Rational Demand Research Articles

Selective rationality? Argumentation of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation on the terms of office of the President in the mirror of cognitive science

The Decision (Zaklyuchenie) of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation on the constitutionality of the constitutional amendments played a significant role for the entry into force of the amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation adopted in 2020. For this reason, and in connection with the fact that many of the novels raise questions precisely from the point of view of their compliance with Chapters 1, 2 and 9 of the Russian Constitution, the positions formulated in the Decision attract serious attention. The article analyzes the arguments of the Court on one of the significant innovations – the possibility of being elected to the post of President of Russia by a person who held or holds this position at the time the amendment entered into force, without taking into account the previous terms. This reasoning is placed in the context of the demands of rationality in constitutional law. The article is aimed at implementing bona fide intentions related to confirming the subjectivity of the body of constitutional review and identifying ways to improve its argumentation. The activities of the constitutional court are presented in the article as part of reasonable foresight, which implies the creation of guarantees for the case of deviation from constitutional values. The rationality of its argumentation is understood as the sum of requirements connecting in a certain way 1) formal logic and 2) substantive reasonableness, determined by the value choice made in the constitution. It is demonstrated that the rationality of the argumentation formulated in the Decision of the Constitutional Court on the problem of the term of office of the head of state can be questioned from these points of view and, for this reason, cause associations with cognitive distortions (such as bias in the selection of initial premises for argumentation; incomplete study of scenarios reflecting the consequences of a reviewed amendment; framing; logical circle, etc.). At the same time, the article reveals the limitations of the “naive” cognitive approach, which is insufficient for working with the argumentation of the body of constitutional review and which actualizes additional consideration of the political and legal context of decision-making by this body.

Evaluation and Optimization of Urban Basic Education Facilities Layout based on GIS——A Case Study in Xuzhou, China

The layout of educational facilities has become a hot topic in urban geography research. Guides by rational demand consensus, typical human settlements extraction and matching of physical property planning, this paper constructs an evaluation system for the spatial layout of urban basic education facilities from the perspective of “Homo-Urbanicus” theory. The content includes the evaluation of accessibility, evaluation of bearing pressure, classification of layout types, selection and analysis of excellent communities. This paper conducts an empirical research on the basic education facilities of kindergartens, elementary schools and middle schools in the main urban area of Xuzhou City. And then, we delineated excellent community, standard communities, under-covered communities, overstressed communities, undeveloped communities on the basis of evaluation results. Finally, we selected sample communities for analysis, and put forward relevant optimization strategies.

ПОПИТ НА ПРАЦІВНИКІВ СФЕРИ ОПТОВОЇ ТА РОЗДРІБНОЇ ТОРГІВЛІ: РОЗВИТОК ЧИ ПЛИННІСТЬ КАДРІВ

The article analyzes the demand trends for workers in the field of wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles. Analysis of the data of the State Employment Service proves the constant demand for trade and repair workers. The share of vacancies in this area of economic activity in January-February 2021 was 14.0%, which corresponds to the second position after demand in the processing industry (18.8%). Staff turnover in the field of wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles exceeds the norm and reaches 51.7% and this trend has been observed in recent years. However, as our research shows, this is caused not so much by economic development as by staff turnover in this area of economic activity and professional group. The conditionality of the increased demand for workers within this sphere of economic activity is investigated. In the process of research it was found that the formation of demand is significantly influenced by staff turnover. To reduce staff turnover, attention should be paid to the level of wages and working conditions, social package, career opportunities, opportunities to receive a bonus for years of service, measures to form and maintain the social culture of the organization, and so on. The negative consequences of increased turnover in trade and services are low levels of productivity and labor organization, reduced responsibility in the performance of work and deteriorating quality of service delivery. Therefore, in order for the sphere of trade and services to promote economic development, it is necessary to think about the organization of labor in accordance with the principles of decent work. Strategic development of wholesale and retail trade; repair of vehicles and motorcycles requires the introduction of measures to retain staff in organizations through a management system, staff motivation, which is based on the principles of social responsibility, which will increase the use of labor potential, taking into account the interests of both employer and employee to increase competitiveness and the formation of a rational demand for workers in this area, which will help ensure the stability of the labor market.

