376 research outputs found
The Effects of Connecting Rituals on Verbal Conflicts in the Montessori Preschool Classroom
The purpose of this action research project was to see if a program through Conscious Discipline called Connecting Rituals would decrease the number of verbal conflicts in a Montessori preschool classroom. Conscious Discipline is a non-punitive, non-adversarial behavior program that is backed by current brain science. One aspect of the Conscious Discipline model is Connecting Rituals. Connecting Rituals are short games, nursery rhymes, and finger plays that adults and children do together in large or small groups. The Connecting Rituals would increase self-regulation and social skills in a Montessori preschool classroom. The study was conducted in a Montessori preschool classroom at a small Montessori school in the Midwestern United States with 23 preschool children, 2.5-6 years old children. Data was collected over a 4 week period using tally marks to record the number of conflicts, a large group discussion, a teacher daily journal and a post-connecting ritual form. Every day the researcher did a Connecting Ritual at the large group gathering with all the children before lunch and at least one Connecting Ritual with each child during the morning work time over a two week period. The study found that the Connecting Rituals did decrease the number of verbal conflicts, but the results were not significant. Further study is needed to understand the long term effects of using Connecting Rituals in the classroom
Jews in the Soviet Union, citizens and builders
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/prism/1459/thumbnail.jp
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Do Fixed Patent Terms Distort Innovation? Evidence from Cancer Clinical Trials
Patents award innovators a ļ¬xed period of market exclusivity, e.g., 20 years in the United States.
Yet, since in many industries ļ¬rms ļ¬le patents at the time of discovery (āinventionā) rather than ļ¬rst
sale (ācommercializationā), eļ¬ective patent terms vary: inventions that commercialize at the time of
invention receive a full patent term, whereas inventions that have a long time lag between invention and
commercialization receive substantially reduced - or in extreme cases, zero - eļ¬ective patent terms. We
present a simple model formalizing how this variation may distort research and development (R&D).
We then explore this distortion empirically in the context of cancer R&D, where clinical trials are
shorter - and hence, eļ¬ective patent terms longer - for drugs targeting late-stage cancer patients,
relative to drugs targeting early-stage cancer patients or cancer prevention. Using a newly constructed
data set on cancer clinical trial investments, we provide several sources of evidence consistent with
ļ¬xed patent terms distorting cancer R&D. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the number
of life-years at stake is large. We discuss three speciļ¬c policy levers that could eliminate this distortion
- patent design, targeted R&D subsidies, and surrogate (non-mortality) clinical trial endpoints - and
provide empirical evidence that surrogate endpoints can be eļ¬ective in practice
Patents and Research Investments: Assessing the Empirical Evidence
A well-developed theoretical literature--dating back at least to Nordhaus (1969)--has analyzed optimal patent policy design. We re-present the core trade-off of the Nordhaus model and highlight an empirical question which emerges from the Nordhaus framework as a key input into optimal patent policy design: namely, what is the elasticity of R&D investment with respect to the patent term? We then review the--surprisingly small--body of empirical evidence that has been developed on this question over the nearly half century since the publication of Nordhaus's book.National Institute on AgingNational Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Common Fund, Office of the NIH Director, through grant U01-AG046708
Do Firms Underinvest in Long-Term Research? Evidence from Cancer Clinical Trials
We investigate whether private research investments are distorted away from long-term projects. Our theoretical model highlights two potential sources of this distortion: short-termism and the fixed patent term. Our empirical context is cancer research, where clinical trials -- and hence, project durations -- are shorter for late-stage cancer treatments relative to early-stage treatments or cancer prevention. Using newly constructed data, we document several sources of evidence that together show private research investments are distorted away from long-term projects. The value of life-years at stake appears large. We analyze three potential policy responses: surrogate (non-mortality) clinical-trial endpoints, targeted R&D subsidies, and patent design
Equilibria in Sequential Allocation
Sequential allocation is a simple mechanism for sharing multiple indivisible
items. We study strategic behavior in sequential allocation. In particular, we
consider Nash dynamics, as well as the computation and Pareto optimality of
pure equilibria, and Stackelberg strategies. We first demonstrate that, even
for two agents, better responses can cycle. We then present a linear-time
algorithm that returns a profile (which we call the "bluff profile") that is in
pure Nash equilibrium. Interestingly, the outcome of the bluff profile is the
same as that of the truthful profile and the profile is in pure Nash
equilibrium for \emph{all} cardinal utilities consistent with the ordinal
preferences. We show that the outcome of the bluff profile is Pareto optimal
with respect to pairwise comparisons. In contrast, we show that an assignment
may not be Pareto optimal with respect to pairwise comparisons even if it is a
result of a preference profile that is in pure Nash equilibrium for all
utilities consistent with ordinal preferences. Finally, we present a dynamic
program to compute an optimal Stackelberg strategy for two agents, where the
second agent has a constant number of distinct values for the items
Practical algorithms and experimentally validated incentives for equilibrium-based fair division (A-CEEI)
Approximate Competitive Equilibrium from Equal Incomes (A-CEEI) is an
equilibrium-based solution concept for fair division of discrete items to
agents with combinatorial demands. In theory, it is known that in
asymptotically large markets:
1. For incentives, the A-CEEI mechanism is Envy-Free-but-for-Tie-Breaking
(EF-TB), which implies that it is Strategyproof-in-the-Large (SP-L).
2. From a computational perspective, computing the equilibrium solution is
unfortunately a computationally intractable problem (in the worst-case,
assuming ).
We develop a new heuristic algorithm that outperforms the previous
state-of-the-art by multiple orders of magnitude. This new, faster algorithm
lets us perform experiments on real-world inputs for the first time. We
discover that with real-world preferences, even in a realistic implementation
that satisfies the EF-TB and SP-L properties, agents may have surprisingly
simple and plausible deviations from truthful reporting of preferences. To this
end, we propose a novel strengthening of EF-TB, which dramatically reduces the
potential for strategic deviations from truthful reporting in our experiments.
A (variant of) our algorithm is now in production: on real course allocation
problems it is much faster, has zero clearing error, and has stronger incentive
properties than the prior state-of-the-art implementation.Comment: To appear in EC 202
The Core of the Participatory Budgeting Problem
In participatory budgeting, communities collectively decide on the allocation
of public tax dollars for local public projects. In this work, we consider the
question of fairly aggregating the preferences of community members to
determine an allocation of funds to projects. This problem is different from
standard fair resource allocation because of public goods: The allocated goods
benefit all users simultaneously. Fairness is crucial in participatory decision
making, since generating equitable outcomes is an important goal of these
processes. We argue that the classic game theoretic notion of core captures
fairness in the setting. To compute the core, we first develop a novel
characterization of a public goods market equilibrium called the Lindahl
equilibrium, which is always a core solution. We then provide the first (to our
knowledge) polynomial time algorithm for computing such an equilibrium for a
broad set of utility functions; our algorithm also generalizes (in a
non-trivial way) the well-known concept of proportional fairness. We use our
theoretical insights to perform experiments on real participatory budgeting
voting data. We empirically show that the core can be efficiently computed for
utility functions that naturally model our practical setting, and examine the
relation of the core with the familiar welfare objective. Finally, we address
concerns of incentives and mechanism design by developing a randomized
approximately dominant-strategy truthful mechanism building on the exponential
mechanism from differential privacy
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