Differential marginality,van den Brink fairness,and the Shapley value

We revisit the characterization of the Shapley value by van den Brink (Int J Game Theory, 2001, 30:309–319) via efficiency, the Null player axiom, and some fairness axiom. In particular, we show that this characterization also works within certain classes of TU games, including the classes of superadditive and of convex games. Further, we advocate some differential version of the marginality axiom (Young, Int J Game Theory, 1985, 14: 65–72), which turns out to be equivalent to the van den Brink fairness axiom on large classes of games.     

The Multilinear Extension and the Symmetric Coalition Banzhaf Value

Alonso-Meijide and Fiestras-Janeiro (2002, Annals of Operations Research 109, 213–227) proposed a modification of the Banzhaf value for games where a coalition structure is given. In this paper we present a method to compute this value by means of the multilinear extension of the game. A real-world numerical example illustrates the application procedure. MSC (2000) Classification: 91A12     

From Pavement to Piazza: Grassroots Social Work to Counteract the Globalization of Marginality

This paper—inspired by the experience of grassroots social work in Naples begun by M. Borrelli in the 1950s—emphasizes that “consciousness‐raising” and “community development” can be useful processes to stimulate responsible social participation on the part of the most marginal individuals and groups. To overcome a bureaucratic and pietistic model of the welfare state which serves in the long run to increase their dependence and socio‐cultural subordination, there is a need for alternative social policies, capable of improving people's empowerment and social citizenship. Giving more resources and decision‐making power to the most marginal could amount to changing an unfair and oppressive society from the roots up. This goal remains a moral imperative for both professional and voluntary social workers who believe in a fair, non‐violent and ecological model of development. Unfortunately, in Italy as elsewhere, neo‐liberal reforms of welfare states are tending in the opposite direction, partly as a result of out‐of‐date functionalist theories and by means of a worrying process of welfare marketization and globalization that actually increases the exclusion and marginality of the lower classes. This paper takes issue with current neo‐liberal trends by returning to a territory‐based and resident‐focused image of social work. This way, non‐profit agencies can play a more active and stimulating role in support of communitarian networks and help avoid the risk of the Third Sector's alternative spur being compromised by the otherwise “commodification” of welfare. Only in this way might one stop the transformation of non‐profit organizations into mere private providers for a buyer/controller state, more business‐minded than really concerned with freeing the poor and the marginal “underclass” from subordination and exclusion.     

Equal opportunities,true options or hidden unemployment? A comparative perspective on labour‐market marginality

Previous studies have shown that women generally adjust to unemployment better than men. This study shows that young women value work equally as highly as men, and have negative feelings when unemployed, which indicates the existence of a closed gender gap. However, children have a different influence on men's and women's unemployment experiences. Being a parent increases job-search activity and work involvement among men. On the other hand, children moderate negative experiences of unemployment among women, and they decrease their job-search activity and work involvement. Being a parent increases labour-market marginality among young unemployed women. For young men it is a motivational factor for searching for and getting a job. The comparison shows furthermore that patterns of re-employment vary in the involved countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Scotland. They reflect differences in the overall unemployment situation in the countries and the welfare strategies applied.     

Science,reason and value

There is a relatively simple argument which shows that science is not, in any important sense, value free. Further, if science is not value free, it may be that the values involved in science rest upon moral considerations. In this paper the author examines one argument for the claim that science essentially involves value, and then looks at the types of values which may be an essential facet of scientific inquiry.     

Age,autos, and the value of a statistical life

The value of a statistical life (VSL) is used to assign a dollar value to the benefits of health and safety regulations. Many of those regulations disproportionately benefit older people, but most estimates of the VSL come from hedonic wage regressions with few older workers and no retirees. Using automobile purchase decisions, I estimate a VSL for individuals from the age of 18 up to the age of 85. Combining information on vehicle holdings and use, household attributes, used vehicle prices, crash test results, and yearly fatal accidents for each make, model, and vintage automobile, I calculate a separate willingness to pay for reduced mortality for different age groups. I find a significant inverted-U shape to the age-VSL function that ranges from $1.5 to $19.2 million (in 2009 dollars). The shape and magnitude of the vehicle-based age-VSL relationship corroborate labor market estimates and extend the age range of revealed preference evidence on the relationship between age and the VSL.     