We Need to Talk About Rationing: The Need to Normalize Discussion About Healthcare Rationing in a Post COVID-19 Era.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought the issue of rationing finite healthcare resources to the fore. There has been much academic debate, media attention, and conversation in the homes of everyday individuals about the allocation of medical resources, diagnostic testing kits, ventilators, and personal protective equipment. Yet decisions to prioritize treatment for some individuals over others occur implicitly and explicitly in everyday practices. The pandemic has propelled the socially taboo and unavoidably prickly issue of healthcare rationing into the public spotlight—and as such, healthcare rationing demands ongoing public attention and transparent discussion. This article concludes that in the aftermath of COVID-19, policymakers should work towards normalizing rationing discussions by engaging in transparent and honest debate in the wider community and public domain. Further, injecting greater openness and objectivity into rationing decisions might go some way towards dismantling the societal taboo surrounding rationing in healthcare.

Procurement As Policy: Administrative Process for Machine Learning

At every level of government, officials contract for technical systems that employ machine learning-systems that perform tasks without using explicit instructions, relying on patterns and inference instead. These systems frequently displace discretion previously exercised by policymakers or individual front-end government employees with an opaque logic that bears no resemblance to the reasoning processes of agency personnel. However, because agencies acquire these systems through government procurement processes, they and the public have little input into-or even knowledge about-their design or how well that design aligns with public goals and values. This Article explains the ways that the decisions about goals, values, risk, and certainty, along with the elimination of case-by-case discretion, inherent in machine-learning system design create policies-not just once when they are designed, but over time as they adapt and change. When the adoption of these systems is governed by procurement, the policies they embed receive little or no agency or outside expertise beyond that provided by the vendor. Design decisions are left to private third-party developers. There is no public participation, no reasoned deliberation, and no factual record, which abdicates Government responsibility for policymaking. This Article then argues for a move from a procurement mindset to policymaking mindset. When policy decisions are made through system design, processes suitable for substantive administrative determinations should be used: processes that foster deliberation reflecting both technocratic demands for reason and rationality informed by expertise, and democratic demands for public participation and accountability. Specifically, the Article proposes administrative law as the framework to guide the adoption of machine learning governance, describing specific ways that the policy choices embedded in machine learning system design fail the prohibition against arbitrary and capricious agency actions absent a reasoned decision-making process that both enlists the expertise necessary for reasoned deliberation about, and justification for, such choices, and makes visible the choices being made. Finally, this Article sketches models for machine-learning adoption processes that satisfy the prohibition against arbitrary and capricious agency actions. It explores processes by which agencies might garner technical expertise and overcome problems of system opacity, satisfying administrative law's technocratic demand for reasoned expert deliberation. It further proposes both institutional and engineering design solutions to the challenge of policymaking opacity, offering process paradigms to ensure the political visibility required for public input and oversight. In doing so, it also proposes the importance of using contestable design-design that exposes value-laden features and parameters and provides for iterative human involvement in system evolution and deployment. Together, these institutional and design approaches further both administrative law's technocratic and democratic mandates.

Dido Meets Aeneas: Anachronism, Alternative History, Counterfactual Thinking and the Idea of Fiction

