Expectational coordination in a class of economic models: Strategic substitutabilities versus strategic complementarities

We consider an economic model that features: 1. a continuum of agents 2. an aggregate state of the world over which agents have an infinitesimal influence. We first propose a review, based on work by Jara (2007), of the connections between the eductive viewpoint that puts emphasis on Strongly Rational Expectations equilibrium and the standard game-theoretical rationalizability concepts. We explore the scope and limits of this connection depending on whether standard rationalizability versus point-rationalizability, or the local versus the global viewpoint, are concerned. In particular, we define and characterize the set of Point-Rationalizable States and prove its convexity. Also, we clarify the role of the heterogeneity of beliefs in general contexts of expectational coordination (see Evans and Guesnerie, 2005). Then, as in the case of strategic complementarities the study of some best response mapping is a key to the analysis, in the case of unambiguous strategic substitutabilities the study of some second iterate, and of the corresponding two-period cycles, allows to describe the point-rationalizable states. We provide application in microeconomic and macroeconomic contexts.expectational coordination ; rational expectations ; iterative expectational stability ; eductive stability ; strong rationality ; strategic complementarities ; strategic substitutabilities

The Ethics of ‘Responsibility While Protecting’: Brazil, the Responsibility to Protect, and Guidelines for Humanitarian Intervention

In the aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya, the responsibility to protect (RtoP) doctrine has received considerable blowback. Various states, most notably some of the ‘BRICS’ states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), claimed that NATO exceeded its mandate given to it by United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1973 (by allegedly focusing on regime change rather than on the protection of civilians), was inappropriate in its target selection, violated the arms embargo by transferring arms to rebels, and generally caused too much harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure.1 It was also suggested that the UK, US, and France—the so-called ‘P3’—acted bombastically and arrogantly in UNSC, ignoring reasonable concerns (see Evans 2012). Regardless of the actual merits of these claims, the allegations have stuck to some extent and they have since framed some of the recent discussions about RtoP

Cognitive Perspectives on English-Italian Spatial Particles: Towards a Motivated Description of Spatial and Non-Spatial Senses from the Lower Section of the Vertical Dimension

English and Italian differ a great deal in their respective repertoires of spatial particles (an important subset of which are prepositions), an area which seems to be quite problematic in foreign language learning. Most current EFL textbooks and didactic grammars tend to provide partial and idiosyncratic cross-linguistic descriptions of such items, while the majority of dictionaries' accounts are grounded in an alphabetical order. This article contributes to the field of research on Cognitive Linguistics applications to pedagogical grammar (see, e.g., Tyler and Evans 2004, Evans and Tyler 2005, Boers et al. (eds) 2010) by proposing a motivated, cognitively grounded contrastive account of particles in English and Italian which ideally addresses the needs of pedagogy professionals as well as of advanced Italian learners of English. The proposal draws on Tyler and Evans's (2003) Principled Polysemy Network model (also see Evans 2010) and applies the rationale of a cognitively oriented view of Lexical Complexity (Bertuccelli Papi and Lenci 2007) to the overall organisation of data. Spatial and non-spatial senses of particles of verticality are here focused on, especially those in the lower section of the vertical axis. The examples were mainly gathered from dictionaries, corpora and informants

Typologies of agreement: some problems from Kayardild

In this paper I describe a number of agreement-type phenomena in the Australian language Kayardild, and assess them against existing definitions, stating both the boundaries of what is to be considered agreement, and characteristics of prototypical agreement phenomena. Though conforming, prima facie, to definitions of agreement that stress semantically based covariance in inflections on different words, the Kayardild phenomena considered here pose a number of challenges to accepted views of agreement: the rich possibilities for stacking case-like agreement inflections emanating from different syntactic levels, the fact that inflections resulting from agreement may change the word class of their host, and the semantic categories involved, in particular tense/aspect/mood, which have been claimed not to be agreement categories on nominals. Two types of inflection, in particular - 'modal case' and 'associating case' - lie somewhere between prototypical agreement and prototypical government. Like agreement, but unlike government, they are triggered by inflectional rather than lexical features of the head, and appear on more than one constituent; like government, but unlike agreement, the semantic categories on head and dependent are not isomorphic. Other types of inflection, though unusual in the categories involved, the possibility of recursion, and their effects on the host's word class, are close to prototypical in terms of how they fare in Corbett's proposed tests for canonical agreement

