Consensus theories: an oriented survey

This article surveys seven directions of consensus theories: Arrowian results, federation consensus rules, metric consensus rules, tournament solutions, restricted domains, abstract consensus theories, algorithmic and complexity issues. This survey is oriented in the sense that it is mainly – but not exclusively – concentrated on the most significant results obtained, sometimes with other searchers, by a team of French searchers who are or were full or associate members of the Centre d'Analyse et de Mathématique Sociale (CAMS).Consensus theories ; Arrowian results ; aggregation rules ; metric consensus rules ; median ; tournament solutions ; restricted domains ; lower valuations ; median semilattice ; complexity

Timing interactions in social simulations: The voter model

The recent availability of huge high resolution datasets on human activities has revealed the heavy-tailed nature of the interevent time distributions. In social simulations of interacting agents the standard approach has been to use Poisson processes to update the state of the agents, which gives rise to very homogeneous activity patterns with a well defined characteristic interevent time. As a paradigmatic opinion model we investigate the voter model and review the standard update rules and propose two new update rules which are able to account for heterogeneous activity patterns. For the new update rules each node gets updated with a probability that depends on the time since the last event of the node, where an event can be an update attempt (exogenous update) or a change of state (endogenous update). We find that both update rules can give rise to power law interevent time distributions, although the endogenous one more robustly. Apart from that for the exogenous update rule and the standard update rules the voter model does not reach consensus in the infinite size limit, while for the endogenous update there exist a coarsening process that drives the system toward consensus configurations.Comment: Book Chapter, 23 pages, 9 figures, 5 table

The influence of decision-making rules on individual preference for ecological restoration: Evidence from an experimental survey

We conduct an experimental survey to analyze how rules for collective decision-making influence individual preferences concerning nature restoration projects. Our study compares two decision-making rules - a consensus rule and a majority rule - wherein participants decide on a plan concerning nature restoration in the Kushiro Wetland, Japan. Our main finding is that the difference between the individual preferences and collective decision-making is less significant under the consensus rule than the majority rule. Furthermore, there is a larger disparity with regard to the marginal willingness to pay between collective and individual decisions when participants are unsatisfied with the results of collective choice.

Dynamical and topological aspects of consensus formation in complex networks

The present work analyzes a particular scenario of consensus formation, where the individuals navigate across an underlying network defining the topology of the walks. The consensus, associated to a given opinion coded as a simple message, is generated by interactions during the agent's walk and manifest itself in the collapse of the various opinions into a single one. We analyze how the topology of the underlying networks and the rules of interaction between the agents promote or inhibit the emergence of this consensus. We find that non-linear interaction rules are required to form consensus and that consensus is more easily achieved in networks whose degree distribution is narrower.Fil: Chacoma, Andrés Alberto. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Area de Investigación y Aplicaciones No Nucleares. Gerencia de Física (Centro Atómico Bariloche); Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; ArgentinaFil: Mato, German. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; ArgentinaFil: Kuperman, Marcelo Nestor. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; Argentin

Item-writing Rules: Collective Wisdom

In student assessment, teachers place the greatest weight on tests they have constructed themselves and have an equally great interest in the quality of those tests. To increase the validity of teacher-made tests, many item-writing rules-of-thumb are available in the literature, but few rules have been tested experimentally. In light of the paucity of empirical studies, the validity of any given guideline might best be established by relying on experts. This study analyzed twenty classroom assessment textbooks to identify a consensus list of item-writing rules. Forty rules for which there was agreement among textbook authors are presented. The rules address four different validity concerns-potentially confusing wording or ambiguous requirements, the problem of guessing, test-taking efficiency, and controlling for testwiseness

The Implosion of the Brussels Economic Consensus.

Underlying the current political crisis of EU is a decade of cumulative malaise produced by low growth, high unemployment and welfare cuts. The poor economic record of the core Eurozone states is attributable neither to supply-side sclerosis nor top-heavy welfare, but rather to the ECB’s obsession with inflation and the fiscal strait-jacket imposed by the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), referred to here as ‘Brussels Consensus’ economics. The paper critically examines the SGP rules, argues that the 2005 SGP compromise reached at Luxembourg has not addressed the fundamental problem of Europe’s asymmetric economic institutions, and proposes radical remedies.Eurozone growth; unemployment; Maastricht; EIB; SGP rules; EU fiscal and monetary policy; neo-liberal Brussels consensus.