Standard Voting Power Indices Work: An Experimental Investigation of Pure Voting Power

We evaluate the accuracy of power indices by experimentally measuring the political power embodied in blocks of votes per se. The experiment incorporates several subjects interacting in online chat rooms under supervision. Chat rooms and processes for selecting subjects reduce or eliminate extraneous political forces leaving logrolling as the primary political force. Results show that two standard power indices reflect voting power while other power indices and proportionality do not.Voting, Power Index, P Power, Shapley-Shubik, Banzhaf, Johnston, Burgin, Experiment.

hpDJ: An automated DJ with floorshow feedback

Many radio stations and nightclubs employ Disk-Jockeys (DJs) to provide a continuous uninterrupted stream or “mix” of dance music, built from a sequence of individual song-tracks. In the last decade, commercial pre-recorded compilation CDs of DJ mixes have become a growth market. DJs exercise skill in deciding an appropriate sequence of tracks and in mixing 'seamlessly' from one track to the next. Online access to large-scale archives of digitized music via automated music information retrieval systems offers users the possibility of discovering many songs they like, but the majority of consumers are unlikely to want to learn the DJ skills of sequencing and mixing. This paper describes hpDJ, an automatic method by which compilations of dance-music can be sequenced and seamlessly mixed by computer, with minimal user involvement. The user may specify a selection of tracks, and may give a qualitative indication of the type of mix required. The resultant mix can be presented as a continuous single digital audio file, whether for burning to CD, or for play-out from a personal playback device such as an iPod, or for play-out to rooms full of dancers in a nightclub. Results from an early version of this system have been tested on an audience of patrons in a London nightclub, with very favourable results. Subsequent to that experiment, we designed technologies which allow the hpDJ system to monitor the responses of crowds of dancers/listeners, so that hpDJ can dynamically react to those responses from the crowd. The initial intention was that hpDJ would monitor the crowd’s reaction to the song-track currently being played, and use that response to guide its selection of subsequent song-tracks tracks in the mix. In that version, it’s assumed that all the song-tracks existed in some archive or library of pre-recorded files. However, once reliable crowd-monitoring technology is available, it becomes possible to use the crowd-response data to dynamically “remix” existing song-tracks (i.e, alter the track in some way, tailoring it to the response of the crowd) and even to dynamically “compose” new song-tracks suited to that crowd. Thus, the music played by hpDJ to any particular crowd of listeners on any particular night becomes a direct function of that particular crowd’s particular responses on that particular night. On a different night, the same crowd of people might react in a different way, leading hpDJ to create different music. Thus, the music composed and played by hpDJ could be viewed as an “emergent” property of the dynamic interaction between the computer system and the crowd, and the crowd could then be viewed as having collectively collaborated on composing the music that was played on that night. This en masse collective composition raises some interesting legal issues regarding the ownership of the composition (i.e.: who, exactly, is the author of the work?), but revenue-generating businesses can nevertheless plausibly be built from such technologies

Focused Power: Experimental Manifestation of the Shapley-Shubik Power Index

Experiments evaluate the fit of the Shapley-Shubik Power Index to a controlled human environment. Subjects with differing votes divide a fixed purse by majority rule in online chat rooms under supervision. Earnings serve as a measure of power. Chat rooms and processes for selecting subjects reduce or eliminate extraneous political forces, leaving logrolling as the primary political force. Initial proposals by subjects for division of the purse allow measurement of effects from focal points and transaction costs. Net results closely fit the Shapley-Shubik Power Index.Voting, Power Index, Focal Point, Shapley-Shubik, Experiment

Exploring social music behaviour: An investigation of music selection at parties

This paper builds an understanding how music is currently listened to by small (fewer than 10 individuals) to medium-sized (10 to 40 individuals) gatherings of people— how songs are chosen for playing, how the music fits in with other activities of group members, who supplies the music, the hardware/software that supports song selection and presentation. This fine-grained context emerges from a qualitative analysis of a rich set of participant observations and interviews focusing on the selection of songs to play at social gatherings. We suggest features for software to support music playing at parties

