Understanding analogical reasoning : viewpoints from psychology and related disciplines

Analogy and metaphor have a long history of study in linguistics, education, philosophy and psychology. Consensus over what analogy is or how analogy functions in language and thought, however, has been elusive. This paper, the first in a two part series, examines these various research traditions, attempting to bring out major lines of agreement over the role of analogy in individual human experience. As well as being a general literature review which may be helpful for newcomers to the study of analogy, this paper attempts to extract from these literatures existing theories, models and concepts which may be interesting or useful for computational studies of analogical reasoning

Learning in evolutionary environments

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Learning in Evolutionary Environments

The purpose of this work is to present a sort of short selective guide to an enormous and diverse literature on learning processes in economics. We argue that learning is an ubiquitous characteristic of most economic and social systems but it acquires even greater importance in explicitly evolutionary environments where: a) heterogeneous agents systematically display various forms of "bounded rationality"; b) there is a persistent appearance of novelties, both as exogenous shocks and as the result of technological, behavioural and organisational innovations by the agents themselves; c) markets (and other interaction arrangements) perform as selection mechanisms; d) aggregate regularities are primarily emergent properties stemming from out-of-equilibrium interactions. We present, by means of examples, the most important classes of learning models, trying to show their links and differences, and setting them against a sort of ideal framework of "what one would like to understand about learning...". We put a signifiphasis on learning models in their bare-bone formal structure, but we also refer to the (generally richer) non-formal theorising about the same objects. This allows us to provide an easier mapping of a wide and largely unexplored research agenda.Learning, Evolutionary Environments, Economic Theory, Rationality

Governing Fiscal Commons in the Enlarged EU

This study explores the achievements of the acceding countries in the sphere of procedural fiscal rules (labeled as fiscal governance). The primary goal is to answer two questions: what is the current state of fiscal governance in the “novice” EU comparing to the “old” EU-15? Can we prescribe the acceding states any country-specific fiscal procedures? Three major sections of the study aim at three different issues. Section 2 reviews the rationale for fiscal governance, and the main focus draws upon the common-pool problem. The next section reviews methods to find the fiscal governance suitable for countries with differing political environments. Next, observed fiscal governance is reported by means of indices from survey data gathered in May-June 2004. Group by group, the author compares the observations with what has been measured for EU-15 countries. The findings reveal the existence of groups of countries with similar characteristics and similar institutional potential.fiscal governance; fiscal rules; political fragmentation

A Game-theoretical Perspective

Die Ausgestaltung von Wirtschaftspolitik wird als Prozess wiederholter Interaktion zwischen einer zentralisierten Politikinstanz und privaten Individuen vorgestellt. Diese Interaktion ist inhärent strategisch und eignet sich daher für eine spieltheoretische Behandlung. Die in dieser Arbeit auf der Grundlage der Spieltheorie erarbeiteten makroökonomischen Modelle dienen der Formalisierung eines dynamischen Prozesses von Politikgestaltung. In diesen Spielen bildet ein autonom handelnder Privatsektor Erwartungen über die zukünfitgen Handlungen einer Regierung. Die dabei entstehende Rückkopplung von der Erwartungsbildung des Privatsektors auf die Anreize der Regierung hat weitreichende Konsequenzen für die Entwicklung sowohl nominaler als auch realer Größen in der Wirtschaft. Aufbauend auf dem grundlegenden Prinzip der rationalen Erwartungen erarbeitet die Analyse eine Konzeptionalisierung der makroökonomischen Glaubwürdigkeit (Zeitkonsistenz) und Reputation vor dem Hintergrund vo! n Strukturreform und Stabilierungspoltik in Entwicklungsländern. Unterschiedliche Ansätze sind besonders der Geld- und Wechselkurspoltiik zur Inflationsbekämpfung gewidmet

Optimizing Educational Resources: A Paradigm for the Pursuit of Educational Productivity

The advantage and perhaps the major motivation for using “seat-of-the-pants” decision making is that it obscures the assumptions made in arriving at a decision. If no one knows the assumptions upon which you based your decisions, then even though they may be uneasy with the decision they will have a difficult time criticizing your assumptions or decisions