We model a firm’s decisions about product innovation, focusing on the extent to which features should be improved or changed in the succession of models that comprise a life cycle. We show that the structure of revenues and costs can suggest when a firm should pursue radical rather than incremental innovation. We use the criterion of maximizing the expected present value of profits during the l...

This article applies General System Theory to the formalization of the Cognitive Affective Personality System (CAPS). A model is developed as means for understanding the relationships between widely studied constructs at the individual level of analysis: personality traits, affectivity, self-efficacy, intrinsic task complexity, and managerial empowerment, among others. The resulting theoretical...

COMMERCIAL POLICY VARIABILITY, BINDINGS, AND MARKET ACCESS Joseph F. Francois and Will Martin Protection unconstrained by rules often varies substantially over time. Rules-based disciplines, like OECD industrial tariff bindings negotiated under GATT since 1947 and new Uruguay Round bindings on agricultural and services trade and on developing country industrial tariffs, constrain this variabili...

Steps toward the systematic formalization of mathematics goes back more than a hundred years to Frege, Russell, Hilbert and others, but it is only the advent of a diverse collection of computer based technologies that makes the possibility of realizing this goal truly possible. For the past thirty years and more, the computer science community has been constructing the theoretical and technical...

In this position paper we suggest a possible metric approach to shape comparison that is based on a mathematical formalization of the concept of observer, seen as a collection of suitable operators acting on a metric space of functions. These functions represent the set of data that are accessible to the observer, while the operators describe the way the observer elaborates the data and enclose...

This paper describes a formalization of a class of xed-point problems on graphs and its applications. This class captures several wellknown graph theoretical problems such as those of shortest path type and for data ow analysis. An abstract solution algorithm of the xedpoint problem is formalized and its correctness is proved using a theorem proving system. Moreover, the validity of the A* algo...

This paper introduces the concept of Narrative Game-based Learning Objects (NGLOBs) as the basis for the creation and control of Story-based Digital Educational Games (DEGs). In the context of the European research project 80Days, section 1 describes major aims and challenges of Story-based DEGs and motivates for the introduction and use of NGLOBs. In the main part, section 2 provides an overvi...

Policy advice is a transfer learning method where a student agent is able to learn faster via advice from a teacher. However, both this and other reinforcement learning transfer methods have little theoretical analysis. This paper formally defines a setting where multiple teacher agents can provide advice to a student and introduces an algorithm to leverage both autonomous exploration and teach...

The doubly circular relations of the major and minor keys based on all twelve pitchclasses can be depicted in toroidal models. We demonstrate a convergence of derivations from the different bases of conventional harmonic theory and recent experiments in music psychology. We present a formalization of the music-theoretical derivation from Gottfried Weber’s 1817 chart of tone-centers by using a t...

Analogies have had and continue to have an important role in the development of theoretical physics. They may start from similarities of physical concepts followed by similarities in the mathematical formalization or it may be a purely mathematical aspect to suggest the development of analogous physical concepts. More often a subtle nonobvious interplay between these levels is involved. In this...