Decreasing higher-order absolute risk aversion and higher-degree stochastic dominance

Fishburn and Vickson (Stochastic dominance: an approach to decision-making under risk, Lexington Books, D.C. Heath and Company, Lexington, pp. 39–113, 1978) showed that, when applied to random alternatives with an equal mean, 3rd-degree and decreasing absolute risk aversion stochastic dominances represent equivalent rules. The present paper generalizes this result to higher degrees. Specifically, higher-degree stochastic dominance rules and common preference by all decision makers with decreasing higher-order absolute risk aversion are shown to coincide under appropriate constraints on the respective moments of the random variables to be compared.     

Convex stochastic dominance with finite consequence sets

Stochastic dominance is a notion in expected-utility decision theory which has been developed to facilitate the analysis of risky or uncertain decision alternatives when the full form of the decision maker's von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function on the consequence space X is not completely specified. For example, if f and g are probability functions on X which correspond to two risky alternatives, then f first-degree stochastically dominates g if, for every consequence x in X, the chance of getting a consequence that is preferred to x is as great under f as under g. When this is true, the expected utility of f must be as great as the expected utility of g.Most work in stochastic dominance has been based on increasing utility functions on X with X an interval on the real line. The present paper, following [1], formulates appropriate notions of first-degree and second-degree stochastic dominance when X is an arbitrary finite set. The only structure imposed on X arises from the decision maker's preferences. It is shown how typical analyses with stochastic dominance can be enriched by applying the notion to convex combinations of probability functions. The potential applications of convex stochastic dominance include analyses of simple-majority voting on risky alternatives when voters have similar preference orders on the consequences.     

Increasing Risk: Some Direct Constructions

This article extends the classic RothschildNStiglitz characterization of comparative risk ("increasing risk") in two directions. By adopting a more general definition of "mean preserving spread" (MPS), it provides a direct construction of a sequence of MPS's linking any pair of distributions that are ranked in terms of comparative risk. It also provides a direct, explicit construction of a zero-conditional-mean "noise" variable for any such pair of distributions. Both results are extended to the case of second order stochastic dominance.     

Sing … Then Think: Musical Interventions and Nondeliberative Forms of Practice in Social Work Groups

ABSTRACT

The positive effects of music have been demonstrated worldwide in many fields including social work, psychology, medicine, and education. Musical interventions including music listening, lyric analysis, and singing have also been found effective in group work. This article, guided by Norma Lang’s nondeliberative theory, aims to provide the “why,” “when,” and “how” of incorporating music into social work groups. It also provides the reader with a toolbox of musical interventions and the encouragement to utilize these “artful, actional, and analogic” activities in group work.     

From fun to fraught: marketing to kids and regulating “risky foods” in Canada

ABSTRACT

In an era of industrialized food production, ultra-processed foods, “Big Food” marketing, and growing obesity rates, food has come to be framed as an object of risk – and as an object of regulation. Such reframing has fascinating implications related to issues of responsibility and decision making, especially when it comes to children’s food. This article probes the relationship between representation, regulation and “risky” consumption with respect to children’s food. I examine how child-targeted foods become framed as “risky” and what counts as “risky” food messaging under Health Canada’s commitment to restrict the marketing of unhealthy foods to children. Detailing the tension between food as a risk object and food as a child object, I suggest how issues of semantic provisioning and the politics of the unseen work to complicate and destabilize the (seemingly) straightforward process of prohibiting unhealthy food marketing to children.     

Spatial externalities and risk in interdependent security games

Individuals regularly invest in self-protection to reduce the risk of an adverse event. The effectiveness of self-protection often depends on the actions of other economic agents and can be modeled as a stochastic coordination game with multiple Pareto-ranked equilibria. We use lab experiments to analyze tacit coordination in stochastic games with two kinds of interdependencies in payoffs: “non-spatial” in which every agent’s action has an impact on the risk faced by every other agent, and “spatial” in which agents only impact the risk faced by their immediate neighbors. We also compare behavior in the stochastic games to deterministic versions of the same games. We find that coordination on the payoff-dominant equilibrium is significantly easier in the deterministic games than in the stochastic games and that spatial interdependencies lead to greater levels of coordination in the deterministic game but not in the stochastic game. The difficulty with coordination observed in the stochastic games has important implications for many real-world examples of interdependent security and also illustrates the importance of not relying on data from deterministic experiments to analyze behavior in settings with risk.     

