Text Style Transfer: A Review and Experimental Evaluation

The stylistic properties of text have intrigued computational linguistics researchers in recent years. Specifically, researchers have investigated the Text Style Transfer (TST) task, which aims to change the stylistic properties of the text while retaining its style independent content. Over the last few years, many novel TST algorithms have been developed, while the industry has leveraged these algorithms to enable exciting TST applications. The field of TST research has burgeoned because of this symbiosis. This article aims to provide a comprehensive review of recent research efforts on text style transfer. More concretely, we create a taxonomy to organize the TST models and provide a comprehensive summary of the state of the art. We review the existing evaluation methodologies for TST tasks and conduct a large-scale reproducibility study where we experimentally benchmark 19 state-of-the-art TST algorithms on two publicly available datasets. Finally, we expand on current trends and provide new perspectives on the new and exciting developments in the TST field

Counterfactual reasoning in strategy context : a theoretical investigation of the role of hindsight in strategic foresight

The purpose of this doctoral thesis is to deepen theoretical understanding of the role that hindsight plays in foresight. The thesis argues that the past is not an isolated static state, but one that is intimately connected with the future. However, there are several biases that influence our perceptions and conceptions of the past. These biases act as constraints on strategic learning by limiting our ability to understand the driving forces that emerge from the past, play out through the present and become critical uncertainties in the future. They can result in misperceptions about events or processes, and as such, may impair foresight methodologies such as scenario thinking. Such foresightful thinking flaws are characterised by a combination of hindsight biases and creeping determinism, which result in searching for information that corresponds to people's views about both the past and the future, logical path-dependencies, misaligned dominant logics, routines, recipes and paradigms, and over-confidence and defensive pessimism. Drawing on received research in psychology, the role of counter-to-factual reasoning as a heuristic is discussed and analysed as a possible antidote to foresightful thinking flaws. The judicious use of such a heuristic device as counterfactual reasoning, both as a sense-making process and as an analytical reasoning tool applied to the analysis of historical data, the thesis concludes, is a method for investigating and discovering the past and fortifying foresightful strategic thinking

Behavioral microfoundations of retail credit markets :a theoretical and experimental approximation

[Resumen] La reciente crisis financiera ha renovado el interés en el papel que juega el crédito, particularmente bancario, para amplificar el ciclo económico. Esta tesis se centra en el lado de la oferta para estudiar la eficiencia informativa de los sistemas bancarios a la hora de conceder crédito a la economía. Tras una revisión de la literatura centrada en dicho objeto, establecemos la economía y finanzas conductuales como marco conceptual de nuestra investigación. Asi, comentamos en primer lugar los límites para aplicar la hipótesis del mercado eficiente, paradigma clásico en los mercados financieros, a los sistemas bancarios, y ofrecemos un enfoque alternativo en tres pasos que se basa en la literatura conductual. Después, llevamos a cabo una investigación experimental para testar el primer paso: un juego de simulación diseñado para replicar el esquema básico en el que un banco establece sus políticas de crédito. Los resultados se contrastan con los perfiles de los participantes en términos de exceso de confianza y la teoría prospectiva, para determinar si estos sesgos podrían explicar las diferentes políticas de crédito. Por último, ofrecemos un modelo teórico para analizar los pasos segundo y tercero. Asumiendo que algunos bancos tienen gerentes demasiado optimistas, el modelo muestra cómo los bancos racionales seguirían a sus competidores sesgados, y describe los límites del arbitraje en la industria que impedirían restaurar la eficiencia informativa.[Resumo]A recente crise financeira renovou o interese no papel xogado polo crédito, en particular bancario, na amplificación do ciclo económico. Esta tese céntrase no lado da oferta ao obxecto de estudar a eficiencia informativa dos sistemas bancarios cando conceden crédito á economía. Tras unha revisión das principais áreas da literatura centradas en dita cuestión, fixamos a economía e finanzas conductuais como marco conceptual da nosa investigación. Deste xeito, debatemos primeiro sobre as limitacións para aplicar a hipótese do mercado eficiente, paradigma clásico nos mercados financeiros, aos sistemas bancarios, e suxerimos un enfoque alternativo en tres pasos, baseado na literatura conductual. Logo, poñemos en práctica unha investigación experimental ao obxecto de testar o primeiro paso: un xogo de simulación deseñado para replicar o esquema básico no que un banco establece as súas políticas de crédito. Os resultados son contrastados cós perfís dos participantes en termos de exceso de confianza e a teoría prospectiva, para determinar se ditos sesgos poderían explicar diferentes políticas de crédito entre bancos. Para rematar, ofertamos un modelo teórico para analizar o segundo e terceiro paso. Asumindo que algúns bancos son dirixidos por xestores optimistas de máis, o modelo mostra como os bancos racionais seguirían aos seus sesgados competidores, e describe os límites da arbitraxe na industria que impedirían restablecer a eficiencia informativa.[Abstract] The recent financial crisis has renewed interest in the role credit plays, particularly when granted by the banking sector, to amplify the economic cycle. This thesis focuses on the credit supply side to study the informational efficiency of bank-based financial systems when granting credit to the economy. After a revision of the main areas of the literature that are devoted to such purpose, we set the behavioral economics and finance as a conceptual framework for our research. Thus, we firstly discuss the limits to apply the classic paradigm in financial markets, the efficient market hypothesis, to bank-based systems, and offer an alternative approach in three steps, based on the behavioral literature. Then, we implement an experimental research to test the first step. The experiment consists of a business simulation game designed to replicate the basics of a bank to set its credit policies. The results are tested against the participants’ profiles in terms of overconfidence and prospect theory, to determine whether these behavioral biases might explain different credit policies across banks. Finally, we offer a theoretical model to analyze the second and third steps in the behavioral approach. Assuming some banks are run by too optimistic managers, the model shows how rational banks would herd to follow their biased competitors, and describes the limits of arbitrage in the industry that would prevent informational efficiency to be restored

