Simulating the Formation of Risk Perception

The damages of smoking on health have been taken more and more seriously, most relative studies focus on fields in sociology, psychology, public health or economy. The act of smoking itself satisfies the smoker's need for consumption, but at the same time produces negative effect such as smoking related damages. When making a decision whether to smoke or not or how much to smoke, the decision itself is hugely swayed by the smoker's own perception of risk regarding this matter. Whenever there is uncertainty involved, the decision made regarding whether to carry out the act i.e. smoking or not hugely depends upon the amount of risk perceived by each individual. Sex, age, education, health awareness and other factors affect how a perception is formed, in other words, how a "belief" is formed, and the forming process itself is a complex and intricate learning/evolving process. In this study, an agent-based computational model is employed to look at how a risk perception is formed and how the decision to smoke is made. This system can be used to observe the dynamic between anti-smoking policy and decision makers, and the resulting observation can serve as useful reference when the government is making or executing relative policies.Risk Perception, Smoking, Learning

Estimating the impact of diabetes on employment in Taiwan

This paper investigates the impact of diabetes on employment based on the 2005 National Health Interview Survey in Taiwan using a recursive bivariate probit model. The findings show that diabetes has a negative and significant effect on employment, and that the magnitude is larger for men than for women. The results of this study also suggest that neglecting the potential endogeneity of diabetes will lead to an underestimation of the negative impact of diabetes on employment.diabetes, employment, Taiwan

An Analysis on Simulation Models of Competing Parties

Down’s spatial theory of elections (1957) has occupied a prominent theoretical status within political science. Studies use a notion of ideological distance to develop explanations for observable electoral trends. In elections, voters by observing party ideologies and using the information to make decisions for their votes because voters do not always have enough information to appraise the difference of which they are aware. The Downsian idea suggests that parties’ effort to attract votes leads them to adopt a median position. However, many studies have questioned the result and have many different conclusions. In recent years there has been an increasing interest in learning and adaptive behaviour including simulation models. In this study, we model the dynamics of competing parties who make decisions in an evolving environment and construct simulation models of party competition. We illustrate and compare their consequences by analyzing two variants of computational models.Spatial Voting Model, Party Competition, Evolutionary Modelling, Learning

Model Evolution of Heterogeneous Beliefs in an Network Economy

We model a simple communication network model for the evolution of heterogeneous beliefs in an overlapping generation economy. Each agent gathers information from his contacts and forms an inflation forecast based on this information, using the belief generating procedures. When the actual inflation is realised, an agent is in a position to learn i.e. adjust his own network strategy and belief. The learning is modelled as an evolving network process i.e. a local network of agents, with non-zero costs of communication. The network economy as a whole acts efficiently in achieving convergence to the Pareto superior equilibrium, in which agent"s perception of information is local and is subject to available resource.Network Economy, Belief Generating Procedures, Learning, Local Interactions

Development of Streams Classification System for Nutrient Criteria in Illinois

USEPApublished or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe