A Short-term Intervention for Long-term Fairness in the Labor Market

The persistence of racial inequality in the U.S. labor market against a general backdrop of formal equality of opportunity is a troubling phenomenon that has significant ramifications on the design of hiring policies. In this paper, we show that current group disparate outcomes may be immovable even when hiring decisions are bound by an input-output notion of "individual fairness." Instead, we construct a dynamic reputational model of the labor market that illustrates the reinforcing nature of asymmetric outcomes resulting from groups' divergent accesses to resources and as a result, investment choices. To address these disparities, we adopt a dual labor market composed of a Temporary Labor Market (TLM), in which firms' hiring strategies are constrained to ensure statistical parity of workers granted entry into the pipeline, and a Permanent Labor Market (PLM), in which firms hire top performers as desired. Individual worker reputations produce externalities for their group; the corresponding feedback loop raises the collective reputation of the initially disadvantaged group via a TLM fairness intervention that need not be permanent. We show that such a restriction on hiring practices induces an equilibrium that, under particular market conditions, Pareto-dominates those arising from strategies that statistically discriminate or employ a "group-blind" criterion. The enduring nature of equilibria that are both inequitable and Pareto suboptimal suggests that fairness interventions beyond procedural checks of hiring decisions will be of critical importance in a world where machines play a greater role in the employment process.Comment: 10 page

Informational Substitutes

We propose definitions of substitutes and complements for pieces of information ("signals") in the context of a decision or optimization problem, with game-theoretic and algorithmic applications. In a game-theoretic context, substitutes capture diminishing marginal value of information to a rational decision maker. We use the definitions to address the question of how and when information is aggregated in prediction markets. Substitutes characterize "best-possible" equilibria with immediate information aggregation, while complements characterize "worst-possible", delayed aggregation. Game-theoretic applications also include settings such as crowdsourcing contests and Q\&A forums. In an algorithmic context, where substitutes capture diminishing marginal improvement of information to an optimization problem, substitutes imply efficient approximation algorithms for a very general class of (adaptive) information acquisition problems. In tandem with these broad applications, we examine the structure and design of informational substitutes and complements. They have equivalent, intuitive definitions from disparate perspectives: submodularity, geometry, and information theory. We also consider the design of scoring rules or optimization problems so as to encourage substitutability or complementarity, with positive and negative results. Taken as a whole, the results give some evidence that, in parallel with substitutable items, informational substitutes play a natural conceptual and formal role in game theory and algorithms.Comment: Full version of FOCS 2016 paper. Single-column, 61 pages (48 main text, 13 references and appendix

An Optimization-Based Framework for Combinatorial Prediction Market Design

We build on ideas from convex optimization to create a general framework for the design of efficient prediction markets over very large outcome spaces.Engineering and Applied Science

The impact of digital payments on the velocity of money in the Chinese market

To study the impact of digital payments on the velocity of money circulation, this paper selects the velocity of money circulation at the M2 level in the Chinese market from FY2012 to 202112 quarters as the dependent variable, the size of digital payment transactions as the independent variable, and gross national product, inflation rate and opportunity cost of money as control variables. In terms of model selection, since the inflation rate and opportunity cost of money are monthly data, while the transaction size of digital payment and the circulation speed of money at the M2 level are quarterly data, the MIDAS series model is chosen to compare with the traditional OLS model, and it is found that MIDAS-PDL has the best fitting effect and prediction accuracy. Through the empirical results of the MIDAS-PDL model, we find that for the Chinese market, digital payments have a significant positive effect on the velocity of money circulation, in addition, inflation has a significant positive effect on the velocity of money circulation, while the opportunity cost of money has a significant negative effect on the velocity of money circulation

The Possibility Of Applying YouTube To Motivate Learning Autonomy

The notion of collaborative learning and teaching inforeign language education has been popular for decades. This concept focuseson learners and encourages them to learn a language by experiential and sharedlearning. The learners are believed to learn best if they learn through theconscious or unconscious internalization of their own or observed experienceswhich build upon our past experiences or knowledge. There is an assumption thatthe learning that can result from the experience, if the activities aremanifested ‘properly’, is a commodity called ‘knowledge’. This tends to be theview of the training and development literature (Moon, 2001). Within thisconcept, the role of teachers as collaborators in the teaching and learningprocess represents a change to traditional educational patterns. Moreover,increasing numbers of instructors are realizing the importance of motivatinglearning autonomy among students in EFL (English as a Foreign Language)classrooms. In this paper, I will consider to what extent the concept of ateacher as a collaborator can be applied to the university EFL classes inTaiwan, and how to motivate EFL learners’ autonomy via YouTube. Attention is firstpaid to the theoretical grounding of the concept and the characteristics of ateacher as a collaborator. Following this, the English education contexts in Taiwanis highlighted in order to consider how far this concept can be achieved.Finally, conclusions will be drawn from this small-scale exploration