Agendas in legislative decision-making

Despite the wide range of agendas used in legislative decision-making, the literature has focused almost exclusively on two stylized formats, the so-called Euro-Latin and Anglo-American agendas. As emphasized by Ordeshook and Schwartz [1987], this focus leaves a sizable gap in our understanding of the legislative process. To help address the deficiency, I first define a very broad class of agendas (called simple agendas) whose features are common among agendas used in legislative settings. I then characterize the sophisticated (Farquharson [1969]) voting outcomes implemented by agendas in this class. By establishing a clear connection between the structure of simple agendas and the outcomes associated with them, the characterization extends our understanding of legislative decision-making well beyond the very limited scope of Euro-Latin and Anglo-American agendas.

Decision‐Making in Public Good Dilemmas: Theory and Agent‐Based Simulation

In many real world contexts individuals find themselves in situations where they have to decide between options of behaviour that serve a collective purpose or behaviours which satisfy one’s private interests, ignoring the collective. In some cases the underlying social dilemma (Dawes, 1980) is solved and we observe collective action (Olson, 1965). In others social mobilisation is unsuccessful. The central topic of social dilemma research is the identification and understanding of mechanisms which yield to the observed cooperation and therefore resolve the social dilemma. It is the purpose of this thesis to contribute this research field for the case of public good dilemmas. To do so, existing work that is relevant to this problem domain is reviewed and a set of mandatory requirements is derived which guide theory and method development of the thesis. In particular, the thesis focusses on dynamic processes of social mobilisation which can foster or inhibit collective action. The basic understanding is that success or failure of the required process of social mobilisation is determined by heterogeneous individual preferences of the members of a providing group, the social structure in which the acting individuals are contained, and the embedding of the individuals in economic, political, biophysical, or other external contexts. To account for these aspects and for the involved dynamics the methodical approach of the thesis is computer simulation, in particular agent-based modelling and simulation of social systems. Particularly conductive are agent models which ground the simulation of human behaviour in suitable psychological theories of action. The thesis develops the action theory HAPPenInGS (Heterogeneous Agents Providing Public Goods) and demonstrates its embedding into different agent-based simulations. The thesis substantiates the particular added value of the methodical approach: Starting out from a theory of individual behaviour, in simulations the emergence of collective patterns of behaviour becomes observable. In addition, the underlying collective dynamics may be scrutinised and assessed by scenario analysis. The results of such experiments reveal insights on processes of social mobilisation which go beyond classical empirical approaches and yield policy recommendations on promising intervention measures in particular.

Individual Decision-Making and Inflation Persistence

The traditional task of a central bank is to preserve price stability and, in doing so, not to impair the real economy more than necessary. To meet this challenge, it is of great relevance whether inflation is only driven by inflation expectations and the current output gap or whether it is, in addition, influenced by past inflation. In the former case, as described by the New Keynesian Phillips curve, the central bank can immediately and simultaneously achieve price stability and equilibrium output, the so-called ‘divine coincidence’ (Blanchard and Galí 2007). In the latter case, the achievement of price stability is costly in terms of output and will be pursued over several periods. Similarly, it is important to distinguish this latter case, which describes ‘intrinsic’ inflation persistence, from that of ‘extrinsic’ inflation persistence, where the sluggishness of inflation is not a ‘structural’ feature of the economy but merely ‘inherited’ from the sluggishness of the other driving forces, inflation expectations and output. ‘Extrinsic’ inflation persistence is usually considered to be the less challenging case, as policy-makers are supposed to fight against the persistence in the driving forces, especially to reduce the stickiness of inflation expectations by a credible monetary policy, in order to reestablish the ‘divine coincidence’. The scope of this dissertation is to contribute to the vast literature and ongoing discussion on inflation persistence: Chapter 1 describes the policy consequences of inflation persistence and summarizes the empirical and theoretical literature. Chapter 2 compares two models of staggered price setting, one with a fixed two-period duration and the other with a stochastic duration of prices. I show that in an economy with a timeless optimizing central bank the model with the two-period alternating price-setting (for most parameter values) leads to more persistent inflation than the model with stochastic price duration. This result amends earlier work by Kiley (2002) who found that the model with stochastic price duration generates more persistent inflation in response to an exogenous monetary shock. Chapter 3 extends the two-period alternating price-setting model to the case of 3- and 4-period price durations. This results in a more complex Phillips curve with a negative impact of past inflation on current inflation. As simulations show, this multi-period Phillips curve generates a too low degree of autocorrelation and too early turnings points of inflation and is outperformed by a simple Hybrid Phillips curve. Chapter 4 starts from the critique of Driscoll and Holden (2003) on the relative real-wage model of Fuhrer and Moore (1995). While taking the critique seriously that Fuhrer and Moore’s model will collapse to a much simpler one without intrinsic inflation persistence if one takes their arguments literally, I extend the model by a term for inequality aversion. This model extension is not only in line with experimental evidence but results in a Hybrid Phillips curve with inflation persistence that is observably equivalent to that presented by Fuhrer and Moore (1995). In chapter 5, I present a model that especially allows to study the relationship between fairness attitudes and time preference (impatience). In the model, two individuals take decisions in two subsequent periods. In period 1, both individuals are endowed with resources and are able to donate a share of their resources to the other individual. In period 2, the two individuals might join in a common production after having bargained on the split of its output. The size of the production output depends on the relative share of resources at the end of period 1 as the human capital of the individuals, which is built by means of their resources, cannot fully be substituted one against each other. Therefore, it might be rational for a well-endowed individual in period 1 to act in a seemingly ‘fair’ manner and to donate own resources to its poorer counterpart. This decision also depends on the individuals’ impatience which is induced by the small but positive probability that production is not possible in period 2. As a general result, the individuals in the model economy are more likely to behave in a ‘fair’ manner, i.e., to donate resources to the other individual, the lower their own impatience and the higher the productivity of the other individual. As the (seemingly) ‘fair’ behavior is modelled as an endogenous outcome and as it is related to the aspect of time preference, the presented framework might help to further integrate behavioral economics and macroeconomics.

