We consider the relationship between positive and normative political theory, emphasising both the role of normative ideas in motivating political behaviour and particularly the constraints on normative theory imposed by positive theory. Our point of departure is Christiano’s recent claim that the rational choice approach to positive and normative political theory is self-defeating. In arguing ...

Rationality is one of the most over-used words in economics. Behaviour can be rational, or irrational. So can decisions, preferences, beliefs, expectations, decision procedures, and knowledge. There may also be bounded rationality. And recent work in game theory has considered strategies and beliefs or expectations that are “rationalizable”. Here I propose to assess how economists use and mis-u...

In a series of articles and a book, Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell (KS) articulated and defended the normative approach of standard law-and-economics. KS also argued that legal analysts should think in welfare-economic terms exclusively when advising on normative social issues of tremendous import. This thesis generated controversy within the legal academic community because it implied that nu...

Scholars have long noted how migration streams, once initiated, obtain a self-feeding character. Studies have connected this phenomenon, called the cumulative causation of migration, to expanding social networks that link migrants in destination to individuals in origin. While extant research has established a positive association between individuals’ ties to prior migrants and their migration ...

Multi-agent systems Computational Trust Normative Control Betrayal Despite relevant insights from socio-economics, little research in multi-agent systems has addressed the interconnections between trust and normative notions such as contracts and sanctions. Focusing our attention on scenarios of betrayal, in this paper we combine the use of trust and sanctions in a negotiation process. We desc...

Positive and normative legal theory often seem to have little to do with one another. Part I describes the disconnect and suggests that it arises from two sources: the gap between fact and value, and the gap between external and internal perspectives on law. In the following Parts, I lay out a repertoire of strategies and mechanisms for connecting positive and normative legal theory. Part II ex...

normative feedback is a kind of feedback which involves information about an individual's performance in comparison with other peers unrealistically (positive or negative). the aim of the present study was to determine the effect of normative feedback on throwing aiming task learning in children aged between 9 and 11 in ahvaz city. for this purpose, 90 right-handed children were selected w...