Search results for "thinking"

Perceptual presence without counterfactual richness

2014

In this commentary, I suggest that non-visual perceptual modalities provide counterexamples to Seth's claim that perceptual presence depends on counterfactual richness. Then I suggest a modification to Seth's view that is not vulnerable to these counterexamples.

Labor Productivity Growth: Disentangling Technology and Capital Accumulation

2014

We adopt a counterfactual approach to decompose labor productivity growth into growth of Technological Productivity (TEP), growth of the capital-labor ratio and growth of Total Factor Productivity (TFP). We bring the decomposition to the data using international countrysectoral information spanning from the 1960s to the 2000s and a nonparametric generalized kernel method, which enables us to estimate the production function allowing for heterogeneity across all relevant dimensions: countries, sectors and time. As well as documenting substantial heterogeneity across countries and sectors, we nd average TEP to account for about 44% of labor productivity growth and TEP gaps with respect to the…

Joint Audit, Audit Market Structure, and Consumer Surplus

2017

We use a structural application of the discrete choice model to investigate how the introduction of a joint audit policy would affect audit market structure and consumer surplus. We perform this policy evaluation by identifying demand fundamentals in a joint audit regime and applying them to a single audit regime. We find that a joint audit requirement has the potential to change the audit market structure substantially but that the effects are sensitive to the specific policy design. For example, small audit firms gain market share in a joint audit regime but only if an equal sharing of the workload between the two joint auditors is not required. Our counterfactual analysis reveals that th…

The Tax Returns of Public Spending on Universities: An Estimate with Monte Carlo Simulations

2015

Pastor J. M. and Peraita C. The tax returns of public spending on universities: an estimate with Monte Carlo simulations, Regional Studies. This paper proposes a methodology based on counterfactual scenarios and the existence of uncertainty to estimate the tax returns of public spending of regional governments on their public universities. The introduction of differences in the time spent by the students at university and the proportion of the total public expenditure implies making assumptions about uncertainty. The paper applies Monte Carlo simulations incorporating stochastic elements to estimate the tax returns of public spending in the University of the Basque Country (Spain). The resu…

Causal Inference and Statistical Fallacies

2001

Fallacies are defined as plausible-seeming arguments that give the wrong conclusion. The article concentrates on those with some connection with causality. The classical definition of causality involving a necessary and sufficient condition for an effect is rejected and three possible definitions discussed. The first is that of a statistical association that cannot be explained away as the effect of admissible alternative features. To make this more precise, Markov graphical representations are introduced and the important distinction between pairs of variables on an equal footing and those in a potential explanatory-response relation described. The roles of unobserved confounders and of ra…

Obligations and Conditionals

2015

The paper considers two kinds of medieval obligational disputations (positio, rei veritas) and the medieval genre of sophismata in relation to the kinds of inferences accepted in them. The main texts discussed are the anonymous Obligationes parisienses from the early 13th century and Richard Kilvington’s Sophismata from the early 14th century. Four different kinds of warranted transition from an antecedent to a consequent become apparent in the medieval discussions: (1) the strong logical validity of basic propositional logic, (2) analytic validity based on conceptual containment, (3) merely semantic impossibility of the antecedent being true without the consequent, and (4) intuitively true…

Guises and their Existence

1996

According to H-N. Castafieda, a guise the very thin individual which lies at the bottom of the ontological furniture of the world is indifferent to existence in a Meinongian way, in the sense that it remains the same whether it exists or not. Moreover, its existence does not alter its intentional character, as it is the very same individual which is thought of regardless of its being real or not. ~ In what follows, I will attempt to show that with regards to guises both theses are illegitimate, unless one introduces the notion of an existentiallyconditioned property as a counterfactual property which a guise has prior to its actual existence. To do so means to work out an amendment to Casta…

Place-based policy in southern Italy: evidence from a dose-response approach

2021

This paper evaluates the effectiveness at a territorial level of a place-based policy for southern Italy, that is, territorial integrated projects (TIPs). We combine classical counterfactual designs and the construction of a dose–response function to assess the impact of the infrastructural interventions on the municipalities involved in a target region (Sicily). The results are robust enough to show policy effectiveness on both the number of workers and the number of plants. In the latter case, we also identify a significant and increasing dose–response function highlighting the positive relationship between funding intensity and the growth of plants.

Evaluation of creative thinking in children with epilepsy.

2011

Creativity development trajectories in Elementary Education: Differences in divergent and evaluative skills

2015

Abstract The aim of this paper is to analyse the developmental trajectory during childhood of the divergent and evaluative skills implicit in the creative process. A total of 1491 children, aged between 6 and 12 years old, from seven Spanish schools participated in the study by answering the Test de Creatividad Infantil (Child Creativity Test). The aforementioned instrument is based on the theoretical framework of “problem finding” and covers both the creative process and the product. It requires designing a model with stickers -formulation of the problem and then later on producing a drawing based on the model -solving the problem. The results show three types of developmental trajectories…