En raison de sa force explicative et opérationnelle, la théorie du choix rationnel est utilisée au sein de plusieurs disciplines des sciences sociales. Alors que la majorité des économistes conçoivent la théorie du choix rationnel comme un processus de maximisation de l’utilité, la portée de ce modèle est le sujet de nombreuses critiques. Pour plusieurs, certaines préférences ne peuvent être modulées à l’intérieur de ce cadre. Dans ce mémoire, trois conceptions alternatives de la théorie du choix rationnel sont présentées : la rationalité comme présence virtuelle, la rationalité comme mécanisme intentionnel et la rationalité en tant que science du choix. Une analyse critique de celles-ci est effectuée. En design institutionnel, ces trois conceptions de la rationalité offrent des perspectives distinctes. La première met l’emphase sur les motivations non-égocentriques. La seconde mise sur l’aspect adaptatif du processus. La rationalité jouant un rôle privilégié, mais non exclusif, les mécanismes causaux doivent également être considérés. La troisième implique de formuler des règles institutionnels différentes dépendamment du modèle de l’agent rationnel qui est mis de l’avant. L’établissement de règles institutionnelles varie en fonction de la conception adoptée parmi ces théories du choix rationnel. / Because of its explanatory and operational strengths, rational choice theory is used in a variety of social sciences disciplines. Most economists understand rational choice theory as a utility maximization process. For this reason, the reach of the rational model has been subject of a great deal of criticism. For many commentators, there are preferences that cannot be represented by this model of explanation. In the following, three alternative rational choice theory accounts will be presented: the rationality as a virtual presence, rationality as an intentional mechanism and rationality as a science of choice. Each rationality account offers a different view of institutional design. The first focus on agents non-egoistic motivations. The second, on the adaptive aspect with an emphasis on causal mechanism. The third, on the multiplicity of rational actor models. Depending of which rational choice theory account is adopted, implications in institutional design will be different.

