Narrow Results

A bisemigroup is a set with two associative operations. Subsets of free bisemigroups are called bisemigroup languages. Recognizable, regular and MSO-definable bisemigroup languages have been studied earlier, and these classes are known to be equal. In this paper we prove a Kleene theorem for bisemigroup languages, namely we show that the class of recognizable bisemigroup languages is the least class which contains the finite languages and closed under the operations of union, horizontal and vertical product, horizontal and vertical iteration, ξ-substitution and a restricted version of the the ξ-iteration. We extend our result to binoid languages, i.e., to subsets of free algebras, where the two associative operations share a common identity element.

We study iterated transductions defined by a class of invertible Mealy automata over the binary alphabet. It is shown that in some cases the resulting orbit relation is rational and we determine the complexity of several natural computational problems associated with the iterated transductions. In particular, we show how to compute timestamps and coordinates.

In this paper, we attempt to shed light on whether Japanese households are rational or if their behavior is influenced by culture and social norms by examining their saving and bequest behavior. To summarize our main findings, we find that Japan’s household saving rate showed great volatility, was often low and even negative and was high only during the 25-year period from around 1960 until the mid-1980s (if we exclude the war years) and that we can explain the high level of, and trends over time in, Japan’s household saving rate via various socioeconomic and policy variables. This seems to suggest that the Japanese are not a saving-loving people and that their saving behavior is not governed by culture and social norms. Moreover, the bequest behavior of the Japanese suggests that they are less altruistic toward their children and less reliant on their children than other peoples, suggesting that the alleged social norm of strong family ties in Japan is largely a myth, and that the Japanese do not appear to be appreciably more concerned about the continuation of the family line or the family business than other peoples, suggesting that the influence of the “ie” (family) system is apparently not so pervasive either. However, we argue that these findings do not necessarily mean that culture and social norms do not matter.

We study the education premiums in the online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending marketplace in which individuals bid on unsecured microloans applied by individual borrowers. Using more than 100,000 consummated and failed listings from the largest online P2P lending marketplace in China — Paipaidai.com, we examine whether higher education level lead to lower interest rates and lower risk of default. We find that controlling for other characteristics of borrowers, borrowing rates of borrowers with bachelor’s degrees is 0.141 percent higher than that of borrowers with associate’s degrees, and that female borrowers’ education premiums were higher than their male counterparts. With regard to loan performance, borrowers with bachelor’s degrees are 13% less likely to default than the borrowers with associate’s degrees. Therefore, the education premiums in the P2P lending marketplace are rational.

This article introduces a model of rationality that combines procedural utility over actions with consequential utility over payoffs. It applies the model to the Prisoners' Dilemma and shows that empirically observed cooperative behaviors can be rationally explained by a procedural utility for cooperation. The model characterizes the situations in which cooperation emerges as a Nash equilibrium. When rational individuals are not solely concerned by the consequences of their behavior but also care for the process by which these consequences are obtained, there is no one single rational solution to a Prisoners' Dilemma. Rational behavior depends on the payoffs at stake and on the procedural utility of individuals. In this manner, this model of procedural utility reflects how ethical considerations, social norms or emotions can transform a game of consequences.

Game-theoretic solution concepts describe sets of strategy profiles that are optimal for all players in some plausible sense. Such sets are often found by recursive algorithms like iterated removal of strictly dominated strategies in strategic games, or backward induction in extensive games. Standard logical analyses of solution sets use assumptions about players in fixed epistemic models for a given game, such as mutual knowledge of rationality. In this paper, we propose a different perspective, analyzing solution algorithms as processes of learning which change game models. Thus, strategic equilibrium gets linked to fixed-points of operations of repeated announcement of suitable epistemic statements. This dynamic stance provides a new look at the current interface of games, logic, and computation.

Game-theoretic solution concepts describe sets of strategy profiles that are optimal for all players in some plausible sense. Such sets are often found by recursive algorithms like iterated removal of strictly dominated strategies in strategic games, or backward induction in extensive games. Standard logical analyses of solution sets use assumptions about players in fixed epistemic models for a given game, such as mutual knowledge of rationality. In this paper, we propose a different perspective, analyzing solution algorithms as processes of learning which change game models. Thus, strategic equilibrium gets linked to fixed-points of operations of repeated announcement of suitable epistemic statements. This dynamic stance provides a new look at the current interface of games, logic, and computation.

We show that the birationality class of a quadric surface bundle over ${\mathbb{P}}^2$ is determined by its associated cokernel sheaves. As an application, we discuss stable-rationality of very general quadric bundles over ${\mathbb{P}}^2$ with discriminant curves of fixed degree. In particular, we construct explicit models of these bundles for some discriminant data. Among others, we obtain various birational models of a nodal Gushel–Mukai fourfold, as well as of a cubic fourfold containing a plane. Finally, we prove stable irrationality of several types of quadric surface bundles.

Instead of trying to improve its very inadequate research by yet another rededication to rationality, social work should take cognizance of its consistent failure across fifty years to produce any scientifically credible social service assessments. The pursuit of rationality in social work obscures its political acquiescence, a fable of the Arctic midgerby. The corrective myths of its research stunt the professional coming of age of social work and may well lead to its demise. Rather than social science, social criticism is more consistent with the field's traditions, inclinations, and capacities.

An efficient solution to the misleading solutions of decision-making problems is the study of consistency when the decision makers express their opinions by means of fuzzy preference relations. To elucidate the consistency of HFPRs, the S-ordinal consistency of HFPRs was proposed, and S-OCI was also proposed to evaluate the degree of consistency of a hesitant fuzzy preference relation by calculating the unreasonable 3-cycles in the directed graph. Two novel methods were also proposed for calculation of the S-OCI. Moreover, the inconsistent judgment in hesitation fuzzy preference relation was developed. In order to repair the inconsistency of a hesitant fuzzy preference relation, an algorithm for finding and removing 3-cycles in digraph was developed. Finally, some illustrative examples were given to prove the effectiveness of the method.