Ross' measure of risk aversion and portfolio selection

This article shows that if Ross' definition of riskier is replaced by a more traditional definition, such as a mean-preserving spread or second-degree stochastic dominance, then the application of Ross's stronger measure of risk aversion to the portfolio problem may no longer produce the desired result. It is also shown that the stronger measure may not perform satisfactorily when applied to exponential utility functions.The authors are grateful to John Pratt for his helpful comments.     

Changes in multiplicative background risk and risk-taking behavior

This article analyzes the conditions under which any change in a multiplicative background risk induces a more cautious behavior. We give necessary and sufficient conditions under which any change in the multiplicative background risk with respect to the Nth-degree stochastic dominance raises local risk aversion. Surprisingly, decreasing relative risk aversion of any order up to N in the sense of Pratt (Econometrica 32:122–136, 1964) coupled with decreasing relative risk aversion in the sense of Ross (Econometrica 49:631–638, 1981) are sufficient to guarantee an increase in local risk aversion after any deterioration of the multiplicative background risk thanks to the Nth-degree stochastic dominance. We link our results concerning second-order stochastic dominance with the concept of multiplicative risk vulnerability.     

Stronger utility

Empirical research often requires a method how to convert a deterministic economic theory into an econometric model. A popular method is to add a random error term on the utility scale. This method, however, ignores stochastic dominance. A modification of this method is proposed to account for stochastic dominance. The modified model compares favorably to other existing models in terms of goodness of fit to experimental data. The modified model can rationalize the preference reversal phenomenon. An intuitive axiomatic characterization of the modified model is provided. Important microeconomic concept of risk aversion is well defined in the modified model.     

No-betting Pareto under ambiguity

It has been argued that Pareto-improving trade is not as compelling under uncertainty as it is under certainty. The former may involve agents with different beliefs, who might wish to execute trades that are no more than betting. In response, the concept of no-betting Pareto dominance was introduced, requiring that putative Pareto improvements must be rationalizable by some common probabilities, even though the participants’ beliefs may differ. In this paper, we argue that this definition might be too narrow for use when agents are not Bayesian. Agents who face ambiguity might wish to trade in ways that can be justified by common ambiguity, though not necessarily by common probabilities. We accordingly extend the notion of no-betting Pareto dominance to characterize trades than are “no-betting Pareto” ranked according to the maxmin expected utility model.

     

Generalized similarity judgments: An alternative explanation for choice anomalies

Rubinstein's (1988) procedure for choosing between risky prospects, based, in part, upon similarities between prizes and probabilities across lotteries, is modified and extended to apply to a more general class of binary choices. This modified procedure is shown to imply behaviors following from Loomes and Sugden's (1982) Regret Theory, although under more general conditions, and provides an alternative explanation for much of the data which led to the specification of Prospect Theory's value and decision weighing functions. The procedure also explains observed violations of stochastic dominance, transitivity, and invariance not accounted for in available alternatives to expected utility.     

Feddersen and Pesendorfer meet Ellsberg

The Condorcet Jury Theorem formalises the “wisdom of crowds”: binary decisions made by majority vote are asymptotically correct as the number of voters tends to infinity. This classical result assumes like-minded, expected utility maximising voters who all share a common prior belief about the right decision. Ellis (Theor Econo 11(3): 865–895, 2016) shows that when voters have ambiguous prior beliefs—a (closed, convex) set of priors—and follow maxmin expected utility (MEU), such wisdom requires that voters’ beliefs satisfy a “disjoint posteriors” condition: different private signals lead to posterior sets with disjoint interiors. Both the original theorem and Ellis’s generalisation assume symmetric penalties for wrong decisions. If, as in the jury context, errors attract asymmetric penalties then it is natural to consider voting rules that raise the hurdle for the decision carrying the heavier penalty for error (such as conviction in jury trials). In a classical model, Feddersen and Pesendorfer (Am Politi Sci Rev 92(1):23–35, 1998) have shown that, paradoxically, raising this hurdle may actually increase the likelihood of the more serious error. In particular, crowds are not wise under the unanimity rule: the probability of the more serious error does not vanish as the crowd size tends to infinity. We show that this “Jury Paradox” persists in the presence of ambiguity, whether or not juror beliefs satisfy Ellis’s “disjoint posteriors” condition. We also characterise the strictly mixed equilibria of this model and study their properties. Such equilibria cannot exist in the absence of ambiguity but may exist for arbitrarily large jury size when ambiguity is present. In addition to uninformative strictly mixed equilibria, analogous to those exhibited by Ellis (Theor Econo 11(3): 865–895, 2016), there may also exist strictly mixed equilibria which are informative about voter signals.

