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Separate essays on entrepreneurship, joint venturing, and trade comprise this thesis. The emergence of entrepreneurship is common in the real world but relatively less so in classical economic models. If industry incumbents are attributed with full rationality and perfect foresight, then there are few, if any, profitable opportunities left for new entrants (entrepreneurs) to exploit. This essay explains how entrepreneurs can emerge in a dynamic world when firms must choose between a technology strategy that is either statically or dynamically efficient. A model is developed which shows how such opportunities for new entry can occur when incumbents are caught in a Prisoners’ Dilemma game involving technology strategy. A relevance measure and policy implications are then explored. Joint ventures, especially of the R&D type, are becoming increasingly important as a way to gain needed technological and market competencies. Unfortunately, many joint ventures have the characteristics of a Prisoners’ Dilemma. Firms may cooperate or defect in the venture. If contracts, side-payments, and third-party verification of the venture outcome are unavailable, then the dominant solution to the Prisoners’ Dilemma (mutual defection) results. This paper proposes the use of an ex-ante auction to obtain a Pareto-improvement for these ventures. A Pareto-improvement is assured when non-transferable costs and benefits of firms are not conditional on joint venture strategies. When this condition is not met restrictions are required to obtain the Pareto-improvement. The problem of trade between countries that share an international open access resource is becoming significant as the world reaches the limits of critical shared resource stocks. It is modelled as a world with one primary factor, two intermediate goods, one final good (harvested from the open access resource), and two nations where it is assumed that either the trading takes place over one stage (nations are price-takers), or two stages (nations have market power). Imperfect competition and open access generated externalities affect the trading efficiency. To maximize world welfare this essay recommends subsidizing R&D where comparative advantage exists, and creating international agreements to ensure the one-stage game structure is used when trading.

Separate essays on entrepreneurship, joint venturing, and trade comprise this thesis. The emergence of entrepreneurship is common in the real world but relatively less so in classical economic models. If industry incumbents are attributed with full rationality and perfect foresight, then there are few, if any, profitable opportunities left for new entrants (entrepreneurs) to exploit. This essay explains how entrepreneurs can emerge in a dynamic world when firms must choose between a technology strategy that is either statically or dynamically efficient. A model is developed which shows how such opportunities for new entry can occur when incumbents are caught in a Prisoners’ Dilemma game involving technology strategy. A relevance measure and policy implications are then explored. Joint ventures, especially of the R&D type, are becoming increasingly important as a way to gain needed technological and market competencies. Unfortunately, many joint ventures have the characteristics of a Prisoners’ Dilemma. Firms may cooperate or defect in the venture. If contracts, side-payments, and third-party verification of the venture outcome are unavailable, then the dominant solution to the Prisoners’ Dilemma (mutual defection) results. This paper proposes the use of an ex-ante auction to obtain a Pareto-improvement for these ventures. A Pareto-improvement is assured when non-transferable costs and benefits of firms are not conditional on joint venture strategies. When this condition is not met restrictions are required to obtain the Pareto-improvement. The problem of trade between countries that share an international open access resource is becoming significant as the world reaches the limits of critical shared resource stocks. It is modelled as a world with one primary factor, two intermediate goods, one final good (harvested from the open access resource), and two nations where it is assumed that either the trading takes place over one stage (nations are price-takers), or two stages (nations have market power). Imperfect competition and open access generated externalities affect the trading efficiency. To maximize world welfare this essay recommends subsidizing R&D where comparative advantage exists, and creating international agreements to ensure the one-stage game structure is used when trading.

Socialinių paslaugų administravimo specialistai savo darbe vadovaujasi Lietuvos socialinių darbuotojų etikos kodeksu, tačiau neretai patenka į konfliktines situacijas, kurių išsprendimas reikalauja išgyventi vertybių kovą. Darbuotojui kylančios etinės dilemos apsunkina sprendimo priėmimo procesą. Dėl subjektyvių išgyvenimų kartais nukenčia ir teikiamos paslaugos kokybė, ir darbuotojo savijauta. Tokie konfliktai didina perdegimo sindromo atsiradimo galimybę, darbuotojas nusivilia savimi, nes neįstengia suprasti, kad sudėtingi procesai, lydintys jo veiklą –daugelio darbuotojų patiriamas išgyvenimas. Šiame darbe siekiama atskleisti, ko reikia, kad pavyktų sėkmingai spręsti socialines paslaugas administruojančio specialisto veikloje kylančias etines dilemas. Darbo tikslas - atskleisti socialines paslaugas administruojančių specialistų darbe kylančių etinių dilemų sprendimo ypatumus. Tikslo pasiekimui buvo iškelti šie uždaviniai : • Apibūdinti socialinio darbuotojo etikos kodekso ypatybes. • Nustatyti, kas sąlygoja etinių dilemų kilimą socialines paslaugas administruojančių specialistų veikloje. • Aptarti socialines paslaugas administruojančių specialistų priimtų etinių dilemų sprendimų ypatumus. • Atskleisti veiksnius, sąlygojančius socialines paslaugas administruojančio specialisto veikloje kylančių etinių dilemų sėkmingą sprendimą. Kokybinio tyrimo metu į pusiau struktūrizuoto interviu klausimus atsakė 5 tikslinės patogiosios tyrimo imties atstovės, dirbančios socialinių... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Social services management specialists organize their work and duties according to Lithuanian Republic social workers ethical code; unfortunately, very often they are involved in conflicts. An arrowed conflicts solving requires avoiding values arguing. Employees arising ethical dilemmas makes difficulties in decision acceptance. Regarding of subjective experience, sometimes a fulfilling service quality and workers wellbeing are hardly injured. Such conflicts alter fuse syndrome appearance possibility, employee disappointed by oneself, because of he is not motivated to realize that difficult processes, leading his work – a various number of other employees sustained experience. This work aimed to discover, what needed to make a successful social services management and social worker arising ethical dilemmas solving possibilities. The tasks of this work: • To define social employee ethical codec specifications • To define, what is determines the appearance of ethical dilemma for social employees during their social services management process • To discuss social services specialists accepted ethical dilemma features management • To disclose the actions which descript successful aroused ethical dilemma decision for social services employer During qualitative research, to a half structural interview questions we have got 5 objective convenient research sample test respondent, who works with social services management and coped with a n ethical dilemma during their work. ... [to full text]