AbstractThe anachronistic character of the loving relationship between Dido and Aeneas was widely and commonly discussed among commentators, critics, and writers in the early modern period. From the 16th century onwards, when the word »anachronism« appeared in vernacular languages, its definition was even inseparable from the example borrowed from theAeneid. The purpose of this article is to interrelate early modern debates on anachronism, reflections on the status of fiction and the history of fiction.Starting with the hypothesis that anachronism is a form of counterfactual, the questions posed in this article are: did forms of counterfactuals exist before the 19th century, to what extent did they differ from contemporary alternative histories and, if so, why? The story of Dido and Aeneas in theAeneidcan be considered »counterfactual«, because this version of the narrative about the queen of Carthage was opposed to another, which was considered to be historical and which made Dido a privileged embodiment of female virtue and value.Several important shifts are highlighted in this article. With the exception of St. Augustine (who saw in Vergil’s anachronism confirmation of the inanity of fiction), before the 16th century indifference towards anachronism prevailed: the two versions of Dido’s story were often juxtaposed or combined. If Vergil’s version of Dido’s story was condemned, it was for moral reasons: the exemplary version, considered more historically accurate, was favored throughout the Middle Ages, notably by Petrarch and Boccaccio.From the 16th century onwards, however, increased acquaintance with Aristotle’s Poetics promoted greater demand for rationality and plausibility in fables. This coincided with the appearance of the word »chronology« and its development, which led to a new understanding of historical time. Anachronism then appeared to be a fault against verisimilitude, and as such was strongly condemned, for example by the commentator on Aristotle, Lodovico Castelvetro. At the same time, the argument of poetic license was also often invoked: it actually became the most common position on this issue. Vergil’s literary canonization, moreover, meant that the version of Dido’s life in theAeneidwas the only story that was known and cited, and from the 17th century onwards it totally supplanted the exemplary version. Strangely enough, permissiveness towards anachronism in treatises, prefaces, or comments on literary works was not accompanied by any development of counterfactual literature in early modern period. Indeed, in both narrative and theatrical genres fiction owed its development and legitimization to the triumph of the criterion of plausibility.This article, however, discusses several examples that illustrate how the affirmation of fiction in the early modern period was expressed through minor variations on anachronism: the counterfictional form of Ronsard’s epic,La Franciade, which represents an explicit deviation from theIliad; the metaleptic meeting of Vergil and Dido in the Underworld in Fontenelle’sLe dialogue des morts; and the provocative proposal for a completely different version of Dido’s life, which was made in an early 17th century Venetian operatic work by an author who claimed to be anti-Aristotelian. This study thus intends to provide an aspect of the story of fiction. The change of perspective on anachronism marks a retreat from moral argument, with privilege given to aesthetic criteria and relative independence with regard to history – while still moderated by the criterion of verisimilitude, as underlined by the abbé d’Aubignac, as well as Corneille.

An Investigation of Online Gaming Addiction Level Among University Students in Terms of Emotional Schemas, Agentic Personality, and Various Variables

The aim of this study is to examine online game addiction level among university students in terms of emotional schemas, agentic personality, and various variables (i.e. gender, type of game played, and accommodation). The sample group consists of 380 university students studying in Izmir province and playing online games during the school year of 2017 and 2018. The data have been collected through multiple tools that are Online Game Addiction Scale for University Students, Multi-measure Agentic Personality Scale, Leahy Emotional Schema Scale, and Personal Information Questionnaire. The data were analyzed by correlation analysis, t-test, one-way analysis of variance, and regression analysis in accordance with the hypothesis of the study. The result of regression analysis indicated that emotional schemas of uncontrollability, demand for rationality, rumination, dissimilarity, denial of emotions, validation, seeing emotions as dangerous, acceptance of feelings, consensus, and guilt predicted addiction significantly, whereas, emotional schemas of weakness against emotions and duration did not predict such an outcome. Additionally, as a result of the t-test, it was found that online gaming addiction levels differed significantly according to gender and that males had higher levels of online game addiction than females. Lastly, one-way analysis of variance resulted in finding the level of online gaming addiction significantly differed based on the type of game played, but it did not differ significantly based on where students lived.

Rationing bytes: managing demand for digital forensic examinations

ABSTRACT With the growing sophistication and prevalence of digital devices such as mobile phones, computers, tablets, sat-navs, and domestic appliances, the extraction, analysis and interpretation of digital data has become increasingly central to intelligence gathering and criminal proceedings. However, the very extent of data available today challenges the ability of police agencies to turn seized devices into useful evidence. To date, most social science scholarship about forensics has concentrated on DNA profiling and its societal and ethical issues. In contrast, other forensic fields, including digital forensics, have had little analytical scrutiny. Based on unprecedented access to a forensic collaboration in England, this study addresses the question: In conditions of constrained resources, how do police agencies manage the insatiable demand for digital examinations? In doing so, we bring rationing classification schemes from healthcare studies into the field of criminology in order to characterise the techniques for reconciling demand with capacity. As detailed, formal attempts to ration demand are confounded by informal practices and procedures that can impact on the capacity of the workforce and the speed with which cases are processed. In addition, the rationing of digital devices has significant consequences for the definition and distribution of skills and expertise across criminal justice agencies.

