Weighted distances between preferences

Individual disagreements are assumed to be reflected in the preferences. Distance functions, e.g., the well-known Kemeny (1959) metric, are used to measure these disagreements. However, a disagreement on how to rank the top two alternatives may be perceived more (or less) than a disagreement on how to rank the bottom two alternatives. We propose two conditions on functions which characterize a class of weighted semi-metric functions. This class of semi-metrics allows to quantify disagreements according to where they occur in preferences. It turns out one of these functions, “the path minimizing function”, is the only metric which generalizes the Kemeny metric.     

Shorter Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Urry, John 1995: Consuming places. Perry, D.C. (ed.) 1995: Building the public city — the politics, governance and finance of public infrastructure. Wells, P. and M. Rawlinson 1994: The new European automobile industry. Kemeny, Jim 1995: From public housing to the social market: rental policy in comparative perspective.     

Boekbesprekingen

Book reviewed in this article:
Elementary statistical methods , W. A. Neiswanger.
Elementaire statistische opgaven met uitgewerkte oplossingen , J. Hemelrijk en Doraline Wabeke.
Non parametric methods in statistics , D. A. S. Fraser. Wiley & Sons, N.Y.
Statistical Analysis of Stationary Time Series , U. Grenander and M. Rosenblatt, L. Wiley & Sons, N.Y.
Principles of Medical Statistics , A. Bradford Hill.
Mathematical thinking in the social sciences , Paul F. Lazarsfeld (editor).
Tables for use with Binomial Samples , Donald Mainline, Lee Herrera and Marion I. Sutcliffe.
Finite Mathematics , John G. Kemeny, J. Laurie Snell and Gerald L. Thompson.
Waarschijnlijkheid en statistiek , Hans Freudenthal.
Bedrijfsstatistiek , P. de Wolff.
Wiskundige Propaedeuse voor Economisten , J. H. C. Lisman.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Burt, Martha, 1992: Over the edge: the growth of homelessness in the 1980s. Drache, Daniel and Meric Gertler (eds), 1991: The new era of global competition: state policy and market power. Kemeny, Jim, 1992: Housing and social theory. Savage, Mike, James Barlow, Peter Dickens and Tony Fielding, 1992: Property, bureaucracy and culture: middle-class formation in contemporary Britain. Spain, Daphne, 1992: Gendered spaces. Storper, Michael, 1991: Industrialization, economic development and the regional question in the third world: from import substitution to flexible production. Wolch, Jennifer, 1991: The shadow state: government and voluntary sector in transition.     

Boekbesprekingen

Book reviewed in this article:
De organisatie van de kwaliteitszorg, J. H. Enters, H. E. Stenfert Kroese N.V.
Statistiek voor Medici. Korte inleiding, Chr. L. Rumke, C. van Eeden, uitgeverij L. Stafleu en Zoon
De bloemisterij in Nederland
Characteristic Functions, E. Lukacs, Griffins Statistical Monographs and Courses no. 5 Charles Griffin and Cy. Ltd.
Portfolio Selection, Efficient Diversification of Investments, H. M. Markowitz, Cowles Foundation Monograph 16
Finite Markov Chains, J. G. Kemeny en J. L. Snell, University Series in Undergraduate Mathematics, Van Nostrand, Princeton, New Jersey
Operations Research and Systems Engineering, onder redactie van Charles D. Flagle, William H. Hugginsen Robert H. Roy
Tables of the Hypergeometric Probability Distribution, G. L. Lieberman and D. B. Owen, Stanford Studies in Mathematics and Statistics III
Probability with statistical applications, Frederick Mosteller, Robert E. K. Rourke, George B. Thomas, Jr.
Probability: a First Course, F. Mosteller, R. E. K. Rourke, G. B. Thomas, Jr.     

Binary effectivity rules

A social choice rule (SCR) is a collection of social choice correspondences, one for each agenda. An effectivity rule is a collection of effectivity functions, one for each agenda. We prove that every monotonic and superadditive effectivity rule is the effectivity rule of some SCR. A SCR is binary if it is rationalized by an acyclic binary relation. The foregoing result motivates our definition of a binary effectivity rule as the effectivity rule of some binary SCR. A binary SCR is regular if it satisfies unanimity, monotonicity, and independence of infeasible alternatives. A binary effectivity rule is regular if it is the effectivity rule of some regular binary SCR. We characterize completely the family of regular binary effectivity rules. Quite surprisingly, intrinsically defined von Neumann–Morgenstern solutions play an important role in this characterization.     