Doubled up all over again: borrowing, sound change and reduplication in Iwaidja

This article examines the interactions between reduplication, sound change, and borrowing, as played out in the Iwaidja language of Cobourg Peninsula, Arnhem Land, in Northern Australia, a non-Pama-Nyungan language of the Iwaidjan family. While Iwaidja traditionally makes use of (various types of) right-reduplication, contact with two other left-reduplicating languages-one Australian (Bininj Gun-wok) and one Austronesian (Makassarese)-has led to the introduction of several (non-productive) left-reduplicating patterns. At the same time as these new patterns have been entering the language, the cumulative effect of sweeping sound changes within Iwaidja has complicated the transparency of reduplicative outputs. This has left the language with an extremely varied and complicated set of reduplication types, for some of which the analysis is no longer synchronically recoverable by children

Making Sense of Family Deaths in Urban Senegal: Diversities, Contexts, and Comparisons

Despite calls for cross-cultural research, Minority world perspectives still dominate death and bereavement studies, emphasizing individualized emotions and neglecting contextual diversities. In research concerned with contemporary African societies, on the other hand, death and loss are generally subsumed within concerns about AIDS or poverty, with little attention paid to the emotional and personal significance of a death. Here, we draw on interactionist sociology to present major themes from a qualitative study of family deaths in urban Senegal, theoretically framed through the duality of meanings-in-context. Such themes included family and community as support and motivation; religious beliefs and practices as frameworks for solace and (regulatory) meaning; and material circumstances as these are intrinsically bound up with emotions. Although we identify the experience of (embodied, emotional) pain as a common response across Minority and Majority worlds, we also explore significant divergencies, varying according to localized contexts and broader power dynamics

An assessment of Evans' unified field theory I

Evans developed a classical unified field theory of gravitation and electromagnetism on the background of a spacetime obeying a Riemann-Cartan geometry. This geometry can be characterized by an orthonormal coframe theta and a (metric compatible) Lorentz connection Gamma. These two potentials yield the field strengths torsion T and curvature R. Evans tried to infuse electromagnetic properties into this geometrical framework by putting the coframe theta to be proportional to four extended electromagnetic potentials A; these are assumed to encompass the conventional Maxwellian potential in a suitable limit. The viable Einstein-Cartan(-Sciama-Kibble) theory of gravity was adopted by Evans to describe the gravitational sector of his theory. Including also the results of an accompanying paper by Obukhov and the author, we show that Evans' ansatz for electromagnetism is untenable beyond repair both from a geometrical as well as from a physical point of view. As a consequence, his unified theory is obsolete.Comment: 39 pages of latex, modified because of referee report, mistakes and typos removed, partly reformulated, taken care of M.W.Evans' rebutta

The Molecular Gas Content of z<0.1 Radio Galaxies: Linking the AGN Accretion Mode to Host Galaxy Properties

One of the main achievements in modern cosmology is the so-called `unified model', which successfully describes most classes of active galactic nuclei (AGN) within a single physical scheme. However, there is a particular class of radio-luminous AGN that presently cannot be explained within this framework -- the `low-excitation' radio AGN (LERAGN). Recently, a scenario has been put forward which predicts that LERAGN, and their regular `high-excitation' radio AGN (HERAGN) counterparts represent different (red sequence vs. green valley) phases of galaxy evolution. These different evolutionary states are also expected to be reflected in their host galaxy properties, in particular their cold gas content. To test this, here we present CO(1-0) observations toward a sample of 11 of these systems conducted with CARMA. Combining our observations with literature data, we derive molecular gas masses (or upper limits) for a complete, representative, sample of 21 z<0.1 radio AGN. Our results yield that HERAGN on average have a factor of ~7 higher gas masses than LERAGN. We also infer younger stellar ages, lower stellar, halo, and central supermassive black masses, as well as higher black hole accretion efficiencies in HERAGN relative to LERAGN. These findings support the idea that high- and low-excitation radio AGN form two physically distinct populations of galaxies that reflect different stages of massive galaxy build-up.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, 4 tables; accepted for publication in Ap