Modeling Stock Order Flows and Learning Market-Making from Data

Stock markets employ specialized traders, market-makers, designed to provide liquidity and volume to the market by constantly supplying both supply and demand. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel method for modeling the market as a dynamic system and a reinforcement learning algorithm that learns profitable market-making strategies when run on this model. The sequence of buys and sells for a particular stock, the order flow, we model as an Input-Output Hidden Markov Model fit to historical data. When combined with the dynamics of the order book, this creates a highly non-linear and difficult dynamic system. Our reinforcement learning algorithm, based on likelihood ratios, is run on this partially-observable environment. We demonstrate learning results for two separate real stocks.

Searching for consensus in ahp-group decision making. A bayesian perspective

This paper sets out to identify the initial positions of the different decision makers who intervene in a group decision making process with a reduced number of actors, and to establish possible consensus paths between these actors. As a methodological support, it employs one of the most widely-known multicriteria decision techniques, namely, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Assuming that the judgements elicited by the decision makers follow the so-called multiplicative model (Crawford and Williams, 1985; Altuzarra et al., 1997; Laininen and Hämäläinen, 2003) with log-normal errors and unknown variance, a Bayesian approach is used in the estimation of the relative priorities of the alternatives being compared. These priorities, estimated by way of the median of the posterior distribution and normalised in a distributive manner (priorities add up to one), are a clear example of compositional data that will be used in the search for consensus between the actors involved in the resolution of the problem through the use of Multidimensional Scaling tools

Group preference structures in AHP–group decision making

This paper presents a procedure that allows us to determine the preference structures (PS) associated to each of the different groups of actors that can be identified in a group decision making problem with a large number of individuals. To that end, it makes use of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) (Saaty, 1980) as the technique to solve discrete multicriteria decision making problems. This technique permits the resolution of multicriteria, multienvironment and multiactor problems in which subjective aspects and uncertainty have been incorporated into the model, constructing ratio scales corresponding to the priorities relative to the elements being compared, normalised in a distributive manner (wi = 1). On the basis of the individuals’ priorities we identify different clusters for the decision makers and, for each of these, the associated preference structure using, to that end, tools analogous to those of Multidimensional Scaling. The resulting PS will be employed to extract knowledge for the subsequent negotiation processes and, should it be necessary, to determine the relative importance of the alternatives being compared using anyone of the existing procedures

An fMRI Study of Emotional engagement in decicion-making

It has been suggested that decision making depends on sensitive feelings associated with cognitive processing rather than cognitive processing alone. From human lesions, we know the medial anterior inferior-ventral prefrontal cortex processes the sensitivity associated with cognitive processing, it being essentially responsible for decision making. In this fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Image) study 15 subjects were analyzed using moral dilemmas as probes to investigate the neural basis for painful-emotional sensitivity associated with decision making. We found that a network comprising the posterior and anterior cingulate and the medial anterior prefrontal cortex was significantly and specifically activated by painful moral dilemmas, but not by non-painful dilemmas. These findings provide new evidence that the cingulate and medial anterior prefrontal are involved in processing painful emotional sensibility, in particular, when decision making takes place. We speculate that decision making has a cognitive component processed by cognitive brain areas and a sensitivity component processed by emotional brain areas. The structures activated suggest that decision making depends on painful emotional feeling processing rather than cognitive processing when painful feeling processing happens

Past and present enviroments : The evolution of decisi??n making

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Regression-based techniques for statistical decision making in singlecase designs

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

JISC TechDis Accessibility essentials guide: Making electronic documents more readable

The TechDis Accessibility Essentials Guide for Reading has been divided into the following three sections: Font colours and styles; Enlarging text and Navigating documents. These guides have been designed to give practical step-by-step information to enable anyone reading electronic material to amend its look and feel into a style which suits them, their audience or the context in which it is used.

Part 2 - talk on using Creative Commons and opensource software to make Open Content. (Making of Doljer)

This is the second part of a 2 part video from my talk in May 2008 on open source content creation. Here I am talking about the Making of Doljer

Making a PDF (Photoshop)

Video on how to create a basic PDF for standard paper based Printing using Photoshop. Ideal format for all printers worldwide.

Making the case: an academic guide to research

This guide gives advice on the best ways to find and select the most useful, reliable and relevant information to support and argument in your essay.

Copyright Questions: Making chapters from a book available to your students

This narrated slideshow (8 minutes) shows how UK copyright law applies to an example book and explores how a tutor can make copies of selected chapters to distribute to students