Unconditional Preferences Research Articles

When Independence Meets Reality: Symbolic and Pragmatic Politics in Taiwan

ABSTRACT In Taiwan, where relations with China define the major political cleavage, voters have distinct preferences on the issue of independence. Do Taiwanese favor a symbolic or pragmatic approach to the Taiwan independence issue? What are the factors that account for their political preferences? We identify two types of voters, symbolic and pragmatic, according to whether their preferences on independence are conditional or unconditional on China’s potential counter actions. Specifically, symbolic voters have unconditional preferences on independence, while pragmatic voters are more agreeable to independence under more favorable conditions. Using multiple wave data from the Taiwan National Security Surveys (TNSS 2002–2022), we investigate the individual- and macro-level factors and find that gender, age, education level, ethnicity, partisan strength, and economic growth rate shape the types of voters in Taiwan. This paper contributes to the study of political attitudes in Taiwan, and have important implications on the regional stability in East Asia.

О выборе элементарных сигналов для радиосистем со сложными сигналами

It widely uses complex signals based on code sequences in digital communication and radar systems. It pays most attention to code sequences analysis, synthesis, and implementation while developing such systems. Significantly less attention is paid to the shape of elementary signals (ES) constituting a complex signal. This work aims at a comparative analysis of the parameters of several known ES in terms of the rate of spectrum decrease and the accuracy of measuring the time position. Recommendations are given for choosing the best ES based on the criterion of unconditional preference. This paper aims in comparative parameter analysing of several known ESs from spectrum decrease rate and time position measurement accuracy points of view. Recommendations are given on choosing the best ES based on the unconditional preference criterion.

The effect of unconditional preferences on Sen’s paradox

The effect of unconditional preferences on Sen’s paradox

Method distribution of package delivery time

When analyzing the problems of organizing the effective functioning of distributed data transmission networks with packet switching, it becomes clear that it is necessary to improve existing models of individual network structures, develop new models for studying effects, factors and mechanisms that have not been considered previously, and create, on their basis, non-laborious methods for selecting network parameters according to various criteria of optimality. An analytical review of the results achieved in the study of various structural formations made it possible to reveal the degree of elaboration of the issues of organizing the effective operation of the network, to formulate unsolved problems and to outline the main directions of research. In this case, the peculiarity of end-to-end data transportation over a multi-link virtual connection is clearly not taken into account, and the question of the adequacy of the assigned distributions to the real information transfer process is not considered and remains open. An approach to the construction of the distribution of the transmission time of an information packet in a virtual channel with distortions is proposed, on the basis of which the analysis of the influence of the duration of the end-to-end time-out of non-receipt of a receipt on the operational characteristics of the data transport process is carried out. A model of a data transmission path with distortions in individual sections of the transfer in the form of a stochastic conveyor is proposed, and auxiliary relations necessary for the analysis of stochastic information transfer are obtained. The parameters of the line protocols largely determine the potential of inter-node connections, the requirements for the buffer memory of the switching nodes and the end-to-end delay of subscriber messages. The known methods for the formal selection of these parameters are focused mainly on the unconditional preference of the criterion for the throughput of inter-node connections and require time-consuming numerical calculations. Since the problem of redefining network parameters often arises in real networks due to changes in operating conditions, then there is a need to develop non-laborious engineering methods for their selection according to various criteria of optimality.

Development of a conceptual GIS model to support management decision making

Making (identifying) the right decision, just making a decisionis a choice from a variety of acceptable alternatives, depending on various factors, one in which the effective value is optimized. If a decision maker (DM) or a decision support system (DSS) can isolate a control parameter with unconditional preference that is relevant and most fully characterizing the properties of the system (process, object), it can be considered an objective function, subject to certain restrictive (by an acceptable set, resources) conditions. A similar problem is single-criterion, solved by classical methods of the decision theory. Decision-making tasks can be solved by a sequence of steps, a procedure: generation of acceptable options, selection of relevant criteria, search for an acceptable choice, its evaluation. In solving the problems of the decision support system (DSS), the decision-maker is usually involved - an expert, an analyst with competencies in the subject area and evaluating options, a consultant who helps to formulate acceptable options. The article discusses the development of a conceptual model of a geographic information system to support managerial decision-making. The basis of such GIS is an automated mapping system.

