Stochastic dominance in multicriterion analysis under risk

Traditionally, in the literature on the modelling of decision aids one notes the propensity to treat expected utility models and outranking relation models as rivals. It may be possible, however, to benefit from the use of both approaches in a risky decision context. Stochastic dominance conditions can be used to establish, for each criterion, the preferences of a decision maker and to characterise them by a concave or convex utility function.Two levels of complexity in preference elicitation, designated as clear and unclear, are distinguished. Only in the case of unclear preferences is it potentially interesting to attempt to estimate the value function of the decision maker, thus obtaining his (her) preferences with a reduced number of questions. The number of questions that must be asked of the decision maker depends upon the level of the concordance threshold that he(she) requires in the construction of the outranking relations using the ELECTRE method.     

Painting the Prison 'Red': Constructing and Experiencing Aboriginal Identities in Prison

Dominant Western paradigms of the social work profession havelargely failed to integrate Aboriginal traditional knowledgesand practices on healing and helping. This paper contributesto the promotion of a context-based approach to social workin prison by examining Aboriginality from both institutionaland individual points of view. Drawing on documentary analysesand interviews with Aboriginal women prisoners in Canada, thepaper sheds light on the prison’s endorsement of a hegemonicvision of Aboriginality, and on social work practitioners’inclination to adhere to it. Conversely, we argue that Aboriginalwomen prisoners negotiate their passage into prison throughAboriginal self-identification configurations that often havelittle in common with the prison’s vision of Aboriginality.Service delivery in prison may be enhanced by considering individualmodes of resisting identity-based oppression in prison, andby challenging prisons’ master narrative on Aboriginality.     

Sharing beliefs and the absence of betting in the Choquet expected utility model

Choquet expected utility maximizers tend to behave in a more “cautious” way than Bayesian agents, i. e. expected utility maximizers. We illustrate this phenomenon in the particular case of betting behavior. Specifically, consider agents who are Choquet expected utility maximizers. Then, if the economy is large, Pareto optimal allocations provide full insurance if and only if the agents share at least on prior, i. e., if the intersection of the core of the capacities representing their beliefs is non empty. In the expected utility case, this is true only if they have a common prior. Received: July 2000; revised version: May 2001     

Non-parametric estimation of the long-range dependence exponent for Gaussian processes

We consider a class of long-range-dependent Gaussian processes defined in a semiparametric framework. We propose a new estimator of the long-range dependence parameter, based on the integration of the periodogram in two windows. We show that it is asymptotically Gaussian and calculate the rate of convergence. We optimise parameters defining the window function for the minimum mean-square-error criterion. In a Monte-Carlo study, we compare the proposed estimator with previously studied estimators.     

Tribute to Jean-Yves Jaffray

Tribute to Jean-Yves Jaffray by the French Group of Decision Theory.     

A mixed method study of propensity for participatory evaluation

One way to increase the use of evaluation results is practical participatory evaluation (PPE), which enables non-evaluator participants to join the evaluation process in a participatory mode. We examined the propensity for PPE of health professionals by focusing on four components: learning, working in groups, using judgment and using systematic methods. We interviewed the professionals at a Haitian health institution to determine their positioning on a scale of propensity (low, medium and high) for the four components. The professionals defined each component in relation to the energy puts into them, being more or less proactive. Facilitating elements for all three levels of propensity integration included past positive experiences, external pressure and a desire for better individual and organizational performance. Impeding factors included a lack of available resources perceived responsibilities and commitments toward private patients. The reported advantages included improved organizational performance and idea sharing, and the disadvantages included availability of, difficulty implementing solutions and altered human relationships.     

Biopower and Reproductive Loss

Extensive research indicates that mothers in particular grieve a variety of losses – miscarriage, stillbirth, ectopic pregnancy, induced abortions, newborn deaths – at all gestational stages, yet often find their grief invalidated. In turn, the lack of support or affirmation of these grief responses can be experienced as an exacerbation of the initial impact of death. This painful social silence that parents have expressed as part of their reproductive loss serves as the foundation for this paper, which explores both the strategic silences and discourses in the network of knowledges constituting reproductive loss in an era of biopower. The first section of the paper outlines the (bio)medicalization of the pregnant-unborn body, tracing this process through the deployment of sexuality that socialized fertility and the female body in the early eighteenth century. The second section discusses the responsibilization of the pregnant-unborn body through the technology of risk. Here I show how death infuses the discourse of state intervention in mortality rates, but as a strategic silence mobilizing the ethics of responsibility while never revealing the limits of biopower or the state's promise to foster, protect and enhance life. The third section turns to two discursive strategies tying the pregnant body and the foetal body in relation of responsibility: antenatal care and the reduction of perinatal mortality in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western societies. These serve as more specific illustrations of how reproductive loss is taken up in politics of risk that remains in the biomedical understanding of pregnancy and childbirth today. I conclude with some reflections on the intercorporeality of becoming-unborn and becoming-death, connecting the struggle of parents bereaved by reproductive loss with a broader struggle to move beyond the biomedical control of life and death in an era of biopower.