1,721,308 research outputs found
Can people learn rational expectations? - An 'ecological' approach
No full textIn this note the stability of the rational expectations equilibrium for the Foster and Frierman (1990) version of the Blume and Easley (1982) model is investigated under the assumption that the learning mechanism used by economic agents is based on a selection mechanism on a class of competing models having a 'physical' meaning for the agent and not on the interpolation of models having no clear physical meaning, as it is often the case in the literature on learning rational expectations. It is found that, under the standard assumption that the rational expectations model is in the information set of the uninformed trader no matter his degree of rationality, convergence to it is less likely the higher the uninformed agent's degree of rationality, in a sense to be specified in the paper. Some comments on the result are also provided. © 1994 Springer-Verlag
Introduction to Valletta2018 Cultural Mapping: Debating space and place
No full textIn 2018, Valletta will be the European Capital of Culture. A series of four international conferences has been organized along the path to the ECoC year, dealing with some of its key topics, one for each year from 2014 to 2017. This special issue presents a small selection of papers from the 2015 conference on cultural mapping and its relation with culture-led development
Maintaining content innovation in an industry with unpredictable returns: a portfolio approach to movie production
No full textThe movie industry is typically characterized by high production risk and unpredictable returns. Innovating in this kind of environment is very risky and calls for smart strategies of risk diversification. Hollywood is a recognized content innovation leader in the global movie industry, but the recent tendency for major production companies in the industry is to reduce risk by imitating previously successful productions rather than maintaining an innovation drive. We analyse here an alternative possible strategy based on risk diversification, and show how such strategy is viable for the Hollywood system whereas it is less viable for alternative, less market oriented movie production systems. We study cost/return data for 909 films from the US movie market 1988–99 by the five major US studios, and 118 films from the Italian market 1995–2003 by the three major Italian producers. Three different strategies of portfolio composition are tested, in a comparative perspective, in the US and Italy production and market environments. We find that portfolio diversification strategies are always successful in reducing operating risk in the US, but only partially so in Italy due to major differences in market size and players’ characteristics, and ultimately to differences in entrepreneurial culture
Feedforward networks in financial predictions: The future that modifies the present
No full textThe main goal of this paper is to show how relatively minor modifications of well-known algorithms (in particular, back propagation) can dramatically increase the performance of an artificial neural network (ANN) for time series prediction. We denote our proposed sets of modifications as the `self-momentum', `Freud' and `Jung' rules. In our opinion, they provide an example of an alternative approach to the design of learning strategies for ANNs, one that focuses on basic mathematical conceptualization rather than on formalism and demonstration. The complexity of actual prediction problems makes it necessary to experiment with modelling possibilities whose inherent mathematical properties are often not well understood yet. The problem of time series prediction in stock markets is a case in point. It is well known that asset price dynamics in financial markets are difficult to trace, let alone to predict with an operationally interesting degree of accuracy. We therefore take financial prediction as a meaningful test bed for the validation of our techniques. We discuss in some detail both the theoretical underpinnings of the technique and our case study about financial prediction, finding encouraging evidence that supports the theoretical and operational viability of our new ANN specifications. Ours is clearly only a preliminary step. Further developments of ANN architectures with more and more sophisticated `learning to learn' characteristics are now under study and test
Game-theoretic definitions of fairness and the contractualistic foundations of justice
No full textWe discuss game-theoretic interpretations of Rawls's theory of justice with special reference to the choice of the most appropriate solution concept. We show that Core-like solution concepts, as the one proposed by Laden (1991, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 20, 189-222), have undesirable implications in this context. The "Bargaining Set" has more satisfactory properties for any contractualistic approach
Optimism of the Will. Antonio Gramsci Takes in Max Weber
Full text linkResponding to Max Weber's dour predictions, we enlist Antonio Gramsci's optimism to suggest how culture can spike development. Weber's sociological focus took culture to mean shared beliefs and practices. As a culture that derives from the Protestant Ethic, capitalism waged a "war on pleasure." Weber warned that this unfeeling rationality would generate an "iron cage" to trap our humanity, but his book has been read, paradoxically, as a manual for the lock down. Gramsci, on the contrary, understood culture in its humanistic sense, as a field of aesthetic pleasure, innovation, and debate. For him, a precondition for transformational social change was the broad engagement of masses as empowered collectives (Weber favored charismatic leaders); and pleasure in idiosyncratic forms of artistic as well as rooted expression was the fuel for participating in personal and shared advances. This pleasure in art and collective interpretation contrasts with the exclusionary rituals of commodified pleasure typical of capitalist consumerism. Gramsci's confidence in the transformational role of creative culture provides a framework for understanding a new wave of inclusive artistic practices that originate in the Global South and that revive the arts as vehicles for active citizenship. Participatory art can re-enchant today's sorely disenchanted socio-cultural world of mature capitalism
Obesity as self-regulation failure: A “disease of affluence” that selectively hits the less affluent?
No full textAbstractAn effect of the long-term cycle of industrial and post-industrial global development is the increasingly generalized access to abundant and diversified food sources. This poses a substantial problem of self-regulation that mainly affects the less affluent and whose failures may play an important role in the explanation of the increasing social incidence of overweight and obesity problems.</jats:p
Disequilibrium Dynamics With Naive Agents in the Overlapping Generations Model With Money
No full textThis paper studies the disequilibrium dynamics of the overlapping generations model with money under the assumption that agents are not aware of the strategic opportunities left open by nonequilibrium trade. The standard OG model is extended to a continuous time framework. It is found that the continuous time adjustment dynamics may be asymptotically equivalent to the discrete time generational dynamics. Some examples and comments on the general result are provided
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