Decentralized trade, random utility and the evolution of social welfare

We study decentralized trade processes in general exchange economies and house allocation problems with and without money. The processes are subject to persistent random shocks stemming from agents' maximization of random utility. By imposing structure on the utility noise term -logit distribution-, one is able to calculate exactly the stationary distribution of the perturbed Markov process for any level of noise. We show that the stationary distribution places the largest probability on the maximizers of weighted sums of the agents' (intrinsic) utilities, and this probability tends to 1 as noise vanishe

Decentralized trade, random utility and the evolution of social welfare.

We study decentralized trade processes in general exchange economies and house allocation problems with and without money. The processes are subject to persistent random shocks stemming from agents' maximization of random utility. By imposing structure on the utility noise term -logit distribution-, one is able to calculate exactly the stationary distribution of the perturbed Markov process for any level of noise. We show that the stationary distribution places the largest probability on the maximizers of weighted sums of the agents' (intrinsic) utilities, and this probability tends to 1 as noise vanishes

Decentralized Trade, Random Utility and the Evolution of Social Welfare

We study decentralized trade processes in general exchange economies and house allocation problems with and without money. Such processes are subject to persistent random shocks stemming from agents’ maximization of random utility. By imposing structure on the utility noise term —logit distribution—, one is able to calculate exactly the stationary distribution of the perturbed Markov process for any level of noise. We show that the stationary distribution places the largest probability on the maximizer of several social welfare functions in different variants of the model.Decentralized Trade, Exchange Economies, Housing Markets, Stochastic Stability, Logit Model, Social Welfare Functions

Persistent fluctuations in stride intervals under fractal auditory stimulation

Copyright @ 2014 Marmelat et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Stride sequences of healthy gait are characterized by persistent long-range correlations, which become anti-persistent in the presence of an isochronous metronome. The latter phenomenon is of particular interest because auditory cueing is generally considered to reduce stride variability and may hence be beneficial for stabilizing gait. Complex systems tend to match their correlation structure when synchronizing. In gait training, can one capitalize on this tendency by using a fractal metronome rather than an isochronous one? We examined whether auditory cues with fractal variations in inter-beat intervals yield similar fractal inter-stride interval variability as isochronous auditory cueing in two complementary experiments. In Experiment 1, participants walked on a treadmill while being paced by either an isochronous or a fractal metronome with different variation strengths between beats in order to test whether participants managed to synchronize with a fractal metronome and to determine the necessary amount of variability for participants to switch from anti-persistent to persistent inter-stride intervals. Participants did synchronize with the metronome despite its fractal randomness. The corresponding coefficient of variation of inter-beat intervals was fixed in Experiment 2, in which participants walked on a treadmill while being paced by non-isochronous metronomes with different scaling exponents. As expected, inter-stride intervals showed persistent correlations similar to self-paced walking only when cueing contained persistent correlations. Our results open up a new window to optimize rhythmic auditory cueing for gait stabilization by integrating fractal fluctuations in the inter-beat intervals.Commission of the European Community and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research

THE BALANCE OF PAYMENTS AS A MONETARY PHENOMENON:AN ECONOMETRIC CASE STUDY OF NIGERIA

THE THRUST OF THIS PAPER HAS BEEN TO INVESTIGATE THE THEORETICAL PROPOSITION OF THE MONETARY APPROACH TO THE THEORY OF BALANCE OF PAYMENTS ADJUSTMENT MECHANISM. THE ESSENCE OF THE APPROACH IS A CONSISTENT INSISTENCE THAT BALANCE OF PAYMENTS IS A MONETARY AND NOT A REAL PHENOMENON AS POSITED BY THE CONVENTIONAL THEORIES. FROM THE VARIOUS TESTS CONCLUDED AND HYPOTHESIS EVALUATED,THE STUDY SUGGESTS THAT THE MANIPULATION OF DOMESTIC CREDIT BY THE MONETARY AUTHORITIES WILL NOT ENHANCE THE BALANCE OF PAYMENT VIABILITY OVER TIME; RATHER THAT INCREASES IN THE LEVEL OF OUTPUT MIGHT IMPROVE THE BALANCE ON CURRENT ACCOUNT.BALANCE OF PAYMENTS, ADJUSTMENT MECHANISMS, NIGERIAN ECONOMY ECONOMETRIC TESTS, CURRENT ACCOUNT, INTERNATIONAL

Decentralized Trade, Random Utility and the Evolution of Social Welfare

We study decentralized trade processes in general exchange economies and house allocation problems with and without money. The processes are affected by persistent random shocks stemming from agents' maximization of random utility. By imposing structure on the utility noise term --logit distribution--, one is able to calculate exactly the stationary distribution of the perturbed Markov process for any level of noise. We show that the stationary distribution places the largest probability on the maximizers of weighted sums of the agents' (intrinsic) utilities, and this probability tends to 1 as noise vanishes.decentralized trade, exchange economies, housing markets, long-run stochastic stability, logit model, social welfare functions.