Patent Length, Investment and Social Welfare

The intent of the patent system is to encourage innovation by granting the innovator exclusive rights to a discovery for a limited period of time: with monopoly power, the innovator can recover the costs of creating the innovation which otherwise might not have existed. And, over time, the resulting innovation makes everyone better off. This presumption of improved social welfare is considered here. The paper examines the impact of patents on welfare in an environment where there are large numbers of (small) innovators. With patents, because there is monopoly for a limited time the outcome is necessarily not socially optimal, although social welfare may be higher than in the no-patent state. Patent acquisition and ownership creates two opposing incentives at the same time: the incentive to acquire monopoly rights conferred by the patent spurs innovation, but subsequent ownership of those rights inhibits innovation (both own innovation and that of others). On balance, which effect will dominate? In the framework of this paper separate circumstances are identified under which patents are either beneficial or detrimental to innovation and welfare; and comparisons are drawn with the socially optimal level of investment in innovation.Patents, Investment in R&D, Welfare

Optimal Patent Length

The intent of the patent system is to encourage innovation by granting the innovator exclusive rights to a discovery for a limited period of time: with monopoly power, the innovator can recover the costs of creating the innovation which otherwise might not have existed. And, over time, the resulting innovation makes everyone better off. This presumption of improved social welfare is considered here. The paper examines the impact of patents on welfare in an environment where there are large numbers of (small) innovators — such as the software industry. With patents, because there is monopoly for a limited time the outcome is necessarily not socially optimal, although social welfare may be higher than in the no-patent state. Patent acquisition and ownership creates two opposing incentives at the same time: the incentive to acquire monopoly rights conferred by the patent spurs innovation, but subsequent ownership of those rights inhibits innovation (both own innovation and that of others). On balance, which effect will dominate? In the framework of this paper separate circumstances are identified under which patents are either beneficial or detrimental to innovation and welfare; and comparisons are drawn with the socially optimal level of investment in innovation.

Cooperation through Imitation

This paper characterizes long-run outcomes for broad classes of symmetric games, when players select actions on the basis of average historical performance. Received wisdom is that when agent's interests are partially opposed, behavior is excessively competitive: ``keeping up with the Jones' '' lowers everyones' welfare. Here, we study the long-run consequences of imitative behavior when agents have sufficiently long memories --- and the outcome is dramatically different. Imitation robustly leads to cooperative outcomes (with highest symmetric payoffs) in the long run. This provides a rationale, for example, for collusive cartel-like behavior without collusive intent on the part of the agents.Evolution, Imitation

Common Knowledge With Monotone Statistics

When individual statistics are aggregated through a strictly monotone function to an aggregate statistic, common knowledge of the value of the aggregate statistic does not imply, in general, constancy of the individual statistics. This paper discusses two circumstances where it does occur. The first case arises when partitions are independently drawn: in this case common knowledge of the value of the aggregator function implies (with probability one) constancy of the individual statistics. The second case is where private statistics are related: affiliation of individual statistics and a lattice condition imply constancy of the individual statistics when the value of the aggregate statistic is common knowledge.Common Knowledge, Aggregate Statistics, Random Information, Affiliated Information

A neurofeedback system to promote learner engagement

This report describes a series of experiments that track novice programmer's engagement during two attention based tasks. The tasks required participants to watch a tutorial video on introductory programming and to attend to a simple maze game whilst wearing an electroencephalogram (EEG)device called the Emotiv EPOC. The EPOC's proprietary software includes a system which tracks emotional state (specifically: engagement, excitement, meditation, frustration, valence and long-term excitement). Using this data, a software application written in the Processing language was developed to track user's engagement levels and implement a neurofeedback based intervention when engagement fell below an acceptable level. The aim of the intervention was to prompt learners who disengaged with the task to re-engage. The intervention used during the video tutorial was to pause the video if a participant disengaged significantly. However other interventions such as slowing the video down, playing a noise or darkening/brightening the screen could also be used. For the maze game, the caterpillar moving through the maze slowed in line with disengagement and moved more quickly once the learner re-engaged. The approach worked very well and successfully re-engaged participants, although a number of improvements could be made. A number of interesting findings on the comparative engagement levels of different groups e.g. by gender and by age etc. were identified and provide useful pointers for future research studies

Extensive Form Implementation in Incomplete Information Environments

We study the implementation of social choice rules in incomplete information environments. A sufficiency condition called posterior reversal is given for extensive form implementation. The condition has a natural interpretation in signaling terms: consistent posterior distributions under truth-telling are different from consistent posteriors under deception. This variation in the distribution over player types leads to variation in the distribution over actions and outcomes (comparing truth-telling and deception). We exploit this feature to implement social choice rules.Extensive form games, Signaling

Teaching Discrete Structures: A systematic review of the literature

This survey paper reviews a large sample of publications on the teaching of discrete structures and discrete mathematics in computer science curricula. The approach is systematic, in that a structured search of electronic resources has been conducted, and the results are presented and quantitatively analysed. A number of broad themes in discrete structures education are identified relating to course content, teaching strategies and the means of evaluating the success of a course

Teaching Discrete Structures: A systematic review of the literature

This survey paper reviews a large sample of publications on the teaching of discrete structures and discrete mathematics in computer science curricula. The approach is systematic, in that a structured search of electronic resources has been conducted, and the results are presented and quantitatively analysed. A number of broad themes in discrete structures education are identified relating to course content, teaching strategies and the means of evaluating the success of a course