Formation of Minimax Ensembles of Aperiodic Gold Codes

Introduction. Signals constructed on the basis of ensembles of code sequences are widely used in digital communication systems. During development of such systems, the most attention is paid to analysis, synthesis and implementation of periodic signal ensembles. Theoretic methods for synthesis of periodic signal ensembles are developed and are in use. Considerably fewer results are received regarding construction of aperiodic signal ensembles with given properties. Theoretical methods for synthesis of such ensembles are practically nonexistent.Aim. To construct aperiodic Gold code ensembles with the best ratios of code length to ensemble volume among the most known binary codes.Materials and methods. Methods of directed search and discrete choice of the best ensemble based on unconditional preference criteria are used.Results. Full and truncated aperiodic Gold code ensembles with given length and ensemble volume were constructed. Parameters and shape of auto- and mutual correlation functions were shown for a number of constructed ensembles. Comparison of the paper results with known results for periodic Gold code ensembles has been conducted regarding growth of minimax correlation function values depending on code length and ensemble volume.Conclusion. The developed algorithms, unlike the known ones, make it possible to form both complete ensembles and ensembles taking into account the limitation of their volume. In addition, the algorithms can be extended to the tasks of forming ensembles from other families, for example, assembled from code sequences belonging to different families.

Alternative evolutionary outcomes following endosymbiont-mediated selection on male mating preference alleles.

In many arthropods, intracellular bacteria, such as those of the genus Wolbachia, may spread through host populations as a result of cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI). Here, there is sterility or reduced fertility in crosses between infected males and uninfected females. As the bacterium is maternally inherited, the reduced fertility of uninfected females increases the frequency of the infection. If the transmission fidelity of the bacterium is less than 100%, the bacterium cannot invade from a low frequency, but if its frequency exceeds a threshold, it increases to a high, stable, equilibrium frequency. We explore the expected evolutionary dynamics of mutant alleles that cause their male bearers to avoid mating with uninfected females. For alleles which create this avoidance behaviour conditional upon the male being infected, there is a wide zone of parameter space that allows the preference allele to drive Wolbachia from the population when it would otherwise stably persist. There is also a wide zone of parameter space that allows a joint stable equilibrium for the Wolbachia and a polymorphism for the preference allele. When the male's avoidance of uninfected females is unconditional, the preference allele's effect on Wolbachia frequency is reduced, but there is a narrow range of values for the transmission rate and CI fertility that allow an unconditional preference allele to drive Wolbachia from the population, in a process driven by positive linkage disequilibrium between Wolbachia and the preference allele. The possibility of the evolution of preference could hamper attempts to manipulate wild populations through Wolbachia introductions.

Should the Randomistas (Continue to) Rule?

The rising popularity of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in development applications has come with continuing debates on the pros and cons of this approach. The paper revisits the issues. While RCTs have a place in the toolkit for impact evaluation, an unconditional preference for RCTs as the “gold standard” is questionable. The statistical case is unclear on a priori grounds; a stronger ethical defense is often called for; and there is a risk of distorting the evidence-base for informing policymaking. Going forward, pressing knowledge gaps should drive the questions asked and how they are answered, not the methodological preferences of some researchers. The gold standard is the best method for the question at hand.

Evidence on the Unconditional Preference for Accrual vs. Real Earnings Management

Prior research shows that a greater level of cumulative accrual earnings management (AEM) over prior periods limits managers’ ability to use AEM in the current period and has suggested that this constraint on AEM is associated with greater use of real earnings management (REM). First, we confirm this result using new, more intuitive measures of cumulative AEM and cumulative REM. Second, we document that while constraints on the ability to use AEM are associated with a shift toward REM, constraints on the ability to use REM are not associated with a shift toward AEM. These results suggest that managers shift toward REM when necessary, but all else being equal, would prefer to use AEM. We also find that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 weakened managers’ preference for AEM over REM.

On Structured Argumentation with Conditional Preferences

We study defeasible knowledge bases with conditional preferences (DKB). A DKB consists of a set of undisputed facts and a rule-based system that contains different types of rules: strict, defeasible, and preference. A major challenge in defining the semantics of DKB lies in determining how conditional preferences interact with the attack relations represented by rebuts and undercuts, between arguments.
 We introduce the notions of preference attack relations as sets of attacks between preference arguments and the rebuts or undercuts among arguments as well as of preference attack relation assignments which map knowledge bases to preference attack relations. We present five rational properties (referred to as regular properties), the inconsistency-resolving, effective rebuts, context-independence, attack monotonicity and link-orientation properties generalizing the properties of the same names for the case of unconditional preferences.
 Preference attack relation assignment are defined as regular if they satisfy all regular properties. We show that the set of regular assignments forms a complete lower semilattice whose least element is referred to as the canonical preference attack relation assignment. Canonical attack relation assignment represents the semantics of preferences in defeasible knowledge bases as intuitively, it could be viewed as being uniquely identified by the regular properties together with the principle of minimal removal of undesired attacks. We also present the normal preference attack relation assignment as an approximation of the canonical attack relation assignment.

