The instability of robust aggregation

Levis robust aggregation suggests a generalization of the standard ex ante mode of aggregating individuals expected utilities into a social choice function. This generalization applies some social choice rule not only to the actual individuals but also to hypothetical individuals with all possible combinations of the actual individuals probabilities and utilities. We show that robust aggregation can lead to preference reversals in the social choice when the very same decision situation is described with different degrees of detail, thus violating a desirable stability condition. We also show that any stable robust social choice rule must collapse back into the ex ante mode without recourse to hypothetical individuals. Under sufficient conditions, such as strong Pareto optimality, robust aggregation even leads to an infinite series of reversals in group choices. By contrast, stability is ubiquitous in the standard ex ante mode and is closely related to independence of irrelevant alternatives.I wish to thank Christs College, Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology for their generous financial and academic support. I am grateful to three anonymous referees for their helpful comments. I am much indebted to Isaac Levi, Philippe Mongin and Teddy Seidenfeld for their help and encouragement.     

Sociologists of the unexpected: Edward A. Ross and Georg Sinimel on the unintended consequences of modernity

The modern increase in opportunities for social activities also brings with it unintended side effects posed by the liberating potential and the acceleration of modern life. In this paper it is argued that the views reflected in Georg Simmel’s formal approach and in American sociologist Edward A. Ross’ reformative sociology are (1) complementary and (2) offer fresh insights for our current sociological understanding of unexpected consequences in contemporary “high modernity” or knowledge societies. A long forgotten nexus between the ideas of Simmel’s and the work of Ross will be reviewed in order to point out affinities between the two authors’ takes on the unintended and sometimes tragic moments in modern culture and their relevance for sociology today. Based on these discussions a fundamental mode for framing the unexpected in modern society as a recursively-linked component to the intended is illustrated.     

THE PROTESTANT FISCAL ETHIC: RELIGIOUS CONFESSION AND EURO SKEPTICISM IN GERMANY

During the European sovereign debt crisis, most countries that ran into fiscal trouble had Catholic majorities, whereas countries with Protestant majorities were able to avoid fiscal problems. We find that Christian‐conservative members of the German parliament from constituencies with higher shares of Protestants were more likely to vote against a third bailout for Greece. Survey data show that views on the euro differ between German Protestants and non‐Protestants at the individual level, too. Among Protestants, concerns about the euro have, compared to non‐Protestants, increased during the crisis. We show that this increase in concern is linked to a reduction of Protestants' subjective well‐being. We use the timing of survey interviews and news events in 2011 to account for the endogeneity of euro concerns. Emphasis on moral hazard concerns in Protestant theology may, thus, still shape economic preferences. (JEL D72, E00, I31, Z12)     

Private slave trade in the Dutch Indian Ocean world: a study into the networks and backgrounds of the slavers and the enslaved in South Asia and South Africa

This article explores the local and intercontinental networks that underpinned the private trade in slaves and the transportation of the enslaved in the VOC seaborne empire during the eighteenth century. We rely on two sets of complementary VOC records, with their respective shortcomings, to reveal information about those who were involved in this trade as sellers, buyers and traded. Our focus is on the Cape of Good Hope as a node with a high demand for slaves, and Cochin from where slaves were traded and transported to all regions of the empire, including the Cape. It is apparent from these sources that high ranking VOC officials, the Company rank and file, free citizens and Asians under VOC jurisdiction partook in this lucrative trade. Analyses of regions of origin, age, gender, and caste are provided, giving the reader a rare glimpse into the identity of the enslaved.     

Substituting for the State? Friendship Societies in Germany

Friendship societies are a specific type of voluntary associations that aim primarily to support a definable public benefit purpose—either an activity or a public or nonprofit entity. Over the past 20 years, these organizations have been mushrooming in Germany and elsewhere. More than 75,000 friendship societies are currently registered in Germany alone, and meanwhile they account for the majority of newly established associations. However, the general public typically perceives them as unreliable substitutes for the overburdened state. To assess whether these organizations can actually be reduced to this substitution function, the article draws on qualitative interviews with 70 chairpersons from various friendship societies in a German municipality. The study shows that friendship societies do much more than merely assuming responsibility for public benefit purposes and suggests focusing further research on the participatory potential of these associations.     

Emigration Rates From Sample Surveys: An Application to Senegal

What is the emigration rate of a country, and how reliable is that figure? Answering these questions is not at all straightforward. Most data on international migration are census data on foreign-born population. These migrant stock data describe the immigrant population in destination countries but offer limited information on the rate at which people leave their country of origin. The emigration rate depends on the number leaving in a given period and the population at risk of leaving, weighted by the duration at risk. Emigration surveys provide a useful data source for estimating emigration rates, provided that the estimation method accounts for sample design. In this study, emigration rates and confidence intervals are estimated from a sample survey of households in the Dakar region in Senegal, which was part of the Migration between Africa and Europe survey. The sample was a stratified two-stage sample with oversampling of households with members abroad or return migrants. A combination of methods of survival analysis (time-to-event data) and replication variance estimation (bootstrapping) yields emigration rates and design-consistent confidence intervals that are representative for the study population.     

On the integration of due date setting and order release control

This paper calls for a paradigm shift in the production control literature away from assuming due date setting and order release are two independent decision levels. When order release is controlled, jobs do not enter the shop floor directly but are retained in a pre-shop pool and released to meet certain performance targets. This makes the setting of accurate planned release dates – the point at which jobs transition from the pool to the shop floor – a key consideration when setting due dates. We develop a new approach to estimating planned release dates to be embedded in the Workload Control (WLC) concept. Our approach is unique as it anticipates the release decision as part of the due date setting procedure. This makes a second independent release decision superfluous and avoids a major cause of tardiness – deviations between (i) the planned release date used when calculating the delivery time allowance and (ii) the actual, realised release date. Simulation is used to compare the performance of WLC using two decision levels with the new single-level approach where the release decision is anticipated when setting the due date. Performance improvements are shown to be robust to uncertainty in processing time estimates.     

Deconstructing bottleneck shiftiness: the impact of bottleneck position on order release control in pure flow shops

Bottleneck shiftiness is an important managerial problem that negatively affects shop floor manageability. It has therefore received much research attention. Yet research has focused on how protective capacity can be used to influence bottleneck shiftiness rather than on assessing its operational impact. The latter is complex to evaluate since changing the degree of bottleneck shiftiness influences utilization, which makes the results of different experimental settings non-comparable. To overcome this problem, we take a different approach. Bottleneck shiftiness is decomposed by investigating its underlying phenomenon: the impact of the bottleneck position. Using simulation, we demonstrate that tighter control can be exercised, and better performance achieved, the further upstream the bottleneck is positioned. It is consequently important to be aware of the direction of the bottleneck shift. If the bottleneck shifts upstream, performance is likely to improve rather than deteriorate as is implicitly assumed in the literature.