法治的解读

法治是西方历史文化传统的文明果实,与西方的人文传统、社会结构、风俗习惯乃至宗教文明等一系列文化基因息息相关。法治亦是构建社会主义和谐社会重要的机制。文章论述了法治之渊源和西方主要法治思想以及现代法治的构成.在当今中国,法治的观念深入人心,依法治国是中国人民的理性选择,也是一种文化选择。     

Democracy,rule of law,and corporate governance—a liquidity perspective

This study examines whether and how democracy and rule of law—two overarching country-level governance variables—influence corporate governance. Given that corporate liquidity (cash holdings) is a good channel for examining the quality of corporate governance, the effects of democracy and rule of law on corporate governance can be identified using the liquidity approach. A review of 67 countries from 1996 to 2010 demonstrates that democracy and rule of law indeed have bearings on corporate governance. More specifically, results indicate that firms are more inclined to hoard cash to take advantage of growth opportunities when the level of democracy is higher or rule of law is stronger, suggesting that agency costs are lower and interests of managers and shareholders are more aligned under such circumstances. In addition, the negative effect of debt issuance and dividend payment on cash is more pronounced when the level of democracy is higher or rule of law is stronger, suggesting that these two approaches become more effective in reducing agency costs and transitively cash holdings under such circumstances. Moreover, the positive effect of democracy and rule of law on corporate governance appears to be reinforced when rule of law is stronger and the level of democracy is higher, respectively. Furthermore, higher level of economic development helps reap the benefit of democracy and rule of law in terms of improving corporate governance and reducing agency costs.     

Single-stage election procedures for large electorates

The Condorcet efficiency of single-stage election procedures is considered under the assumption of impartial culture for large electorates. The most efficient ranked voting rule is either Borda rule or a truncated scoring rule. A decision rule is established to determine the number of candidates, k, that individuals should be required to vote for, whether or not ranking should be required, and the scoring rule that should be used if ranking is required. This decision depends upon the number of candidates available and the probabilities that individuals will vote if they must rank k candidates or simply report k candidates.     

Deviations from rules-based policy and their effects

Rules-based monetary policy evaluation has long been central to macroeconomics. Using the original Taylor rule, a modified Taylor rule with a higher output gap coefficient, and an estimated Taylor rule, we define rules-based and discretionary eras by smaller and larger policy rule deviations, the absolute value of the difference between the actual federal funds rate and the federal funds rate prescribed by the three rules. We use tests for multiple structural changes to identify the eras so that knowledge of subsequent economic outcomes cannot influence the choice of the dates. With the original Taylor rule, monetary policy in the U.S. is characterized by a rules-based era until 1974, a discretionary era from 1974 to 1985, a rules-based era from 1985 to 2000, and a discretionary era from 2001 to 2013. With the modified Taylor rule, the rules-based era extends further into the 1970s and there is an additional rules-based period starting in 2006. We calculate various loss functions and find that economic performance is uniformly better during rules-based eras than during discretionary eras, and that the original Taylor rule provides the largest loss during discretionary periods relative to loss during rules-based periods.     

A policy-based rationalization of collective rules: Dimensionality,specialized houses,and decentralized authority

We offer a policy-basis for interpreting, justifying, and designing (3, 3)-political rules, a large class of collective rules analogous to those governing the selection of papers in peer-reviewed journals, where each referee chooses to accept, reject, or invite a resubmission of a paper, and an editor aggregates his own and referees’ opinions into one of these three recommendations. We prove that any such rule is a weighted multicameral rule: a policy is collectively approved at a given level if and only if it is approved by a minimal number of chambers — the dimension of the rule — where each chamber evaluates a different aspect of the policy using a weighted rule, with each evaluator’s weight or authority possibly varying across chambers depending on his area(s) of expertise. These results imply that a given rule is only suitable for evaluating finite-dimensional policies whose dimension corresponds to that of the rule, and they provide a rationale for using different rules to pass different policies even within the same organization. We further introduce the concept of compatibility with a rule and exploit its topological properties to propose a method to construct integer weights corresponding to evaluators’ possible judgments under a given rule, which are more intuitive and easier to interpret for policymakers. Our findings shed light on multicameralism in political institutions and multi-criteria group decision-making in the firm. We provide applications to peer review politics, rating systems, and real-world organizations.     

