Maastricht University - Open Journals
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Growing Pains: An Argumentative Analysis on the Desirability of Economic Growth
Get PDFIn 2012 the German Bundestag convened an inquiry committee tasked with investigating the role of economic growth in society. While the opposition parties presented a rather critical outlook on the phenomenon, the overall tone of the coalition, consisting of Christian Democrats (CDU) and Liberals (FDP), portraits a rather positive image of economic growth. Representatives of the coalition argue that economic growth is inherently tied to freedom and, by extension, to the principles of a free democratic society. This reasoning, called the ‚Free-Society Argument‘ makes a case for the intrinsic value of growth. It is reconstructed and analyzed using the method of Analytical Discourse Evaluation. The underlying premises of the argument are in line with Robert Nozick‘s entitlement theory of justice, as well as the principle of negative freedom and can be defeated on the bases of critiques of these philosophical positions. Moreover, the argument is built upon on a specific (neoliberal) interpretation of economic growth. This weakens the quality of the argument, since it undermines the complexity of the phenomenon and excludes important elements of growth from the reasoning
MBA Student Sectioning
Get PDFMaastricht University is offering a MBA program for people that have a bachelor degree and at least 5 years of working experience. Within the MBA program, students work in groups of 5 during a two year cycle. This thesis is about the formation of the student groups. The MBA program contains 60 students. Every year, two intake moments take place that usually allow 15 new students to enter. All 60 students follow the same course at the same time, implying that the order in which a student follows the courses depends only on the moment at which he/she starts the program. Every two periods, The university creates new student groups according to a set of hard and soft constraints, such that well-diversified groups are formed. Therefore, the student-with-student history, gender, nationality, and level of expertise of each student is taken into account. Hence a mapping from a set of students to groups is created that takes into account the corresponding constraints. The university chooses a group leader for each group. Two general solution methods are applied to the MBA sectioning problem. The first method uses the simplex algorithm to solve the problem. Therefore an integer linear program formulation of the problem was needed, and used as an input for an efficient ILP solver. The second approach starts with an initial feasible solution and improves upon this feasible solution using different improvement algorithms. The quality of each feasible solution depends on the calculated objective function value that measures the level of satisfaction of the different constraints. Different initial solution and improvement algorithms are discussed that help to obtain a feasible solution with an objective function value that is as low as possible. The implemented improvement algorithms are the Descent Improvement algorithm, Tabu Search, Simulated Annealing, and the Bipartite Weighted Matching Improvement algorithm. The first three algorithms make individual students swap between existing group formations. The Bipartite Weighted Matching Improvement algorithm iteratively selects a student from each group, and finds local optimal solutions for a bipartite matching problem in order to improve the overall objective value of the whole problem. In order to test the algorithms, one has to make sure that the instance on which the algorithms are tested mimics a real life example. Therefore, a simulation program is established that mimics the two year cycle and produces such an instance. Empirical results show that the best improvement algorithm considered is the Bipartite Weighted Matching Improvement algorithm. This algorithm, combined with an initial solution algorithm, is now being implemented into the current computer system of Maastricht University
Cabbage, Cars and Beer? An examination of Dual Attitudes towards the Concept “German”
Get PDFA controversial and still ongoing debate concerns the question whether observed weak correlations between implicit and explicit attitudes point to two different underlying constructs of attitudes or emerge due to assessing the same construct in different ways. Next to addressing the problem of the low explanatory power of correlational conclusions, the present study aimed to contribute behavioral evidence to this debate with an additional focus to the underrepresented single target categories in implicit social cognition, such as nationality concepts. The results of the assessment of attitudes towards the concept “German” point to the conclusion that in general, attitudes towards the concept are mostly negative. Implications from these results are used to develop strategies regarding the facilitation of academic student mobility
The stability of memory performance using an adapted version of the Delayed Matching To Sample task: an ERP study
Get PDFThis study examined the stability of performance using an adapted version of the Delayed Matching to Sample memory test (DMTS). With this test the stability of visual working memory can be measured. In the DMTS participants have to memorize a cue for a certain delay, after which a probe is presented. This is an often used test, but it is not yet clear if the performance of this test is also stable over time. In present paradigm stability was assessed mixing short (10-20s) and long delays (140-200s) and presenting cues during the cue-probe interval. Additionally, EEG was measured during testing. For the memory-related components, the P300 and P600, amplitude and latency were compared between sessions and the same was done for accuracy and mean reaction time of behavioral data. Faster reaction times for long delay stimuli were found in Session 2. No effects in accuracy were found. Longer P600 latencies were found for long delay stimuli in the first session as compared to the second. High correlations between sessions were found for almost all other measures. These high correlations suggest that test-retest scores were stable. Therefore, we conclude that the new DMTS paradigm has high stability
False memories and subsequent false testimonies
Get PDFIn this review paper, an introduction to the concept of false memories is given and subsequently compared with the current state of affairs in the research on modern juridical deception. This covers the most widely-used techniques in the area of lie-detection: The Comparison Question Technique and the Guilty Knowledge Test. It then attempts to connect any cross-compatibility to the area of false testimonies and to give an explanation as to why and how this is the case. It is concluded that, in spite of a considerable amount of research, the knowledge that has been acquired over the course of decades is not yet sufficient to be adequately applied in the field, and that accurate detection of false testimonies through techniques resembling above-mentioned may be decades away