The Learning Classifier System (LCS) and its descendant, XCS, are promising paradigms for machine learning design and implementation. Whereas LCS allows classifier payoff predictions to guide system performance, XCS focuses on payoff-prediction accuracy instead, allowing it to evolve "optimal" classifier sets in particular applications requiring rational thought. This research examines LCS and XCS performance in artificial situations with broad social/commercial parallels, created using the non-Markov Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (IPD) game-playing scenario, where the setting is sometimes asymmetric and where irrationality sometimes pays. This research systematically perturbs a "conventional" IPD-playing LCS-based agent until it results in a full-fledged XCS-based agent, contrasting the simulated behavior of each LCS variant in terms of a number of performance measures. The intent is to examine the XCS paradigm to understand how it better copes with a given situation (if it does) than the LCS perturbations studied.Experiment results indicate that the majority of the architectural differences do have a significant effect on the agents' performance with respect to the performance measures used in this research. The results of these competitions indicate that while each architectural difference significantly affected its agent's performance, no single architectural difference could be credited as causing XCS's demonstrated superiority in evolving optimal populations. Instead, the data suggests that XCS's ability to evolve optimal populations in the multiplexer and IPD problem domains result from the combined and synergistic effects of multiple architectural differences.In addition, it is demonstrated that XCS is able to reliably evolve the Optimal Population [O] against the TFT opponent. This result supports Kovacs' Optimality Hypothesis in the IPD environment and is significant because it is the first demonstrated occurrence of this ability in an environment other than the multiplexer and Woods problem domains.It is therefore apparent that while XCS performs better than its LCS-based counterparts, its demonstrated superiority may not be attributed to a single architectural characteristic. Instead, XCS's ability to evolve optimal classifier populations in the multiplexer problem domain and in the IPD problem domain studied in this research results from the combined and synergistic effects of multiple architectural differences.

In the Monty Hall Dilemma (MHD), three doors are presented with a prize behind one and participants are instructed to choose a door. One of the unchosen doors is then shown to not have the prize and the participant can choose to stay with their door or switch to the other one. The optimal strategy is to switch. Herbranson and Schroeder (2010) found that humans performed poorly on this task, whereas pigeons learned to switch readily. However, we found that pigeons learned to switch at level only slightly above humans. We also found that pigeons stay nearly exclusively when staying is the optimal strategy and when staying and switching are reinforced equally (Stagner, Rayburn-Reeves, & Zentall, 2013). In Experiment 1, rats were trained under these same conditions to observe if possible differences in foraging strategy would influence performance on this task. In Experiment 2, pigeons were trained in an analogous procedure to better compare the two species. We found that both species were sensitive to the overall probability of reinforcement, as both switched significantly more often than subjects in a group that were reinforced equally for staying and switching and a group that was reinforced more often for staying. Overall, the two species performed very similarly within the parameters of the current procedure.

媒體危機事件扮演之角色: 以台灣印刷媒體在SARS危機為例 / This study aims to explore the interaction between the media and the government during Taiwan’s SARS crisis of 2003 and observe the media’s attitude toward the government’s efforts to contain the epidemic. This paper is particularly interested understanding whether the media presented the government in a way that enabled or inhibited the government’s efforts to manage the crisis. Qualitative content analysis is used to operationalize print media’s “framing” of events. Articles are collected from two print media outlets, China Post and Taipei Times.

"Specialpedagogik för alla" är en kvalitativ intervjustudie. Syftet med studien är att söka efter kärnan i hur sex lärare med erfarenhet av specialpedagogisk undervisning i ämnet Idrott och hälsa upplever specialpedagogik och hur det tar sig i uttryck i deras arbete med särskilt stöd i ämnet.

