Private Core Research Articles

Spatiotemporal exposome dynamics of soil lead and children's blood lead pre- and ten years post-Hurricane Katrina: Lead and other metals on public and private properties in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A.

BackgroundAnthropogenic re-distribution of lead (Pb) principally through its use in gasoline additives and lead-based paints have transformed the urban exposome. This unique study tracks urban-scale soil Pb (SPb) and blood Pb (BPb) responses of children living in public and private communities in New Orleans before and ten years after Hurricane Katrina (29 August 2005). ObjectivesTo compare and evaluate associations of pre- and ten years post-Katrina SPb and children's BPb on public and private residential census tracts in the core and outer areas of New Orleans, and to examine correlations between SPb and nine other soil metals. MethodsThe Louisiana Healthy Housing and Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program BPb (µg/dL) data from pre- (2000–2005) and post-Katrina (2010–2015) for ≤6-year-old children. Data from public and adjacent private residential census tracts within core and outer areas are stratified from a database that includes 916 and 922 SPb and 13,379 and 4830 BPb results, respectively, from pre- and post-Katrina New Orleans. Statistical analyses utilize Multi-Response Permutation Procedure and Spearman's Rho Correlation. ResultsPre- to Post-Katrina median SPb decreases in public and private core census tracts were from 285 to 55mg/kg and 710–291mg/kg, respectively. In public and private outer census tracts the median SPb decreased from 109 to 56mg/kg and 88–55mg/kg. Children's BPb percent ≥5µg/dL on public and private core areas pre-Katrina was 63.2% and 67.5%, and declined post-Katrina to 7.6% and 20.2%, respectively. BPb decreases also occurred in outer areas. Soil Pb is strongly correlated with other metals. ConclusionsPost-Katrina re-building of public housing plus landscaping amends the exposome and reduces children's BPb. Most importantly, Hurricane Katrina revealed that decreasing the toxicants in the soil exposome is an effective intervention for decreasing children's BPb.

Equilibria and incentives in private information economies

This paper considers three solution concepts in a large private information economy, namely, Walrasian expectations equilibrium, private core, and insurance equilibrium. It shows that these three concepts coincide with each other when the agents are informationally negligible in such an economy. In contrast to the finite-agent setting, one can construct a large private information economy in which incentive compatibility fails completely in the sense that almost every agent in any Walrasian expectations equilibrium/private core/insurance equilibrium allocation has the incentive to misreport her type.

An interim core for normal form games and exchange economies with incomplete information

We consider the interim core of normal form cooperative games and exchange economies with incomplete information based on the partition model. We develop a solution concept that we can situate roughly between Wilson’s coarse core and Yannelis’s private core. We investigate the interim negotiation of contracts and address the two situations of contract delivery: interim and ex post. Our solution differs from Wilson’s concept because the measurability of strategies in our solution is postponed until the consumption date (assumed with respect to the information that will be known by the players at the consumption date). For interim consumption, our concept differs from Yannelis’s private core because players can negotiate conditional on proper common knowledge events in our solution, which strengthens the interim aspect of the game, as we will illustrate with examples.

Cooperative Solutions for Large Economies with Asymmetric Information

A proof of the existence of private core allocations is provided for an exchange economy e where consumers and commodities are both infinite in number, supposing however that only finitely many types can be distinguished among traders. It is obtained passing through the Edgeworth equilibrium notion considered for a suitably associated discrete setting. For this setting a preliminary result—which is interesting in itself—is proved: in every discrete economy E with asymmetric information and unequal numbers of traders with the same characteristics there is a private core allocation which treats agents of the same type equally.

The veto mechanism in atomic differential information economies

We establish new characterizations of Walrasian expectations equilibria based on the veto mechanism in the framework of differential information economies with a complete finite measure space of agents. We show that it is enough to consider the veto power of a single coalition, consisting of the entire set of agents, to obtain the Aubin private core. Moreover, we investigate on the veto power of arbitrarily small and big coalitions, providing an extension to mixed markets of well known Schmeidler (1972) and Vind’s (1972) results in terms of Aubin private core allocations.

