Weakly implementable social choice rules

Previous investigations have shown that a social choice function which is partially implementable must be characterized by pervasive veto power. This paper investigates how much additional latitude in the design of social choice functions, and how much relief from this vetoers result, can be achieved by examining multi-valued social choice rules and relaxing the requirement of partial implementability to a requirement that we call weak partial implementability. We find that the power structures which characterize partially implementable social choice functions, including the veto properties, also characterize weakly partially implementable social choice rules. The conclusion is that invoking multi-valuedness and implementation of appealing social choice rules in strong Nash equilibria. Our results apparently exhaust the possibilities for implementation in strong Nash equilibrium. If any implementation possibility results are to be achieved, they can apparently come only by weakening the equilibrium requirement.     

On admissible strategies and manipulation of social choice procedures

A collective choice mechanism can be viewed as a game in normal form; in this article it is shown, for very attractive rules and for sets with any number of alternatives, how individuals involved in a collective decision problem can construct the preferences they choose to express. An example is given with a version of plurality rule. Manipulability results are deduced from such a characterization.     

For an integrative theory of social behaviour: Theorising with and beyond rational choice theory

Most sociologists are not content with merely relating macrosocial phenomena to preceding macrosocial causes in their causal explanations of social phenomena. Instead they are seeking to provide (non‐reductive) microfoundations with which they can corroborate and make understandable the connection between macrosocial phenomena. In order to do so a theory (or theories) of human action is required. One such theory, rational choice theory (RCT), has long been viewed with strong suspicion in sociology. I show such suspicion to be partially justified. RCT cannot be a general theory of social behaviour. Nonetheless, there are important insights in various versions of RCT that should not be discarded. In order to improve upon RCT and move toward a more unified or integrative theory of action social‐psychological research has to be taken note of. I demonstrate how dual‐process theories and the research on heuristics can help sociologists move beyond RCT without contradicting some of its more basic insights.     

Weak strategy proofness: The case of nonbinary social choice functions

It is now well known that under some eminently acceptable behavioral rule in comparing various power sets every nonimposed, binary, multivalued social choice mechanism is strategy-proof or oligarchic. Various attempts have been made to resolve the paradox either by relaxing binariness or by weakening the notion of strategy-proofness. By relaxing both binariness and the notion of strategy-proofness this paper shows that the trade-off between weak strategy-proofness and various unacceptable power structures, such as oligarchy or dictatorship, would remain intact.The helpful comments and suggestions of an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged.     

Aggregation theorems and multidimensional stochastic choice models

In many choice situations, the options are multidimensional. Numerous probabilistic models have been developed for such choices between multidimensional options and for the parallel choices determined by one or more components of such options. In this paper, it is assumed that a functional relation exists between the choice probabilities over the multidimensional options and the choice probabilities over the associated component unidimensional options. It is shown that if that function satisfies a marginalization property then it is essentially an arithmetic mean, and if the function satisfies a likelihood independence property then it is a weighted geometric mean. The results are related to those on the combination of expert opinion, and various probabilistic models in the choice literature are shown to have the geometric mean form.     

Environmental activation of citizens in the context of policy agenda formation and the influence of social capital

Citizens activation for environmental issues is a significant parameter for the resolution of environmental problems. The present article analyzes the influence of social factors, connected with social capital literature, on environmental activation. In particular, social capital is defined as a multi-dimensional concept consisting of several structural and cognitive elements. Through a theoretical analysis, the main links between social capital components and environmental activation are underlined. Furthermore, the results of an empirical survey are presented highlighting that several elements of social capital are positively connected with environmental activation along with issues of linking social capital.     

Choice and control in social care: Experiences of older self-funders in England

This paper considers the experiences of older self-funders in England in the context of policies promoting choice and control. Self-funders are people who are not state-funded; they pay for social care from their own resources. Choice and control have been operationalized through personal budgets, based on the assumption that managing resources enhances ability to access appropriate care and support. This paper uses data from 40 qualitative interviews with self-funders and their relatives, and 19 with professionals. It explores the impact of the financial and social capital that self-funders are assumed to have and asks how older self-funders experience choice and control. The study found that older self-funders drew on personal experiences, family, and friends for information; were reluctant to spend their wealth on care due to competing priorities; and felt they had more control over the timing of decisions than people who were state-funded. Personal wealth appears to be perceived differently to funds “gifted” to people through cash for care schemes.     

The Australian Social Inclusion Agenda: A New Approach to Social Policy?

The Social Inclusion Agenda (‘SIA’) was introduced by the Australian Labor Party (‘ALP’) in the lead up to the 2007 federal election. The rhetoric was hopeful, proposing to reframe the government's approach to disadvantage. Rhetoric aside, what the then opposition meant when it talked of building social inclusion (‘SI’) was less clear than may have immediately met the eye. This paper offers an introductory analysis and review of the SIA. It first considers why Australia might benefit from a readjustment in its social policy direction, reflecting on the concepts of poverty and Amartya Sen's ‘capabilities approach‘. Second, it offers a critical overview of the main conceptions of SI/Social Exclusion. Third, it applies these first two parts of analysis to developments to date with the SIA. This part, whilst limited in scope and preliminary at best, offers some general comments as to the possibilities and pitfalls of the SIA and proposes the way forward from an analytical perspective in terms of guiding the SIA in a desirable direction.     

