We overview the existing conditional independence concepts from the viewpoint of their relation to possibility theory. We will show that a suitable notion — from this perspective — seems to be strong independence in the wider framework of credal sets.

Article history: Received 18 March 2009 Received in revised form 8 February 2010 Accepted 22 February 2010 Available online 7 March 2010

This article surveys the major kinds of empirical evidence used by linguists, with a particular focus on the relevance of the evidence to the goals of generative grammar. After a background section overviewing the objectives and assumptions of that framework, three broad kinds of data are considered in the three subsequent sections: corpus data, judgment data, and (other) experimental data. The...

We introduce a generalized theoretical approach to study imitation and subject it to rigorous experimental testing. In our theoretical analysis we find that the different predictions of previous imitation models are due to different informational assumptions, not to different behavioral rules. It is more important whom one imitates rather than how. In a laboratory experiment we test the differe...

This Article argues that foundation, not relevance, embodies our fundamental understanding of admissible evidence. The foundation principle—only partially and somewhat obliquely stated in the Federal Rules of Evidence—is a requirement that evidence be case-specific, assertive, and probably true. As such, it is a logical precondition for relevance. A foundation-based theory of evidence explains,...

This paper presents a model that incorporates product market competition into the standard neoclassical framework. The model explains why value-maximizing firms conduct mergers that appear to lower shareholder value. In a Cournot setting, the model demonstrates a prisoners’ dilemma for merging firms in a merger wave. Consistent with the model’s implications, the paper empirically documents that...

It is frequently assumed that rising enrollment improves an institution’s financial condition. In fact, enrollment growth can have an adverse impact on the institution’s financial condition, even in the presence of excess capacity. The reason for this surprising conclusion is that the size of the subsidy required to attract additional students may cause the net financial impact to be negative. ...