Incomplete Theory Research Articles

Uniformly Bounded Arrays and Mutually Algebraic Structures

We define an easily verifiable notion of an atomic formula having uniformly bounded arrays in a structure M. We prove that if T is a complete L-theory, then T is mutually algebraic if and only if there is some model M of T for which every atomic formula has uniformly bounded arrays. Moreover, an incomplete theory T is mutually algebraic if and only if every atomic formula has uniformly bounded arrays in every model M of T.

Bibliometrics and visualisation of research on trust in construction projects

The present study used scientific mapping analysis to describe the overall state of the literature on trust in construction projects (TC) and to gain a deeper understanding of its intellectual structure and research areas of interest. It focuses on 349 articles from 27 journals in the construction-management domain from the past 20 years. The influential journals, scholars and articles in the domain of TC were analysed. A qualitative follow-up discussion targets two main objectives: intellectual structure and research fronts. The TC intellectual structure involves topics such as relationships, project performance, contracts and behaviour, approached by way of multiple disciplinary fields, including ‘transaction, management and accounting’, which are supported primarily by organisational theory, organisational trust theory, trust theory and incomplete contract theory. Multi-case analysis and structural equation models are used widely as research tools. New key TC research areas include varying relationship characteristics, trust evolution, interpersonal trust and new problems in project governance.

Shotgun Wedding: Fiscal and Monetary Policy

This review describes interactions between monetary and fiscal policies that affect equilibrium price levels and interest rates by critically surveying theories about ( a) optimal anticipated inflation, ( b) optimal unanticipated inflation, and ( c) conditions that secure a nominal anchor in the sense of a unique price level path. We contrast incomplete theories whose inputs are budget-feasible sequences of government-issued bonds and money with complete theories whose inputs are bond/money strategies described as sequences of functions that map time t histories into time t government actions. We cite historical episodes that confirm the theoretical insight that lines of authority between a Treasury and a central bank can be ambiguous, obscure, and fragile.

Taking the bait: interrogation questions about hypothetical evidence may inflate perceptions of guilt

ABSTRACT During suspect interviews, police will sometimes ask about hypothetical incriminating evidence to evoke a cue to deception – a technique known as a bait question. Previous research has demonstrated such questions can distort peoples’ memory for what evidence exists in a case. Here, we investigate whether such memory distortion can also cause people to see the suspect as more likely to be guilty. Across three experiments, we find exposure to bait questions led to participants hold inflated views of a suspect’s guilt. Further, we demonstrate bait questions cause reliable, robust memory distortion, leading participants to believe non-existent, incriminating evidence exists. However, we found no evidence to support the speculated mechanisms for this inflation – namely, (1) that source monitoring errors could lead people to misremember false evidence as real evidence and (2) that bait questions provide ‘key evidence’ to fill in the gaps of an incomplete theory of a case. In sum, bait questions have the problematic potential to shift jurors towards guilty verdicts. We suggest future research directions on bait questions, including the need for different designs to clarify why bait questions inflate guilt, and recommend practitioners avoid the use of bait questions.

Narratives of justice: Robert Cover’s moral creativity

ABSTRACT Robert Cover’s essay ‘Nomos and Narrative’ (1983) outlines a programme for an ambitious yet incomplete theory of law. While many interpreters focus on how it readdresses nomos, less attention is given to Cover’s notion of narrative. For Cover, narrative is not simply a complement to law that serves to pluralize it, but a key for a different conception of what law is, how it is constituted, and how it relates to sovereignty, morality and social commitment. In the context of the debates during the 1980s between legal positivists and naturalists, particularly around the question of hard cases, Cover’s contribution is that, instead of arguing about the different legal means required to fill what is perceived as a normative void, the narratival approach realizes that law is always socially and semantically contextualized. Hard cases, like crises of tradition or political breaking-points, are cases that uncover the working of narrative within law as a dynamic normative system. This paper argues that Cover’s work goes beyond the positivism-naturalism dilemma, as well as beyond the liberal framework of legal thinking and more broadly, towards a paradigm-shift in legal philosophy that I suggest calling poetical phronesis.

