Modeling economic systems as locally-constructive sequential games

Real-world economies are open-ended dynamic systems consisting of heterogeneous interacting participants. Human participants are decision-makers who strategically take into account the past actions and potential future actions of other participants. All participants are forced to be locally constructive, meaning their actions at any given time must be based on their local states; and participant actions at any given time affect future local states. Taken together, these essential properties imply real-world economies are locally-constructive sequential games. This paper discusses a modeling approach, Agent-based Computational Economics, that permits researchers to study economic systems from this point of view. ACE modeling principles and objectives are first concisely presented and explained. The remainder of the paper then highlights challenging issues and edgier explorations that ACE researchers are currently pursuing

Success from Satisficing and Imitation: Entrepreneurs’ Location Choice and Implications of Heuristics for Local Economic Development

Decisions about location choice provide an opportunity to compare the predictions of optimization models, which require exhaustive search through very large choice sets, against the actual decision processes used by entrepreneurs choosing where to allocate investment capital. This paper presents new data on entrepreneurs’ self-described decision processes when choosing where to locate, based on scripted interviews with 49 well-placed business owners and senior managers in charge of location choice. Consideration sets are surprisingly small, especially among those who are successful. According to entrepreneurs’ own accounts, locations are frequently discovered by chance rather than systematic search. Few describe decision processes that bear any resemblance to equating marginal benefit with marginal cost as prescribed by standard optimization theory. Nearly all interviewees describe location choice decisions based on threshold conditions, providing direct evidence of satisficing rather than optimization. Imitation is beneficial for small investment projects. Decision process data collected here suggests a need to rethink standard policy tools used to stimulate local economic development.Process Model, Bounded Rationality, Interview Data, Ethnic, Discrimination, Low income, Neighborhood, Lexicographic, Non-compensatory, Business Owners

Sustainable use of ecosystem services under multiple risks – a survey of commercial cattle farmers in semi-arid rangelands in Namibia

Studying the sustainable use of ecosystem services under uncertainty requires the consideration of the stochastic dynamics of the system under study, risk and time preferences, risk management strategies and normative views pertaining to sustainability. To gather this information for an important ecological-economic system, we conducted a survey of commercial cattle farmers in semi-arid rangelands of Namibia, a system that features risks on various space and time scales. Here we present a description of the research aims, design and conduction of the survey, and analyze and discuss the homogeneity and representativeness of our survey population. The survey consisted of a mail-in questionnaire and in-field experiments. We combined two existing farm-address databases, reaching 77% of the estimated 2,500 cattle farmers. The return rate of questionnaires exceeded 20%, and response rate to individual questions surpassed 95% and 90% for the majority of non-sensitive and sensitive questions, respectively. Distinct sub-sample groups within the survey population did not differ in the analyzed characteristics with the exception of ethnicity, regional location of farmland and an intentionally induced bias for residency on farm. It has turned out that we have undersampled distinct population segments of farmers, such as indigenous farmers or farmers not belonging to the main interest group of commercial cattle farming. Notwithstanding, we consider the survey to be highly successful, yielding a rich dataset which allows diverse analyses.survey, cattle farming, semi-arid, rangeland management, sustainability, risk

Individual differences in face and voice matching abilities: The relationship between accuracy and consistency

Deciding whether two different face photographs or voice samples are from the same person represent fundamental challenges within applied settings. To date, most research has focussed on average performance in these tests, failing to consider individual differences and within‐person consistency in responses. Here, participants completed the same face (Experiment 1) or voice matching test (Experiment 2) on two separate occasions, allowing comparison of overall accuracy across the two timepoints as well as consistency in trial‐level responses. In both experiments, participants were highly consistent in their performances. In addition, we demonstrated a large association between consistency and accuracy, with the most accurate participants also tending to be the most consistent. This is an important result for applied settings in which organisational groups of super‐matchers are deployed in real‐world contexts. Being able to reliably identify these high performers based upon only a single test informs regarding recruitment for law enforcement agencies worldwide

Identifying Virtues and Values Through Obituary Data-Mining

Because obituaries are succinct and explicitly intended to summarize their subjects’ lives, they may be expected to include only the features that the author finds most salient but also to signal to others in the community the socially-recognized aspects of the deceased’s character. We begin by reviewing studies 1 and 2, in which obituaries were carefully read and labeled. We then report study 3, which further develops these results with a semi-automated, large-scale semantic analysis of several thousand obituaries. Geography, gender, and elite status all turn out to be associated with the virtues and values associated with the deceased

Multimethod assessment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: The diagnostic utility of clinic-based tests

