Absolute Expediency and Imitative Behaviour

This paper analyses a model of learning by imitation, where besides the decision maker, there is a population of individuals facing the same decision problem. We analyze a property called Absolute Expediency, which requires that the decision maker's expected payoff increases from one round to the next for every decision problem and every state of the population. We give a simple characterization of the expediency property and show that its basic feature is proportional imitation: the change in the probability attached to the played action is proportional to the difference between the received and the sampled payoff (the sampled payoff plays the role of an aspiration level).Social Learning, Decision Problems, Imitation, Bounded Rationality.

The vigil rituals in Ancient Egipt: Nut in the Pyramid Texts

Estudios recientes sobre los Textos de las Pirámides del Reino Antiguo han revelado el papel germinal del servicio mortuorio y de ciertas prácticas mágicas para la configuración del corpus. La temática central del grupo de textos de Nut –protección y reconstitución– se asocia con un ámbito particular del servicio mortuorio: el velatorio del difunto. El reflejo de esta ceremonia en los Textos de las Pirámides manifiesta la antigüedad de esta práctica, fechada hasta ahora con cierta vacilación en el Reino Medio. La transmisión de los textos de Nut al Reino Medio y su posterior emergencia en tumbas y papiros de época grecorromana enfatizan la importancia de estos oficios en la víspera del funeral.Recent studies on the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts have exposed the generative role of the mortuary service and various magical practices for the configuration of the corpus. The main theme of the group of Nut texts –protection and reconstitution– relates to a particular context of the mortuary service: the vigil for the deceased. The attestation of this ceremony in the Pyramid Texts manifests the antiquity of the practice, dated so far with uncertainty to the Middle Kingdom. The transmission of the Nut texts into the Middle Kingdom and their later emergence in tombs and papyri of the Greco-Roman period stress the significance of these practices on the eve of the funeral.Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB 980

Expedient and Monotone Learning Rules

This paper considers learning rules for environments in which little prior and feedback information is available to the decision-maker. Two properties of such learning rules, absolute expediency and monotonicity, are studied. The paper provides some necessary and some sufficient conditions for these properties. A number of examples show that there is quite a large variety of learning rules which have these properties. It is also shown that all learning rules that have these properties are, in some sense, related to replicator dynamics of evolutionary game theory.Absolute expediency, monotonicity, learning rule, decision making

Apuntes teóricos sobre el poder del lenguaje en la literatura mortuoria del Reino Antiguo y el Reino Medio

La función performativa de los Textos de las Pirámides ha sido señalada en numerosos trabajos que tratan del papel ritual y mágico de este corpus para beneficio del difunto y su travesía al Más Allá. Sin embargo, no existen estudios sobre la naturaleza ilocucionaria de los textos que componen el corpus, de su lenguaje y de las transformaciones que experimenta en los diversos contextos socio-culturales del Reino Antiguo y el Reino Medio. En esta contribución examino este corpus a la luz de diversas teorías lingüísticas sobre la performatividad, la estructura y la semántica de los rituales. Asimismo, se hace hincapié en la emergencia de un corpus de estas características en el antiguo Egipto como resultado de un proceso de entextualización de materiales orales previosThe performative function of the Pyramid Texts have been outlined in several works dealing with the ritual and magical role of the corpus for the benefit of the deceased and his journey to the afterlife. However, there are no studies on the illocutionary nature of the texts in the corpus, their language and the transformations experienced through the various socio-cultural contexts in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. In this paper I examine the corpus through various linguistic theories on the performativity, structure and semantics of rituals. Likewise, I underline the emergence of this corpus in ancient Egypt as the result of a process of entextualization of previous oral material

An equivalence result for (Logit) QRE and Level-k

The logit QRE has comparative statics properties that are in some cases more intuitive than for the standard NE, and it explains experimental data that are consistent with intuition but are not predicted by the Nash equilibrium. In this paper we show that level-k model reproduces the same comparative statics and offers predictions close to the logit QRE within the class of (symmetric) games with the local payoff property.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

