A normative approach to the criminalisation of cartel activity

Although cartel behaviour is almost universally (and rightly) condemned, it is not clear why cartel participants deserve the full wrath of the criminal law and its associated punishment. To fill this void, I develop a normative (or principled) justification for the criminalisation of conduct characteristic of ‘hard core’ cartels. The paper opens with a brief consideration of the rhetoric commonly used to denounce cartel activity, eg that it ‘steals from’ or ‘robs’ consumers. To put the discussion in context, a brief definition of ‘hard core’ cartel behaviour is provided and the harms associated with this activity are identified. These are: welfare losses in the form of appropriation (from consumer to producer) of consumer surplus, the creation of deadweight loss to the economy, the creation of productive inefficiency (hindering innovation of both products and processes), and the creation of so-called X-inefficiency. As not all activities which cause harm ought to be criminalised, a theory as to why certain harms in a liberal society can be criminalised is developed. It is based on JS Mill's harm to others principle (as refined by Feinberg) and on a choice of social institutions using Rawls's ‘veil of ignorance.’ The theory is centred on the value of individual choice in securing one's own well-being, with the market as an indispensable instrument for this. But as applied to the harm associated with cartel conduct, this theory shows that none of the earlier mentioned problems associated with this activity provide sufficient justification for criminalisation. However, as the harm from hard core cartel activity strikes at an important institution which permits an individual's ability to secure their own well-being in a liberal society, criminalisation of hard core cartel behaviour can have its normative justification on this basis.

Adaptive Dialogue Strategy Selection through Imprecise Probabilistic Query Answering

In a human-computer dialogue system, the dialogue strategy can range from very restrictive to highly flexible. Each specific dialogue style has its pros and cons and a dialogue system needs to select the most appropriate style for a given user. During the course of interaction, the dialogue style can change based on a user’s response and the system observation of the user. This allows a dialogue system to understand a user better and provide a more suitable way of communication. Since measures of the quality of the user’s interaction with the system can be incomplete and uncertain, frameworks for reasoning with uncertain and incomplete information can help the system make better decisions when it chooses a dialogue strategy. In this paper, we investigate how to select a dialogue strategy based on aggregating the factors detected during the interaction with the user. For this purpose, we use probabilistic logic programming (PLP) to model probabilistic knowledge about how these factors will affect the degree of freedom of a dialogue. When a dialogue system needs to know which strategy is more suitable, an appropriate query can be executed against the PLP and a probabilistic solution with a degree of satisfaction is returned. The degree of satisfaction reveals how much the system can trust the probability attached to the solution.

Critical Dialogue in Architecture Studio: Peer Interaction and Feedback

Most tutors in architecture education regard studio-based learning to be rich in feedback due to is dialogic nature. Yet, student perceptions communicated via audits such as the UK National Student Survey appear to contradict this assumption and challenge the efficacy of design studio as a truly discursive learning setting. This paper presents findings from a collaborative study that was undertaken by the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, and Queen’s University Belfast that develop a deeper understanding of the role that peer interaction and dialogue plays within feedback processes, and the value that students attribute to these within the overall learning experience.

The paper adopts a broad definition of feedback, with emphasis on formative processes, and including the various kinds of dialogue that typify studio-based learning, and which constitute forms of guidance, direction, and reflection. The study adopted an ethnographic approach, gathering data on student and staff perceptions over the course of an academic year, and utilising methods embracing both quantitative and qualitative data.

The study found that the informal, socially-based peer interaction that characterises the studio is complementary to, and quite distinct from, the learning derived through tutor interaction. The findings also articulate the respective properties of informal and formally derived feedback and the contribution each makes to the quality of studio-based learning. It also identifies limitations in the use or value of peer learning, understanding of which is valuable to enhancing studio learning in architecture.