Enligt den svenska förvaltningstraditionen, vilken bygger på den Weberianska byråkratimodellen, ska politiker fatta beslut och tjänstemännen verkställa dem. Men, relationen mellan politiker och tjänstemän i den kommunala vardagen förefaller inte vara så enkel. Förtroendevalda politiker upplever ett problem med att tjänstemännen har för stor makt, vilket leder till ett inflytande på den politiska processen som inte står i proportion till deras formella position. Problemet bottnar i att den Weberianska byråkratimodellen inte längre fungerar som ett vägledande ideal i praktiken. Den kommunala vardagen karakteriseras istället av en otydlighet i hur makten i praktiken konstitueras och distri-bueras i relationen mellan politiker och tjänstemän, med resultat att icke-förtroendevalda chefstjänstemän kan hamna i en maktsituation där de kommer i besittning av, förutom sin legitima chefsmakt, en reell politisk makt. Som en följd av detta kan våra svenska kommuner komma att ledas av en profession som tränger undan och kanske i praktiken övertar politisk ledning – en profession som enligt den Weberianska byråkratimodellen formellt ska vara politiskt maktlösa. Mot bakgrund av detta syftar studien till att bidra till kunskapen om de kommunala chefstjänstemännens politiska agerande och de maktförhållanden som konstituerar detta agerande. Med makt avses i avhandlingen en kapacitet att handla som ägs av agenter och som kan identifieras i kraft av chefspositionens varaktiga relationer med underliggande sociala strukturer mellan politik och förvaltning, mellan politiker och tjänstemän. Makt betraktas följaktligen som en förklaringsfaktor för att förstå chefstjänstemännens politiska agerande. Avhandlingen baseras på en fallstudie av kommunchefer, dvs. kommunens ledande tjänsteman som befinner sig i den omedelbara närheten av den kommunövergripande politiska ledningen, och som därigenom verkar i gränslandet mellan politik och administration. För att bidra till denna kunskap utvecklas i avhandlingen en analysmodell med utgångspunkt i den kritiska realismens synsätt på sociala strukturer och kausalitet. Modellen baseras på tre olika typer av analyser, en strukturell analys, en kausal analys och en förståelseanalys. Med hjälp av den strukturella analysen identifieras tre stycken strukturella maktresurser som kan ses som förbundna med den kommunala chefstjänstemannapositionen. Dessa benämns centralitet, kontroll över kritiska resurser, och närhet till makt. Med hjälp av den kausala analysen studeras vad och hur dessa maktresurser tillåter innehavaren av chefstjänstemannapositionen att påverka för att uppnå effekter. Analysen visar att de strukturella maktresurserna möjliggör för chefstjänstemannen att påverka hela den politiska beslutsprocessen genom att med rätt timing i ärendehanteringen, och de beslutsunderlag som ligger bakom detta, presentera olika problembilder och konsekvensbeskrivningar. Med hjälp av förståelseanalysen studeras chefstjänste-männens politiska agerande. Med utgångspunkt i en kritisk realistisk ansats kan de kommunala chefstjänstemännens politiska agerande förstås i termer av en proaktiv politisk roll som är inneboende i chefspositionens generiska karaktär. Den proaktiva rollen är intimt sammanlänkad med strukturella maktresurser genom det att den för sin existens kräver strukturella maktresurser som är förbundna med den kommunala chefstjänstemannapositionen. / Politicians are meant to make decisions and administrators are supposed to execute them according to the Swedish public administration tradition; a tradition built on the Weberian bureaucracy model. But, power relations between politicians and administrators in municipal practice do not appear as unambiguous as the tradition purports. Administrators have too much power according to elected officials, which in turn have an impact on the political process that is not consistent with the administrators’ formal position. This causes tension in the relations between politicians and administrators. The problem seems to stem from the fact that the Weberian bureaucracy model no longer serves as a guiding ideal in practice. Instead the local government practice is characterized by how vaguely the power is constituted and distributed in the social relation between politicians and administrators, resulting in the fact that non-elected public managers find themselves in a power position encompassing not only their legitimate managerial power, but also real political power – which is not consistent with the ideal bureaucracy model according to which this type of power is reserved only for elected officials. As a result the Swedish municipalities may be run by a profession that in practice take over the political leadership; a profession that in keeping with the Weberian ideal model is supposed to be powerless. This dissertation aims to contribute to field of knowledge concerning the municipal administrators’ political actions and the power relations constituting this behaviour. For the purpose of this dissertation the term power intends a capacity to act inherent in agents and that can be identified by virtue of the managerial position’s lasting relations with underlying social structures between politics and administration, between politicians and public administrators. Power is thus looked upon as an element of explanation in understanding public managers political behaviour. The dissertation is based on a case study of municipal managers, i e the leading public administrator in a municipality who is in the immediate proximity to the overall political leadership and thereby serves in the borderland between politics and administration. A model of analysis is developed with its basis in the critical realism’s approach on social structures and causality- The model is based on three different types of analyses, a structural analysis, a causal analysis, and an analysis of understanding. The structural analysis helps identify three structural power resources that are associated with the municipal management position; centrality, control over critical resources, and nearness to power. By means of the causal analysis one studies what and how these power resources permit the holder of the managerial position to influence in order to achieve certain effects. The analysis shows that the structural power resources make it possible for the public managers to influence the political decision making process through right timing in delivering official documents, along with the decision support data, presenting different problem areas and consequences of these. With the support of the analysis of understanding the municipal manager’s political behaviour is studied. With reference to a critical realist approach the answer is that the public managers’ political behaviour can be understood in terms of a proactive political role inherent in the managerial positions generic character. The role is strictly interconnected with the structural power resources due to the fact that the role requires, for its existence, structural power resources as are associated with the municipal managerial position.

Predicting human behavior from a small amount of training examples is a challenging machine learning problem. In this thesis, we introduce the principle of maximum causal entropy, a general technique for applying information theory to decision-theoretic, game-theoretic, and control settings where relevant information is sequentially revealed over time. This approach guarantees decision-theoretic performance by matching purposeful measures of behavior (Abbeel & Ng, 2004), and/or enforces game-theoretic rationality constraints (Aumann, 1974), while otherwise being as uncertain as possible, which minimizes worst-case predictive log-loss (Gr¨unwald & Dawid, 2003). We derive probabilistic models for decision, control, and multi-player game settings using this approach. We then develop corresponding algorithms for efficient inference that include relaxations of the Bellman equation (Bellman, 1957), and simple learning algorithms based on convex optimization. We apply the models and algorithms to a number of behavior prediction tasks. Specifically, we present empirical evaluations of the approach in the domains of vehicle route preference modeling using over 100,000 miles of collected taxi driving data, pedestrian motion modeling from weeks of indoor movement data, and robust prediction of game play in stochastic multi-player games.