Blocking efficiency in an economy with asymmetric information

In this paper, we study a pure exchange atomless economy with asymmetric information and having an ordered Banach space with an interior point in its positive cone as the commodity space. An extension of the main theorem in Vind (1972) to the private core without free disposal is established. As a particular case of this result, a solution to a problem mentioned in Pesce (2010) is derived.

Introduction: Commentaries and Author's Response to “The Rise and Fall of the Autochthonous Self: From Italian Renaissance Art and Shakespeare to Heidegger, Lacan, and Intersubjectivism” by Richard D. Chessick

This article addresses the unresolved question of the existence of a private core autochthonous self, as it has been described by Winnicott, Modell, and others. The postmodern version of the self has eliminated this concept entirely, relegating the self to a changing and unstable display, or regarding it as totally chaotic, or even an illusion. The question is raised whether by returning to the origins of this notion of a private self and then tracing its apparent dissolution it might be possible to discover some evidence that it still exists. The methodology used is that of obtaining knowledge directly through the arts and the claim is made that because empirical science has clamored to be the only source of knowledge, we have lost what could be obtained by direct intuitive seeing and experiencing the works of creative geniuses. To explore the rise of the autochthonous self this article provides an examination of the shift from Gothic art to Italian Renaissance art, a time which engendered the origin of "man" with his or her elusive private individual self that then became expressed in changing works of art. As this spread north, Shakespeare appeared and similarly invented and illustrated in his characters the private individual self, a concept not appreciated or recognized before the Renaissance. But as science arose and Western civilization began to decline, a corresponding disillusionment with "man" took place. The self began to be viewed as solely a social construction with no core except perhaps a genetic endowment. This was accompanied by a reduction in the concept of the human as a valuable and precious living being and was replaced by regarding the human as an object of control and exploitation. After the Second World War a movement in contemporary United States psychoanalysis gradually replaced the ideas of Freud and his emphasis on the "I" in the psychoanalytic process, with forms of relational therapy, assuming that the self was ab initio intersubjectively formed and could be altered fundamentally by focus on intersubjective processes. The author contends that this attitude makes it less likely for the psychoanalyst to focus on the regressive transferences from which derivatives of the private self arise and to grasp the phenomenological whole of the patient (p. 625).

Transaction and transformation at Trinity: private sponsorship, core values and Christian ethos at England's most improved academy

The Academies Programme in England, whereby new schools may be privately sponsored and managed but publicly funded, has expanded rapidly with over 200 academies already open before 2010 and many more likely given the education policies promoted by Michael Gove as Conservative Secretary of State for Education. A significant number of academies are sponsored by Christian organisations and this article draws upon the author's recent case study of Trinity Academy which has both a business sponsor and a Christian ethos. Trinity Academy, which is located at the heart of a former mining community in South Yorkshire and serves a social priority area with a history of educational underachievement, was designated ‘England's Most Improved Academy’ and the ‘Most Improved School in Yorkshire and Humberside’ just prior to the commencement of the research. In this article the contribution made by Trinity is assessed and the perspectives of sponsor, school leaders, teachers and 14‐year‐olds are evaluated. The concept of the ‘transaction’ to indicate exchange and interdependence informs both research design and analysis. The nature and quality of transactions between those who ‘author’ the authorised ‘texts’ of school life and the young people and teachers who ‘read’ and respond to these value‐laden ‘texts’ at Trinity Academy are reported. The conclusion is drawn that transactions between Trinity Academy's students, its ‘secular’ core values and its Christian ethos, and also between the public and private sectors, have supported an innovation in schooling that has transformed the opportunities and life‐chances of young people. Transactions such as those at Trinity are advocated as an ethical and socially just means of bringing about transformation in educational attainment while providing moral education that fosters autonomy and critical thinking.

