War and Human Nature

Stephen Peter Rosen is Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs at Harvard University. In this ambitious volume he attempts to counter the view that economic- rationality models of human behavior adequately explain human decision making. He defines economic rational- ity as the assumption that people “have a stable, ordered, and consistent set of preferences and that they have a stable way of making choices about how to use scarce resources in a manner that gives them the most utility for a given expenditure of resources.” Rosen at- tempts to demonstrate the inadequacy of economic rationality to explain or predict human behavior by drawing on a wide range of empirical research

Remarks, Stockdale to Pilots, 1965

In Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot, his collection of reflective essays published long after his time in Vietnam, Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale writes eloquently about the importance of the study of philosophy in helping him to endure the prisoner of war (POW) experience. While at Stanford completing a degree in economics, he found his most important questions being deflected by the economics faculty, often with the remark, “Well, we’re getting into philosophy now.” Exasperated by that reaction, Stockdale found his way to the Philosophy Department and embarked on a course of reading in the subject, guided by Pro- fessor Philip H. Rhinelander

Building a Holistic ATM Model for Future KPI Trade-Offs

We present the model developed within the Vista project, studying the future evolution of trade-offs between Key Performance Indicators. The model has a very broad scope and aims to simulate the changes that business and regulatory forces have at a strategic, pre-tactical and tactical level. The relevant factors that will affect the air transportation system are presented, as well as the scenarios to be simulated. The overall architecture of the model is described and a more detailed presentation of the economic component of the model is given. Some preliminary results of this part of the model illustrate its main mechanisms and capabilities

An experimental test of deviant modeling

Objectives: Test the effect of deviant peer modeling on theft as conditioned by verbal support for theft and number of deviant models. Methods: Two related randomized experiments in which participants were given a chance to steal a gift card (ostensibly worth $15) from the table in front of them. Each experiment had a control group, a verbal prompting group in which confederate(s) endorsed stealing, a behavioral modeling group in which confederate(s) committed theft, and a verbal prompting plus behavioral modeling group in which confederate(s) did both. The first experiment used one confederate; the second experiment used two. The pooled sample consisted of 335 undergraduate students. Results: Participants in the verbal prompting plus behavioral modeling group were most likely to steal followed by the behavioral modeling group. Interestingly, behavioral modeling was only influential when two confederates were present. There were no thefts in either the control or verbal prompting groups regardless of the number of confederates. Conclusions: Behavioral modeling appears to be the key mechanism, though verbal support can strengthen the effect of behavioral modeling.UW/SSHRC Seed Gran