The Incompleteness of Quantum Mechanics Demonstrated by Considerations of Relativistic Kinetic Energy

The energy levels of a hydrogen atom, derived by Bohr, are known to be approximations. This is because the classical quantum theory of Bohr does not take the theory of relativity into account. In this paper, the kinetic energy and momentum of an electron in a hydrogen atom are treated relativistically. A clearer argument is developed while also referring to papers published in the past. The energy levels of a hydrogen atom predicted by this paper almost match the theoretical values of Bohr. It is difficult to experimentally distinguish the two. However, this paper predicts the existence of an n = 0 energy level that cannot be predicted even with Dirac’s relativistic quantum mechanics. The only quantum number treated in this paper is n. This point falls far short of a finished quantum mechanics. However, even in discussion at the level of this paper, it can be concluded that quantum mechanics is an incomplete theory.

Magnetic field and inductance of filament conductor segment model with current continuity

Traditional current-carrying model of filament conductor segment is the basic model for analyzing the magnetic field in a closed conductor loop. Although it does not satisfy the law of current continuity, it is still suitable for analyzing the magnetic field in the closed conductor loop. However, for the current distribution problem of some local multi-branch parallel-connection conductor segments in a closed conductor loop, the traditional model cannot fully reflect the interaction between magnetic fields of the local multi-branch parallel-connection conductor segments. For this reason, the displacement current model proposed in the existing literature satisfies the law of current continuity and solves the above problem well. But, there remain some problems to be solved, such as incomplete theory, inconsistency and complex formulae in the existing literature. In this paper, a conductive current-carrying model of filament conductor segment is proposed, which ensures current continuity inside, outside, and on two terminals of the filament conductor segment. The differential equation of total magnetic field with more profound physical connotation and the formulae of vector magnetic potential are derived in detail. Further, the formulae for calculating magnetic field energy and inductance of the conductive current-carrying model of filament conductor segment are proposed, which greatly reduces the computational complexity and makes up for the shortcoming of model in the existing literature. An example given in this paper verifies the correctness of the above theory and formulae.

How Do Banks Interact with Fintech Startups?

The increasing pervasiveness of technology-driven firms that offer banking services has led to a growing pressure on traditional banks to modernize their core business activities. Many banks tackle the challenges of digitalization by cooperating with startup firms that offer technology-driven financial services (fintechs). In this paper, we examine which banks typically collaborate with fintechs, how intensely they do so, and which form of alliance they prefer. Using hand-collected data covering the largest banks from Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, we provide detailed evidence on the different forms of alliances occurring in practice. We show that banks are significantly more likely to form alliances with fintechs when they pursue a well-defined digital strategy and/or employ a chief digital officer. Moreover, in line with incomplete contract theory, we find that banks more frequently invest in small fintechs but often build product-related collaborations with larger fintechs.

Friedenslogik – Leistungsvermögen, Geltungsanspruch, Anfragen*

The logic of peace approach possesses specific potentials: It distills a few essentials of peace, makes peace more fluid, and defines peace and security in a special manner. Maybe it also provides a base for a deep reflexive but always incomplete theory of peace. The claimed validity can be described as a conditioned universality. Points of criticism can be refuted: The discrimination between peace and security is still necessary. Safety remains an important value, but it should be achieved by the logic of peace instead by the logic of security. Obviously, a powerful and ‘hell-bent’ aggressor is an excessive demand. But this is true for all logics. Instead of giving up the approach, it is better to make contextual adjustments and conduct deeper elaboration.

Network Attack and Defense Game Theory Based on Bayes-Nash Equilibrium

In the process of constructing the traditional offensive and defensive game theory model, these are some shortages for considering the dynamic change of security risk problem. By analysing the critical indicators of the incomplete information game theory model, incomplete information attack and defense game theory model and the mathematical engineering method for solving Bayes-Nash equilibrium, the risk-averse income function for information assets is summarized as the problem of maximising the return of the equilibrium point. To obtain the functional relationship between the optimal strategy combination of the offense and defense and the information asset security probability and risk probability. At the same time, the offensive and defensive examples are used to visually analyse and demonstrate the incomplete information game and the Harsanyi conversion method. First, the incomplete information game and the Harsanyi conversion problem is discussed through the attack and defense examples and using the game tree. Then the strategy expression of incomplete information static game and the engineering mathematics method of Bayes-Nash equilibrium are given. After that, it focuses on the offensive and defensive game problem of unsafe information network based on risk aversion. The problem of attack and defense is obtained by the issue of maximizing utility, and then the Bayes-Nash equilibrium of offense and defense game is carried out around the security risk of assets. Finally, the application model in network security penetration and defense is analyzed by designing a simulation example of attack and defense penetration. The analysis results show that the constructed income function model is feasible and practical.

