Eliminating opportunism using an epistemic mechanism

Opportunism is a behavior that takes advantage of knowledge asymmetry and results in promoting agents' own value and demoting other agents' value. It is important to eliminate such a selfish behavior in multi-agent systems, as it has undesirable results for the participating agents. However, as the context we study here is multi-agent systems, system designers actually might not be aware of the value system for each agent thus they have no idea whether an agent will perform opportunistic behavior. Given this fact, this paper designs an epistemic mechanism to eliminate opportunism given a set of possible value systems for the participating agents: An agent's knowledge gets updated so that the other agent is not able to perform opportunistic behavior, and there exists a balance between eliminating opportunism and respecting agents' privacy

Discriminatory Dualism

This Article identifies and theorizes a significant butpreviously overlooked feature of structuraldiscrimination: it frequently develops into two seeminglyopposing, yet in fact mutually supportive practices. This“discriminatory dualism” occurs in multiple contexts,including policing, housing, and employment. Inpolicing, communities of color experience overpolicing(i.e., the aggressive overenforcement of petty crime) at thesame time as they experience underpolicing (i.e., thepersistent failure to address violent crime). In housing,redlining (i.e., the denial of credit to aspiringhomeowners based on race) combines with reverseredlining (i.e., the over-offering of credit on exploitativeterms) to suppress minority homeownership. And inemployment, sexual harassment (i.e., unwanted sexualattention) combines with shunning (i.e., the refusal toengage with women workers at all) to deny equalopportunity in the workplace.While scholars working in these discrete fields havenoted each of these individual paradoxes, this Articleargues that these paradoxes are iterations of the samebroader phenomenon. Three critical insights flow fromthis recognition. First, understanding discriminatorydualism as a common technology of oppression allowspolicymakers to better anticipate its movements andidentify discriminatory dualism as it arises in othercontexts. Second, this frame diagnoses why previousreform mechanisms have failed. Third, it surfaces the distinct harms caused by discriminatory dualism.Because each paradox is made up of two co-existing,contradictory strands that simultaneously deny andsupport each other’s existence, discriminatory dualismcreates destabilizing systems that confoundconceptualization and countermobilization efforts. Theconceptualization challenges create hermeneuticalinjustices, and the countermobilization challenges makediscriminatory dualism difficult to combat.Nevertheless, understanding the dynamic and systemicprocesses of discriminatory dualism offers tools to beginthe necessary work of dismantling it

Impersonal efficiency and the dangers of a fully automated securities exchange

This report identifies impersonal efficiency as a driver of market automation during the past four decades, and speculates about the future problems it might pose. The ideology of impersonal efficiency is rooted in a mistrust of financial intermediaries such as floor brokers and specialists. Impersonal efficiency has guided the development of market automation towards transparency and impersonality, at the expense of human trading floors. The result has been an erosion of the informal norms and human judgment that characterize less anonymous markets. We call impersonal efficiency an ideology because we do not think that impersonal markets are always superior to markets built on social ties. This report traces the historical origins of this ideology, considers the problems it has already created in the recent Flash Crash of 2010, and asks what potential risks it might pose in the future

Public Choice, Constitutional Political Economy and Law and Economics

The various subdisciplines within the emerging ‘new institutionalism’ in economics all draw special attention to the legal-political constraints within which economic and political agents choose and therefore represent a return of economics to its appropriate legal foundations. By changing the name of his research program to constitutional political economy Buchanan distanced himself from those parts of the public choice literature that remained too close to the traditional welfare economics approach. This chapter draws lessons for law and economics from recent developments in the re-emerging field of constitutional political economy. CPE compares alternative sets of institutional arrangements, in markets and the polity, and their outcomes, using ‘democratic consent’ as an internal standard of comparison. The chapter discusses the methodological foundation of the CPE approach, presents Buchanan’s reconstruction of the Coase theorem along subjectivist-contractarian lines and gives an overview of recent contributions to the literature. JEL classification: B41, D70, H10, K; Keywords: Constitutional Economics, Constitutional Political Economy, Public Choice, James M. Buchanan, Methodological FoundationLaw and Economics, Constitutional Economics

Manipulating Underdetermination in Scientific Controversy: The Case of the Molecular Clock

Where there are cases of underdetermination in scientific controversies, such as the case of the molecular clock, scientists may direct the course and terms of dispute by playing off the multidimensional framework of theory evaluation. This is because assessment strategies themselves are underdetermined. Within the framework of assessment, there are a variety of trade-offs between different strategies as well as shifting emphases as specific strategies are given more or less weight in assessment situations. When a strategy is underdetermined, scientists can change the dynamics of a controversy by making assessments using different combinations of evaluation strategies and/or weighting whatever strategies are in play in different ways. Following an underdetermination strategy does not end or resolve a scientific dispute. Consequently, manipulating underdetermination is a feature of controversy dynamics and not controversy closure

The Voting Rights Paradox: Ideology and Incompleteness of American Democratic Practice

This Essay describes the “voting rights paradox”—the factthat despite America’s professed commitment to universalenfranchisement, voting rights legislation throughout U.S.history has arisen in some states to serve antidemocratic,exclusionary ends. This Essay argues that this contradictioncomes into focus when the right to vote is understood as havingas an ideological driving force based on worthiness foradmission to the franchise. This ideology of worthiness persistsbecause the right to vote is dependent on political decisions leftto the political branches and the majority’s willingness to allowpropaganda to influence the scope of the franchise.Ultimately, this Essay argues that the voting rights paradoxis effectively the “invisible hand” influencing the American lawof democracy. The only way out of the paradox is to reorientvoting rights towards a communitarian conception that fostersan authentic understanding of a universalist right to vote. Thismust be expressed by (and coupled with) fundamental,structural transformations in the mechanisms for allowingcitizens to exercise their voting rights