Pathological demand avoidance: What and who are being pathologised and in whose interests?

The term ‘pathological demand avoidance’ was first coined in 1983. In recent years, diagnostic tools have emerged to enable practitioners to identify, name and treat pathological demand avoidance and, at least in the United Kingdom, there is an increasing number of children who attract this label. In addition to what are defined as the core ‘deficits’ of autism, including assumed difficulties in social communication, difficulties in social interaction and restrictive interests, children with pathological demand avoidance are thought to have an extreme anxiety-driven need to control their environment and control the demands and expectations of others. This article will argue that we must exercise extreme caution in accepting the validity of pathological demand avoidance and will suggest that it can be seen as an attempt to psychiatarise autistic children’s resistance, which, in so doing, restricts their agency. First, it will draw on the arguments put forward by some autistic scholars who have claimed that pathological demand avoidance is better understood as rational demand avoidance – an understandable and rational response to the circumstances that one finds oneself in. Second, it will consider the intersection between autism and childhood. When one of the defining characteristics of pathological demand avoidance is an inability to recognise and, presumably, respect social hierarchy, children’s competencies as social actors and active meaning makers of their world can easily become pathologised as defiance. Finally, the article will address the intersections of autism, childhood and gender. Girls are much less likely to be diagnosed as having an autism spectrum condition than boys are, with a ratio traditionally estimated at approximately 1:4. However, pathological demand avoidance diagnoses are fairly evenly spread between boys and girls. It will be argued that it is girls’ resistance to the ordinary and everyday demands of her as a girl and her subsequent rejection or transgression of those expectations that is being pathologised.

Mutually Consistent Revealed Preference Demand Predictions

Revealed preference restrictions are increasingly used to predict demand behavior at new budgets of interest and as shape restrictions in nonparametric estimation exercises. However, the restrictions imposed are not sufficient for rationality when predictions are made at multiple budgets. I highlight the non-convexities in the set of predictions that arise when making multiple predictions. I develop a mixed integer programming characterization of the problem that can be used to impose rationality on multiple predictions. The approach is applied to the UK Family Expenditure Survey to recover rational demand predictions with substantially reduced computational resources compared to known alternatives. (JEL C61, D11, D12)

Effects of Local Soil, Magnitude and Distance on Empirical Response Spectra for Design

ABSTRACT The traditional shape of design spectra, based on regions characterized by constant displacement, constant velocity and constant acceleration, has been questioned from a conceptual point of view and a new formulation based on magnitude and fault distance has been proposed in another article. The parameters required by this formulation had been derived from some 360 ground motions recorded on rock or dense soil, originated by 24 earthquakes that occurred in Italy between 1972 and 2017, with Mw between 4.5 and 6.5. This study presents an extension of the approach to all types of soil, considering a much more extended set of ground motions recorded in Europe and the Middle East (6866 records, from 387 events, Mw between 4.5 and 7.6 and stations r between 0 and 80 km). The results obtained seem to confirm that the approach is very efficient in determining response spectra for design that fit well the experimental evidence and illustrate the different effect of local soil on the amplification of acceleration and displacement. Numerous additional parameter should still be considered, such as, for example, focal depth, duration and number of significant cycles; however, the effectiveness of this approach in defining rational seismic demands is confirmed. A thorough application of this approach may result in significant re-visitation of seismic design approaches, as discussed in other articles.

Fairness and the Unselfish Demand for Redistribution by Taxpayers and Welfare Recipients

We theoretically illustrate how the aversion to unfairness triggers an unselfish though rational demand for redistribution. This leads the well‐off to demand positive tax rates and the “poor” to reject extreme progressivity. We prove that the “rich” and the “poor” adjust their demand for redistribution in opposite ways when their sensitivity to fairness increases: while agents with above average expected income raise their demand for redistribution, agents with below average income lower it. We then provide empirical evidence of these behaviors using a nationally representative survey from Italy. The estimates confirm that a stronger aversion to unfair distributive outcomes is associated with a higher support for redistribution by individuals with high income and to a lower demand for redistribution by those with low income.

