Reputation in multi agent systems and the incentives to provide feedback

The emergence of the Internet leads to a vast increase in the number of interactions between parties that are completely alien to each other. In general, such transactions are likely to be subject to fraud and cheating. If such systems use computerized rational agents to negotiate and execute transactions, mechanisms that lead to favorable outcomes for all parties instead of giving rise to defective behavior are necessary to make the system work: trust and reputation mechanisms. This paper examines different incentive mechanisms helping these trust and reputation mechanisms in eliciting users to report own experiences honestly. --Trust,Reputation

Reconsidering online reputation systems

Social and socioeconomic interactions and transactions often require trust. In digital spaces, the main approach to facilitating trust has effectively been to try to reduce or even remove the need for it through the implementation of reputation systems. These generate metrics based on digital data such as ratings and reviews submitted by users, interaction histories, and so on, that are intended to label individuals as more or less reliable or trustworthy in a particular interaction context. We suggest that conventional approaches to the design of such systems are rooted in a capitalist, competitive paradigm, relying on methodological individualism, and that the reputation technologies themselves thus embody and enact this paradigm in whatever space they operate in. We question whether the politics, ethics and philosophy that contribute to this paradigm align with those of some of the contexts in which reputation systems are now being used, and suggest that alternative approaches to the establishment of trust and reputation in digital spaces need to be considered for alternative contexts

The State of e-Banking Implementation in Nigeria: A Post-Consolidation Review

The most widely used e-Banking instrument in �igeria is e-Payment, particularly the automatic teller machine (ATM) card. However, with the adoption of e-Banking by all the banks in �igeria, the volume of cash in circulation has continued to increase pre-and-post bank recapitalization/consolidation exercise. Furthermore, some of the 25 banks that survived the exercise were found lately to have depleted their capital base and have lost credibility before the consumers, e-Banking implementation notwithstanding. Therefore, in this paper, we review the state of e-Banking implementation in �igeria and evaluate the influence of trust on the adoption of e-Payment using an extended technology acceptance model (TAM). Similarly, we investigate organizational reputation, perceived risk and perceived trust in the management of banks as a factor for enhancing customer loyalty. The findings in this work reveal that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness are not only antecedent to ebanking acceptance, they are also factors to retain customers to the use of e-banking system such as organizational reputation, perceived risk and trust

Community Organizations, Neighborhood Interactions, and Entrepreneurial Social Capital: Effects on Female Self-Employment Earnings

Few attempts have been made to study entrepreneurs' social networks in local communities. This study empirically explores the relationships between self-employed workers' involvement in local communities and their earnings. Examining whether their weak ties with community members and strong ties with their neighbors work differently, we hypothesize that while the former yields positive returns, a high involvement in their neighborhoods limits self-employed workers' access to extra-community contacts, causes free-rider problems, and produces leveling pressures. Our findings suggest that participating in local community organizations significantly raises self-employment earnings. Alternatively, self-employed workers strongly connected with their neighbors receive significantly lower earnings.Entrepreneurship, Social Capital, Local Community, Neighborhood Interaction, Social Networks

National trade associations, economic development and globalization

In the post communism regime, the responsibility of economic development has largely been shifted to private sector. The increasing role of private sector enterprises introduced the new concepts of corporate social responsibility (CSR), democratization in business and finance, corporate culture, fair trade, good governance and economic freedom and participation. The ‘wealth maximization concept’ under the ‘extreme capitalism’, limited liability, separate entity, agency cost, professionalism, and competitiveness were redefined. The implementation of the separate entity concept and the code of corporate governance have become more important in the post communism regime. Now, problems in trade and investment are closely linked with the problems of unemployment, income distribution, poverty, macroeconomic growth, regional and infrastructure development, socio-cultural changes, political structure, and the rate of crimes in a country. Business related issues couldn’t be studied in isolation; they are integrated with the sociopolitical dimensions of an economy. In the present inclination of globalization where the word ‘countries’ is being silently replaced by ‘economies’, the role of trade bodies has became more important. The policy advocacy, research and to work as a leading and supreme think tank should be the core activities of the national and multilateral chambers of commerce. The power and role of the chambers in global polices has been studied and contemplated by various analysts. The role of trade associations, chambers of commerce, large corporations and the business groups in the economic development has become an important area of research which lead the drastic development in the literature of business economics. Now, Business Economics has become an important branch of the applied economics. To provide a forum for research and debates on the contemporary issues in Business Economics, the National Association of Business Economists are serving in the developing and industrialized countries. These associations have close association with the National Chambers of Commerce. Various economists have been analyzing on the productivity, importance and the role of the local chambers and the trade specific associations. Aldrich, Fiol, and Staber from Cambridge University, Arendt from University of Chicago, Axelrod, from New York, Benhabib from Princeton University, Dowling from Oxford University, Fombrun from Harvard Business School, Fukuyama from John Hopkins University, Gutmann from Harvard University, Harré from Cambridge University, Lehne from New York University, Olson from Harvard University, North from Cambridge University, Olson from Harvard University, and Shapiro from Oxford University are famous research scholars in the filed of business economics who have been serving on the role of large business houses and the business representative associations in the economic and socio political development and changes in the global business and financial environment. The paper covers the importance and background of the study, nexus of the chambers with the states and multilateral institutions and effects on socioeconomic development and policy Recommendations.Trade Associations, Globalization, Governance,