This paper presents a view of the economy as a complex system with heterogeneous interacting agents who collectively organize themselves to generate aggregate phenomena which cannot be regarded as the behavior of some average or representative individual. There is an essential difference between the aggregate and the individual and such phenomena as bubbles and crashes, herd behavior, the transmission of information and the organization of trade are better modeled in the sort of framework suggested here than in more standard economic models.

We illustrate how an information sender may use unverifiable signals regarding a set of substitute products located in an alternative market to manipulate the choices made by uninformed but perfectly rational decision makers (DMs) within the verifiable market where the information sender operates. We do so by defining an optimal information gathering structure for rational DMs who acquire information sequentially from a set of multidimensional products. The resulting strategic signaling environment delivers two main results that are illustrated numerically. First, in order for the sender to successfully manipulate the information gathering and choice behavior of DMs, he should release signals on characteristics that differ from their most preferred ones. Second, the capacity of the sender to manipulate the behavior of DMs depends negatively on his reputation regarding the expected value of the unobserved characteristics guaranteed to DMs within the market where he operates. Normative applications to online search environments conditioned by the provision of strategic reviews in social media are presented.

Decision-makers often struggle to terminate unsuccessful new product development (NPD) projects, so that escalating commitment occurs. Although research shows that rational and intuitive decision-making styles (DMS) as well as a decision-maker’s affective state determines the performance of NPD decisions, little is known about their influences on escalating commitment. By applying the affect infusion model in an experimental study, we investigate how a decision-maker’s affective state influence their escalating commitment by focusing on their use of a rational and an intuitive DMS. Our findings, based on 366 respondents, show that a rational DMS is unable to reduce commitment escalation. Surprisingly, an intuitive DMS is able to reduce a decision-maker’s commitment in the case of a positive affect, whereas a rational DMS increases their commitment in the case of a negative affect. Thus, our interdisciplinary research on affect and decision-making extends and contributes to research into decision-making during the NPD process as well as into escalating commitment.

Strategic Environmental Assessment aims to incorporate environmental and sustainability considerations into strategic decision making processes, such as the formulation of policies, plans and programmes. In order to be effective, the assessment must take the real decision making process as the departure point. Existing SEA approaches are frequently tailored after an EIA model conceived from a rational perspective on decision making. However, there are good reasons to assume that most strategic decision making processes are characterised by a bounded rationality. Furthermore, the predictability of environmental consequences generally becomes weaker at strategic levels than at the project level and complexity increases in terms of the numbers of actors involved in the decision. This paper examines various theoretical perspectives to decision making and discusses the implications for decision support in general and SEA in particular. The authors argue that the design of the SEA must be more sensitive to the real characteristics of the decision making context.

The rationality and consistency of preference-based choice functions is often studied for (fuzzy) preference relations having specific properties, such as strong completeness, transitivity, or certain properties on triplets. In this paper, we turn our attention to another type of preference relation, namely relations that are induced as pairwise marginal of an underlying probability distribution on complete rankings (permutations) of all given alternatives. Such relations are necessarily reciprocal and, depending on the underlying distribution, obey additional structural properties. More specifically, we study relations induced by two important probability distributions, the Mallows and the Plackett–Luce distribution, which are well-known in the literature on statistics of rank data. Assuming preference relations of this kind, we study seven different choice functions and their four rationality and consistency properties.

This paper studies a formal power series with coefficients in a Hecke ring associated with the Heisenberg Lie algebra. We relate the series to the classical Hecke series defined by Hecke, and prove that the series has a property similar to the rationality theorem of the classical Hecke series. And then, our results recover the rationality theorem of the classical Hecke series.

By explicitly calculating and then analytically continuing the Fourier expansion of the twisted double Eisenstein series $E_{s,k-s}^{\ast }(z,w;1/2)$ of Diamantis and O’Sullivan, we prove a formula of the Petersson inner product of Cohen’s kernel and one of its twists, and obtain a rationality result. This extends a result of Kohnen and Zagier.

Intelligence can be understood as a form of rationality, in the sense that an intelligent system does its best when its knowledge and resources are insufficient with respect to the problems to be solved. The traditional models of rationality typically assume some form of sufficiency of knowledge and resources, so cannot solve many theoretical and practical problems in Artificial Intelligence (AI). New models based on the Assumption of Insufficient Knowledge and Resources (AIKR) cannot be obtained by minor revisions or extensions of the traditional models, and have to be established fully according to the restrictions and freedoms provided by AIKR. The practice of NARS, an AI project, shows that such new models are feasible and promising in providing a new theoretical foundation for the study of rationality, intelligence, consciousness, and mind.

This chapter gives a summary of the topics that were discussed in this book. These include classical optimization techniques such as the Nelder–Mead (NM) simplex method, Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno (BFGS) and conjugate gradient methods. It also describes the genetic algorithm (GA), simulated annealing and particle swarm optimization (PSO) methods. Furthermore, it describes the response surface method (RSM) as well as hybrid methods. Also presented in this book are advanced topics such as economic and financial modeling based on artificial intelligence (AI), unbounded, bounded and flexibly bounded rational decision-making.

This first quarter of the century is as exciting as the first quarter of the last century, but this time for social science rather than for natural science, and the analogy is striking. We are going to elaborate upon the apparent shift (or extension) from current neoclassical economics to behavioral economics, similar to the extension from Newtonian mechanics to quantum mechanics.