城市制度:城市发展的核心构架

讨论了城市制度的本质、结构、功能及我国城市的发展模式 ,提出城市制度不完善是我国城市发展滞后的重要原因 ;建构与转换城市制度是城市发展进入自觉阶段的根本标志。我国城市要实现跨越式发展 ,应以制度创新为先导     

Sprumont's characterization of the uniform rule when all single-peaked preferences are admissible

Sprumont (1991) has established that the only allocation rule for the division problem that is strategy-proof, efficient, and anonymous is the uniform rule when the domain is the set of all possible profiles of continuous single-peaked preferences. Sprumont's characterization of the uniform rule is shown to hold on any larger domain of single-peaked preferences. Received: 15 December 1998 / Accepted: 12 April 1999     

A note on strategy-proofness from the doctor side in matching with contracts

In a general one-to-many matching model with contracts, Hatfield and Milgrom (Ame Econ Rev 95:913–935, 2005) show that the doctor optimal stable rule is strategy-proof from the doctor side. We strengthen their result by showing that this rule is in fact the unique stable rule that is strategy-proof from the doctor side.     

Sequencing rules and due date setting procedures in flow line cells with family setups

The purpose of this study is to investigate due date setting procedures and dispatching decisions in a flow line cell with family setups. In this environment, setups are not required when switching from a job in a given family to a job in the same family. However, switching from a job in one family to a job in another family requires a setup. Family setups in this shop are sequence independent. The dispatching decisions in this shop are threefold: (1) when should the decision to switch from one part family to another be made; (2) once the decision to switch families is made, how should the next part family be chosen (next family decision); and (3) how should the jobs within a family be prioritized (next job decision)? If the decision to switch classes can only be made after the current family is exhausted, the rule is called a class exhaustion rule. Otherwise the rule is a truncated rule. The results indicate that the due date setting procedure has a major impact on how dispatching should be performed in the shop. The family exhaustion procedure using the APT next family rule and the SPT next job rule is the best performer for mean flow time. When setup times are long, the SEQ due date rule using the family exhaustion procedure with the FCFS next family and the EDD next job rules performed well for due date criteria. When setup times are short, the EDD/T, Sawicki truncation rule and the family exhaustion rules performed well for due date criteria.     

On the natural selection rule in general linear models

We consider a problem of selecting the best treatment in a general linear model. We look at the properties of the natural selection rule. It is shown that the natural selection rule is minimax under to “0–1” loss function and it is a Bayes rule under a monotone permutation invariant loss function with respect to a permutation invariant prior for every variance balanced design. Some other condition on the design matrix is given so that a Bayes rule with respect to a normal prior will be of simple structure.     

Secured lower bound, composition up, and minimal rights first for bankruptcy problems

We study the implications of secured lower bound when imposed together with minimal rights first or composition up for the resolution of conflicting claims. We show that the Talmud rule is the only rule satisfying secured lower bound, minimal rights first, and consistency. In addition, we show that if minimal rights first and consistency in the above characterization were replaced with composition up and null claims consistency, respectively, the constrained equal awards rule stands out as the only acceptable rule.     

The Borda class: An axiomatic study of the Borda rule on top-truncated preferences

The Borda rule, originally defined on profiles of individual preferences modelled as linear orders over the set of alternatives, is one of the most important voting rules. But voting rules often need to be used on preferences of a different format as well, such as top-truncated orders, where agents rank just their most preferred alternatives. What is the right generalisation of the Borda rule to such richer models of preference? Several suggestions have been made in the literature, typically considering specific contexts where the rule is to be applied. In this work, taking an axiomatic perspective, we conduct a principled analysis of the different options for defining the Borda rule on top-truncated preferences.     

论全面依法治国与国家治理现代化

“坚持全面依法治国,建设社会主义法治国家,切实保障社会公平正义和人民权利”在十九届四中全会中被归结为我国国家治理体系的显著优势。全面依法治国作为国家治理现代化过程中的重要一环,能够夯实国家治理现代化的制度基础,同时也是其法治保障。     

An investigation of due-date assignment rules with constrained tightness

We describe an experimental study of a single-machine scheduling model for a system that assigns due-dates to arriving jobs. The average lightness of the due-dates is assumed to be governed by a policy constraint, which we link analytically to the parameters of the decision rules for due-date assignment. We examine the use of different kinds of information in setting due-dates, and we investigate the relationship between the due-date assignment rule and the priority dispatching rule. On the basis of our results we identify situations in which the dispatching rule is critical to effective scheduling, others in which the due-date assignment rule is critical, and still others in which the combination of the two rules is a critical design issue.