AustArch1: A database of 14C and luminescence ages from archaeological sites in the Australian arid zone

AustArch1 is database of 14C and luminescence ages from archaeological sites in the Australian arid zone.Dataset -- Explanatory Note

Hidden Author Bias in Book Recommendation

Collaborative filtering algorithms have the advantage of not requiring sensitive user or item information to provide recommendations. However, they still suffer from fairness related issues, like popularity bias. In this work, we argue that popularity bias often leads to other biases that are not obvious when additional user or item information is not provided to the researcher. We examine our hypothesis in the book recommendation case on a commonly used dataset with book ratings. We enrich it with author information using publicly available external sources. We find that popular books are mainly written by US citizens in the dataset, and that these books tend to be recommended disproportionally by popular collaborative filtering algorithms compared to the users' profiles. We conclude that the societal implications of popularity bias should be further examined by the scholar community

Reproducing popularity bias in recommendation: The effect of evaluation strategies

The extent to which popularity bias is propagated by media recommender systems is a current topic within the community, as is the uneven propagation among users with varying interests for niche items. Recent work focused on exactly this topic, with movies being the domain of interest. Later on, two different research teams reproduced the methodology in the domains of music and books, respectively. The results across the different domains diverge. In this paper, we reproduce the three studies and identify four aspects that are relevant in investigating the differences in results: data, algorithms, division of users in groups and evaluation strategy. We run a set of experiments in which we measure general popularity bias propagation and unfair treatment of certain users with various combinations of these aspects. We conclude that all aspects account to some degree for the divergence in results, and should be carefully considered in future studies. Further, we find that the divergence in findings can be in large part attributed to the choice of evaluation strategy

The issue of instability in a simple policy game between the central bank and a representative union

In the recent economic literature the independence of the central bank is often considered to be one of the most effective guarantees to achieve price stability. A strong theoretical basis for this proposition is that the monetary policy delegation given to an independent central bank is an optimal instrument to avoid the time inconsistency problem of monetary policy. This paper investigates the stability properties of this solution in a simple game in which the private sector (i.e. the trade unions) and the public sector (i.e. the central bank) simultaneously interact. A representative monopoly union is considered, and - in line with the recent economic debate - two types of unions are investigated: (i) the standard micro-founded trade union; (ii) the inflation-averse trade union. In both cases, we find that the requirement for the Nash equilibrium to be stable imposes a limit to the conservativeness of the central bank. Instability of the Nash equilibrium reveals a strategic co-ordination failure between the public and the private sector. © Springer 2006