Educating the transnational network
Get PDFIn the context of a broader and more specific discourse on private law, this paper turns its attention towards the big picture of the European project. The focus of the research is not particularly on the substantive or normative dimension of EU legislation, rather on the people behind its private law. The aim was to understand how legal education could impact the development of EU law. Therefore, the attempt has been that of, firstly, identifying the political dynamics which produce and sustain the law (section I) and, secondly, investigating the cultural dimension of the integration process, specifically on how nationalistic views tend to reject legal harmonization on cultural premises (section II)
Harmonization of Private Law and the destiny of overriding mandatory provisions: The Example of Consumer Protection under The Common European Sales Law
Get PDFThe CESL is not quite as “complete” a sales law as its name suggests. It cannot, in the opinion of this author, be considered “hard core” contract law as it has substantial gaps, which need to be filled by the national laws of the member states.5 As the objectives of the CESL are consumer protection and also the removing of obstacles in the internal market, it is needless to say that a balance had to be struck. Therefore, the CESL does not contain the highest degree of consumer protection possible, albeit the allegations of the European Commission that it does achieve a level of protection that is on average higher than that which the member states’ laws have to offer.6 Member states have on top of that lost the power to impose their own mandatory provisions, which protect the consumer, as the CESL imposes its own mandatory rules, when chosen by the parties. The relationship of the CESL and the Regulation on the law applicable to contractual obligations will be the subject of this paper. Special attention will be paid to the application mechanism, which, as the drafters argue will make Article 6 Rome I superfluous where parties have chosen the CESL to govern their contract, which will however not make the application of all other PIL rules applicable to the contract
Arguing Art: Evaluation of the Viability Argument in the Political Debate on Cutting the Subsidies for the Production of Art in Dutch Society
Get PDFOne of the arguments used by the Dutch government to support the cuts in the subsidies for the production of art is that of economic viability. In the political discourse faulty arguments are masked by the use of arbitrary language and incomplete statements, but through the restructuring of the Viability Argument with the method of Political Discourse Evaluation, several flaws have become apparent, of which the most severe one is that the value of art is equated with its economic viability. Art has many external, immaterial benefits that help shape the social and political aspects of a society; economic viability, on the other hand, only measures the intrinsic costs and benefits of art. The real value of art, which goes far beyond an economic cost-benefit analysis, is neglected by the Dutch government in its decision to cut the subsidies.
Derivative Pricing in Complete and Incomplete Markets
No full textThe starting point of the present paper is the Binomial Option Pricing Model. It basically assumes that there is only one possible value for the volatility of the stock price and it gives a unique arbitrage-free price of an option. This assumption is relaxed in the sense that the occurrence of a second value for the volatility is supposed to have strictly positive probability. Then it is no longer possible to find only one arbitrage-free price of the option; instead some concepts of general arbitrage pricing theory such as the Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing are employed to construct an interval of arbitrage-free option prices. Subsequently, a natural question to ask is under which conditions the Binomial Option Pricing Model assuming deterministic and stochastic volatility respectively agrees on arbitrage-free option prices. This paper gives a formal answer to that question by showing that the volatility used to calculate the price in the deterministic setting has to lie strictly in between the two possible volatilities used when assuming stochastic volatility. Furthermore, the Binomial Option Pricing Model is enriched to the Trinomial Option Pricing Model. In the latter model in cases of both deterministic as well as stochastic volatility an interval of arbitrage free option prices is obtained. The question of agreement on arbitrage-free prices is discussed again and a similar answer to the above situation is derived. The paper provides illustrations of the theoretical findings along examples such as European Call Options, Butterfly Spreads as well as Double Butterfly Spreads
Repeated games with terminating cells
No full textBuying a house can be a time consuming process. After the buyer places its first bid the seller may o er a counter bid, which might be followed by a counter bid from the buyer. After a certain time period this can result in an agreement when the bid is accepted. These multiple rounds of bids can be described mathematically, and the scientific discipline dealing with them is called game theory. In this discipline the focus lies on the analysis of strategic choices of the players involved. When we go back to the example of the buyer and the seller we see that the action that both players can play is to place a bid. If the bid is not accepted by the other player the game continues and a counterbid has to be placed. However, if the bid is accepted the game ends and the payoff is paid from the buyer to the seller. When an agreement is made the payoff is equal to the final bid, otherwise, if the players do not come to a settlement the game may go on forever, in that case the payoff equals 0. A strategy for a player is a decision rule that prescribes a mixed action, that is, a probability distribution on the possible actions. The combination of these strategies yields some payoff for all players. We assume that all players seek a strategy that maximizes their payoff. In reality the bids of the buyer and seller tend to come closer to each other and to the value of the house as the game proceeds. In the end a price agreement is made someplace in the midst. In this paper we assume however that the strategies of the players are stationary and are played simultaneous. That is, they do not depend on the history of the game and in each round all players play their action at the same time