1,721,167 research outputs found

    The economic entomologist: an interview with Alan Kirman

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    The Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics was delighted to have the opportunity to interview Professor Kirman when he visited the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics (EIPE) in late November 2010 to present a paper on the state of macroeconomics. In this interview, Professor Kirman discusses his understanding of the relationship between individual behaviour and aggregate patterns, why it is essential to consider the interactions between agents, and what the study of ant’s behaviour can teach us about collective human actions. He explains the core concepts of his ‘interactionist’ approach, including microfoundations, rationality and emergence, and reflects on the potential of agent-based modelling, the limitations of game theory, the possibility of aggregate-level analysis, and the relevance of behavioural studies. The interview also ranges more widely, discussing the different goals of economics (for instance, explaining, predicting, and controlling), the role of mathematics in modern economics, and the state of macroeconomics

    Émergence, formation et dynamique des réseaux. Modèles de la morphogenèse

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    Cohendet Patrick, Kirman Alan, Zimmermann Jean-Benoît. Émergence, formation et dynamique des réseaux. Modèles de la morphogenèse. In: Revue d'économie industrielle, vol. 103, 2e et 3e trimestre 2003. La morphogénèse des réseaux, sous la direction de Patrick Cohendet, Alan Kirman et Jean-Benoît Zimmermann. pp. 15-42

    Alan Kirman

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    Marginal contribution, reciprocity and equity in segregated groups: Bounded rationality and self-organization in social networks

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    We study the formation of social networks that are based on local interaction and simple rule following. Agents evaluate the profitability of link formation on the basis of the Myerson-Shapley principle that payoffs come from the marginal contribution they make to coalitions. The NP-hard problem associated with the Myerson-Shapley value is replaced by a boundedly rational 'spatially' myopic process. Agents consider payoffs from direct links with their neighbours (level 1), which can include indirect payoffs from neighbours' neighbours (level 2) and up to M-levels that are far from global. Agents dynamically break away from the neighbour to whom they make the least marginal contribution. Computational experiments show that when this self-interested process of link formation operates at level 2 neighbourhoods, agents self-organize into stable and efficient network structures that manifest reciprocity, equity and segregation, reminiscent of hunter gather groups. A large literature alleges that this is incompatible with self-interested behaviour and market oriented marginality principle in the allocation of value. We conclude that it is not this valuation principle that needs to be altered to obtain segregated social networks as opposed to global components, but whether it operates at level 1 or 2 of social neighbourhoods. Remarkably, all M>2 neighbourhood calculations for payoffs leave the efficient network structures identical to the case when M=2. © 2007

    Foreword by Alan Kirman

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    How Should Research Performance Be Measured? A Study of Swedish Economists

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    Billions of euros are allocated every year to university research. Increased specialisation and international integration of research and researchers has sharply raised the need for comparisons of performance across fields, institutions and individual researchers. However, there is still no consensus regarding how such rankings should be conducted and what output measures are appropriate to use. We rank all full professors in a particular discipline, economics, in one European nation using seven established, and some of them commonly used, measures of research performance. Our examination shows both that the rank order can vary greatly across measures, and that depending on the measure used the distribution of total research out-put is valued very differently. The renowned KMS measure in economics stands out among the measures analysed here. It exhibits the weakest correlation with the others used in our study. We conclude by giving advice to funding councils and others assessing research quality on how to think about the use of both quantitative and qualitative measures of performance.Impact of research; Ranking; Research productivity; Bibliometrics; Impact Factor

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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