Learning and evolution in games and oligopoly models

Dynamic models of adjustment, as well as static models of equilibrium, are important to understand economic reality. This thesis considers such dynamic models applied to economic games. The models can broadly be divided into two categories: learning and evolution. This thesis analyzes reinforcement learning and imitation dynamic on the learning side and the indirect evolution approach on the evolution side. It demonstrates the relation between the concept of Nash equilibrium and the long run outcome of the namic processes. The applications of the dynamic models to economic games include, among others, Cournot oligopoly and merger games.

Design of Electronic Learning Courses for IT Students Considering the Dominant Learning Style

Methods of using e-learning courses to support learning activities of students at higher educational institutions is the subject of a large number of scientific and educational studies. In particular, much attention is paid to the structure, content and format of educational resources of e-learning courses. However, the problem of dependency of their efficiency on the learning styles of students still needs to be further researched. This paper deals with the learning styles characteristic for IT students on the basis of determining their leading modality; designs the structure of e-learning courses for IT students considering the dominating learning styles and provides the results of pedagogical experiment by measuring the performance and satisfaction in learning activity

On the Problem of the Island of Earth: Introducing a Universal Theory of Value in an Open Letter to The President of the United States

This paper introduces a unified theory of value.theory of value; evolutionary stable solution; economic power; military power; national security; global threat mitigation; extinction; human evolution; ideological environmentalism; the problem of induction; karl popper; F.A. von Hayek; austrian economics

On the Problem of Vague Terms: A Glossary of Clearly Stated Assumptions & Careful, Patient, Descriptions

Coase 1930 endures through the decades as one of the most-cited papers in economics due to the fact that it highlights a fundamental and equally enduring problem: "Economic theory has suffered in the past from a failure to state clearly its assumptions. Economists in building up a theory have often omitted to examine the foundations on which it was erected. This examination is, however, essential not only to prevent the misunderstanding and needless controversy which arise from a lack of knowledge of the assumptions on which a theory is based, but also because of the extreme importance for economics of good judgement in choosing between rival sets of assumptions." In 1944 Von Neumann and Morgenstern offered the simply, yet invariably rejected solution: "In… economics the most fruitful work may be that of careful, patient description; indeed this may be by far the largest domain for the present and some time to come….Economic problems [have been and are often] not formulated clearly and are often stated in such vague terms as to make mathematical treatment a priori appear hopeless because it is quite uncertain what the problems really are. There is no point in using exact methods where there is no clarity in the concepts and issues to which they are to be applied. Consequently the initial task is to clarify the knowledge of the matter by further careful descriptive work." This paper offers a stone along the path to the solution to this problem by offering a glossary in this spirit, a glossary germain to some of the most fundamental, open problems in economics. As the fate of the human race may lay in the balance to finding solutions to these problems, this glossary may be a steop in the right direction.economic terms; methodology; scientific method; coase 1930; Von Neumann & Morgenstern 1944; definitions; careful, patient descriptions

Three essays on rationality, intentionality and economic agency

The central theme of this dissertation is the contribution that the theory of human ontology developed by the philosopher John SearIe can make to economics. SearIe's account of the cognitive functioning associated with rational behaviour provides a framework within which to analyse the role of conscious and non-conscious factors in rational behaviour; the nature and functioning of discursive and tacit knowledge; and the distinction between intentional and non-intentional states. Using this framework, each of the three essays which make up the core of this dissertation examines aspects of the conception of economic agency associated with a different field in economics; critical realism, behavioural finance and mainstream microeconomics. The first essay, which looks at the critical realist conception of the human actor in Tony Lawson 's Economics and Reality, argues that Lawson leaves undeveloped the notion of tacit knowledge, failing to explain important differences between knowledge that functions by virtue of conscious reflection and that which functions tacitly. From a SearIean perspective the key omission is argued to be the technical notion of intentionality, upon which SearIe develops an account of tacit knowledge. I show how this notion of intentionality evades my criticism of Lawson. The second essay examines the conception of agency associated with behavioural finance from the perspective of the human ontology proposed by Searle. The principle theme of the essay is that each of the psychological traits that behavioural finance draws on, namely prospect theory, judgmental heuristics and mental accounting, involves the interplay of both conscious and non-conscious factors. Consequently the agent of behavioural finance is a construction that is readily intelligible in SearIean terms. I argue that this finding leads to a conception of the rationality of the agent encountered in the behavioural finance literature that is quite different from the way in which it is commonly presented. The mainstream microeconomic conception of the human actor is the focus of the final essay, in which it is argued that the treatment of human knowledge on this approach neglects a number of important factors in economic behaviour. The first half of the essay uses a simple Cournot duopoly game under conditions of complete and incomplete information in order to highlight the usual assumptions about actors ' knowledge in mainstream models. On the basis of these findings the second half of the essay then considers three aspects of human agency that these models neglect: non-probabilistic forms of unceltainty and ignorance, the subjectivity of knowledge and the role of tacit knowledge.ESRC; Rothschild / Newton Trust Bursary