7,435 research outputs found
Evolutionary Game Theory and Thorstein Veblen’s Evolutionary Economics: Is EGT Veblenian?
This essay provides an approach to the analysis of the link between Thorstein Veblen's evolutionary approach and evolutionary game theory (EGT). We shed some light on the potential contribution of Veblen's theory of socioeconomic evolution to the discussion on the application of EGT to social environments. We also investigate to what extent elements of EGT can be used to formalize some of the basic evolutionary principles proposed by Veblen. The methodological imperatives laid down by Veblen, defining an evolutionary approach, are presented. We provide an analytical framework that allows the evaluation of EGT in terms of Veblen's evolutionary approach. To better understand the main principles and rationale behind EGT and how it can be applied as a tool for analyzing issues on the diversity, interaction, and evolution of social systems, we discuss this nontraditional approach and its basic concepts. Finally, the main characteristics of EGT are contrasted with Veblen's principles.Evolution; Evolutionary Economics; Evolutionary; Game Theory; Games
Hidden dimensions of governments. Executives as cohesive networks of power groups
Esta comunicación presenta algunos resultados de un anà lisis de redes de dos ejecutivos españoles.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional AndalucÃa Tech
Maintenance or loss of dialect Andalusian features: Internal and external factors
In the last sixty years a steadily maintained process of convergence towards the Castilian national standard has been occurring in Southern Spain affecting urban middle-class speakers’ varieties, particularly phonology and lexis. As a consequence, unmarked features characterising innovative southern pronunciation have become less frequent and, at the same time, certain standard marked features have been adapted to the southern phonemic inventory. Then, urban middle-class varieties have progressively been stretching out the distance separating them from working-class and rural varieties, and bringing them closer to central Castilian varieties. Intermediate, yet incipient koineised varieties have been described including also transitional Murcia and Extremadura dialects (Hernández & Villena 2009, Villena, Vida & von Essen 2015).
(1) Some of the standard phonologically marked features have spread out among southern speakers exclusively based on their mainstream social prestige and producing not only changes in obstruent phoneme inventory –i.e. acquisition of /s/ vs. /θ/ contrast, but also standstill and even reversion of old consonant push- or pull-chain shifts –e.g. /h/ or /d/ fortition, affricate /ʧ/, etc. as well as traditional lexis shift (Villena et al. 2016). Internal (grammar and word frequency) and external (stratification, network and style) factors constraining those features follow similar patterns in the Andalusian speech communities analysed so far (Granada, Malaga) but when we zoom in on central varieties, which are closer to the national standard and then more conservative, differences in frequency increase and conflict sites emerge.
(2) Unmarked ‘natural’ phonological features characterising southern dialects, particularly deletion of syllable-final consonant, do not keep pace with this trend of convergence towards the standard. Thus a combination of southern innovative syllable-final and standard conservative onset-consonant features coexist.
(3). The main idea is that this intermediate variety is formed through changes suggesting that Andalusian speakers look for the best way of accepting marked prestige features without altering coherence within their inventory. Either reorganisation of the innovative phonemic system in such a way that it may include Castilian and standard /s/ vs. /θ/ contrast or re-syllabification of aspirated /s/ before dental stop are excellent examples of how and why linguistic features are able to integrate intermediate varieties between the dialect-standard continuum.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional AndalucÃa Tech
The Evolution of Social Norms and Individual Preferences
Why does an altruistically inclined player behave altruistically in some contexts and egoistically or spitefully in others? This article provides an economic explanation to this question. The basic argument is centered on the idea that social norms shape our preferences through a process of cultural learning. In particular, we claim that, in contexts with a stable norm of reciprocity, an altruistic player can respond in kind to egoistic or spiteful players by behaving either egoistically or spitefully when confronting them and yet continue to be an altruistic player. This is why, instead of studying the evolution of preferences as such, in this work we analyze the evolution of social norms that indirectly determine individual preferences and behavior. Such a study requires that we distinguish between players' behavioral preferences, or those individuals show with their behavior, and players' intrinsic preferences, or those they inherently support or favor. We argue that, whereas the former can change through the evolution of social norms, in this case a reciprocity norm, the latter are not subject to evolutionary pressures and, therefore, we assume them to be given.Social norms, reciprocity, endogenous preferences, asymmetric evolutionary game
Option Pricing of Twin Assets
How to price and hedge claims on nontraded assets are becoming increasingly
important matters in option pricing theory today. The most common practice to
deal with these issues is to use another similar or "closely related" asset or
index which is traded, for hedging purposes. Implicitly, traders assume here
that the higher the correlation between the traded and nontraded assets, the
better the hedge is expected to perform. This raises the question as to how
\textquoteleft{}closely related\textquoteright{} the assets really are. In this
paper, the concept of twin assets is introduced, focusing the discussion
precisely in what does it mean for two assets to be similar. Our findings point
to the fact that, in order to have very similar assets, for example identical
twins, high correlation measures are not enough. Specifically, two basic
criteria of similarity are pointed out: i) the coefficient of variation of the
assets and ii) the correlation between assets. From here, a method to measure
the level of similarity between assets is proposed, and secondly, an option
pricing model of twin assets is developed. The proposed model allows us to
price an option of one nontraded asset using its twin asset, but this time
knowing explicitly what levels of errors we are facing. Finally, some numerical
illustrations show how twin assets behave depending upon their levels of
similarities, and how their potential differences will traduce in MAPE (mean
absolute percentage error) for the proposed option pricing model
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