On Time and Money Donations

This paper investigates the determinants of time and money gifts. We first develop a behavioural model which accounts for both types of donations, as well as for decisions about domestic and market hours of work. We then investigate the issue empirically, using survey data for Italy. Results suggest that, according to the theoretical predictions, proxies for “warm glow”, reputational concerns and (impure) altruism are important determinants of giving. Moreover, the unobservable determinants driving money and time donations are positively correlated, suggesting a certain degree of complementarity between the two decisions.volunteering, money donations, household behaviour

On Time and Money Donations

This paper investigates the determinants of time and money gifts. We first develop a behavioural model which accounts for both types of donations, as well as decisions about domestic and market hours of work. We then investigate the issue empirically, using survey data for Italy. Results suggest that, according to the theoretical predictions, proxies for “warm glow”, reputational concerns and (impure) altruism are important determinants of giving. Moreover, the unobservable determinants driving money and time donations are positively correlated, suggesting a certain degree of complementarity between the two decisions.Volunteering, Money donations, Household behaviour.

The Problem of Evil in Virtual Worlds

In its original form, Nozick’s experience machine serves as a potent counterexample to a simplistic form of hedonism. The pleasurable life offered by the experience machine, its seems safe to say, lacks the requisite depth that many of us find necessary to lead a genuinely worthwhile life. Among other things, the experience machine offers no opportunities to establish meaningful relationships, or to engage in long-term artistic, intellectual, or political projects that survive one’s death. This intuitive objection finds some support in recent research regarding the psychological effects of phenomena such as video games or social media use. After a brief discussion of these problems, I will consider a variation of the experience machine in which many of these deficits are remedied. In particular, I’ll explore the consequences of a creating a virtual world populated with strongly intelligent AIs with whom users could interact, and that could be engineered to survive the user’s death. The presence of these agents would allow for the cultivation of morally significant relationships, and the world’s long-term persistence would help ground possibilities for a meaningful, purposeful life in a way that Nozick’s original experience machine could not. While the creation of such a world is obviously beyond the scope of current technology, it represents a natural extension of the existing virtual worlds provided by current video games, and it provides a plausible “ideal case” toward which future virtual worlds will move. While this improved experience machine would seem to represent progress over Nozick’s original, I will argue that it raises a number of new problems stemming from the fact that that the world was created to provide a maximally satisfying and meaningful life for the intended user. This, in turn, raises problems analogous in some ways to the problem(s) of evil faced by theists. In particular, I will suggest that it is precisely those features that would make a world most attractive to potential users—the fact that the AIs are genuinely moral agents whose well-being the user can significantly impact—that render its creation morally problematic, since they require that the AIs inhabiting the world be subject to unnecessary suffering. I will survey the main lines of response to the traditional problem of evil, and will argue that they are irrelevant to this modified case. I will close by considering by consider what constraints on the future creation of virtual worlds, if any, might serve to allay the concerns identified in the previous discussion. I will argue that, insofar as the creation of such worlds would allow us to meet morally valuable purposes that could not be easily met otherwise, we would be unwise to prohibit it altogether. However, if our processes of creation are to be justified, they must take account of the interests of the moral agents that would come to exist as the result of our world creation

Modeling Exchange Rates with Incomplete Information

Recent research has shown that relaxing the assumptions of complete information and common knowledge in exchange rate models can shed light on a wide range of important exchange rate puzzles. In this chapter, we review a number of models we have developed in previous work that relax the strong assumptions on information. We also review some related literature.information heterogeneity; learning; infrequent decisions

Competing for attention in social communication markets

We investigate the incentives for social communication in the new social media technologies. Three features of online social communication are represented in the model. First, new social media platforms allow for increased connectivity; i.e., they enable sending messages to many more receivers, for the same fixed cost, compared to traditional word of mouth. Second, users contribute content because they derive status- or image-based utility from being listened to by their peers. Third, we capture the role of social differentiation, or how social distance between people affects their preferences for messages. In the model, agents endogenously decide whether to be a sender of information and then compete for the attention of receivers. An important point of this paper is that social communication incentives diminish even as the reach or the span of communication increases. As the span of communication increases, competition between senders for receiver attention becomes more intense, resulting in senders competing with greater equilibrium messaging effort. This in turn leads to lower equilibrium payoffs and the entry of fewer senders. This result provides a strategic rationale for the socalled participation inequality phenomenon, which is a characteristic of many social media platforms. We also show that social differentiation may enhance or deter sender entry depending on whether it can be endogenously influenced by senders. Finally, we examine how the underlying network structure (in terms of its density and its degree distribution) affects communication and uncover a nonmonotonic pattern in that increased connectivity first increases and then reduces the entry of senders

Fuzzy argumentation for trust

In an open Multi-Agent System, the goals of agents acting on behalf of their owners often conflict with each other. Therefore, a personal agent protecting the interest of a single user cannot always rely on them. Consequently, such a personal agent needs to be able to reason about trusting (information or services provided by) other agents. Existing algorithms that perform such reasoning mainly focus on the immediate utility of a trusting decision, but do not provide an explanation of their actions to the user. This may hinder the acceptance of agent-based technologies in sensitive applications where users need to rely on their personal agents. Against this background, we propose a new approach to trust based on argumentation that aims to expose the rationale behind such trusting decisions. Our solution features a separation of opponent modeling and decision making. It uses possibilistic logic to model behavior of opponents, and we propose an extension of the argumentation framework by Amgoud and Prade to use the fuzzy rules within these models for well-supported decisions

Transparency of Monetary Policy: Theory and Practice

Transparency has become one of the main features of monetary policymaking during the last decade. This paper establishes some stylized facts. In addition, it provides a systematic overview of the practice of monetary policy transparency around the world. It shows much diversity in information disclosure, even for central banks with the same monetary policy framework, including inflation targeting. Nevertheless, the paper finds significant differences in transparency across monetary policy frameworks. The empirical findings are explained using key insights distilled from the theoretical literature. Thus, this paper aims to bridge the gap between the theory and practice of monetary policy transparency

Can intelligence explode?

The technological singularity refers to a hypothetical scenario in which technological advances virtually explode. The most popular scenario is the creation of super-intelligent algorithms that recursively create ever higher intelligences. It took many decades for these ideas to spread from science fiction to popular science magazines and finally to attract the attention of serious philosophers. David Chalmers' (JCS, 2010) article is the first comprehensive philosophical analysis of the singularity in a respected philosophy journal. The motivation of my article is to augment Chalmers' and to discuss some issues not addressed by him, in particular what it could mean for intelligence to explode. In this course, I will (have to) provide a more careful treatment of what intelligence actually is, separate speed from intelligence explosion, compare what super-intelligent participants and classical human observers might experience and do, discuss immediate implications for the diversity and value of life, consider possible bounds on intelligence, and contemplate intelligences right at the singularity