Thinking Ahead: The Decision Problem

We propose a model of bounded rationality based on time-costs of deliberating current and future decisions. We model an individual decision maker%u2019s thinking process as a thought-experiment that takes time and let the decision maker %u201Cthink ahead%u201D about future decision problems in yet unrealized states of nature. By formulating an intertemporal, state-contingent, planning problem, which may involve costly deliberation in every state of nature, and by letting the decision-maker deliberate ahead of the realization of a state, we attempt to capture the basic idea that individuals generally do not think through a complete action-plan. Instead, individuals prioritize their thinking and leave deliberations on less important decisions to the time or event when they arise.

Implicit Partner Evaluations: How They Form and Affect Close Relationships

For decades, research on couples has attempted to understand the source of relationship decay by explicitly asking people how they evaluate their relationships. Ironically, however, relationship science also indicates that people seem largely indisposed to acknowledge some aspects of their relationships in self-report questionnaires, particularly when those are undesirable. To circumvent these limitations, a growing body of work has started to employ more indirect measurement tools (the so-called ‘implicit measures’) to capture people’s spontaneous evaluative associations, or gut-feeling reactions, toward their partner: their implicit partner evaluations. Recent evidence suggests that implicit partner evaluations, as assessed by implicit measures, differ quite sharply from self-reported explicit evaluations and predict later relationship quality and stability, even when explicit evaluations do not. To date, however, little is known about the sources of implicit partner evaluations and the reasons why they have such powerful predictive power. The present dissertation contributes to this growing field of research in many ways by examining how implicit partner evaluations form and affect close relationships in everyday life. First, using a combination of longitudinal and observational methods, Chapter 2 provides evidence that, compared to their explicit counterparts, implicit partner evaluations remain more stable over time, are more resistant to day-to-day relationship experiences, and update gradually as relationship experiences accumulate in time. Second, Chapters 3 and 4 capitalize on diary and experimental designs to show that one of the reasons why implicit partner implicit partner evaluations have important implications for relationship maintenance is because, under specific yet prevalent conditions (i.e., when opportunities to deliberate are limited), they determine daily behaviors that are critical for long-term relational well-being, such as nonverbal communication in problem-solving conversations and forgiveness toward the partner’s offense. Third, drawing on a large dyadic sample of newlyweds, Chapter 5 further extends these findings by showing that having ambivalent implicit partner evaluations can also affect relationship functioning over time by motivating spouses to make behavioral efforts that may improve their marital problems. Last, Chapter 6 describes how studying implicit evaluations in close relationship contexts can also invigorate basic implicit social cognition research on how attitudes change and affect behavior in the real world, and inform interventions for society. Taken together, the findings from the present dissertation provide novel insights about the key role of implicit partner evaluations in relational contexts, and further illustrate the scientific and practical value of integrating research in relationship science and implicit social cognition

A simulation-based approach to assess impacts of urban logistics policies on traffic flow dynamics

International audienceIn urban environments, there are now many challenging problems concerning freight transport.As cities around the world grow rapidly, there is an increase in pickup-delivery truck traffic inurban areas. It turns out that commercial traffic is now a major source of externalities in metroareas, including congestion, noise, air pollution (small particulates, NOx, greenhouse gasemissions), and traffic incidents [1].To overcome these issues, many interesting and innovative strategies have been developed inEurope and other parts of the world. Especially, some researchers proposed the idea of citylogistics to solve these difficult problems [2-3]. The idea of this concept is to rationalize thefreight activities in cities by optimizing operations considering the traffic conditions and thecongestion issues. Consequently, public authorities strongly need decision support frameworksto evaluate urban logistics planning and management.It turns out that a key point in predicting the impacts of city logistics is the influence of freighton traffic flow dynamics. Particularly, pickup-delivery trucks maneuvers generate roadcapacity reduction and lead to delay for individual drivers. Although this is a crucial topic, theliterature rarely addresses this issue. This paper aims to fill this lack of understanding byincorporating the effects of urban freight in a traffic flow model

Satisficing Contracts

We propose a model of equilibrium contracting between two agents who are "boundedly rational" in the sense that they face time-costs of deliberating current and future transactions. We show that equilibrium contracts may be incomplete and assign control rights: they may leave some enforceable future transactions unspecified and instead specify which agent has the right to decide these transactions. Control rights allow the controlling agent to defer time-consuming deliberations on those transactions to a later date, making her less inclined to prolong negotiations over an initial incomplete contract. Still, agents tend to resolve conflicts up-front by writing more complete initial contracts. A more complete contract can take the form of either a finer adaptation to future contingencies, or greater coarseness. Either way, conflicts among contracting agents tend to result in excessively complete contracts in the sense that the maximization of joint payoffs would result in less up-front deliberation.