Quality Control in Criminal Investigation

Edited by Xabier Agirre Aranburu, Morten Bergsmo, Simon De Smet and Carsten Stahn, this 1,108-page book offers detailed analyses on how the investigation and preparation of fact-rich cases can be improved, both in national and international jurisdictions. Twenty-four chapters organized in five parts address, inter alia, evidence and analysis, systemic challenges in case-preparation, investigation plans as instruments of quality control, and judicial and prosecutorial participation in investigation and case-preparation. The authors include Antonio Angotti, Devasheesh Bais, Olympia Bekou, Gilbert Bitti, Leïla Bourguiba, Thijs B. Bouwknegt, Ewan Brown, Eleni Chaitidou, Cale Davis, Markus Eikel, Shreeyash Uday Lalit, Moa Lidén, Tor-Geir Myhrer, Trond Myklebust, Matthias Neuner, Christian Axboe Nielsen, Gilad Noam, Gavin Oxburgh, David Re, Alf Butenschøn Skre, Usha Tandon, William Webster and William H. Wiley, in addition to the four co-editors. There are also forewords by Fatou Bensouda and Manoj Kumar Sinha, and a prologue by Gregory S. Gordon.The book follows from a conference at the Indian Law Institute in New Delhi, and is the main outcome of the third leg of a research project of the Centre for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP) known as the 'Quality Control Project'. Other books produced by the project are Quality Control in Fact-Finding (Second Edition, 2020) and Quality Control in Preliminary Examination: Volumes 1 and 2 (2018). Covering three distinct phases - documentation, preliminary examination and investigation - the volumes consider how the quality of each phase can be improved. Emphasis is placed on the nourishment of an individual mindset and institutional culture of quality control.bookExploring the Frontiers of International La

Paraphrase Diversification Using Counterfactual Debiasing

The problem of generating a set of diverse paraphrase sentences while (1) not compromising the original meaning of the original sentence, and (2) imposing diversity in various semantic aspects, such as a lexical or syntactic structure, is examined. Existing work on paraphrase generation has focused more on the former, and the latter was trained as a fixed style transfer, such as transferring from positive to negative sentiments, even at the cost of losing semantics. In this work, we consider style transfer as a means of imposing diversity, with a paraphrasing correctness constraint that the target sentence must remain a paraphrase of the original sentence. However, our goal is to maximize the diversity for a set of k generated paraphrases, denoted as the diversified paraphrase (DP) problem. Our key contribution is deciding the style guidance at generation towards the direction of increasing the diversity of output with respect to those generated previously. As pre-materializing training data for all style decisions is impractical, we train with biased data, but with debiasing guidance. Compared to state-of-the-art methods, our proposed model can generate more diverse and yet semantically consistent paraphrase sentences. That is, our model, trained with the MSCOCO dataset, achieves the highest embedding scores, .94/.95/.86, similar to state-of-the-art results, but with a lower mBLEU score (more diverse) by 8.73%