Search results for "Game theory"
showing 10 items of 498 documents
Models, information and meaning
2018
Abstract There has recently been an explosion of formal models of signaling, which have been developed in order to learn about different aspects of meaning. This paper discusses whether that success can also be used to provide an original naturalistic theory of meaning in terms of information or some related notion. In particular, it argues that, although these models can teach us a lot about different aspects of content, at the moment they fail to support the idea that meaning just is some kind of information. As an alternative, I suggest a more modest approach to the relationship between the informational notions used in models and semantic properties in the natural world.
How Long-Term Contracts can Mitigate Inefficient Renegotiation Arising Due to Loss Aversion
2021
A loss-averse buyer and seller face an uncertain environment. Should they write a long-term contract or wait until the state of the world is realized? I show that simple long-term contracts perform better than insinuated in Herweg and Schmidt (2015), even though loss aversion makes renegotiation sometimes inefficient. During renegotiation, the outcome induced by the long-term contract constitutes the reference point to which the parties compare gains and losses induced by the renegotiated transaction. Whereas Herweg and Schmidt consider that the long-term contract is always performed, it should not in "bad" states. This alters the threat point in renegotiation, making it easier to renegotia…
Circumventing deadlock through venue-shopping: Why there is more than just talk in US immigration politics in times of economic crisis
2016
This article addresses the question of how the financial and economic crisis that hit the US in the late 2000s impacted immigration policies. We find that the crisis has not significantly changed dynamics. Instead, it has highlighted and aggravated persisting trends. Drawing on Kingdon’s multiple streams model and combining it with the notion of two-level games, we find that while the policy stream and the problem stream would call for both restrictive and liberalising changes, the political stream impedes change: The fact that Congress has been divided for a long time over Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) impedes any restrictive or liberalising changes. With problems resulting from c…
The Inclusion of Socially Irresponsible Companies in Sustainable Stock Indices
2019
Social rating agencies implement complex filters to identify the companies with the best sustainable and social performance and help investors select the companies for their sustainable portfolios. This study analysed whether companies that are defined as ethical, sustainable and socially responsible by those agencies actually deserve this label. More specifically, the inclusion in the prestigious Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) World of companies that have been involved in controversies according to the Thomson Reuters Eikon database was studied. The results show that the inclusion of irresponsible companies in the DJSI Index is a fact. This outcome is in line with previous studies t…
Formal Project Organization and Informal Social Networks: Regional Advantages in the Emergent Animation Industry in Oslo, Norway
2011
This article focuses on the social networks that facilitate projects based activities in one particular part of cultural industries. Cultural industries are dependent on flexible ways of organizing their work because they operate in unpredictable markets. However, the organization of work in temporary projects challenges some key assumptions when it comes to the need for long-term, stable relationships for innovative and effective organizations. A key question is thus how firms that do not have a formal organization that creates stable relationships manage to create continuity in what they do. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with core firms that operate within the animation…
Applying system dynamics to foster organizational change, accountability and performance in the public sector: A case-based Italian perspective
2010
The goal of this paper is to discuss the role System Dynamics (SD) can play to enhance performance improvement in the public sector. It is remarked how SD can help decision makers to properly perceive the boundaries of the relevant system underlying observed phenomena. To this end, three real cases are analysed to show how SD can facilitate a better understanding of the relationships between the political and the organisational system in the public sector, and how to promptly attain efficiency and improve outcome, given the constraints that the institutional and political systems constitute. The goal of this paper is to discuss the role System Dynamics (SD) can play to enhance performance i…
A formal model based on Game Theory for the analysis of cooperation in distributed service discovery
2016
New systems can be designed, developed, and managed as societies of agents that interact with each other by offering and providing services. These systems can be viewed as complex networks where nodes are bounded rational agents. In order to deal with complex goals, they require cooperation of the other agents to be able to locate the required services. The aim of this paper is formally and empirically analyze under which circumstances cooperation emerges in decentralized search of services. We propose a repeated game model that formalizes the interactions among agents in a search process where agents are free to choose between cooperate or not in the process. Agents make decisions based on…
Risky choices in strategic environments: An experimental investigation of a real options game
2019
Managers frequently make decisions under conditions of fundamental uncertainty due the stochastic nature of the outcomes and competitive rivalry. In this study, we experimentally test a theoretical model under fundamental uncertainty and competitive rivalry by designing a sequential interaction game between two players. The first mover can decide either to choose a sure outcome that assigns a risky outcome to the second mover or to pass the decision to the second mover. If the second player gets the chance to decide, she can choose between a sure outcome, conditioned by the assignment of a risky payoff to the first mover, or the sharing of the risky outcome with the first mover. We then int…
The United Citizens Organization: Public-private partnerships in global governance
2020
Abstract Can Public-Private Partnerships be applied to global affairs and governance? This paper reviews the existing relations between public and private global actors. I argue that current international politics is largely an outcome of these relations. Although for the foreseeable future the role of traditional nation-states on the global scene should not be dismissed, they come under the constant pressure of different private actors, particularly of MNCs and NGOs. If this is the case, the question of global responsibility must be raised. It has been the traditional role of governments to stand for such societal values as security and prosperity, and be responsible for their citizens. Wi…
AI for Resource Allocation and Resource Allocation for AI: a two-fold paradigm at the network edge
2022
5G-and-beyond and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are pushing a shift from the classic cloud-centric view of the network to a new edge-centric vision. In such a perspective, the computation, communication and storage resources are moved closer to the user, to the benefit of network responsiveness/latency, and of an improved context-awareness, that is, the ability to tailor the network services to the live user's experience. However, these improvements do not come for free: edge networks are highly constrained, and do not match the resource abundance of their cloud counterparts. In such a perspective, the proper management of the few available resources is of crucial importance to impr…