Progress in Behavioral Game Theory

Is game theory meant to describe actual choices by people and institutions or not? It is remarkable how much game theory has been done while largely ignoring this question. The seminal book by von Neumann and Morgenstern, The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, was clearly about how rational players would play against others they knew were rational. In more recent work, game theorists are not always explicit about what they aim to describe or advise. At one extreme, highly mathematical analyses have proposed rationality requirements that people and firms are probably not smart enough to satisfy in everyday decisions. At the other extreme, adaptive and evolutionary approaches use very simple models-mostly developed to describe nonhuman animals-in which players may not realize they are playing a game at all. When game theory does aim to describe behavior, it often proceeds with a disturbingly low ratio of careful observation to theorizing

Spartan Daily, March 19, 1973

Volume 60, Issue 87https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/5721/thumbnail.jp

THOUGHTS ON BUILDING AN ACADEMIC CAREER

We have many routes to success in agricultural economics: extension education, resident teaching, advising, research, and public service. In selecting problems to study we must be sensitive to needs of all our clientele. Several production economics concepts are relevant to allocating our own efforts. Noticing, recognizing, and experiencing surprise aid scientific discovery. We need to use heuristics, intuition, deduction, and induction, though consideration of science's ideal and real types shows that all these mental processes are fallible. We need special theories that have broad application. Replication deserves high priority. A few thoughts on the manuscript review process are presented.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Denervation does not induce muscle atrophy through oxidative stress

Denervation leads to the activation of the catabolic pathways, such as the ubiquitin-proteasome and autophagy, resulting in skeletal muscle atrophy and weakness. Furthermore, denervation induces oxidative stress in skeletal muscle, which is thought to contribute to the induction of skeletal muscle atrophy. Several muscle diseases are characterized by denervation, but the molecular pathways contributing to muscle atrophy have been only partially described. Our study delineates the kinetics of activation of oxidative stress response in skeletal muscle following denervation. Despite the denervation-dependent induction of oxidative stress in skeletal muscle, treatments with anti-oxidant drugs do not prevent the reduction of muscle mass. Our results indicate that, although oxidative stress may contribute to the activation of the response to denervation, it is not responsible by itself of oxidative damage or neurogenic muscle atrophy

Simultaneous administration of adjuvant donor bone marrow in pancreas transplant recipients

Objective: The effect of donor bone marrow was evaluated for its potentially favorable effect in the authors' simultaneous pancreas/kidney transplant program. Methods: From July 1994 to January 1999, 177 pancreas transplants were performed, 151 of which were simultaneous pancreas/kidney transplants. All patients received tacrolimus, mycophenolate mofetil, and steroids for immunosuppression (azathioprine was used in the first year of the program). Fifty-three simultaneous pancreas/kidney transplant recipients received perioperative unmodified donor bone marrow, 3 to 6 x 108 cells/kg. Results: Overall actuarial survival rates at 1 and 3 years were 98% and 95% (patient), 95% and 87% (kidney), and 86% and 80% (pancreas), respectively. In the adjuvant bone marrow group, 1- and 3-year survival rates were 96% and 91% (patient), 95% and 87% (kidney), and 83% and 83% (pancreas), respectively. For 98 recipients who did not receive bone marrow, survival rates at 1 and 3 years were 100% and 98% (patient), 96% and 86% (kidney), and 87% and 79% (pancreas), respectively. No pancreas allografts were lost after 3 months in bone marrow recipients, and seven in the non-bone marrow recipients were lost to rejection at 0.7, 6.7, 8.8, 14.6, 24.1, 24.3, and 25.5 months. Twenty-two percent of bone marrow patients were steroid-free at 1 year, 45% at 2 years, and 67% at 3 years. Nineteen percent of the non-bone marrow recipients were steroid-free at 1 year, 38% at 2 years, and 45% (p = 0.02) at 3 years. The mean acute cellular rejection rate was 0.94 ± 1.1 in the bone marrow group and 1.57 ± 1.3 (p = 0.003) in the non-bone marrow group (includes borderline rejection and multiple rejections). The level of donor cell chimerism in the peripheral blood of bone marrow patients was at least two logs higher than in controls. Conclusion: In this series, which represents the largest experience with adjuvant bone marrow infusion in pancreas recipients, there was a higher steroid withdrawal rate (p = 0.02), fewer rejection episodes, and no pancreas graft loss after 3 months in bone marrow recipients compared with contemporaneous controls. All pancreas allografts lost to chronic rejection (n = 6) were in the non-bone marrow group. Donor bone marrow administered around the time of surgery may have a protective effect in pancreas transplantation

Probabilities and health risks: a qualitative approach

Health risks, defined in terms of the probability that an individual will suffer a particular type of adverse health event within a given time period, can be understood as referencing either natural entities or complex patterns of belief which incorporate the observer's values and knowledge, the position adopted in the present paper. The subjectivity inherent in judgements about adversity and time frames can be easily recognised, but social scientists have tended to accept uncritically the objectivity of probability. Most commonly in health risk analysis, the term probability refers to rates established by induction, and so requires the definition of a numerator and denominator. Depending upon their specification, many probabilities may be reasonably postulated for the same event, and individuals may change their risks by deciding to seek or avoid information. These apparent absurdities can be understood if probability is conceptualised as the projection of expectation onto the external world. Probabilities based on induction from observed frequencies provide glimpses of the future at the price of acceptance of the simplifying heuristic that statistics derived from aggregate groups can be validly attributed to individuals within them. The paper illustrates four implications of this conceptualisation of probability with qualitative data from a variety of sources, particularly a study of genetic counselling for pregnant women in a U.K. hospital. Firstly, the official selection of a specific probability heuristic reflects organisational constraints and values as well as predictive optimisation. Secondly, professionals and service users must work to maintain the facticity of an established heuristic in the face of alternatives. Thirdly, individuals, both lay and professional, manage probabilistic information in ways which support their strategic objectives. Fourthly, predictively sub-optimum schema, for example the idea of AIDS as a gay plague, may be selected because they match prevailing social value systems