Рост и производительность Удмуртского климатипа сосны обыкновенной в условиях Подмосковья

In normative documents defining the principles of reforestation, unconditional preference is given to local or nearby populations. This situation contradicts the data obtained by many authors in various forest growing areas, as well as the results of our research, which were performed in 65-year-old geographical cultures of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) in the Serebryanoborsky forestry of the Institute of Forest Science, located in the central part of the Moscow region. Despite the remote origin (the distance from the geographical landings under study was about 900 km to the east), the planting grown from seeds obtained from the Mozhginsky region of the Udmurt Republic was close to the average height with the Moscow region and Vladimir climatypes and significantly exceeded them in average diameter and stock. The distribution of trees by thickness steps in the tree stands under study is close to normal. At the same time, in the Udmurt climatype, a shift towards the predominance of large trunks is noticeable, whereas in the Vladimir climatype, they are lagging behind. Moscow Provision occupies an intermediate position. According to the dependences of relative heights on tree diameters, the most intense competitive relations are characteristic of the Vladimir climate type. In the first place, this reflects the greatest density of the plantings. In the Udmurt climatype, a high H/D value, corresponding in size to that in Moscow and Vladimir climatypes, is characteristic of trees lagging behind in growth, the diameter of which does not exceed 20 cm. Leading trees in the Udmurt clima type are significantly larger than the local provences. . Planting of Udmurt origin not only adapted to the climatic conditions of the study area, but also surpassed local climatypes in terms of the aggregate characteristics of growth and productivity.

Conditional expected utility

Let \({\mathcal {E}}\) be a class of events. Conditionally Expected Utility decision makers are decision makers whose conditional preferences \(\succsim _{E}\), \(E\in {\mathcal {E}}\), satisfy the axioms of Subjective Expected Utility (SEU) theory. We extend the notion of unconditional preference that is conditionally EU to unconditional preferences that are not necessarily SEU. We study a subclass of these preferences, namely those that satisfy dynamic consistency. We give a representation theorem, and show that these preferences are Invariant Bi-separable in the sense of Ghirardato et al. (Journal of Economic Theory 118:133–173, 2004). We also show that these preferences have only a trivial overlap with the class of Choquet Expected Utility preferences, but there are plenty of preferences of the \(\alpha \)-Maxmin Expected Utility type that satisfy our assumptions. We identify several concrete settings where our results could be applied. Finally, we consider the special case where the unconditional preference is itself SEU, and compare our results with those of Fishburn (Econometrica 41:1–25, 1973).

Daytime summer access to pasture vs. free-stall barn in dairy cows with year-long outdoor experience: A case study

With its documented health and behavioural benefits, one would expect dairy cows to have near unconditional preference for pasture. However, dairy cow preference is multifaceted with numerous factors contributing to the choices and or actions of the cow. Experience is one such factor that may play a role in the level of preference that a dairy cow displays for pasture. In the current case study, we investigated if cows, when given the choice, would go to and remain at pasture under Eastern Canadian summer climatic conditions. Two important components were introduced in the case study: the use of a herd with year-round experience with the outdoors and the provision of the same feed options (both fresh-cut forage and haylage) inside and on pasture. In doing so, the effects of a novel, outdoor environment and feed preference could be mitigated. 32 organic Holstein cows (parity average±SD: 2.8±2.0) averaging 9211kg/cow milk production were submitted to a 6-d test cycle comprised of three consecutively and randomly applied 2-d phases repeated 4x over the course of 8 weeks. During these phases, cows were restricted to a free-stall barn (forced-indoor), restricted to pasture (forced-outdoor), or provided the access to both options (free-choice) for a 7-h period. Live observations of activities (drinking, eating haylage, eating fresh forage, lying, and other) were conducted every 2min by scan sampling during the forced-outdoor and choice phases. A group level analysis with a Friedman test followed by an Asymptotic General Independence test was used to analyze the difference in time spent performing each activity between weeks and hours when forced-outdoor. The number of cows on pasture during the free-choice phase was averaged by week and hour. A 2-sample t-test was also used to compare time doing activities inside (free-choice phase) to those outside (forced-outdoor phase). When given the option, as a group, cows went to and remained at pasture for a majority of the time, with the exception of week 3 where a reduction in the number of cows on pasture was observed (from >90 to 40%), possibly due to inclement weather. No difference in activities were reported between the indoor vs. pasture environments. Eating fresh forage more than haylage was observed in both the indoor and pasture environments. The case study suggests that cows with outdoor experience have a strong inclination towards the outdoors and to elements such as eating fresh forages that is normally associated with the natural behaviour of grazing, providing a baseline for future research on the importance of providing outdoor access to cows for more sustainable dairy systems.