A first checklist of the lichen-forming fungi of the Venezuelan Andes

Basing on an evaluation of the literature and some unpublished collections, 745 taxa of lichen forming-fungi are reported from the Venezuelan Andes, including 10 infraspecific taxa. Of these taxa 37 are new records for Venezuela: Actinoplaca vulgaris (Müll. Arg.) Vezda & Poelt, Asterothyrium decipiens (Rehm) R. Sant., Calopadia foliicola (Fée) Vezda, C. fusca (Müll. Arg.) Vezda, C. phyllogena (Müll. Arg.) Vezda, Chrysothrix chlorina (Ach.) J. R. Laundon, Cystocoleus ebeneus (Dillwyn) Thwaites, Diploschistes scruposus (Schreb.) Norm., Echinoplacaleucotrichoides (Vain.) R. Sant., Fellhanerabouteillei (Desm.) Vezda, F.dominicana (Vain.) Vezda, F. fuscatula (Müll. Arg.) Vezda, F. sublecanorina (Nyl.) Vezda, Gyalectidium filicinum Müll. Arg., Lecidea limosa Ach., Lepraria neglecta Auct., Ochrolechia africana Vain., Peltigera vainioi Gyelnik, Phyllobathelium nigrum R. Sant. & Tibell, Phyllophialealba R. Sant., Polymeridiumalbidum (Müll. Arg.) R. C. Harris, Porina epiphylla (Fée) Fée, Racodium rupestre Pers., Ramalina asahinae W. Culb. & C. Culb., R. calcarata Krog & Swinsc., R. puiggarii Müll Arg., R. rectangularis Nyl., Rhizoplaca melanophthalma (DC.) Leuckert & Poelt, Strigula antillarum (Fée) Müll. Arg., S. platypoda (Müll. Arg.) R. C. Harris, Tapellaria epiphylla (Müll. Arg.) R. Sant., T.nana (Fée) R. Sant., Tephromela aglaea (Sommerf.) Hertel & Rambold, Tricharia vainioi R. Sant., Trichothelium epiphyllum Müll. Arg., T. bipindense F. Schill. and Vezdaea foliicola Sérusiaux. Another 4 species are new records only for the Venezuelan Andes: Dimerellaepiphylla (Müll. Arg.) Malme, Porinaatrocoerulea Müll. Arg., Ramalina peruviana Ach. and Woessia apiahica (Müll. Arg.) Sérus. A list of synonyms used in the consulted literature is added. Four new combinations are proposed: Dictyonema zahlbruckneri (Schiffn.) V. Marcano, Heterodermia tropica (Kurok.) Sipman, Parmelinopsis cleefii (Sipman) V. Marcano & Sipman and Phyllobaeislinearis (De Vries) V. Marcano & Sipman

Branching Deregulation and Merger Optimality

The U.S. banking industry has been characterized by intense merger activity in the absence of economies of scale and scope. We claim that the loosening of geographic constraints on U.S. banks is responsible for this consolidation process, irrespective of value-maximizing motives. We demonstrate this by putting forward a theoretical model of banking competition and studying banks’ strategic responses to geographic deregulation. We show that even in the absence of economies of scale and scope, bank mergers represent an optimal response. Also, we show that the consolidation process is characterized by merger waves and that some equilibrium mergers are not profitable per se -they yield losses- but become profitable as the waves of mergers unfold.Banking Competition, Deregulation, Mergers

Whom to Merge with? A Tale of the Spanish Banking Deregulation Process

We put forward a simple spatial competition model to study banks’ strategic responses to the Spanish asymmetric geographic deregulation. We find that once geographic deregulation process finishes, inter-regional mergers between the savings banks are optimal. We claim that the public good nature of the merging activities together with the incentives provided by the deregulation process are the driving factors behind the equilibrium merger of the savings banks. It seems that the economic crisis will finally force regional politicians to allow inter-regional caja mergers, letting the consequences of the removal of geographic barriers in the 80’s come to a fruition with a delay of thirty years.Banking Competition, Deregulation, Mergers

Optimizing Scan Homogeneity for Building Full-3D Lidars based on Rotating a Multi-Beam Velodyne Rangefinder

Multi-beam lidar (MBL) scanners are compact, light, and accessible 3D sensors with high data rates, but they offer limited vertical resolution and field of view (FOV). Some recent robotics research has profited from the addition of a degree-of-freedom (DOF) to an MBL to build rotating multi-beam lidars (RMBL) that can achieve high-resolution scans with full spherical FOV. In a previous work, we offered a methodology to analyze the complex 3D scan measurement distributions produced by RMBLs with a rolling DOF and no pitching. In this paper, we investigate the effect of introducing constant pitch angles in the construction of the RMBLs with the purpose of finding a kinematic configuration that optimizes scan homogeneity with a spherical FOV. To this end, we propose a scalar index of 3D sensor homogeneity that is based on the spherical formulation of Ripley's K function. The optimization is performed for the widely used Puck (VLP-16) and HDL-32 sensors by Velodyne.This work was partially funded by the Spanish project {DPI2015-65186-R}. The publication has received support from Universidad de Málaga, Campus de Excelencia Andalucía Tech