4,304,286 research outputs found

    Investigation of Conditions and Benefits for Ukraine in the Transition of Its Household in the Rank of the Internal Investor of the State

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    In the article the place, role and functions of families (households) as economic subjects of the market system are clarified. The interrelation, interdependence of categories of "savings", "investments" and "consumption" is defined. The importance and location of the internal investor in the investment process at the macroeconomic level is proved. The algorithm for determining the level of aggregate income of a family necessary for transition to the rank of an internal investor of the state is presented. Parallels are drawn between the author\u27s theoretical and methodical approach proposed in the article and between the theories (laws, models) of a number of well-known economists, such as E. Engel, M. Tugan-Baranovsky, J. Keynes, P. Samuelson and others. The features of practical definition of the minimum level of the aggregate income of a family and a household for savings and investments for Ukrainian realities are revealed. The current and desired operating conditions and the results of financial and economic development of each of the interested parties are considered. In particular, for the population it is shown how, based on its real income, to identify and plan expenditures in order to move to investments. In addition, it is investigated: first, what exactly is the real minimum level of income per month will allow one person or a family (of two, three, four people) to survive in the economic conditions that defined public authorities and formed the market; secondly, what exactly need s a person or a household to be able to meet at an appropriate level of income; thirdly, what level of income will allow the population to save and convert these savings into investments (with their subsequent distribution for the development of domestic business and entrepreneurship). At the same time, it is shown how the state (on Ukrainian data) can influence the growth of domestic investment in order to reduce the deficit of financial resources for the development of business and the economy of the country

    Epistemic Conditions and Social Preferences in Trust Games

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    It is well-known that subjects in bilateral bargaining experiments often exhibit choice behavior suggesting there are strong reciprocators in the population. But it is controversial whether explaining this data requires a social preference model that invokes genuine strong reciprocity or whether some social preference model built on other-regarding preferences as a surrogate can explain it. Since the data precedes theory here, all the social preference models agree on most of it — making direct tests more diïŹƒcult. We report results from a laboratory experiment using a novel method for testing between the classes of social preference models in the trust game that manipulates the distribution of payoïŹ€ information in the game. We ïŹnd evidence supporting the strong reciprocity hypothesis.social preferences, trust game, reciprocity, strong reciprocators

    Mesoscopic structure conditions the emergence of cooperation on social networks

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    We study the evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma on two social networks obtained from actual relational data. We find very different cooperation levels on each of them that can not be easily understood in terms of global statistical properties of both networks. We claim that the result can be understood at the mesoscopic scale, by studying the community structure of the networks. We explain the dependence of the cooperation level on the temptation parameter in terms of the internal structure of the communities and their interconnections. We then test our results on community-structured, specifically designed artificial networks, finding perfect agreement with the observations in the real networks. Our results support the conclusion that studies of evolutionary games on model networks and their interpretation in terms of global properties may not be sufficient to study specific, real social systems. In addition, the community perspective may be helpful to interpret the origin and behavior of existing networks as well as to design structures that show resilient cooperative behavior.Comment: Largely improved version, includes an artificial network model that fully confirms the explanation of the results in terms of inter- and intra-community structur

    The sociological imagination and its promise fifty years later: Is there a future for the social sciences as a free form of enquiry?

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    This paper offers a restatement of Wright Mills’ The Sociological Imagination and tries to judge whether its promise can be credibly renewed today by addressing the question about the present and future possibilities of the social sciences as free forms of enquiry. Relying on Weber, Mills and other thinkers, the paper sustains that the possibilities for a truly free social science essentially depend on three major ‘conditions’: the subjective stance or vocation, the sociological imagination proper, and an independent social science politics, conditions whose apt names can also be ‘love’, ‘insight’ and ‘courage’. An analysis of the presence and strength of each of these conditions in contemporary social science and in academia shows the magnitude of the task faced for the existence of a free social science

    Macaque monkeys learn by observation in the ghost display condition in the object-in-place task with differential reward to the observer

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    Observational learning has been investigated in monkeys mainly using conspecifics or humans as models to observe. Some studies attempted to clarify the social agent’s role and to test whether non-human primates could learn from observation of a non-social agent, usually mentioned as a ‘ghost display’ condition, but they reported conflicting results. To address this question, we trained three rhesus monkeys in an object-in-place task consisting of the presentation of five subsequent problems composed of two objects, one rewarded and one unrewarded, for six times, or runs. Three types of learning conditions were tested. In the individual learning condition, the monkeys performed the first run, learned from it and improved their performance in the following runs. In the social and non-social learning conditions, they observed respectively a human model and a computer performing the first run and learned by the observation of their successes or errors. In all three conditions, the monkeys themselves received the reward after correct choices only. One-trial learning occurred in all three conditions. The monkeys performed over chance in the second run in all conditions, providing evidence of non-social observational learning with differential reward in macaque monkeys using a “ghost display” condition in a cognitive task

    Sociality Affects REM Sleep Episode Duration Under Controlled Laboratory Conditions in the Rock Hyrax, Procavia capensis.

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    The rock hyrax, Procavia capensis, is a highly social, diurnal mammal. In the current study several physiologically measurable parameters of sleep, as well as the accompanying behavior, were recorded continuously from five rock hyraxes, for 72 h under solitary (experimental animal alone in the recording chamber), and social conditions (experimental animal with 1 or 2 additional, non-implanted animals in the recording chamber). The results revealed no significant differences between solitary and social conditions for total sleep times, number of episodes, episode duration or slow wave activity (SWA) for all states examined. The only significant difference observed between social and solitary conditions was the average duration of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep episodes. REM sleep episode duration was on average 20 s and 40 s longer under social conditions daily and during the dark period, respectively. It is hypothesized that the increase in REM sleep episode duration under social conditions could possibly be attributed to improved thermoregulation strategies, however considering the limited sample size and design of the current study further investigations are needed to confirm this finding. Whether the conclusions and the observations made in this study can be generalized to all naturally socially sleeping mammals remains an open question

    Network Capital and Social Trust: Pre-Conditions for ‘Good’ Diversity?

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    This paper unpicks the assumption that because social networks underpin social capital, they directly create it – more of one inevitably making more of the other. If it were that simple, the sheer quantity of networks criss-crossing a defined urban space would be a proxy measure for the local stock of social capital. Of course the interrelationships are more complex. Two kinds of complication stand out. The first is specific: networks have both quantitative and qualitative dimensions, but the two elements have no necessary bearing on each other. The shape and extent of a network says nothing about the content of the links between its nodes. Certainly the line we draw between any two of them indicates contact and potential connection, but what kind of contact, how often, how trusting, in what circumstances, to what end
? Reliable answers to these questions need more than surface maps or bird’s eye accounts of who goes where, who speaks to whom. The second complication is a general, not to say universal, difficulty. We are stuck with the fact that sociological concepts - networks, social capital and trust included - are ‘only’ abstractions. They are ways of thinking about the apparent chaos of people behaving all over the place – here, to make it worse, in multi-cultural urban environments - but none of them is visible to be measured, weighed or quantified. This does not make the concepts ‘untrue’, and it should not stop them being useful. My hope is that we can find a nuanced perspective which will at least make the complications intelligible. At best, a multi-layered model will account for diversity in the nature of trust; and for variations in the way social capital is hoarded or distributed within and across ethnic boundaries. It would be contribution enough if we were able to specify the conditions which cause social capital, as Puttnam formulates it, to be exclusionary or inclusionary in its effect.Network capital, Social trust, ‘Good’ diversity
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