Effort and Performance in Public-Policy Contests

Government intervention often gives rise to contests in which the possible ‘prizes’ are determined by the existing status-quo and some new public- policy proposal . In this paper we study the general class of such two-player public-policy contests and examine the effect of a change in the proposed policy, a change that may affect the payoffs of the two contestants, on their effort and performance. We extend the existing comparative statics studies that focus on the effect of changes either in the value of the prize in symmetric contests or in one of the contestants’ valuation of the prize in asymmetric contests. Our results hinge on the relationship between the strategic own-stake (“income”) effect and the strategic rival’s-stake (“substitution”) effect. This relationship is determined by three types of ability and stakes asymmetry between the contestants. In particular, we specify the asymmetry condition under which a more restrained government intervention that reduces the contestants’ prizes has the perverse effect of increasing their aggregate lobbying efforts.public-policy contests, policy reforms, lobbying efforts, strategic own-stake effect, strategic rival’s-stake (“substitution”) effect.

Approaches to analysis with infinitesimals following Robinson, Nelson, and others

This is a survey of several approaches to the framework for working with infinitesimals and infinite numbers, originally developed by Abraham Robinson in the 1960s, and their constructive engagement with the Cantor-Dedekind postulate and the Intended Interpretation hypothesis. We highlight some applications including (1) Loeb's approach to the Lebesgue measure, (2) a radically elementary approach to the vibrating string, (3) true infinitesimal differential geometry. We explore the relation of Robinson's and related frameworks to the multiverse view as developed by Hamkins. Keywords: axiomatisations, infinitesimal, nonstandard analysis, ultraproducts, superstructure, set-theoretic foundations, multiverse, naive integers, intuitionism, soritical properties, ideal elements, protozoa

Applying Formal Methods to Networking: Theory, Techniques and Applications

Despite its great importance, modern network infrastructure is remarkable for the lack of rigor in its engineering. The Internet which began as a research experiment was never designed to handle the users and applications it hosts today. The lack of formalization of the Internet architecture meant limited abstractions and modularity, especially for the control and management planes, thus requiring for every new need a new protocol built from scratch. This led to an unwieldy ossified Internet architecture resistant to any attempts at formal verification, and an Internet culture where expediency and pragmatism are favored over formal correctness. Fortunately, recent work in the space of clean slate Internet design---especially, the software defined networking (SDN) paradigm---offers the Internet community another chance to develop the right kind of architecture and abstractions. This has also led to a great resurgence in interest of applying formal methods to specification, verification, and synthesis of networking protocols and applications. In this paper, we present a self-contained tutorial of the formidable amount of work that has been done in formal methods, and present a survey of its applications to networking.Comment: 30 pages, submitted to IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial

DyNetKAT: An Algebra of Dynamic Networks

We introduce a formal language for specifying dynamic updates for Software Defined Networks. Our language builds upon Network Kleene Algebra with Tests (NetKAT) and adds constructs for synchronisations and multi-packet behaviour to capture the interaction between the control- and data-plane in dynamic updates. We provide a sound and ground-complete axiomatisation of our language. We exploit the equational theory to provide an efficient reasoning method about safety properties for dynamic networks. We implement our equational theory in DyNetiKAT -- a tool prototype, based on the Maude Rewriting Logic and the NetKAT tool, and apply it to a case study. We show that we can analyse the case study for networks with hundreds of switches using our initial tool prototype

Potential Games and Interactive Decisions with Multiple Criteria.

Abstract: Game theory is a mathematical theory for analyzing strategic interaction between decision makers. This thesis covers two game-theoretic topics. The first part of this thesis deals with potential games: noncooperative games in which the information about the goals of the separate players that is required to determine equilibria, can be aggregated into a single function. The structure of different types of potential games is investigated. Congestion problems and the financing of public goods through voluntary contributions are studied in this framework. The second part of the thesis abandons the common assumption that each player is guided by a single goal. It takes into account players who are guided by several, possibly conflicting, objective functions.

Formal specification of a simple operating system

Within the Verisoft project, we aim at the pervasive modeling, implementation, and verification of a complete computer system, from gate-level hardware to applications running on top of an operating system. As an adequate representative for such a system we choose a system for writing, signing, and sending emails. The starting point of our work was a processor together with its assembly language, a compiler for a type safe C variant and a micro kernel. The goal of our work was to develop a (user-mode) operating system that bridges the gap between micro kernel and user applications. That is, formally specify and implement a system that, on the one hand, is built right on top of our micro kernel and, on the other hand, provides everything necessary for user applications such as an SMTP server, a signing server, and an email client. Furthermore, the design of this system should support its verification in a pervasive context. Within this thesis, we present the formal specification of such an operating system. Along with this specification, we (i) discuss the current state-of-the-art in formal methods applied to operating-systems design, (ii) justify our approach and distinguish it from other people\u27s work, (iii) detail our implementation and verification stack, (iv) describe the realization of our operating system, and (v) outline the verification of this system.Innerhalb des Verisoft-Projekts streben wir die durchgängige Modellierung, Implementierung und Verifikation eines kompletten Computersystems, von der Hardware auf Gatterebene bis hin zu Benutzeranwendungen, an. Ausgangspunkt unserer Arbeit war ein Prozessor inklusive Assembler Sprache, ein Compiler für eine typensichere C Variante und ein Mikrokern. Ziel unserer Arbeit war es, ein Betriebssystem (auf Benutzerebene) zu entwickeln, welches die Verbindung zwischen Mikrokern und Benutzeranwendungen herstellt. Das bedeutet, ein System formal zu spezifizieren und zu implementieren, welches auf der einen Seite direkt auf dem Mikrokern aufsetzt und auf der anderen Seite alle Voraussetzungen für Benutzeranwendungen wie einen SMTP Server, einen Signatur Server und ein E-Mail Programm erfüllt. Außerdem soll das Design dieses Systems seine durchgängige Verifikation unterstützen. In dieser Arbeit präsentieren wir die formale Spezifikation eines solchen Systems. Ferner (i) diskutieren wir den aktuellen Stand im Bereich der formalen Methoden im Betriebssystemdesign, (ii) rechtfertigen unseren Ansatz und differenzieren ihn von dem anderer, (iii) stellen die unterschiedlichen Implementierungs- und Verifikations-Schichten unseres Projektes vor, (iv) beschreiben unsere Umsetzung des Systems und (v) skizzieren seine Verifikation

Web and Philosophy, Why and What For?: Proceedings of the WWW2012 conference workshop PhiloWeb 2012

ISSN: 1613-0073International audienceProceedings of PhiloWeb 2012, workshop at WWW 2012, on the philosophy of the Web