     

An evaluative system for restructuring the literary history of modern China

当下的中国处于一个价值多元的时代,以往的建立于进化论、阶级论和启蒙主义 的文学史观也是颇有价值的;但是,进入21世纪,由于“以人为本”与“和谐社会” 目标的提出,也由于社会时空、文学功能和美学趣味的巨大变化,教材型的中国现代 文学史已远不能适应时代、社会和文学的发展需要,因此亟待重建和确立一个更为公 正、平等与合理的价值评估体系。这个评估体系是以人道主义为最高原则,以真、 善、美为三个闪光点,其最大优势是具有普适性、超越性、公正性和人本性的功能特 点。

关键词: 现代中国文学史?评估体系?价值重建?人道主义?真善美和谐统一

China is now in an era of multiple values. While there is some virtue in previous theories on the history of literature based on the theory of evolution, class struggle and the enlightenment, when it comes to the twenty‐first century, the histories of modern Chinese literature used in teaching are far from adequate for meeting the developmental needs of the times, society and literature. This is especially so in view of the putting forward of the goals of “putting people first” and “the harmonious society,” and the great changes taking place in time and space, the function of literature and aesthetic taste. Hence there is an urgent need to restructure this history and establish a more fair, equal and reasonable system of evaluation. Such a system would have humanism as its highest principle, and truth, goodness and beauty as its three virtues. Its great superiority would be its functional characteristics of universality, transcendence, fairness, and human‐centeredness.     

Learning to smell: on the shifting modalities of experience

ABSTRACT

How can one learn to perceive? The study of an expert training shows how olfactory learning combines two operations and modalities of experience: firstly, it rests upon doubt and the questioning of perception to turn its undisputable evidence into a changing plurality. Secondly, perception is reconstructed and stabilized according to a set of chosen constraints, thanks to a perpetual control and reworking of the inadequate perceptions.

This analysis brings us to reconsider the interpretation of the notion of “attention”. Trainees focusing on their perception do not make it more salient, precise and detailed, as per the representational interpretation of perception. They question it. In so doing, they foster a surge of “shades” and make it plural and variable. Attention denotes here a process of perceptual destabilization, through doubt.

Additionally, in the cases studied, the reflexivity that enables learning shows deconstructive aspects: through doubt, the surrounding world turns from self-evident to changing and plural. This does not fit the usual constructive character of reflexivity, as in “mind-” or “self-building” processes, for instance. At the core of the learning process, the shifting modalities of perception seem to open the door to a larger variety of understandings of reflexivity and their correlative selves.     

从臣民到市民：韦伯著作中的城市类型学、城市的动态演变与非正当性支配研究

韦伯“正当性支配”的概念可分为“权威主义命令权”与“正当性信仰”两个要素。在现代政治秩序的视域下，二者的失调威胁到秩序的稳定，造成了“正当性危机”，而应对之道就是重新整合“正当性信仰”，同时避免过度整合带来的对“日常需求”的破坏。本文从韦伯“非正当性支配”入手，通过对中世纪西方城市的类型学比较以及对城市市民的身份特征、生活—工作风格、政治诉求、参与法律过程的分析，发现“非正当性支配”提供了一条西方文明特有的自下而上能够保全“日常需求”的路径，从而给“正当性信仰”的整合以及“正当性危机”的解决提供了新的可能性。     

A Study of the Development of Alcohol Use Disorder in Muslim Immigrant Workers in Korea

Abstract

This study examines the process by which Muslim immigrant workers, prohibited by their religion from drinking, develop alcohol use disorder when working in Korea. Participants were seven male immigrant workers who have lived in Korea for 6–10?years and all experienced a change in immigrant status, shifting from registered to unregistered. Utilizing grounded theory devised by Strauss and Corbin, 87 concepts, 24 subcategories, and 10 categories were derived as a result. By converting these categories into a paradigm model, participants moved through stages of “self-monitoring,” “confusion,” “self-despair,” and “daily collapse” as they developed alcohol use disorder, and began to take on an existence as drifters, not settling into life in Korea. Their “learning experiences of drinking to survive turning into experiences of causing social death” is considered a core category. The study’s results suggest that a rehabilitation program for immigrant workers needs to be developed wherein the program not only enables them to reflect on their current existence but also allows them to develop specific coping skills. Future research should be broadened to consider social support mechanisms and viewpoints of other people, including female immigrant workers, and local community members in close contact with Muslim immigrant workers.     

