Context and decision : three approaches to representing preferences

We present three approaches to representing families of preference relations indexed by context over a set of alternatives. Our main motivation is that existing models of preferences typically assume that there is a unique order that ranks alternatives and contexts alike, that is preferences are context-free. We argue that this is often an unnecessary and unrealistic burden on the decision-maker’s capacity to decide. The first chapter is a geometric approach that improves upon the model of Gilboa and Schmeidler (2003) and casebased decision theory. The second is a general, topological approach with applications to choice under uncertainty; for context preferences it emulates the classical representation of Debreu (1954) and (1964). Finally, as a practical alternative the previous two models we extend the model of Herstein and Milnor (1953) and hence von Neumann and Morgernstern (1944) to obtain a representation for unions of mixture spaces

A website supporting sensitive religious and cultural advance care planning (ACPTalk): Formative and summative evaluation

Background: Advance care planning (ACP) promotes conversations about future health care needs, enacted if a person is incapable of making decisions at end-of-life that may be communicated through written documentation such as advance care directives. To meet the needs of multicultural and multifaith populations in Australia, an advance care planning website, ACPTalk, was funded to support health professionals in conducting conversations within diverse religious and cultural populations. ACPTalk aimed to provide religion-specific advance care planning content and complement existing resources. Objective: The purpose of this paper was to utilize the context, input, process, and product (CIPP) framework to conduct a formative and summative evaluation of ACPTalk. Methods: The CIPP framework was used, which revolves around 4 aspects of evaluation: context, input, process, and product. Context: health professionals’ solutions for the website were determined through thematic analysis of exploratory key stakeholder interviews. Included religions were determined through an environmental scan, Australian population statistics, and documentary analysis of project steering committee meeting minutes. Input: Project implementation and challenges were examined through documentary analysis of project protocols and meeting minutes. Process: To ensure religion-specific content was accurate and appropriate, a website prototype was built with content review and functionality testing by representatives from religious and cultural organizations and other interested health care organizations who completed a Web-based survey. Product: Website analytics were used to report utilization, and stakeholder perceptions were captured through interviews and a website survey. Results: Context: A total of 16 key stakeholder health professional (7 general practitioners, 2 primary health nurses, and 7 palliative care nurses) interviews were analyzed. Website solutions included religious and cultural information, communication ideas, legal information, downloadable content, and Web-based accessibility. Christian and non-Christian faiths were to be included in the religion-specific content. Input: Difficulties gaining consensus on religion-specific content were overcome by further state and national religious organizations providing feedback. Process: A total of 37 content reviewers included representatives of religious and cultural organizations (n=29), health care (n=5), and community organizations (n=3). The majority strongly agree or agree that the content used appropriate language and tone (92%, 34/37), would support health professionals (89%, 33/37), and was accurate (83%, 24/29). Product: Resource usage within the first 9 months was 12,957 page views in 4260 sessions; majority were (83.45%, 3555/4260) from Australia. A total of 107 Australian-based users completed the website survey; most felt information was accurate (77.6%, 83/107), easy to understand (82.2%, 88/107), useful (86.0%, 92/107), and appropriate (86.0%, 92/107). A total of 20 nurses (general practice n=10, palliative care n=8, and both disciplines n=2) participated in stakeholder interviews. Qualitative findings indicated overall positivity in relation to accessibility, functionality, usefulness, design, and increased knowledge of advance care planning. Recommended improvements included shortened content, a comparable website for patients and families, and multilingual translations. Conclusions: The CIPP framework was effectively applied to evaluate the development and end product of an advance care planning website. Although overall findings were positive, further advance care planning website development should consider the recommendations derived from this study

Parametric continuity from preferences when the topology is weak and actions are discrete

Empirical settings often involve discrete actions and rich parameter spaces where the notion of open set is constrained. This restricts the class of continuous functions from parameters to actions. Yet suitably continuous policies and value functions are necessary for many standard results in economic theory. We derive these tools from preferences when the parameter space is normal (disjoint closed sets can be separated). Whereas we use preferences to generate an endogenous pseudometric, existing results require metrizable parameter spaces. Still, weakly ordered parameters do not form a normal space. We provide a solution and close with an algorithm for eliciting preferences

Measuring utility without mixing apples and oranges and eliciting beliefs about stock prices

In day-to-day life we encounter decisions amongst prospects that do not have a convex structure. To address this concern, Herstein and Milnor introduce mixture sets and provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a cardinal and linear utility representation. We derive the same utility representation for partial mixture sets: where the mixture operation is only partially defined. The resulting model has an interesting application to finance. In particular, we use paths instead of events to elicit utility and beliefs about stock prices. This feature is promising for settings where the dimension of the state space is large

Minimal conditions for parametric continuity and stable policy in extreme settings

In civil conflicts, warring factions commit atrocities for arbitrarily small gains in territory. On the product of territory-atrocity pairs, such (revealed) preferences are lexicographic. In such settings, the external policy maker faces a nonmetrizable parameter space. Taking the policy maker’s preferences as primitive, we provide tools for evaluating and approximating policy in such settings. In particular, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a utility representation and a pseudometric, both of which are continuous on a parameter space with the minimal topological structure. We then bring our results to bear upon the Syrian conflict and propose a policy that is stable relative to a sufficiently moderate (ε-lexicographic) warring faction

Measuring utility without mixing apples and oranges and eliciting beliefs about stock prices

In day-to-day life we encounter decisions amongst prospects that do not have a convex structure. To address this concern, Herstein and Milnor introduce mixture sets and provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a cardinal and linear utility representation. We derive the same utility representation for partial mixture sets: where the mixture operation is only partially defined. The resulting model has an interesting application to finance. In particular, we use paths instead of events to elicit utility and beliefs about stock prices. This feature is promising for settings where the dimension of the state space is large

The chance "to melt into the shadows of obscurity": Developing a "right to be forgotten" in the United States

This chapter argues that there is some (limited) evidence of a right to be forgotten in the jurisprudence of U.S. courts. For the purposes of this argument, the right exists whenever interests in being forgotten and/or forgetting are understood as weighty enough to impose a duty on government and/or fellow citizens to respect those interests. Most of the relevant cases belong to the pre-digital era but nevertheless provide some doctrinal support for a right to be forgotten in the digital era. In particular, the chapter pays close attention to the privacy challenges associated with search engines and argues that it may be possible to implement a Google Spain-inspired right to be forgotten (in the sense of delisting or deindexing search results) in the United States