The comovements of construction in Italy's regions, 1861-1913

This paper examines the comovements of construction in Italy's regions from 1861 to 1913. The dynamic correlations of the series' deviation cycles decline in the case of buildings, remain very low in that of railways, and tend to decline in that of other infrastructure; the total-construction correlations instead peak in the 1870s, and again after 1900. Long-term comovements are examined by tracking the dispersion of the first differences of the measured trends. Increasing dispersion is obtained in the construction of buildings and of non-rail infrastructure; railway construction displayed a dramatic decline in dispersion, which dominates the aggregate.construction, regions , post-Unification Italy, trends, cycles, comovements

A Dynamic Epistemic Logic for Abstract Argumentation

This paper introduces a multi-agent dynamic epistemic logic for abstract argumenta- tion. Its main motivation is to build a general framework for modelling the dynamics of a debate, which entails reasoning about goals, beliefs, as well as policies of com- munication and information update by the participants. After locating our proposal and introducing the relevant tools from abstract argumentation, we proceed to build a three-tiered logical approach. At the first level, we use the language of propositional logic to encode states of a multi-agent debate. This language allows to specify which arguments any agent is aware of, as well as their subjective justification status. We then extend our language and semantics to that of epistemic logic, in order to model individuals’ beliefs about the state of the debate, which includes uncertainty about the information available to others. As a third step, we introduce a framework of dynamic epistemic logic and its semantics, which is essentially based on so-called event models with factual change. We provide completeness results for a number of systems and show how existing formalisms for argumentation dynamics and unquantified uncerSynthese tainty can be reduced to their semantics. The resulting framework allows reasoning about subtle epistemic and argumentative updates—such as the effects of different levels of trust in a source—and more in general about the epistemic dimensions of strategic communication

Dynamic epistemic logics for abstract argumentation

AbstractThis paper introduces a multi-agent dynamic epistemic logic for abstract argumentation. Its main motivation is to build a general framework for modelling the dynamics of a debate, which entails reasoning about goals, beliefs, as well as policies of communication and information update by the participants. After locating our proposal and introducing the relevant tools from abstract argumentation, we proceed to build a three-tiered logical approach. At the first level, we use the language of propositional logic to encode states of a multi-agent debate. This language allows to specify which arguments any agent is aware of, as well as their subjective justification status. We then extend our language and semantics to that of epistemic logic, in order to model individuals' beliefs about the state of the debate, which includes uncertainty about the information available to others. As a third step, we introduce a framework of dynamic epistemic logic and its semantics, which is essentially based on so-called event models with factual change. We provide completeness results for a number of systems and show how existing formalisms for argumentation dynamics and unquantified uncertainty can be reduced to their semantics. The resulting framework allows reasoning about subtle epistemic and argumentative updates—such as the effects of different levels of trust in a source—and more in general about the epistemic dimensions of strategic communication

Promoting the best as an incentive : reply to Pluchino et al. on the Peter Principle

The Peter Principle states that employees tend to be promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. In a sophisticated simulation study, Pluchino et al (2010) confirmed a version of the principle. However, they also noted that their model has the counterintuitive consequence that “the best ways for improving the efficiency of a given organization are either to promote each time an agent at random or to promote randomly the best and the worst members”. We argue that what promotion rule is used can in general influence employee productivity (which is here seen as part of competence). Accommodating this psychological aspect of promotion is noted as an open problem by Pluchino et al. Using an amended simulation model we verify that if the incentive induced by promoting the best is strong enough, then that strategy will be optimal. In a final simulation experiment we consider the effect on the efficiency of an organization of using “double standard” promotion strategies, i.e., strategies that depend on the official promotion rule being different from the de facto promotion rule. We show that double standard promotion strategies can be highly efficient, although we also note that in using such strategies the employer may take an unacceptable medium to long term risk

Bivalence and Future Contingency

Peer reviewe

An Abstract Look at Awareness Models and Their Dynamics

This work builds upon a well-established research tradition on modal logics of awareness. One of its aims is to export tools and techniques to other areas within modal logic. To this end, we illustrate a number of significant bridges with abstract argumentation, justification logics, the epistemic logic of knowing-what and deontic logic, where basic notions and definitional concepts can be expressed in terms of the awareness operator combined with the box modality. Furthermore, these conceptual links point to interesting properties of awareness sets beyond those standardly assumed in awareness logics, i.e. positive and negative introspection. We show that the properties we list are characterised by corresponding canonical formulas, so as to obtain a series of off-the-shelf axiomatisations for them. As a second focus, we investigate the general dynamics of this framework by means of event models. Of specific interest in this context is to know under which conditions, given a model that satisfies some property, the update with an event model keeps it within the intended class. This is known as the closure problem in general dynamic epistemic logics. As a main contribution, we prove a number of closure theorems providing sufficient conditions for the preservation of our properties. Again, these results enable us to axiomatize our dynamic logics by means of reduction axioms.Comment: In Proceedings TARK 2023, arXiv:2307.0400

Patterns of industrial specialisation in post-Unification Italy

This paper investigates the patterns of sectoral specialisation in Italian provinces over half a century following the Unification of the country. To this end we propose a multivariate graphical technique named dynamic specialisation biplots. In 1871 specialisation vocations toward the different manufacturing sectors were limited in size and no clear geographical path emerged. A regional specialisation divide resulted clearly in 1911. In 1871 as in 1911 the foodstuffs, the textile, and the engineering sectors represented the three pillars delimiting the arena of the specialisation race. Within that arena, sharp changes in the directions of specialisation trajectories characterise a group of selected Northern provinces, largely attracted by the textile sector from the 1880s and from the engineering sector in the pre-War decade. Within region homogeneity and smooth specialisation trajectories are instead representative of most of the remaining provinces. Among them, Southern provinces exhibit specialisation paths revealing that little more than a composition effect occurred among manufacturing sectors

The comovements of construction in Italy's regions, 1861-1913

This paper examines the comovements of construction in Italy's regions from 1861 to 1913. The dynamic correlations of the series' deviation cycles decline in the case of buildings, remain very low in that of railways, and tend to decline in that of other infrastructure; the total-construction correlations instead peak in the 1870s, and again after 1900. Long-term comovements are examined by tracking the dispersion of the first differences of the measured trends. Increasing dispersion is obtained in the construction of buildings and of non-rail infrastructure; railway construction displayed a dramatic decline in dispersion, which dominates the aggregate

The comovements of construction in Italy's regions, 1861-1913

This paper examines the comovements of construction in Italy's regions from 1861 to 1913. The dynamic correlations of the series' deviation cycles decline in the case of buildings, remain very low in that of railways, and tend to decline in that of other infrastructure; the total-construction correlations instead peak in the 1870s, and again after 1900. Long-term comovements are examined by tracking the dispersion of the first differences of the measured trends. Increasing dispersion is obtained in the construction of buildings and of non-rail infrastructure; railway construction displayed a dramatic decline in dispersion, which dominates the aggregate