Sparks and Fizzles: Divergent Performances and Patterns of Cambodian Development Projects

Starting from a development pilot project that aimed to introduce new water accounting procedures to Cambodia, this article examines interactions between technical experts from abroad and government officials. Drawing on STS, performativity theory, and the anthropology of development, the article shows that the dynamics at the project interface are characterized by parallel and incongruent performances. Visiting technical experts work on the assumption that they are operating at a science-policy interface. Meanwhile, officials align with the demands of technical rationality, aware of its discrepancy with the performance of politics outside the project frame. Two versions of project realities and their relation to broader Cambodian realities are thus performed simultaneously, but awareness of this is not evenly distributed, with significant consequences for the aspiration of development organizations to transfer knowledge. The case study feeds into a subsequent characterization of a more general pattern of sparks and fizzles, in which projects continuously start up, while efforts to bootstrap technology transfer peter out as they end. This pattern may be endemic to development projects that operate on the assumption of a science-policy interface that is not really there.

“A Medium Made of Such Uncommon Stuff”: The Female Occult Investigator in Victorian Women's Fin-de-Siècle Fiction

ABSTRACTThis article examines how women writers critique the problems with Victorian gender roles through their representation of the inequality between male psychical researchers and female occult investigators in their fin-de-siècle ghost stories. In contrast to male psychical researchers, who adopt a rational outlook and demand proof of the supernatural's existence, female occult investigators practice different forms of occultism to achieve self-empowerment and to show compassion for others, especially ghosts. Moreover, female occult investigators embody the tension between the conflicting images of the conservative Victorian Angel and independent New Woman. Building on the work of Schaper (2001), I consider the portrayal of these male and female character types in Lanoe Falconer's “Cecilia de Noël,” Lettice Galbraith's “In the Séance Room,” and Nora Tynan O'Mahony's “Hester's Ghost.” Ultimately, I find that these women writers unite the distinct fields of science, religion, and occultism by combining the male and female characters to form the New Woman doctor.

Religious Education and Societal Development: The Nigerian Context

The present writer is drawn to write on this topic based on the realization that the Nigerian society seems to be onethat is bereft of the practicalisation of the ideal standards of virtues. There is apparent lack of objective measures ofrightness and wrongness of actions, especially in the present dispensation, irrespective of the so much toutedreligiosity of Nigerians. A particular action is regarded (by implication and praxis) as right when performed bypersons of a particular religion, tribe and party affiliation, but as an abomination when performed by some otherpersons. This beats one’s imagination to the core, especially given the fact that the religio-tribal considerationsappear to be the major driving force. This paper is therefore interested in the contents of the religious education ofthe various major religious types and how these contents that are imbibed by their adherents aid or mar thedevelopment of the Nigerian society. It was discovered, through personal observations and through the tools ofanalytical and deductive reasoning via library research methodology, that certain aspects of certain religiousteachings have great positive impact on societal cohesion which leads to development in the Nigerian society whilesome others rather sow the seed of discord, injustice, hate and rancor that have led to killings, oppressions andupsurges that have characterized the Nigerian social space for decades on end and have drastically militated againstsocial development of Nigeria. Recommendations include: religious education must consider the virtue of justice, itmust adhere to the demands of rationality, it must be universalizable and not myopic, it must be dynamic, and it mustbe morally honest and must proceed from right conscience rather than a sick conscience.

What's in a Model? Computer Simulations and the Management of Ignorance

Research on artifacts in organization studies predominantly focuses on knowledge – what we know – and how it is produced, used and exchanged through artifacts. This study examines the role of artifacts in managing ignorance. Namely, what is not known, and what cannot be shared across collaborating organizations. We do that through a qualitative study of the use of computerized simulation models in terrorism insurance, using interviews supplemented by observational data. Illustrating the sources of ignorance, we develop a conceptual framework to show how terrorism models, by compartmentalizing ignorance, enable strategies of acceptance, work around and ignoring of ignorance. This contributes to the nascent area of organizational research on ignorance by unpacking the evolving interplay between knowledge and ignorance. Our study also contributes to the organizational literature on the role of material artifacts as enablers of (inter)action. Further, showing how decoupling elements of ignorance from action occurs when demands for rationality in calculating and trading risk require access to knowledge that science cannot produce, this study contributes to the literature that explores how insurance remains possible in contexts of extreme uncertainty.