Ordinal utility models of decision making under uncertainty

This paper studies two models of rational behavior under uncertainty whose predictions are invariant under ordinal transformations of utility. The quantile utility model assumes that the agent maximizes some quantile of the distribution of utility. The utility mass model assumes maximization of the probability of obtaining an outcome whose utility is higher than some fixed critical value. Both models satisfy weak stochastic dominance. Lexicographic refinements satisfy strong dominance.The study of these utility models suggests a significant generalization of traditional ideas of riskiness and risk preference. We define one action to be riskier than another if the utility distribution of the latter crosses that of the former from below. The single crossing property is equivalent to a minmax spread of a random variable. With relative risk defined by the single crossing criterion, the risk preference of a quantile utility maximizer increases with the utility distribution quantile that he maximizes. The risk preference of a utility mass maximizer increases with his critical utility value.     

Talking about citizenship in New Zealand

Abstract

This paper fleshes out the rather sparse empirical literature on citizenship with data collected from seven focus groups involving a wide range of New Zealanders. Results indicate that the term “citizenship” is relatively unimportant to identity and belonging compared to “family” and “community”. Yet there is considerable agreement about the key elements of citizenship and what makes a “good citizen”. Knowledge about citizenship, however, is not evenly distributed or experienced in the same way by different groups of New Zealanders, with Maori participants offering notably more negative perspectives on citizenship, and benefit recipients most likely to feel like “second‐class citizens”. Against predictions, the findings further suggest that neo‐liberal reforms have not eliminated a belief in community spirit and collective solutions to social problems. Although New Zealanders do believe that individuals should be responsible for themselves, they also expect government to ensure the social and economic conditions that make this possible.     

E-Nose for News?

ABSTRACT

Many journalists claim to have a “nose for news.” This metaphor, where a body part is used in a transferred sense for metaphorical change has occupied a central place in journalists' discourses. It appears to express something essential about their identity, profession, practice, and how they “see” and experience the world. This article uses the figure/ground approach of Marshall McLuhan to inform an exploration of the “nose for news” metaphor. By studying the “nose for news” we can understand how and why electronic noses and the Internet have made this once vital and living metaphor obsolete. We can also discover ways to reanimate this metaphor in order to: (a) help recover something of the essence of journalism expressed by journalists' claims to possess a “nose for news,” and (b) re-conceptualize the current “crisis” in journalism.     

Implications of Large Burial Sites of Songze Culture

江苏省张家港市东山村崧泽文化早中期大墓的发现, 证明长江下游在距今 五千七、八百年以前已存在明显的社会分化, 初级王权已经产生, 社会已进入“古 国” ¹ 1 “古国” (guguo), a concept put forward by Su Bingqi, literally means “ancient state.” This literal translation is adopted in this paper. However, the author believes that in Su’s theory, guguo is roughly equivalent to “chiefdom” in the West. 阶段。在中国古代文明演进过程中, 率先开始社会重大转型的不是黄河中游的 中原地区, 也不是以古长城地带为中心的北方地区, 而是崧泽文化所在的长江下游地 区。该遗址的发现还表明, 在文明化进程中, 中国古代最早出现的 “古国” 的性质和 表现形式并不完全一样, 有的是神权至上, 有的是王权至上, 从而导致其发展方向和 发展前途的不同。

关键词: 崧泽文化 社会分化 王权

The discovery of large burial sites belonging to the early and middle stages of Songze Culture at Dongshan Village, Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu Province, shows that distinct social polarization had already emerged in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River 5,700 or 5,800 years ago, when the initial stage of kingly power had taken shape and society had entered the stage of the “ancient states.” In the course of the evolution of ancient Chinese civilization, this area—rather than the Central Plains in the middle reaches of the Yellow River or the northern area centered around the ancient Great Wall—was the first to experience significant social transformation. This discovery also indicates that when the “ancient states” first appeared, they varied in form and character: some took the form of theocracies while others were dominated by kingly power. These differences meant that they developed in different directions and had different outcomes.