The Rise and Fall of the Autochthonous Self: From Italian Renaissance Art and Shakespeare to Heidegger, Lacan, and Intersubjectivism

This article addresses the unresolved question of the existence of a private core autochthonous self, as it has been described by Winnicott, Modell, and others. The postmodern version of the self has eliminated this concept entirely, relegating the self to a changing and unstable display, or regarding it as totally chaotic, or even an illusion. The question is raised whether by returning to the origins of this notion of a private self and then tracing its apparent dissolution it might be possible to discover some evidence that it still exists. The methodology used is that of obtaining knowledge directly through the arts and the claim is made that because empirical science has clamored to be the only source of knowledge, we have lost what could be obtained by direct intuitive seeing and experiencing the works of creative geniuses. To explore the rise of the autochthonous self this article provides an examination of the shift from Gothic art to Italian Renaissance art, a time which engendered the origin of "man" with his or her elusive private individual self that then became expressed in changing works of art. As this spread north, Shakespeare appeared and similarly invented and illustrated in his characters the private individual self, a concept not appreciated or recognized before the renaissance. But as science arose and Western civilization began to decline, a corresponding disillusionment with "man" took place. The self began to be viewed as solely a social construction with no core except perhaps a genetic endowment. This was accompanied by a reduction in the concept of the human as a valuable and precious living being and was replaced by regarding the human as an object of control and exploitation. After the Second World War a movement in contemporary United States psychoanalysis gradually replaced the ideas of Freud and his emphasis on the "I" in the psychoanalytic process, with forms of relational therapy, assuming that the self was ab initio intersubjectively formed and could be altered fundamentally by focus on intersubjective processes. The author contends that this attitude makes it less likely for the psychoanalyst to focus on the regressive transferences from which derivatives of the private self arise and to grasp the phenomenological whole of the patient.

A Note on the Private Core and Coalitional Fairness under Asymmetric Information

We study relations among Walrasian expectations allocations, coalitional fair allocations and the private core of economies with uncertainty and asymmetric information. Our analysis covers finite exchange models, as well as models of mixed markets consisting of some large traders and an ocean of small traders. The adopted notion of coalitional fairness requires that: 1. Under a “c-fair” allocation, no coalition could benefit from achieving the net trade of some other disjoint coalition; 2. Coalition bargaining takes place without information sharing among agents. We introduce a notion of restricted Walrasian expectations allocation and examine its relations with c-fairness.

On mixed markets with asymmetric information

In asymmetric information exchange economies involving both non-negligible and negligible agents, one should expect the failure of the private Core-Walras Equivalence Theorem. This paper shows that if “large” traders are similar to each other, then they lose their market power and hence the Equivalence Theorem can be restored. We also investigate on weaker equivalences among Walrasian expectations allocations, Aubin private core and private core allocations of the original mixed economy and the atomless one associated to it, without the assumption that all atoms are of the same type. Furthermore, extensions of Herves-Moreno-Yannelis and Schmeidler Theorems (compare Herves et al. in J Math Econ 41:844–856, 2005a; Schemidler in Econometrica 40:579–580, 1972) are given for differential information economies in which the feasibility constraints are imposed with an equality (exact feasibility).

Core and equilibria in coalitional asymmetric information economies

We study coalitional economies under uncertainty and asymmetric information, assuming a finitely additive measure space of agents and finitely many possible states of nature. We introduce a suitable core notion showing that it is equivalent to Walrasian expectations equilibria. The finitely additive approach proposed in the paper permits also asymmetric information economy with countably many agents, rather than requiring only a continuum. Moreover, it allows us to overcome well-known criticisms related to the interpretation of individual private core notions.

Large economies with differential information and without free disposal

We consider exchange economies with a continuum of agents and differential information about finitely many states of nature. It was proved in Einy, Moreno, and Shitovitz (2001) that if we allow for free disposal in the market clearing (feasibility) constraints then an irreducible economy has a competitive (or Walrasian expectations) equilibrium, and moreover, the set of competitive equilibrium allocations coincides with the private core. However when feasibility is defined with free disposal, competitive equilibrium allocations may not be incentive compatible and contracts may not be enforceable (see e.g. Glycopantis, Muir, and Yannelis (2002)). This is the main motivation for considering equilibrium solutions with exact feasibility. We first prove that the results in Einy, Moreno, and Shitovitz (2001) are still valid without free-disposal. Then, motivated by the issue of contracts’ execution, we adapt the incentive compatibility property introduced in Krasa and Yannelis (1994) and we prove that every Pareto optimal exact feasible allocation is incentive compatible, implying that contracts of competitive or core allocations are enforceable.