Living Innovation Laboratory Model Design and Implementation

Living Innovation Laboratory (LIL) is an open and recyclable way for multidisciplinary researchers to remote control resources and co-develop user centered projects. In the past few years, there were several papers about LIL published and trying to discuss and define the model and architecture of LIL. People all acknowledge about the three characteristics of LIL: user centered, co-creation, and context aware, which make it distinguished from test platform and other innovation approaches. Its existing model consists of five phases: initialization, preparation, formation, development, and evaluation. Goal Net is a goal-oriented methodology to formularize a progress. In this thesis, Goal Net is adopted to subtract a detailed and systemic methodology for LIL. LIL Goal Net Model breaks the five phases of LIL into more detailed steps. Big data, crowd sourcing, crowd funding and crowd testing take place in suitable steps to realize UUI, MCC and PCA throughout the innovation process in LIL 2.0. It would become a guideline for any company or organization to develop a project in the form of an LIL 2.0 project. To prove the feasibility of LIL Goal Net Model, it was applied to two real cases. One project is a Kinect game and the other one is an Internet product. They were both transformed to LIL 2.0 successfully, based on LIL goal net based methodology. The two projects were evaluated by phenomenography, which was a qualitative research method to study human experiences and their relations in hope of finding the better way to improve human experiences. Through phenomenographic study, the positive evaluation results showed that the new generation of LIL had more advantages in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.Comment: This is a book draf

Emergence of social networks via direct and indirect reciprocity

Many models of social network formation implicitly assume that network properties are static in steady-state. In contrast, actual social networks are highly dynamic: allegiances and collaborations expire and may or may not be renewed at a later date. Moreover, empirical studies show that human social networks are dynamic at the individual level but static at the global level: individuals' degree rankings change considerably over time, whereas network-level metrics such as network diameter and clustering coefficient are relatively stable. There have been some attempts to explain these properties of empirical social networks using agent-based models in which agents play social dilemma games with their immediate neighbours, but can also manipulate their network connections to strategic advantage. However, such models cannot straightforwardly account for reciprocal behaviour based on reputation scores ("indirect reciprocity"), which is known to play an important role in many economic interactions. In order to account for indirect reciprocity, we model the network in a bottom-up fashion: the network emerges from the low-level interactions between agents. By so doing we are able to simultaneously account for the effect of both direct reciprocity (e.g. "tit-for-tat") as well as indirect reciprocity (helping strangers in order to increase one's reputation). This leads to a strategic equilibrium in the frequencies with which strategies are adopted in the population as a whole, but intermittent cycling over different strategies at the level of individual agents, which in turn gives rise to social networks which are dynamic at the individual level but stable at the network level

Applications of Repeated Games in Wireless Networks: A Survey

A repeated game is an effective tool to model interactions and conflicts for players aiming to achieve their objectives in a long-term basis. Contrary to static noncooperative games that model an interaction among players in only one period, in repeated games, interactions of players repeat for multiple periods; and thus the players become aware of other players' past behaviors and their future benefits, and will adapt their behavior accordingly. In wireless networks, conflicts among wireless nodes can lead to selfish behaviors, resulting in poor network performances and detrimental individual payoffs. In this paper, we survey the applications of repeated games in different wireless networks. The main goal is to demonstrate the use of repeated games to encourage wireless nodes to cooperate, thereby improving network performances and avoiding network disruption due to selfish behaviors. Furthermore, various problems in wireless networks and variations of repeated game models together with the corresponding solutions are discussed in this survey. Finally, we outline some open issues and future research directions.Comment: 32 pages, 15 figures, 5 tables, 168 reference

Emergence and Collapse of Peace with Friend Selection Strategies

A society consisting of agents who can freely choose to attack or not to attack others inevitably evolves into a battling society (a \'war of all against all\'). We investigated whether strategies based on C. Schmitt\'s concept of the political, the distinction of a friend and an enemy, lead to the emergence and collapse of social order. Especially, we propose \'friend selection strategies\' (FSSs), one of which we called the \'us-TFT\' (tit for tat) strategy, which requires an agent to regard one who did not attack him or his \'friends\' as a \'friend\'. We carried out evolutionary simulations on an artificial society consisting of FSS agents. As a result, we found that the us-TFT results in a peaceful society with the emergence of an us-TFT community. In addition, we found that the collapse of a peaceful society is triggered by another FSS strategy called a \'coward\'.Community, Carl Schmitt, a Friend and an Enemy, Tit for Tat, Coward, Evolutionary Simulation