Investigated the utility of two clinic-based tests, the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFFT; Kagan, 1966) and a version of the Continuous Performance Test (CPT; Gordon, 1983), in the assessment of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). At a group level of analysis, scores on the CPT and MFFT were found to share little variance with parent and teacher report on several behavior rating scales used to evaluate ADHD. Further, clinic test scores, either alone or in combination, resulted in classification decisions that frequently disagreed with a diagnosis of ADHD based on parent interview and behavior-rating-scale data. The limited utility of currently available tests in the evaluation of ADHD suggests the need to develop clinic-based measures of sufficient ecological validity, which can be used in conjunction with parent and teacher report

On heuristic and linear models of judgment: Mapping the demand for knowledge

Research on judgment and decision making presents a confusing picture of human abilities. For example, much research has emphasized the dysfunctional aspects of judgmental heuristics, and yet, other findings suggest that these can be highly effective. A further line of research has modeled judgment as resulting from “as if” linear models. This paper illuminates the distinctions in these approaches by providing a common analytical framework based on the central theoretical premise that understanding human performance requires specifying how characteristics of the decision rules people use interact with the demands of the tasks they face. Our work synthesizes the analytical tools of “lens model” research with novel methodology developed to specify the effectiveness of heuristics in different environments and allows direct comparisons between the different approaches. We illustrate with both theoretical analyses and simulations. We further link our results to the empirical literature by a meta-analysis of lens model studies and estimate both human and heuristic performance in the same tasks. Our results highlight the trade-off between linear models and heuristics. Whereas the former are cognitively demanding, the latter are simple to use. However, they require knowledge – and thus “maps” – of when and which heuristic to employ.Decision making; heuristics; linear models; lens model; judgmental biases

Multi-method assessment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: The diagnostic utility of clinic-based tests.

Investigated the utility of two clinic-based tests, the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFFT; Kagan, 1966) and a version of the Continuous Performance Test (CPT; Gordon, 1983), in the assessment of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). At a group level of analysis, scores on the CPT and MFFT were found to share little variance with parent and teacher report on several behavior rating scales used to evaluate ADHD. Further, clinic test scores, either alone or in combination, resulted in classification decisions that frequently disagreed with a diagnosis of ADHD based on parent interview and behavior-rating-scale data. The limited utility of currently available tests in the evaluation of ADHD suggests the need to develop clinic-based measures of sufficient ecological validity, which can be used in conjunction with parent and teacher report

New Developments in Enactive Social Cognition

The long standing and still highly influential mindreading framework claims that social cog- nition is best understood as an ability to predict and explain others’ behavior in terms of their mental states. This ability is explained by appealing to mental representations and inferential reasoning via rule-based knowledge. However, recent enactive work on social cognition questions most, if not all, of the main assumptions on which mindreading is founded. Enac- tivism’s emphasis on the structural coupling of the brain-body-world constitutes the foundation of the framework, which rejects the representational and inferential reasoning claims of the mindreading framework. For enactivists, social cognition is best explained in terms of the direct embodied and embedded interactions an agent has with her socio-material world. In continuing this work, the thesis provides new developments of the enactive project for investigating and explaining social cognition. The thesis utilizes two approaches to achieve this goal. First, it dialectally defends enactivism vis-a-vis the mindreading framework. It does this by both securing established enactive claims from criticism, and by developing new objections against the mindreading framework. Secondly, the thesis offers new enactive interpretations of empirical developmental data, and presents new ways of investigating three central areas of debate within the field of social cognition: the metaphysical basis of social cognitive processes, the false-belief test literature, and the concept of empathy in relation to therapeutic practices and autism. The thesis is composed of five different, but thematically intertwined papers. The first paper targets the constitutive basis of social cognition by attempting to dissolve the causal-constitutive fallacy through appealing to a diachronic conception of constitution. This move both secures established enactive claims and develops a more thorough account of what is meant by enactive constitutive claims. The second paper then examines infant social cognitive capacities, arguing cognitivist explanations of these capacities rely on fallacious as- sumptions regarding the nature of perception. The paper then offers an alternative enactive and ecological account of these capacities. The third paper argues both innate and construc- tivist mindreading accounts of the folk psychological know-how required to reliably succeed on false-belief tests fall prey to an infinite regress problem. The paper ends by briefly pre- senting an alternative enactive, narrative explanation of the empirical data. The fourth paper then shifts focus to examine the concept empathy and practice of empathizing. It argues there are advantages to conceiving of empathy as enactive and exploratory, in the sense that when we empathize with others we understand them in a deeper and richer way, through exploring their self-authored narratives. Finally, the fifth paper re-examines our understand- ing of autism by integrating the enactive framework with a neurodiversity approach to cognition. It argues this integration can help us better understand how neurotypical social practices and institutions effect the development, and well-being, of autistic individuals. Through these substantial expansions of established enactivist accounts, and by offering new objections to the mindreading framework, the thesis provides reasons to prefer an enactivist framework in exploring human abilities for social cognition