宪政:价值、形态与表现方式

宪政的价值在于通过法律的形式界定国家与社会、政府与公民的关系,规范政治权力,从而达到维护和发展人的尊严和权利之目的;其政治形态表现为将国家领域的政治问题置换成法律问题,以制度化、程序化的形式解决谁来掌握政治权力、政治权力的范围和限度、如何行使政治权力诸问题;而其常规表现则是政治问题的司法解决方式。     

Cigarette smoking,illicit drug use and the value of life

This article investigates the relationship between cigarette smoking and illicit drug use and compensating wage differentials for the risk of job-related death. Knowledge of an individual's experiences with cigarettes and illicit drugs is used to identify worker heterogeneity in job-risk preferences. The results show that individuals who are both nonsmokers and nondrug users work in the safest jobs and receive the highest compensating wage differentials for job-related risk. Significant differences in job risk and compensating differentials are also found between smokers and nonsmokers and drug users and nondrug users. Estimates of the statistical value of life increase from $2.9 million to $7.1 million when moving from the full sample of workers to those individuals classified as nonsmokers and non-drug users.     

责任,提升品牌价值

责任,是对人们所从事的事业一种尽心的态度。有个人责任、集体责任和国家责任。一个企业,要对市场和消费者负责,这就体现为企业的责任。中国房地产市场化十多年来,从最初的粗放型操作,到尊重市场规律开发,再到现在的以客户为鹄的的品质地产,显示了由利益追逐到责任树立的曲折过程。责任代表了品质。一个负责任的地产企业,会永远追求高品质的产品,     

Political information,gender and the vote: the differential impact of organizations,personal discussion,and the media on the electoral decisions of women and men

Although there are many demonstrated ways in which men and women approach politics differently, we know very little about how sources of political information, e.g., mass media, political organizations, differentially influence the vote choices of men and women. Using a rich, contextual dataset containing measures not only of respondent perceptions of political information, but actual content coding of those sources of political information, we estimate how television, newspapers, personal discussants, organizations, and political parties may have impacted the voting of men and women in the 1992 U.S. presidential election. We find that women’s vote choices are more likely than men’s to be influenced by the organizations to which they belong. Women are also more likely to respond to television news with a hostile media bias—they see television newscasts as definitively favoring the candidate that they oppose. We address possible explanations for these patterns of results and point towards directions for additional research.     

Ambiguity and the value of information

The value of information is studied in a non-expected utility model of ambiguity with second-order probabilities. Information that reduces ambiguity has a positive value for ambiguity-averse decision makers, and the value of information that resolves ambiguity increases with greater ambiguity and with greater ambiguity aversion. Since information that resolves risk is valuable, and must also resolve ambiguity, the value of such information for ambiguity averters increases with greater ambiguity and with greater ambiguity aversion.     

Coalitional desirability and the equal division value

Theory and Decision - We introduce three natural collective variants of the well-known axiom of desirability (Maschler and Peleg in Pac J Math 18:289–328, 1966), which require that if the...     

民主行政:价值·框架·生态环境

在当今各国的公共行政改革中 ,民主的价值日益得到人们的重视。民主行政的基本框架主要包括建立参与型的公共行政决策架构 ,实施程序化的公共行政管理模式 ,推行竞争性的公共服务机制。民主行政运作所需要的社会生态环境是 ,以法治为保证的民主政治体制的确立、以市场为基础的公民社会的培育和以公开为前提的社会信息传播机制的发展     

The value of private safety versus the value of public safety

In this study, one group of respondents is offered to purchase a safety device to be installed in their cars, while another group is offered a public safety program (improved road quality) which results in the same size risk reduction. In terms of the value of a statistical life, our results are very reasonable. However, the WTP for the private safety device ishigher than the WTP for the public safety measure. Drawing on a model developed by Jones-Lee (1991), we show that some types of altruists may, but need not, be willing to pay more for a private risk reduction than for a uniform risk reduction of the same magnitude. Still, our empirical results are surprising, and further empirical research seems warranted.     

Risk aversion and the value of diagnostic tests

Theory and Decision - Diagnostic tests allow better informed medical decisions when there is uncertainty about a patient’s health status and, therefore, about the desirability to undertake...     

The sure thing principle and the value of information

This paper examines the relationship between Savage's sure thing principle and the value of information. We present two classes of results. First, we show that, under a consequentialist axiom, the sure-thing principle is neither sufficient nor necessary for perfect information to be always desirable: specifically, under consequentialism, the sure thing principle is not implied by the condition that perfect information is always valuable; moreover, the joint imposition of the sure thing principle, consequentialism and either one of two state independence axioms does not imply that perfect information is always desirable. Second, we demonstrate that, under consequentialism, the sure thing principle is necessary for a nonnegative value of possibly imperfect information (though of course the principle is still not sufficient). One implication of these results is that the sure thing principle, under consequentialism, plays a somewhat different role in ensuring dynamic consistency in decision making under uncertainty than does the independence axiom in decision making under risk.