Interdependent Preferences and Strategic Distinguishability

A universal type space of interdependent expected utility preference types is constructed from higher-order preference hierarchies describing (i) an agent's (unconditional) preferences over a lottery space; (ii) the agent's preference over Anscombe-Aumann acts conditional on the unconditional preferences; and so on.Two types are said to be strategically indistinguishable if they have an equilibrium action in common in any mechanism that they play. We show that two types are strategically indistinguishable if and only if they have the same preference hierarchy. We examine how this result extends to alternative solution concepts and strategic relations between types.

Legislator Dissent as a Valence Signal

Existing research suggests that voters tend to respond positively to legislator independence due to two types of mechanism. First, dissent has an indirect effect, increasing a legislator’s media coverage and personal recognition among constituents (profile effects). Secondly, constituents react positively to dissent when this signals that the legislator has matching political or representational preferences (conditional evaluation). This article presents a third effect: dissent acts as avalence signalof integrity and trustworthiness. Consistent with the valence signalling mechanism, it uses new observational and experimental evidence to show that British voters have a strong and largely unconditional preference for legislators who dissent. The findings pose a dilemma for political systems that rely on strong and cohesive parties.

A characterization of Brandenburger–Friedenberg–Keisler’s assumption

Brandenburger et al.’s (2008) preference-based definition of assumption has two requirements: nontriviality and strict determination. We show that a decision maker’s preferences satisfy strict determination (on a given event) if and only if her unconditional preferences are equivalent to a lexicographic evaluation of her conditional preferences. An immediate application of this result yields a characterization of all lexicographic probability systems (LPS’s)—similar to the characterization in Brandenburger et al.(2008) for a strict subset of LPS’s—under which an event is assumed.

Examining unconditional preference revelation in choice experiments: a voting game approach

If respondents are strategic, voting in choice experiments may violate the common modelling assumption that everyone votes for his unconditionally most-preferred alternative. This presents a challenge to accurately estimating welfare measures. We conduct a homegrown-value laboratory experiment designed to mimic a three-alternative choice experiment. Two key pieces of information not previously collected from participants are their (1) unconditionally most-preferred alternative and (2) their perception of the likely vote distribution. We are able to identify whether participants adopt a strategy of voting for their second-most-preferred alternative when their most-preferred alternative is believed likely to garner the fewest votes. We find that many more participants do not vote for their most-preferred alternative than theory predicts. We also test whether prompting participants to think about the likely vote distribution before voting affects their own vote. We find that prompting participants does not affect strategic voting. We find percentages of participants who do not vote for their most-preferred alternative, who cast strategic votes for their second most-preferred alternative, and who cast apparently ‘irrational’ votes are close to estimates from studies in political election settings. The presence of strategic and irrational votes should cause choice experiment researchers to rethink their model assumptions.

Quantitative genetics of learning ability and resistance to stress in Drosophila melanogaster.

Even though laboratory evolution experiments have demonstrated genetic variation for learning ability, we know little about the underlying genetic architecture and genetic relationships with other ecologically relevant traits. With a full diallel cross among twelve inbred lines of Drosophila melanogaster originating from a natural population (0.75 < F < 0.93), we investigated the genetic architecture of olfactory learning ability and compared it to that for another behavioral trait (unconditional preference for odors), as well as three traits quantifying the ability to deal with environmental challenges: egg-to-adult survival and developmental rate on a low-quality food, and resistance to a bacterial pathogen. Substantial additive genetic variation was detected for each trait, highlighting their potential to evolve. Genetic effects contributed more than nongenetic parental effects to variation in traits measured at the adult stage: learning, odorant perception, and resistance to infection. In contrast, the two traits quantifying larval tolerance to low-quality food were more strongly affected by parental effects. We found no evidence for genetic correlations between traits, suggesting that these traits could evolve at least to some degree independently of one another. Finally, inbreeding adversely affected all traits.

Interdependent Preferences and Strategic Distinguishability

A universal type space of interdependent expected utility preference types is constructed from higher-order preference hierarchies describing (i) an agent's (unconditional) preferences over a lottery space; (ii) the agent's preference over Anscombe-Aumann acts conditional on the unconditional preferences; and so on. Two types are said to be strategically indistinguishable if they have an equilibrium action in common in any mechanism that they play. We show that two types are strategically indistinguishable if and only if they have the same preference hierarchy. We examine how this result extends to alternative solution concepts and strategic relations between types.

A dynamic Ellsberg urn experiment

Many theories of updating under ambiguity assume either dynamic consistency or consequentialism to underpin behaviorally the link between conditional and unconditional preferences. To test the descriptive validity of these rationality concepts, we conduct a dynamic extension of Ellsbergʼs 3-color experiment. We find that more subjects act in line with consequentialism than with dynamic consistency and that this result is even stronger among ambiguity averse subjects.