This thesis takes a discursive/rhetorical approach to the topic of support for modern constitutional monarchy. It examines in detail some of the rhetorical devices used by modern Japanese speakers when they discuss monarchism. In so doing the thesis highlights both the discursive and social dilemmas involved in contemporary monarchism. In Britain, another constitutional monarchical state, critical psychologists have analysed what have been called 'dilemmas of lived ideology' (BiIIig et al., 1988). Billig (1992) analysed ordinary people's discourses about British monarchism. He points out that people employ dilemmatic themes as they justifY, mitigate and make sense of their own non-privileged positions under egalitarianism. I use Billig's work as a main reference, and apply his analytical frameworks (discursive psychology) for my investigation ofJapanese monarchism. Amongst several features ofJapanese conversation, I focus on its complicated naming and honorific systems. These systems almost always encode power structures amongst speaker-addressee, speaker-referent as well as addressee-referent relationships. Analysing people's mundane (family) conversations about the Emperor system, I have found contradictory rhetorical common-places, which are not always voiced explicitly, but are often formulated implicitly through these linguistic implications (i.e. naming, honorifics). Moreover, these codes have to be managed in their particular discursive contexts where the different systems of showing honour can conflict. By analysing news articles, in addition, I focus on a terminology which is employed exclusively to describe an Emperor's death. Lookingat the contexts in which terms are used (and not used), the process of construction ofthe social reality (i.e. monarchism under egalitarian social norm) is illustrated. Through my analysis, I believe, a new perspective for Japanese monarchism is introduced: people represent the institutional reality and accept the inequality simultaneously through mundane discursive interaction.

This dissertation examines the problems of translation within the language ideological context of multilingual Singapore. On the basis of textual and paratextual data from published literary translations and with reference to the language power relation between the English language and the Chinese language in contemporary Singapore, the study raises questions about the relationship between literary translation and language ideology in Singapore. These questions are concerned with textual problems in translating heterolingual texts, interpretive problems facing the target readers of translated Chinese-language texts that deal with the Chinese identity crisis and the ideological functions that translation plays in the making of multilingual literary anthologies. In delineating the general character of cross-cultural communication in Singapore, the study combines various theoretical perspectives and employs both textual and contextual approaches of inquiry. The dissertation consists of three main parts. The first part discusses the textual problems involved in the translation of heterolingual Chinese literature thematically concerned with the ideological tension between English and Chinese in Singapore. Drawing on the theory of the metonymics of translation as well as code-switching theories, the identity function of heterolingualism in Chinese literary texts is first established as creating a metonymic link between the linguistic tension in the literary texts and the ideological tension between English and Chinese in Singapore society. It is then proposed that when a heterolingual text using Chinese as its matrix language code-switches into English as part of its textual strategy, the translation of this text into the English language necessarily creates a crisis of representation in which the English language paradoxically projects itself as the cultural “Other”. The second part of the dissertation examines the interpretive problems of Singapore Chinese literature in English translation based on the theory of the ethics of translation. Specifically, when a target text (TT) reader is construed as the cultural “Other” in a source text (ST), an interpretive paradox arises when the TT reader attempts to understand himself/herself as a cultural “Other” in his/her own language in order to achieve a positive ethics of translation. The TT reader faces an epistemological dilemma: he/she either betrays his/her own identity in favour of the identity function of the ST, thus setting on an ironic process of self-Othering, or adheres to his/her identity and betrays that of the ST, thus contradicting the intended objective of allowing the predominantly English-speaking Chinese community in Singapore to understand the cultural predicament of their Chinese-speaking counterparts. In the third part of the study, I explore the role of translation in the construction of language ideology in Singapore and the way in which this role has changed since the mid-1980s. Based on an analysis of the use of translation in the making of multilingual literary anthologies published between 1985 and 2008, it is found that the power relation between the English language and the mother tongue languages in Singapore has shifted over the past two decades. Central to this shift is translation, the discursive instrument in multilingual publications. While earlier anthologies adopt a “one-to-one” translation model, in which literary works written in the mother tongue languages are translated into English but not vice versa, more recent anthologies adopt a “many-to-many” translation model, in which various languages translate into one another. This shift leads to a subtle change in the relationship between English and the mother tongue languages, from an asymmetric one in favour of English as the language of power, to a balanced one that gives an equal “voice” to the mother tongue languages. The analysis shows that translation is the locus of complex language ideological struggles, and that it plays the conflicting roles of reinforcing the hegemony of the English language and of resisting such hegemony in Singapore. This study has three implications for translation studies. Firstly, it supports the case for the combination of textual and contextual approaches in the investigation of translation phenomena. Secondly, it suggests that translation practice in Singapore is a potentially paradoxical act whose efficacy is not unproblematic. Finally, the study enables translators and language policy makers in Singapore to become more aware of the ideological implication of translation in multilingual discourses, and to tap into the discursive power of translation in creating a truly balanced multilingual nation.