Rational choice theory and demand for petty corruption

This article studies corruption as a rational choice phenomenon. Unlike the widespread game-theory approach to explaining corrupt behaviour, this article attempts to describe corruption as continuous utility-maximizing problem. It comes up with a demand for corruption function, which shows how the readiness of a rational person to accept corrupt income depends on several factors such as official wage rate, severity of punishment, awareness of those penalties, probability of being detected and probability of being prosecuted.

Accepting the avoidable death: The philosophy of limiting intensive care

Limiting intensive care is paid increasing attention. In the echoing call for physicians' ethical self-restriction, it is easily overlooked, however, that ethics needs a critical epistemological analysis before it can suffice as an emergency brake to futile treatment. This analysis is provided by the present essay. The authors suggest that the difficulties of resolving moral dilemmas related to limiting intensive care may just be due to the unclarified epistemological status of moral claims. Even if normative ethics cannot prescribe right decisions, but only draw conclusions from defined premises, the premises may or may not be true. Their intertwined descriptive and normative evidence is endorsed in an academic and political discourse. There will necessarily be various demands for rationality in prudent decisions between physicians, their patients and society. These demands are formulated dialogically through critical questions and justified answers. A good argument is the convincing one that, finally and ideally, leads to the absence of open objections. Thus, in the end the rightness of a given decision does not depend on axiomatic moral principles, but is comparative and conditional, as it is given in an omnilateral argument. Neither is it the democratic process of shared decision making that we should evaluate, but rather the argumentative state itself, when we judge the morality of health politics and clinical practice.

Pairs trading across Mainland China and Hong Kong stock markets

AbstractMotivated by the rationale that market inefficiency arises from a combination of less than fully rational demand and limits to arbitrage, this paper investigates the profitability of pairs trading across Mainland China and Hong Kong on highly liquid large‐cap and midcap stocks from January 1996 to July 2017. We have three main findings. First, we find that pairs trading constrained within each market generates no significant abnormal returns. However, if investors can trade across Mainland China and Hong Kong, pairs trading is profitable after adjusting for risk and transaction costs, where the annualized abnormal return is 9% over the full sample. Second, by using a rolling‐window regression, we find that the profitability of the strategy is time‐varying. The bootstrap simulations suggest that the decline in profitability of the strategy since 2012 is due to random chance rather than poor ability of identifying mispriced stocks. However, the vast majority of profitable periods reflect the strategy's ability to choose profitable stocks rather than random chance. Third, the profitability of the strategy is somewhat sensitive to market conditions, most notably, the strategy is more profitable during longer term market turbulence. Overall, our empirical findings are consistent with the Adaptive Market Hypothesis in that the integration of financial markets and market conditions determine the level of market efficiency.

An incentive mechanism for crowdsourcing markets with social welfare maximization in cloud‐edge computing

SummaryCrowdsourcing is emerging as a powerful paradigm that utilizes the distributed devices to sense, collect, and upload data to satisfy the requirements of the users. Currently, with the popularity of edge computing, edge device users can act as recruiters or participants to publish or perform crowdsourcing tasks and share feedback. However, due to the individual selfishness, it is still a challenge to maximize the social welfare distribution of all the participants and the recruiters for the crowdsourcing market. In view of this challenge, an incentive mechanism for the crowdsourcing market with social welfare maximization in the cloud‐edge computing is designed in this paper. Technically, a double action model under the cloud‐edge computing framework is proposed first, which aims to maximize the social welfare maximization and meanwhile meet the demands of incentive compatibility, individual rationality, market clearing, and budget constraint. Secondly, a corresponding incentive mechanism is designed based on the double auction model to achieve the market fairness. Experimental evaluation and comparison analysis are conducted to validate the efficiency and effectiveness of the mechanism.