Cultural integration and its discontents

social integrationculture

Strategies for minority game and resource allocation.

She, Yingni.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-78).Abstracts in English and Chinese.Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 1.1 --- Scope --- p.2Chapter 1.2 --- Motivation --- p.5Chapter 1.3 --- Structure of the Thesis --- p.6Chapter 2 --- Literature Review --- p.7Chapter 2.1 --- Intelligent Agents and Multiagent Systems --- p.8Chapter 2.1.1 --- Intelligent Agents --- p.8Chapter 2.1.2 --- Multiagent Systems --- p.10Chapter 2.2 --- Minority Game --- p.13Chapter 2.2.1 --- Minority Game --- p.13Chapter 2.2.2 --- Characteristics of Minority Game --- p.14Chapter 2.2.3 --- Strategies for Agents in Minority Game --- p.18Chapter 2.3 --- Resource Allocation --- p.22Chapter 2.3.1 --- Strategies for Agents in Multiagent Resource Allocation --- p.23Chapter 3 --- Individual Agent´ةs Wealth in Minority Game --- p.26Chapter 3.1 --- The Model --- p.26Chapter 3.2 --- Motivation --- p.27Chapter 3.3 --- Inefficiency Information --- p.28Chapter 3.4 --- An Intelligent Strategy --- p.31Chapter 3.5 --- Experiment Analysis --- p.32Chapter 3.6 --- Discussions and Analysis --- p.35Chapter 3.6.1 --- Equivalence to the Experience method --- p.36Chapter 3.6.2 --- Impact of M' and S' --- p.38Chapter 3.6.3 --- Impact of M and S --- p.41Chapter 3.6.4 --- Impact of Larger Number of Privileged Agents --- p.48Chapter 3.6.5 --- Comparisons with Related Work --- p.48Chapter 4 --- An Adaptive Strategy for Resource Allocation --- p.53Chapter 4.1 --- Problem Specification --- p.53Chapter 4.2 --- An Adaptive Strategy --- p.55Chapter 4.3 --- Remarks of the Adaptive Strategy --- p.57Chapter 4.4 --- Experiment Analysis --- p.58Chapter 4.4.1 --- Simulations --- p.58Chapter 4.4.2 --- Comparisons with Related Work --- p.62Chapter 5 --- Conclusions and Future Work --- p.69Chapter 5.1 --- Conclusions --- p.69Chapter 5.2 --- Future Work --- p.71A List of Publications --- p.73Bibliography --- p.7

After the Big Bang? Obstacles to the emergence of the rule of law in post-communist societies

With the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1989-91, many economic reformers supported"Big Bang"privatization-the rapid transfer of state-owned enterprises to private individuals. It was hoped that Big Bang privatization would create the conditions for a demand-led evolution of legal institutions. But there was no theory to explain how this process of institutional evolution, including a legal framework for the protection of investors, would occur and, in fact, it has not yet occurred in Russia, in other former Soviet Union countries, in the Czech Republic, and elsewhere. A central reason for that, according to many scholars, is the weakness of the political demand for the rule of law. To shed light on this puzzle, the authors consider a model where the conditions for the emergence of the rule of law might be interpreted as highly favorable. Individuals with control rights over privatized assets can collectively bring about the rule of law simply by voting for it. These individuals are concerned with the wealth they can obtain from the privatized assets, and have two alternative strategies: building value and stripping assets. Building value under the rule of law yields higher benefits to a majority than stripping assets under no rule of law. But uncertainty about when the rule of law will be established may lead some individuals to choose an economic strategy-stripping assets, including converting corporate assets to private use-that gives them an interest in postponing the establishment of the rule of law. And therefore in the succeeding period, the rule of law may again not be in place, and so again individuals may strip assets. If they do, some of them may again have an interest in postponing the establishment of the rule of law. And so a weak demand for the rule of law can persist. The contribution of the paper is to show that the view that once stripping has occurred, the strippers will say"enough"and by supporting the rule of law seek public protection of their gains, is flawed. By abstracting from the obvious problem that strippers who obtain great wealth can buy special favored treatment from the state, the model highlights two less obvious flaws in the optimistic view about the Big Bang: First, that the asset-strippers can remove the assets from exposure to further stealing, and in that case they do not care about public protection for their gains. And second, that the perceived justice of a system is important to gaining the cooperation of those involved in the process of producing the rule of law (judges, regulators, jurors, potential offenders). Accordingly, state protection of asset strippers may be infeasible, even under an ostensible rule of law. Knowing this, strippers will be less supportive of the rule of law. The model makes one further point: what is at issue is how fast the rule of law will emerge. The presumption of the Big Bang strategy was that the faster state property was turned over to private hands, the faster a true market economy, including the rule of law, would be established. The analysis shows that, even if eventually a rule of law is established, the Big Bang may put into play forces that delay the establishment of the rule of law. The tortoise once again may beat the hare! Finally, the authors analyze the impact of certain policies, such as the particular structure of privatization and monetary policy. Policies that enhance the returns to investment and wealth creation rather than assetstripping not only serve to strengthen the economy in the short run, but enhance political support for the rule of law and thus put it in a position for stronger long-term growth.Corruption&Anitcorruption Law,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Legal Products,Labor Policies,Legal Products,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Corruption&Anitcorruption Law,Judicial System Reform

Private Protection of Property Rights, Inequality, and Economic Growth in Transition Economies

For economies in transition, the issues of property rights protection provided by the state and implications for economic performance are very important. The paper develops an endogenous growth model with incomplete capital markets and the level of public protection of property rights determined by voting (possibly different from the majority voting). An exogenous in-flow to the economy that constitutes a rent-seeking pie reduces incentives to invest in production and negatively affects the growth rate. An empirical investigation verifies the implications of the model using cross-section data on Russian regions. During transition (since 1992), Russian regions demonstrated enormous differences in growth rates. It is found that these differences may be explained by initial conditions and effectiveness of institutions. Also, positive impact of inequality on the level of public protection of property rights is found and a theoretical explanation for this phenomenon in the framework of the model is provided.

Economic Incentives and Social Preferences: A Preference-based Lucas Critique of Public Policy

Policies and explicit private incentives designed for self-regarding individuals sometimes are less effective or even counterproductive when they diminish altruism, ethical norms and other social preferences. Evidence from 51 experimental studies indicates that this crowding out effect is pervasive, and that crowding in also occurs. A model in which self-regarding and social preferences may be either substitutes or complements is developed and evidence for the mechanisms underlying this non-additivity feature of preferences is provided. The result is a preference-based analogue to the Lucas Critique restricting feasible implementation to allocations that are supportable given the effect of incentives on preferences.public goods, behavioural experiments, social preferences, second best, motivational crowding, explicit incentives

Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motives: Standard and Behavioral Approaches to Agency and Labor Markets

Employers structure pay and employment relationships to mitigate agency problems. A large literature in economics documents how the resolution of these problems shapes personnel policies and labor markets. For the most part, the study of agency in employment relationships relies on highly stylized assumptions regarding human motivation, e.g., that employees seek to earn as much money as possible with minimal effort. In this essay, we explore the consequences of introducing behavioral complexity and realism into models of agency within organizations. Specifically, we assess the insights gained by allowing employees to be guided by such motivations as the desire to compare favorably to others, the aspiration to contribute to intrinsically worthwhile goals, and the inclination to reciprocate generosity or exact retribution for perceived wrongs. More provocatively, from the standpoint of standard economics, we also consider the possibility that people are driven, in ways that may be opaque even to themselves, by the desire to earn social esteem or to shape and reinforce identity.agency, motivation, employment relationships, behavioral economics