Spacelike character of the Minkowski four-momentum in analog gravity

In analog gravity the recent experiment of Drori {\it et al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 122}, 010404 (2019)] is impressive, as it shows how the emission of two Hawking quanta emitted in opposite directions lead to measurable consequences in the medium's rest system in a straightforward way. This result raises however the following problem: how can this experiment be explained in terms of classical electrodynamics? There must necessarily exist such an explanation (the experiment is after all classical); otherwise classical electrodynamics would be an incomplete theory. This is the main topic of the present paper. We propose that the measured effect is a demonstration of the spacelike character of the Minkowski four-momentum. Moreover, we extend the discussion by analyzing a Gedanken experiment (making use of the Kerr effect as a formal agency), to illustrate the transition from subluminal to superluminal phenomena in a straightforward way. Finally, we emphasize the close relationship that exists between the spacelike Minkowski momentum and the anomalous Doppler effect.

The Ethical Implications of Evolutionary Theory

This essay is primarily concerned with important arguments involved in the debate about the relationship between evolution and morality. Though the paper holds that it is plausible that certain natural traits would have evolved into human moral sentiments, it argues that evolutionary theory cannot tell us how to be good people or why moral sentiments ought to take priority over immoral sentiments. Evolutionary theory is in this way an incomplete moral theory, analyzing how humans and human morality evolved through natural selection can uncover implications of evolutionary theory, which have a strong impact on a theory of morality

The Debt-Contracting Value of Accounting Numbers and Financial Covenant Renegotiation

Building on incomplete contract theory, I investigate whether the likelihood of renegotiating financial covenants is affected by the debt-contracting value of borrowers’ accounting numbers. The debt-contracting value captures the inherent ability of accounting numbers to predict credit quality. Using a large sample of private credit agreements, I hypothesize and find that a higher debt-contracting value gives rise to smaller ex post measurement errors in accounting numbers used in covenants, and thus borrowers and lenders are less likely to renegotiate financial covenants. This effect is stronger when the financial covenant intensity is higher. Consistent with the notion that renegotiation improves contracting efficiency by eliminating errors in financial covenants, I show that the distance of the covenant variable to its new contractual threshold better predicts a borrower’s creditworthiness than does the distance to the original threshold absent the renegotiation. This paper was accepted by Shiva Rajgopal, accounting.

Landmark-Enhanced Heuristics for Goal Recognition in Incomplete Domain Models

Recent approaches to goal recognition have progressively relaxed the assumptions about the amount and correctness of domain knowledge and available observations, yielding accurate and efficient algorithms. These approaches, however, assume completeness and correctness of the domain theory against which their algorithms match observations: this is too strong for most real-world domains. In this paper, we develop goal recognition techniques that are capable of recognizing goals using incomplete domain theories by considering different notions of planning landmarks in such domains. We evaluate the resulting techniques empirically in a large dataset of incomplete domains, and perform an ablation study to understand their effect on recognition performance.

The Deceptive Efficiency of Smart Contracts: Hidden Opportunism in Certainty

The optimism for smart contracts is derived from the cost-saving efficiency benefits in contractual construction, enforcement, and provisions of legal certainty. However, this paper analyzes from a behavioral standpoint the problem of opportunism in incomplete contract theory and relation-based contract theory, leading to an evaluation of how smart contracts might consequently lead to the amplification of such costs of opportunism, overall making them less efficient compared to conventional natural language contracts.

Hints of modified gravity in cosmos and in the lab?