Politics, Relief, and Reform: The Transformation of America's Social Welfare System during the New Deal

The American social welfare system was transformed during the 1930s. Prior to the New Deal public relief was administered almost exclusively by local governments. The administration of local public relief was widely thought to be corrupt. Beginning in 1933, federal, state, and local governments cooperatively built a larger social welfare system. While the majority of the funds for relief spending came from the federal government, the majority of administrative decisions were made at state and local levels. While New Dealers were often accused of playing politics with relief, social welfare system created by the New Deal (still largely in place today) is more often maligned for being bureaucratic than for being corrupt. We do not believe that New Dealers were motivated by altruistic motives when they shaped New Deal relief policies. Evidence suggests that politics was always the key issue. But we show how the interaction of political interests at the federal, state, and local levels of government created political incentives for the national relief administration to curb corruption by actors at the state and local level. This led to different patterns of relief spending when programs were controlled by national, rather than state and local officials. In the permanent social welfare system created by the Social Security Act, the national government pressed for the substitution of rules rather than discretion in the administration of relief. This, ultimately, significantly reduced the level of corruption in the administration of welfare programs.

Coordination of flagella on filamentous cells of Escherichia coli

Video techniques were used to study the coordination of different flagella on single filamentous cells of Escherichia coli. Filamentous, nonseptate cells were produced by introducing a cell division mutation into a strain that was polyhook but otherwise wild type for chemotaxis. Markers for its flagellar motors (ordinary polyhook cells that had been fixed with glutaraldehyde) were attached with antihook antibodies. The markers were driven alternately clockwise and counterclockwise, at angular velocities comparable to those observed when wild-type cells are tethered to glass. The directions of rotation of different markers on the same cell were not correlated; reversals of the flagellar motors occurred asynchronously. The bias of the motors (the fraction of time spent spinning counterclockwise) changed with time. Variations in bias were correlated, provided that the motors were within a few micrometers of one another. Thus, although the directions of rotation of flagellar motors are not controlled by a common intracellular signal, their biases are. This signal appears to have a limited range

The Economic Consequences of IFRS: The Impact of IAS 32 on Preference Shares in the Netherlands

The consequences of international accounting standards are likely to reach beyond the impact on financial statements. This paper demonstrates one of the economic implications of international standards. We focus on the impact of the IFRS regulation on preference shares (IAS 32) in the Netherlands. IAS 32 causes most preference shares to lose their classification as equity and these shares will hence be classified as liabilities. We document that for Dutch firms with preferred stock outstanding, the reclassification will on average increase the reported debt ratio by 35%. We find that 71% of the firms that are affected by IAS 32 buy back their preference shares or alter the specifications of the preference shares in such a way that the classification as equity can be maintained. The main determinant of the decision whether to give these consequences to IAS 32 is the magnitude of the impact of IAS 32 on a firm’s debt ratio. We conclude that IFRS does not only lead to a decrease in the use of financial instruments that otherwise would have added to the capital structure diversity, but also changes firms’ real capital structure.IFRS;Accounting Changes;Economic Consequences;IAS 32;Magnitude Effect;Preference Shares

Group Decision-Making and Voting in Ultimatum Bargaining: An Experimental Study

Many rent-sharing decisions in a society result from a bargaining process between groups of individuals (such as between the executive and the legislative branches of government, between legislative factions, between corporate management and shareholders, etc.). We conduct a laboratory study of the effect of different voting procedures on group decision-making in the context of ultimatum bargaining. Earlier studies have suggested that when the bargaining game is played by unstructured groups of agents, rather than by individuals, the division of the payoff is substantially affected in favor of the ultimatum-proposers. Our theoretical arguments suggest that one explanation for this could be implicit voting rules within groups. We explicitly structure the group decision-making as voting and study the impact of different voting rules on the bargaining outcome. The observed responder behavior is consistent with preferences depending solely on payoff distribution. Furthermore, we observe that proposers react in an expected manner to changes in voting rule in the responder group.Bargaining games, group decision making and experimental design.