In a seminal contribution, Hansson (1976) demonstrates that the collection of decisive coalitions associated with an Arrovian social welfare function forms an ultrafilter. He goes on to show that if transitivity is weakened to quasi-transitivity as the coherence property imposed on a social relation, the set of decisive coalitions is a filter. We examine the notion of decisiveness with acyclica...

This paper proposes a methodology that combines the use of Schwarz’s BIC in subset autoregression and subset transfer function identification along with the posterior odds ratio test developed by Poskitt & Tremayne (1987) in the context of testing for Granger-causality and cointegration tests. This approach provides a measure for the strength (decisiveness) of causality and cointegration betwee...

Our work deals with the important problem of globally characterizing truthful mechanisms where players have multi-parameter, additive valuations, like scheduling unrelated machines or additive combinatorial auctions. Very few mechanisms are known for these settings and the question is: Can we prove that no other truthful mechanisms exist? We characterize truthful mechanisms for n players and 2 ...

This article examines how individual differences on the need for cognitive closure and demographics influence consumer perception and the usage of consumer reviews in online shopping. Data were randomly collected from 2,381 U.S. online consumer review users through an online survey. The findings from multiple regression analyses revealed the different effects of the need for cognitive closure d...

Any symmetric mixed-strategy equilibrium in a Tullock contest with intermediate values of the decisiveness parameter (“ 2)hascountablyinfinitelymanymasspoints.Allprobabilityweightisconcentratedonthosemasspoints, whichhavethezerobidastheirsolepointofaccumulation.Withcontestantsrandomizingoveranon− convexset, thereisacostofbeinghalfhearted, whichisabsentfromboththelotterycontestandtheall−payaucti...

We explored people’s reactions to expert categorizers who expressed difficulty in making a categorization decision. Specifically, we compared people’s impressions of expert health professionals who either expressed certainty, uncertainty, or ambivalence about a categorization decision in the form of a diagnosis. We found that ambivalence resulted in the most negative impressions of these expert...

Many people vote in large elections with costs to vote although the expected benefits would seem to be infinitesimal to a rational mind. We show that prospect and regret theories cannot solve this paradox of not voting and may even aggravate it. However, if the possibility of a decisive vote comes to mind, expected utility maximizers will doubt their preference for abstention and greatly overes...

At a recent Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on the Boston bombings, a Massachusetts state official praised the decisiveness of the response. As citizens of a U.S. ally that was the target of more than 100 terror attacks between 2000 and 2005, we viewed the event somewhat differently. While your actions affirmed that the U.S. will go to extraordinary lengths to protect the security of...

(c) If D is decisive then the implications (a) and (b) are also true in the opposite direction. That is, if D is decisive, then the stable model semantics of P(D) corresponds to the provability in defeasible logic. However part (c) is not true in the general case, as the following example shows. Example 5. Consider the defeasible theory r 1 :) :p r 2 : p) p In defeasible logic, +@:p cannot be p...