General Relativity (GR) is consistent with a wide range of experiments/observations from millimeter scales up to galactic scales and beyond. However, there are reasons to believe that GR may need to be modified because it includes singularities (it is an incomplete theory) and also it requires fine-tuning to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe through the cosmological constant. Therefore, it is important to check various experiments and observations beyond the above range of scales for possible hints of deviations from the predictions of GR. If such hints are found it is important to understand which classes of modified gravity theories are consistent with them. The goal of this review is to summarize recent progress on these issues. On sub-millimeter scales, we show an analysis of the data of the Washington experiment [D. J. Kapner, T. S. Cook, E. G. Adelberger, J. H. Gundlach, B. R. Heckel, C. D. Hoyle and H. E. Swanson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98 (2007) 021101, arXiv:hep-ph/0611184 [hep-ph]] searching for modifications of Newton’s Law on sub-millimeter scales and demonstrate that a spatially oscillating signal is hidden in this dataset. We demonstrate that even though this signal cannot be explained in the context of standard modified theories (viable scalar tensor and [Formula: see text] theories), it is a rather generic prediction of nonlocal gravity theories. On cosmological scales we review recent analyses of Redshift Space Distortion (RSD) data which measure the growth rate of cosmological perturbations at various redshifts and show that these data are in some tension with the [Formula: see text]CDM parameter values indicated by Planck/2015 CMB data at about [Formula: see text] level. This tension can be reduced by allowing for an evolution of the effective Newton constant that determines the growth rate of cosmological perturbations. We conclude that even though this tension between the data and the predictions of GR could be due to systematic/statistical uncertainties of the data, it could also constitute early hints pointing towards a new gravitational theory.

Monsoon Responses to Climate Changes—Connecting Past, Present and Future

Knowledge of how monsoons will respond to external forcings through the twenty-first century has been confounded by incomplete theories of tropical climate and insufficient representation in climate models. This review highlights recent insights from past warm climates and historical trends that can inform our understanding of monsoon evolution in the context of an emerging energetic framework. Projections consistent with paleoclimate evidence and theory indicate expanded/wetter monsoons in Africa and Asia, with continued uncertainty in the Americas. Twentieth century observations are not congruent with expectations of monsoon responses to radiative forcing from greenhouse gases, due to the confounding effect of aerosols. Lines of evidence from warm climate analogues indicate that while monsoons respond in globally coherent and predictable ways to orbital forcing and inter-hemispheric thermal gradients, there are differences in response to these forcings and also between land and ocean. Further understanding of monsoon responses to climate change will require refinement of the energetic framework to incorporate zonal asymmetries and the use of model hierarchies.

Unrestricted factor analysis of multidimensional test items based on an objectively refined target matrix.

A common difficulty in the factor analysis of items designed to measure psychological constructs is that the factor structures obtained using exploratory factor analysis tend to be rejected if they are tested statistically with a confirmatory factor model. An alternative to confirmatory factor analysis is unrestricted factor analysis based on Procrustes rotation, which minimizes the distance from a target matrix proposed by the researcher. In the present article, we focus on the situation in which researchers propose a partially specified target matrix but are prepared to allow their initial target to be refined. Here we discuss RETAM as a new procedure for objectively refining target matrices. To date, it has been recommended that this kind of refinement be guided by human judgment. However, our approach is objective, because the threshold value is computed automatically (not decided on by the researcher) and there is no need to manually compute a number of factor rotations every time. The new procedure was tested in an extensive simulation study, and the results suggest that it may be a useful procedure in factor analysis applications based on incomplete measurement theory. Its feasibility in practice is illustrated with an empirical example from the personality domain. Finally, RETAM is implemented in a well-known noncommercial program for performing unrestricted factor analysis.

When to go it alone: Examining post-conversion performance of international joint ventures

This study examines the decision to convert international joint ventures to either foreign or local wholly owned entities and the subsequent impact on performance from the perspective of incomplete contract theory. With China’s relaxation of the joint venture requirement, foreign partners are more likely to take full control and thereby improve performance in provinces with fewer institutional barriers and industries with high intangible asset intensity, while local partners are more likely to do so in provinces with higher institutional barriers and low intangible asset intensity. Furthermore, the performance improvement is more salient when transitioning from foreign minority-local majority joint ventures.

Preventing Technological Unemployment by Widening our Understanding of Capital and Progress: Making Robots Work for Us

ABSTRACTUnless we direct technology, technology will increasingly direct us, with mass un(der)employment and a possible atrophying of the human soul (i.e. human thinking, feeling and will) as likely consequences. The root of such problems is a failure to understand capital fully, itself a consequence of a failure to understand fully the human condition. The solution is to complete today’s incomplete theory of capital so that capital can take on its true role as the enabler of human capacities.