplies, and may create their ownmarkets by sending information signals communicating theirwillingness to sell. Meeting of potential trading partners isarranged in the form of shopping by consumers. The questions to beconsidered are: How do firms compete in such markets? And what arethe properties of an equilibrium? We establish existenceconditions for a symmetric Nash equilibrium in the firms'strategies, and analyze its characteristics. The developedframework appears to lend itself well to study many typicalphenomena of decentralized economies, such as the emergence ofcentral markets, the role of middlemen, and price-making.

Social value orientation as a moral intuition: Decision-making in the dictator game

We studied the decision making process in the Dictator Game and showed that decisions are the result of a two-step process. In a first step, decision makers generate an automatic, intuitive proposal. Given sufficient motivation and cognitive resources, they adjust this in a second, more deliberated phase. In line with the social intuitionist model, we show that one s Social Value Orientation determines intuitive choice tendencies in the first step, and that this effect is mediated by the dictator s perceived interpersonal closeness with the receiver. Self-interested concerns subsequently leadto a reduction of donation size in step 2. Finally, we show that increasing interpersonal closeness can promote pro-social decision-making.