Conspicuous conservatism in risk choice

We analyze the risk levels chosen by agents who have private information regarding their quality, and whose performance will be judged and rewarded by outsiders. Assume that risk choice is observable. Agents will choose risk strategically to enhance their expected reputations. We show that conspicuous conservatism results: agents of different qualities choose levels below those that would be chosen if quality were observable. This happens because bad agents must cloak their identity by choosing the same risk level as good agents, and good agents are more likely to distinguish themselves if they reduce the risk level. Our results contrast starkly with those for the case when risk choice cannot be observed.

论社会创新

社会创新是当代以知识为基础的全球社会发展和我国新型社会转型时期社会变迁的主导形式 ,它同技术创新相互结合 ,共同满足着当代社会发展的全面需要和构成社会可持续发展的综合动力基础。社会创新研究是对于中国现代化具有重大理论与现实意义的前沿型课题 ,应纳入多学科的研究视野 ,并在探索中使之学科化和使学科创新化     

Hidden information acquisition and static choice

This note explores the consequence of hidden information acquisition for static choice theory. We show that any choice function in the observable problem can be consistent with some well-behaved choice function in a metaproblem with unobservable costly information acquisition. This illustrates how choices may not satisfy consistency conditions because a decision maker's decision process (in this case, information acquisition) depends on her feasible set. It also illustrates the importance of modeling the source of violations of consistency conditions, rather than simply weakening axioms on preferences.     

Regret theory with general choice sets

The regret theory of choice under uncertainty proposed by Loomes and Sugden has performed well in explaining and predicting violations of Expected Utility theory. The original version of the model was confined to pairwise choices, which limited its usefulness as an economic theory of choice. Axioms for a more general form of regret theory have been proposed by Loomes and Sugden. In this article, it is shown that a simple nonmanipulability requirement is sufficient to characterize the functional form for regret theory with general choice sets. The stochastic dominance and comparative static properties of the model are outlined. A number of special cases are derived in which regret theory is equivalent to other well-known theories of choice under uncertainty.I would like to thank Graham Loomes, Robert Sugden, Peter Wakker, and Nancy Wallace for helpful comments and criticism.     

Is there a field of social work?: Trainees evaluating social problems and social work

My aim was to study the experiences and priorities of two age groups of social work students practicing in client-centered social work. This article is based on the research on rationality and language games in social work. The target groups of the research project as a whole were the actors: the heads and social workers or activists in public social welfare and health care agencies and institutions and in voluntary associations and action groups, and finally, two subsequent classes of students from a school of social work, during their practicing periods. This article concentrates on the trainees. At first, the trainees wrote essays and kept diaries. Secondly, they marked their standings on graphs visualizing different types of information contents and social relation structures. Thirdly, they made their choices of reasons for and solutions to social problems on a problem wheel. The trainees' study, using different data gathering techniques, partly confirms the results of the research of the other actor groups, in which the data were derived using questionnaires and interviews. The trainees' study shows variation in the respondents' priorities within and between specified social problem categories. Qualitatively analyzed, however, the characterizations of social work, both those who currently act in and those aiming to enter this field, resemble one another.     

Using critical social theory to develop a conceptual framework for comparative social work

This paper sets out a conceptual framework for comparing and contrasting social work within nation-states and across international boundaries. The framework is "situated" theoretically within a (late)modernist understanding of events within advanced capitalism and draws primarily on Habermas' critical social theory. The authors apply this framework to explicate the development of social work in Northern Ireland, a region in which high levels of political conflict mark it out as a site of local, national and international interest. It is suggested that the ideas developed from the case study have relevance for the social professions in other countries, particularly where social conflict is in evidence.     

现代国有企业制度与管理层的外部选择

政府对国有企业管理层的外部选择既不是现代国有企业制度不完善的表现,也不可能取代国有企业的制度改革,相反,外部选择和现代企业制度特别是企业治理结构都是保证国有企业性质和绩效不可或缺的有机组成部分.只有二者形成事前选择与事后监督的动态制约体系,才能克服国有企业中的制度失灵和管理者行为的不一致性问题.事实表明,国有企业管理者行为的不一致的原因主要在于国有企业制度不完善,因而改正的办法是深化制度改革,而不是简单地代之以强化外部选择.     

Rapid growth or stagnation: An economic policy choice

Why has the American economy performed so poorly in the past decade, especially in comparison with the two prior decades? This paper makes the theoretical and empirical case that a series of economic policy decisions provides the most satisfactory explanation and that policy reform will restore good economic performance. The paper also considers alternative explanations including the idea of a new secular stagnation unrelated to policy and the view that the deep financial crisis inevitably delayed recovery from the recession.     

Intertemporal choice under timing risk: An experimental approach

This paper investigates how individuals evaluate delayed outcomes with risky realization times. Under the discounted expected utility (DEU) model, such evaluations depend only on intertemporal preferences. We obtain several testable hypotheses using the DEU model as a benchmark and test these hypotheses in three experiments. In general, our results show that the DEU model is a poor predictor of intertemporal choice behavior under timing risk. We found that individuals are averse to timing risk and that they evaluate timing lotteries in a rank-dependent fashion. The main driver of timing risk aversion is nothing but probabilistic risk aversion that stems from the nonlinear treatment of probabilities.     

Testing between alternative models of choice under uncertainty—Comment

Battaglio, Kagel, and Jiranyakul use experimental tests to compare rank-dependent expected utility (RDEU), regret theory, prospect theory, and Machina's generalized smooth preferences model. They conclude that none of these models consistently organizes the data. The purpose of this note is to point out that RDEU theory was tested in combination with a hypothesis on the choice of functional form that has been explicitly rejected by the original author of the model (Quiggin, 1982, 1987). When the original form of RDEU theory is tested, it performs quite well.     

Grandparenthood,Life Review,and Psychosocial Development

No abstract available for this article.