Recent experimental studies point to the notion that the brain is a complex dynamical system whose behaviors relating to brain functions and dysfunctions can be described by the physics of network phenomena. The brain consists of anatomical axonal connections among neurons and neuronal populations in various spatial scales. Neuronal interactions and synchrony of neuronal oscillations are central to normal brain functions. Breakdowns in interactions and modifications in synchronization behaviors are usual hallmarks of brain dysfunctions. Here, in this dissertation for PhD degree in physics, we report discoveries of brain oscillatory network activity from two separate studies. These studies investigated the large-scale brain activity during tactile perceptual decision-making and epileptic seizures. In the perceptual decision-making study, using scalp electroencephalography (EEG) recordings of brain potentials, we investigated how oscillatory activity functionally organizes different neocortical regions as a network during a tactile discrimination task. While undergoing EEG recordings, blindfolded healthy participants felt a linear three-dot array presented electromechanically, under computer control, and reported whether the central dot was offset to the left or right. Based on the current dipole modeling in the brain, we found that the source-level peak activity appeared in the left primary somatosensory cortex (SI), right lateral occipital complex (LOC), right posterior intraparietal sulcus (pIPS) and finally left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) at 45, 130, 160 and 175 ms respectively. Spectral interdependency analysis showed that fine tactile discrimination is mediated by distinct but overlapping ~15 Hz beta and ~80 Hz gamma band large-scale oscillatory networks. The beta-network that included all four nodes was dominantly feedforward, similar to the propagation of peak cortical activity, implying its role in accumulating and maintaining relevant sensory information and mapping to action. The gamma-network activity, occurring in a recurrent loop linked SI, pIPS and dlPFC, likely carrying out attentional selection of task-relevant sensory signals. Behavioral measure of task performance was correlated with the network activity in both bands. In the study of epileptic seizures, we investigated high-frequency (> 50 Hz) oscillatory network activity from intracranial EEG (IEEG) recordings of patients who were the candidates for epilepsy surgery. The traditional approach of identifying brain regions for epilepsy surgery usually referred as seizure onset zones (SOZs) has not always produced clarity on SOZs. Here, we investigated directed network activity in the frequency domain and found that the high frequency (>80 Hz) network activities occur before the onset of any visible ictal activity, andcausal relationships involve the recording electrodes where clinically identifiable seizures later develop. These findings suggest that high-frequency network activities and their causal relationships can assist in precise delineation of SOZs for surgical resection.

This thesis investigated money supply behaviors in the ‘BRICS’ group from 1982 to 2012. It empirically analyzed causality relationships between related monetary indicators by using quarterly data and time series econometric methods. In four countries: Brazil, China, Russia (the period of 2004-2012) and South Africa (1982-1993), this study found money supply endogeneity evidence (bank loans cause the money supply, or there is bidirectional between these two). Other countries, India and the 1982-2003 period of Russia, money supply was found to be exogenous, i.e. money supply cause bank loans. Nonetheless, traditional Monetarian view still holds across the five economies in the short run. The findings reflected discretionary monetary policies targeting monetary aggregates in the short term, despite a neutral role of most central banks in the long run.

自1970年代以來有許多研究指出，能源價格衝擊對於一個國家的總體經濟表現有顯著的影響。但對於能源價格究竟是以何種形式，以及透過什麼管道對總體經濟產生影響，卻沒有一致的看法。同時，經濟決策者對於能源價格變動的反應，經常因為有不確定性的存在而有延後反映的現象。本文利用台灣1981年到2009年的能源價格，建構數種對稱與不對稱之能源價格變動設定，以Granger因果關係檢定探討能源價格變動與台灣其他相關的總體經濟變數資料間的關係；並透過自我迴歸分配落後模型 (Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model, ARDL) 模型估計能源價格與台灣產出的長期關係。我們的實證結果顯示：能源價格，相較於台灣的總體經濟體系，具有外生性。能源價格成長率對產出與失業率沒有顯著的影響；但能源價格的波動程度對台灣產出成長率卻有顯著的負面影響。能源價格波動率與台灣實質產出具有長期均衡關係，而且能源價格波動將對台灣實質產出有負面影響。 / Since the 1970s, numerous studies have demonstrated that energy price impact can have a significant influence on a country’s macroeconomy. However, there is no consensus regarding in what form, or by which channel can energy price changes affect the macroeconomy. In addition, economic decision makers often respond to energy price changes with a time lag due to the existence of uncertainty. This paper constructs several indicators of symmetric and asymmetric energy price changes based on the energy prices in Taiwan for the period from 1981 to 2009. We employ the Granger’s causality test to examine the relationship between energy price changes and related macroeconomic variables; and utilize the autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) to estimate the long-run relationship between energy price volatility and Taiwan’s real GDP. Our empirical results show that energy price exhibits exogeneity relative to important macroeconomic variables; the energy price growth rate does not have significant impact on output and unemployment rate, while the energy price volatility has negative impact on Taiwan’s macroeconomy. There is long-run relationship between the energy price volatility and Taiwan’s real GDP. Furthermore, the energy price volatility do have negative impact on Taiwan’s real GDP.