Existence of Edgeworth equilibria for economies with asymmetric information

We analyze a general equilibrium model with asymmetrically informed agents. A basic and well-known consequence of asymmetric information is the failure of equal treatment property. Despite of this, we show that in every replica economy a private core allocation, which treats agents of the same type equally, exists. This result is provided in the framework of two different models, with and without expectations, and it suffices to guarantee in both cases the existence of a private Edgeworth equilibrium.

The Ashes of Usucly: Reflections after Editing William James

The essay consists of two somewhat independent parts. In the first, I recount some of my experiences as editor, reflecting on interpretative contexts as a source of error, the role of chance, and dependence upon the work of others, especially the arrangement and cataloguing of libraries and archives. I note some of the changes libraries have undergone, including computerization, and sketch out some likely effects on scholarship. In the second part, I report some of my idle thoughts about William James. Emphasis is on the surprising absence of evidence, given the large number of surviving documents, giving insight into the private core of his personality, as distinct from the public—and at times politically motivated—presentation of himself. I make some guesses about his personal religious beliefs, his reasons for engaging in psychical research, and his social views. I conclude with reflections upon his contributions to philosophy and the consequences for myself of such an extensive association with a single person.

The measure of blocking coalitions in differential information economies

We provide an evaluation of the measure of privately blocking coalitions in differential information economies. In the case of atomless economies, it is proved that for a Pareto optimal allocation that is not a Walrasian expectations equilibrium, to any symmetric profile there corresponds a ball such that "almost half” of the profiles it contains are privately blocking. Analogous results are proved in the case of finite differential information economies for generalized coalitions and social coalition structures. From a different point of view, the paper can be considered as a contribution showing private core equivalence theorems under restrictions on coalition formation.

Private Information: Similarity as Compatibility

We introduce a new topology on information which evaluates the similarity between information fields taking into account their compatibility, that is, the events that are commonly observed. With this “topology of common information”, the Walrasian expectations equilibrium (Radner 1968) and the private core (Yannelis 1991) are upper semicontinuous

Non-implementation of rational expectations as a perfect Bayesian equilibrium

We point out several conceptual difficulties of the rational expectations equilibrium concept. In particular we show that such an equilibrium need not be incentive compatible and need not be implementable as a perfect Bayesian equilibrium . A comparison of rational expectations equilibria with the private core is also provided. We conclude that the private core is a more appropriate concept to capture the idea of contracts under asymmetric information.

The Aubin private core of differential information economies

We establish characterizations of Radner equilibrium allocations via private core notions in the framework of differential information economies with a finite number of states of nature and a measure space of agents that may have atoms. The commodity space is an ordered separable Banach space whose positive cone admits an interior point. We introduce the notion of Aubin private core and prove that it provides a characterization of Radner equilibrium allocations. We show that the Aubin private core is equivalent to Edgeworth private equilibria and to privately non-dominated allocations of suitable associated economies. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 91B50, 91B44 Journal of Economic Literature Classification: D51, D82, D11

On extensive form implementation of contracts in differential information economies

In the context of differential information economies, with and without free disposal, we consider the concepts of Radner equilibrium, rational expectations equilibrium, private core, weak fine core and weak fine value. We look into the possible implementation of these concepts as perfect Bayesian or sequential equilibria of noncooperative dynamic formulations. We construct relevant game trees which indicate the sequence of decisions and the information sets, and explain the rules for calculating ex ante expected payoffs. The possibility of implementing an allocation is related to whether or not it is incentive compatible. Implementation through an exogenous third party or an endogenous intermediary is also considered.