Redistribution spurs growth by using a portfolio effect on human capital

We demonstrate by mathematical analysis and systematic computer simulations that redistribution can lead to sustainable growth in a society. The human capital dynamics of each agent is described by a stochastic multiplicative process which, in the long run, leads to the destruction of individual human capital and the extinction of the individualistic society. When agents are linked by fully-redistributive taxation the situation might turn to individual growth in the long run. We consider that a government collects a proportion of income and reduces it by a fraction as costs for administration (efficiency losses). The remaining public good is equally redistributed to all agents. We derive conditions under which the destruction of human capital can be turned into sustainable growth, despite the losses from the random growth process and despite the administrative costs. Sustainable growth is induced by redistribution. This effect could be explained by a simple portfolio-effect which re-balances individual stochastic processes. The findings are verified for three different tax schemes: proportional tax, taking proportional more from the rich, and proportionally more from the poor. We discuss which of these tax schemes is optimal with respect to maximize growth under a fixed rate of administrative costs, or with respect to maximize the governmental income. This leads us to some general conclusions about governmental decisions, the relation to public good games, and the use of taxation in a risk taking society.Comment: 12 pages, plus 8 Figures, plus matlab-code to run simulation and produce figur

Cognitive Ability and In-group Bias: An Experimental Study

We study the role of performance differences in a task requiring cognitive effort on in-group bias. We show that the in-group bias is strong in groups consisting of high-performing members, and it is weak in low-performing groups. This holds although high-performing subjects exhibit no in-group bias as members of minimal groups, whereas low-performing subjects strongly do. We also observe instances of low-performing subjects punishing the in-group favoritism of low-performing peers. The same does not occur in high-performing or minimal groups where subjects generally accept that decisions are in-group biased.Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Serie

Markets Reduce Discrimination

This paper studies the ability of markets to alleviate taste-based discrimination in a laboratory experiment. We find that markets significantly reduce discrimination relative to individual choice situations with the same payoff structure and the same social group membership of the trading partner. We identify three main mechanisms behind this effect. First, the price of prejudice matters in both situations, but significantly more so in the market. Second, markets reduce identification with one’s social group. Third, markets diminish egalitarian preferences. Passive subjects correctly anticipate the main effect. We confirm the main treatment effect in an online experiment with natural groups

Social Preferences and Voting on Reform: An Experimental Study

Debating over efficiency-enhancing but inequality-increasing reforms accounts for the routine business of democratic institutions. Fernandez and Rodrik (1991) hold that anti-reform bias can be attributed to individual-specific uncertainty regarding the distribution of gains and losses resulting from a reform. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate that anti-reform bias arising from uncertainty is mitigated by social preferences. We show that, paradoxically, many who stand to lose from reforms vote in favor because they value efficiency, while many who will potentially gain from reforms oppose them due to inequality aversion. (authors' abstract)Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Serie

Aperiodicity Correction for Rotor Tip Vortex Measurements

The initial roll-up of a tip vortex trailing from a model-scale, hovering rotor was measured using particle image velocimetry. The unique feature of the measurements was that a microscope was attached to the camera to allow much higher spatial resolution than hitherto possible. This also posed some unique challenges. In particular, the existing methodologies to correct for aperiodicity in the tip vortex locations could not be easily extended to the present measurements. The difficulty stemmed from the inability to accurately determine the vortex center, which is a prerequisite for the correction procedure. A new method is proposed for determining the vortex center, as well as the vortex core properties, using a least-squares fit approach. This approach has the obvious advantage that the properties are derived from not just a few points near the vortex core, but from a much larger area of flow measurements. Results clearly demonstrate the advantage in the form of reduced variation in the estimated core properties, and also the self-consistent results obtained using three different aperiodicity correction methods

A multimodal corpus of rapid dialogue games

Ponencia presentada en la Ninth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'14)This paper presents a multimodal corpus of spoken human-human dialogues collected as participants played a series of Rapid DialogueGames (RDGs). The corpus consists of a collection of about 11 hours of spoken audio, video, and Microsoft Kinect data taken from 384game interactions (dialogues). The games used for collecting the corpus required participants to give verbal descriptions of linguisticexpressions or visual images and were specifically designed to engage players in a fast-paced conversation under time pressure. As aresult, the corpus contains many examples of participants attempting to communicate quickly in specific game situations, and it alsoincludes a variety of spontaneous conversational phenomena such as hesitations, filled pauses, overlapping speech, and low-latencyresponses. The corpus has been created to facilitate research in incremental speech processing for spoken dialogue systems. Potentially,the corpus could be used in several areas of speech and language research, including speech recognition, natural language understanding,natural language generation, and dialogue management.Fil: Paetzel, Maike. University of Southern California. Institute for Creative Technologies; United States of America.Fil: Racca, David Nicolás. University of Southern California. Institute for Creative Technologies; United States of America.Fil: Racca, David Nicolás. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; Argentina.Fil: De Vault, David. University of Southern California. Institute for Creative Technologies; United States of America.Ciencias de la Computació

O papel da montagem na produção de sentido dos micro vídeos do TikTok

Dissertação de mestrado apresentada à Escola Superior de Comunicação Social como parte dos requisitos para obtenção de grau de mestre em Audiovisual e Multimédia.A presente dissertação busca investigar acerca das características presentes na montagem dos micro-vídeos publicados na plataforma TikTok, a fim de compreender o papel da montagem na produção de sentido destes conteúdos. Para isto, são abordados temas como a linguagem cinematográfica e sua relação com a semiótica; o conceito de montagem e sua contextualização histórica, bem como as teorias de montagem de Eisenstein; o conceito de vídeo e as mudanças de formato consequentes dos avanços tecnológicos, da videoarte, passando pelo videoclipe e os vídeos domésticos, até chegar nos vídeos online dos dias atuais, no ambiente das mídias sociais e da cultura participativa. A seguir, realizou-se uma análise descritiva de 10 vídeos selecionados do TikTok, a partir de categorias de análise utilizando as informações coletadas ao longo da fundamentação teórica, verificando assim os elementos da montagem presentes nos micro-vídeos do aplicativo.ABSTRACT: The present dissertation seeks to investigate the characteristics present in the montage of micro-videos published on TikTok, in order to understand the role of film montage in the production of meaning of these contents. For this, topics such as cinematographic language and its relationship with semiotics are addressed; the concept of film montage and its historical context, as well as Eisenstein's theories of montage; the concept of video and the changes in format resulting from technological advances, from video art, through video clips and home videos, to today's online videos, in the environment of social media and participatory culture. Next, a descriptive analysis of 10 videos selected from TikTok was carried out, based on analysis categories using the information collected throughout the theoretical foundation, thus verifying the elements of the montage present in the application's micro-videos.N/