台灣不動產投資信託(T-REIT)自2005年發行至今已逾四年，過去國內相關的文獻多集中於法律面、制度架構及問卷調查等相關研究，對於整體市場實際表現的討論則較缺乏。隨著交易歷史資料的延展，本研究針對國內REITs施行的現況與總體經濟波動及不動產市場之關係進行討論。在總體經濟部分以股價指數、利率與通貨膨脹進行分析，在不動產市場部分則採用辦公室平均租金水準與實際商辦交易價格為指標，期望探索T-REITs價格與總體經濟及不動產市場間之長期關係。 本文發現T-REITs與股價指數、商辦租金以及商辦交易價格間，均會存在長期均衡關係，即有共整合情形，而T-REITs與通貨膨脹率以及T-REITs與利率間不具有長期均衡關係，且股價指數、商辦租金以及通貨膨脹率與T-REITs為正向關係，利率及商辦租金與T-REITs則為反向關係。此外，根據因果關係檢定，股價指數與通貨膨脹率皆領先T-REITs，而商辦租金與T-REITs為雙向回饋。本文結果顯示，台灣REITs與總體經濟及商用不動產市場具有長期均衡關係，亦即總體經濟的變動以及不動產市場的波動可做為探討T-REITs長期變化的指標。 / Taiwan launched the first Real Estate Investment Trusts (T-REITs) in 2005. However, over the past few years, studies regarding T-REITs mainly focused on legal system, institutional framework and questionnaire surveys, but lack of empirical analysis on the performance of T-REIT markets. This study therefore intends to explore the cointegration and causality relationship among the T-REITs, macroeconomy and commercial real estate markets. The macroeconomic factors in this study include the stock prices, interest rate and inflation rate; and the real estate variables include the commercial rents and commercial prices. Empirical results first demonstrate that there exists the long-run relationship among T-REITs, stock prices, commercial rents and commercial prices, but not the interest rate or inflation rate. Moreover, T-REITs are significantly related to stock prices, interest rate and inflation rates as well as commercial rents and commercial prices. Third, the changes of stock prices and inflation rate lead the change of T-REITs. Finally, there is a significant feedback relationship between T-REITs and commercial rents.

Numerous studies have been done in the area of nurse scheduling, since this is a complex area with a lot of aspects that has to be taken into account. An interesting but little studied subject is how the requirements for the scheduling affect the possibility to construct a feasible schedule, or how the requirements affect the quality of the schedule. Of special interest is the effect of the composition of the workforce and of the change in scheduling rules. What is missing is results showing which composition and changes that are possible, and if so what is needed to be able to follow through with them. The changes tested in our simulation study are changes that is up for discussion at many wards in Sweden today, with topics such as split shifts and high part-time work percentages within the staff. In order to simulate various scheduling requirements and changes, an integer linear model for creating nurse schedules is developed. The results provide some insight into the dependence between scheduling requirements and the resulting schedules. In particular our simulation results indicate that there is an inherent conflict between high part-time work percentages and split or long work shifts. Our results can be used as a basis for future research on these topics in the area of nurse scheduling.

Could it be stated that the fulfillment of the causality principle is required in order for expense deduction to be applied? And, can criteria such as reasonability and normality be considered complementary to causality in Peruvian domestic law? In the present article, the author analyzes how the causality principle is configured in our legal system, and explains the importance of its subjective and objective division. He also ends up examining the concept of necessary expenditure from, as understood in local and foreign jurisprudence. / ¿La deducción de gastos está supeditada al cumplimiento del principio de causalidad? ¿Se puede afirmar la existencia de razonabilidad y normalidad como criterios complementarios al de causalidad en nuestro ordenamiento jurídico? En el presente artículo, el autor buscará analizar cómo se configura el principio de causalidad en nuestro ordenamiento, a partir de su división subjetiva y objetiva. Asimismo, se estudiará el concepto de gasto necesario a partir de la jurisprudencia nacional y extranjera.

This essay pretends to offer a juridical analysis of recent pronouncements of the Peruvian Tax Adminstration, by virtue of which, such entity states that those disbursements linked to extra judicial transactions do not constitute deductible expenses for the calculation of the Peruvian Income Tax. Under such premises, we offer a civil analysis of the nature of such disbursements and later, cover the issue of their relation with the generation of taxable income for Income Tax purposes. / El presente artículo pretende efectuar un análisis jurídico de los recientes pronunciamientos de la Administración Tributaria, en el sentido que los pagos efectuados como consecuencia de transacciones extrajudiciales no resultan deducibles para efectos de la determinación del Impuesto a la Renta. Se trata pues, de un análisis de corte civil respecto de la real naturaleza de los desembolsos efectuados con ocasión de la celebración de una transacción extrajudicial, para luego abordar la problemática de su vinculación con la generación de rentas gravadas con elImpuesto a la Renta.