282,613 research outputs found
Aspiration Dynamics of Multi-player Games in Finite Populations
Studying strategy update rules in the framework of evolutionary game theory,
one can differentiate between imitation processes and aspiration-driven
dynamics. In the former case, individuals imitate the strategy of a more
successful peer. In the latter case, individuals adjust their strategies based
on a comparison of their payoffs from the evolutionary game to a value they
aspire, called the level of aspiration. Unlike imitation processes of pairwise
comparison, aspiration-driven updates do not require additional information
about the strategic environment and can thus be interpreted as being more
spontaneous. Recent work has mainly focused on understanding how aspiration
dynamics alter the evolutionary outcome in structured populations. However, the
baseline case for understanding strategy selection is the well-mixed population
case, which is still lacking sufficient understanding. We explore how
aspiration-driven strategy-update dynamics under imperfect rationality
influence the average abundance of a strategy in multi-player evolutionary
games with two strategies. We analytically derive a condition under which a
strategy is more abundant than the other in the weak selection limiting case.
This approach has a long standing history in evolutionary game and is mostly
applied for its mathematical approachability. Hence, we also explore strong
selection numerically, which shows that our weak selection condition is a
robust predictor of the average abundance of a strategy. The condition turns
out to differ from that of a wide class of imitation dynamics, as long as the
game is not dyadic. Therefore a strategy favored under imitation dynamics can
be disfavored under aspiration dynamics. This does not require any population
structure thus highlights the intrinsic difference between imitation and
aspiration dynamics
Viable tax constitutions
Taxation is only sustainable if the general public complies with it. This observation is uncontroversial with tax practitioners but has been ignored by the public finance tradition, which has interpreted tax constitutions as binding contracts by which the power to tax is irretrievably conferred by individuals to government, which can then levy any tax it chooses. However, in the absence of an outside party enforcing contracts between members of a group, no arrangement within groups can be considered to be a binding contract, and therefore the power of tax must be sanctioned by individuals on an ongoing basis. In this paper we offer, for the first time, a theoretical analysis of this fundamental compliance problem associated with taxation, obtaining predictions that in some cases point to a re-interptretation of the theoretical constructions of the public finance tradition while in others call them into question
Increasing Access to Food: A Comprehensive Report on Food Supply Options
Access to food is one of the most important aspects of a healthy, sustainable community. Grocery stores and other suppliers can serve as an economic anchor to provide social benefits to communities. Unfortunately, many communities do not have convenient and/or affordable access to grocery items, particularly fresh produce.
As part of Virginia Commonwealth University\u27s Fall 2019 graduate course on Urban Commercial Revitalization, class members researched 13 retail and other food access options, which are described in this report. Each chapter covers a food access option and provides basic information that will be useful to individuals, organizations, or government agencies that wish to attract and/or develop grocery operations in their communities
Research Report on Phase 5 Of Cornell University/Gevity Institute Study: Human Resource Management Practices and Firm Performance In Small Businesses: A Look At Differences Across Industries
In this study, we look at the effects of three HR practice strategies on firm performance and examine potential differences in effects across industries. Overall, we found that employee selection based on person-organization fit, workforce management following a involvement strategy, and employee management and retention practices based on creating a family-like environment were all positively related to revenue growth, profit growth, and employee retention across when looking at all of the companies in the sample. We also found that the three HR strategies were related to higher firm performance when looking at each of the four individual industries in our study. We were surprised to find that the effects of these HR practice strategies were larger in both the retail and low-skilled services industries compared to the professional services and manufacturing industries. We were particularly surprised by these results because much of the popular press writing and conventional wisdom regarding HR practices has stressed the need to manage professional and highly skilled employees because they are potentially harder to find and retain. The specific results for each of the four industries are reported and discussed in the report as are the key takeaways for the study as a whole
The virtues and vices of equilibrium and the future of financial economics
The use of equilibrium models in economics springs from the desire for
parsimonious models of economic phenomena that take human reasoning into
account. This approach has been the cornerstone of modern economic theory. We
explain why this is so, extolling the virtues of equilibrium theory; then we
present a critique and describe why this approach is inherently limited, and
why economics needs to move in new directions if it is to continue to make
progress. We stress that this shouldn't be a question of dogma, but should be
resolved empirically. There are situations where equilibrium models provide
useful predictions and there are situations where they can never provide useful
predictions. There are also many situations where the jury is still out, i.e.,
where so far they fail to provide a good description of the world, but where
proper extensions might change this. Our goal is to convince the skeptics that
equilibrium models can be useful, but also to make traditional economists more
aware of the limitations of equilibrium models. We sketch some alternative
approaches and discuss why they should play an important role in future
research in economics.Comment: 68 pages, one figur
Stochastic evolutionary game dynamics
In this review, we summarize recent developments in stochastic evolutionary
game dynamics of finite populations.Comment: To appear in "Reviews of Nonlinear Dynamics and Complexity" Vol. II,
Wiley-VCH, 2009, edited by H.-G. Schuste
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