Retributive justice and social categorizations: The perceived fairness of punishment depends on intergroup status

In the current research, the authors investigate the influence of intergroup status and social categorizations on retributive justice judgments, that is, the extent to which observers perceive punishment as fair. Building on social identity theory and the model of subjective group dynamics, it is predicted that when the ingroup has higher status than the outgroup, people are relatively less concerned about punishment of an outgroup offender than when the ingroup has lower status than the outgroup. Two experiments revealed that participants are more punitive towards an ingroup than an outgroup offender when ingroup status is high but not when ingroup status is low. Furthermore, in correspondence with our line of reasoning, this finding emerged because participants were less punitive towards outgroup offenders when ingroup status is high than when ingroup status was low. It is concluded that the perceived fairness of punishment depends on the offender's social categorization and intergroup status. Copyright ©2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Recalling an unfair experience reduces adolescents’ dishonest behavioral intentions: The mediating role of justice sensitivity

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer Verlag via the DOI in this record.Injustice experiences are likely to have a strong impact on—adolescents' life. However, individuals differ in how they perceive and respond to injustice depending on their justice sensitivity. Whereas several studies analyzed the relationships between justice sensitivity and antisocial behaviors in adult samples, little is known about this relationship among adolescents. The aim of the present experimental study is to expand knowledge on the antecedents and effects of justice sensitivity from the Victim (i.e., JS-Victim) and Others (i.e., JS-Observer, Perpetrator, and Beneficiary) perspective, particularly with regard to its relationship to willingness to act in dishonest behavioral intentions (e.g., stealing money or objects from classmates, teachers, or strangers). The study involved 369 Italian students (52% males; Mage = 16.64, SD = 1.78). We examined the role of justice sensitivity in the relationship between the recall of unfair, fair, or neutral episodes, and the consequent willingness to perform dishonest behaviors. Results demonstrate that recalling unfair (vs. fair or neutral) episodes leads to an increase in JS-Others, which in turn decreased willingness to behave dishonestly. Conversely, JS-Victim did not mediate the relationship between the recall of unfair episodes and intentions to behave dishonestly. The present findings suggest that during adolescence JS-Others might act as a protective factor against dishonest behaviors.This study was made possible due a FIRB 2012 grant from the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR; Grant Number RBFR128CR6)

BlockChain Platforms in Financial Services: Current Perspective

Background: BlockChain technology was invented to support bitcoin, currently the most popular virtual currency. Objectives: The purpose of this paper is to investigate contemporary BlockChain platforms in financial services. Methods/Approach: An unstructured literature review has been used. Results: BlockChain in financial services is mostly associated with bitcoin exchange. However, this is a partial view of both BlockChain technology and its possible adoption for financial services: in fact, many BlockChain platforms are now available and many different financial services can be effectively supported by BlockChain platforms, even though they are not based on virtual-money exchange. Furthermore, people are attracted by the concept of smart contract, i.e., a contract that is automatically executed by computer technology, without human intervention. Conclusions: The contribution of this paper is twofold: first of all, we introduce the four BlockChain platforms that are now most popular, discussing how they support the smart contract concept; second, we identify some typical categories of financial services, matching each of them with the platform that provides the best support for each category

The Image of Man in the Economic Sciences In Light of the Financial Crisis and Recent Research Results

The image of Man in the Economic Sciences is examined in this paper from the perspective of behavioral economics and expanded using new interdisciplinary research findings. Experiments show that there are many people who selflessly do good deeds and feel better for doing so, not worse. This demonstrates a selfless motivation that contradicts the theory of utility maximization, or the concept of homo economicus. The fact that selfless, or even self-sacrificing, acts exist shows that such ethical behavior is part of human behavior. The experiments also show the influence of group behavior on economic decisions, which has been heretofore neglected in economic science. Not bad characters but moral hazards like unilateral compensation schemes are to blame for the subprime crisis. However teaching of ethical values is also needed

Part 6: The Decline of Local Journalism

Local journalism is in peril. Newspapers all over the country are reducing coverage, cutting staff, abandoning physical newsrooms or shuttering operations altogether. The United States has lost fully one-fourth of its newspapers since 2004, including 70 dailies and more than 2,000 weeklies and other nondaily papers. Hampton Roads has not escaped these cutbacks. We discuss the future of local journalism in Hampton Roads

Fair and Robust Multi-party Computation Using a Global Transaction Ledger

Classical results on secure multi-party computation (MPC) imply that fully secure computation, including fairness (either all parties get output or none) and robustness (output delivery is guaranteed), is impossible unless a majority of the parties is honest. Recently, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin where utilized to leverage the fairness loss in MPC against a dishonest majority. The idea is that when the protocol aborts in an unfair manner (i.e., after the adversary receives output) then honest parties get compensated by the adversarially controlled parties. Our contribution is three-fold. First, we put forth a new formal model of secure MPC with compensation and we show how the introduction of suitable ledger and synchronization functionalities makes it possible to express completely such protocols using standard interactive Turing machines (ITM) circumventing the need for the use of extra features that are outside the standard model as in previous works. Second, our model, is expressed in the universal composition setting with global setup and is equipped with a composition theorem that enables the design of protocols that compose safely with each other and within larger environments where other protocols with compensation take place; a composition theorem for MPC protocols with compensation was not known before. Third, we introduce the first robust MPC protocol with compensation, i.e., an MPC protocol where not only fairness is guaranteed (via compensation) but additionally the protocol is guaranteed to deliver output to the parties that get engaged and therefore the adversary, after an initial round of deposits, is not even able to mount a denial of service attack without having to suffer a monetary penalty. Importantly, our robust MPC protocol requires only a {\em constant } number of (coin-transfer and communication) rounds

The Future Is Mobile: Financial Inclusion and Technological Innovation in the Emerging World

The digital revolution is in full bloom and technology is being used to solve the world’s most challenging problems, yet traditional banking excludes many of the world’s poorest from taking advantage of the full fruits of the financial system. Especially in developing countries, implementing mobile financial systems can speed financial inclusion and spur economic growth. There is space for regulatory reform that addresses concerns with data security and consumer privacy yet does not stifle innovation. Throughout history, resistance to innovation has generally proved futile, and countries that refuse to change risk missing opportunities

Credit Network Payment Systems: Security, Privacy and Decentralization

A credit network models transitive trust between users and enables transactions between arbitrary pairs of users. With their flexible design and robustness against intrusions, credit networks form the basis of Sybil-tolerant social networks, spam-resistant communication protocols, and payment settlement systems. For instance, the Ripple credit network is used today by various banks worldwide as their backbone for cross-currency transactions. Open credit networks, however, expose users’ credit links as well as the transaction volumes to the public. This raises a significant privacy concern, which has largely been ignored by the research on credit networks so far. In this state of affairs, this dissertation makes the following contributions. First, we perform a thorough study of the Ripple network that analyzes and characterizes its security and privacy issues. Second, we define a formal model for the security and privacy notions of interest in a credit network. This model lays the foundations for secure and privacy-preserving credit networks. Third, we build PathShuffle, the first protocol for atomic and anonymous transactions in credit networks that is fully compatible with the currently deployed Ripple and Stellar credit networks. Finally, we build SilentWhispers, the first provably secure and privacy-preserving transaction protocol for decentralized credit networks. SilentWhispers can be used to simulate Ripple transactions while preserving the expected security and privacy guarantees