Kooperatives Verhalten lässt sich in vielen Bereichen menschlichen Zusammenlebens sowie im gesamten Tierreich beobachten. In evolutionären Modellen wurde gezeigt, dass Netzwerkstrukturen die Kooperation erhöhen können. Empirische Studien versuchten vergeblich diesen Mechanismus auch bei Menschen nachzuweisen. Es scheint, als würden Netzwerke nur dann die Kooperation erhöhen, wenn die Strukturen nicht statisch sind, sondern dynamisch. Das heißt, dass die Individuen die Möglichkeit haben, ihre Partner zu wechseln. Eine wichtige – aber bislang unerforschte – Eigenschaft dynamischer Netzwerke ist jedoch, dass derartige Wechsel von Partnern in der Regel Kosten verursachen, ob in Form von Zeit oder Ressourcen. Kapitel I meiner Arbeit schließt diese Lücke, in dem es sich mit den Effekten von Kosten auf dynamischen Netzwerken befasst. Ich konnte nachweisen, dass Menschen seltener Interaktionen mit Partnern beendeten, wenn die Kontaktaufnahme mit einem neuen Partner mit Kosten verbunden war. Bei sehr hohen Kosten, wurden Partner so selten gewechselt, dass das Netzwerk fast statisch war. Interessanterweise blieb die Kooperation dennoch sehr hoch. Das bedeutet, dass für kooperatives Verhalten entscheidend ist, ob man die Möglichkeit hat, Partner zu wechseln. Im Gegensatz zu bisherigen Annahmen ist es daher nicht wichtig, wie oft tatsächlich Partner gewechselt werden, sondern lediglich ob es die Möglichkeit dazu gibt. In Kapitel II beschäftige ich mich mit optimalem Entscheidungsverhalten. Im sogenannten Judge-Advisor-System geht es darum, dass eine Person, der Judge, eine unbekannte numerische Größe schätzen will. Dazu erhält der Judge eine zweite unabhängige Schätzung als Rat von einer zweiten Person, des Advisor. Schließlich ist die Frage, wie der Judge optimal den Rat verwerten kann um seine Anfangsschätzung zu verbessern. Bisherige Forschung konzentrierte sich hauptsächlich auf zwei mögliche Methoden, (i) das Bilden des Mittelwerts und (ii) das Wählen der besseren Anfangsschätzung. Das Hauptargument für diese einfachen Methoden ist deren häufige Verwendung in bisherigen Experimenten. Allerdings wurden sehr wohl auch andere Gewichtungen beobachtet und daher ist eine gründliche Analyse der optimalen Gewichtung erforderlich. In der vorliegenden Arbeit leitete ich ein normatives Modell her, das beschreibt, unter welchen Bedingungen welche Methode das bestmögliche Ergebnis liefert. Es wurden drei Methoden verglichen: (i) das Bilden des Durchschnitts, (ii) das Wählen der besseren Anfangsschätzung, und (iii) das Bilden eines gewichtetet Mittelwerts, wobei das Gewicht vom Kompetenzunterschied abhängt. Welche Methode optimal ist, hängt davon ab, wie groß der Kompetenzunterschied ist und wie gut er vom Judge erkannt wird. Die Durchschnittbildung ist immer dann vorteilhaft, wenn der Kompetenzunterschied nicht groß ist, oder nur schwer richtig eingeschätzt werden kann. Wenig überraschend lohnt sich das Wählen der besseren Anfangsschätzung, wenn der Kompetenzunterschied hinreichend groß ist, vorausgesetzt es wird tatsächlich die bessere Anfangsschätzung gewählt. Wenn der Kompetenzunterschied vom Judge gut eingeschätzt werden kann, ist eine Entsprechende Gewichtung immer die beste Methode, unabhängig vom tatsächlichen Unterschied. In Übereinstimmung mit bisheriger Forschung wurde auch die Kombination von Durchschnittbildung und Wählen der besseren Anfangsschätzung untersucht. Diese Kombinationsmethode beruht darauf, bei als gering eingeschätztem Kompetenzunterschied den Durchschnitt zu bilden und ansonsten die bessere Anfangsschätzung zu wählen. Interessanterweise schneidet diese Kombinationsmethode sehr schlecht ab, was hauptsächlich daran liegt, dass zu oft die falsche Anfangsschätzung genommen würde. Insgesamt ist das gewichtete Mittel also eine geeignete Methode für einen großen Parameterbereich.

Traditional economic theory postulates that people are rational. This implies that people make decisions to maximize their utility functions and to do this, that they have fully and correctly evaluated their preferences and limitations. Behavioral economics recognizes that this is not always true, that sometimes information is incomplete. This article is examines some of the effects of behavioral economics (which come largely from cognitive psychology) in decision-making by investors in the stock exchanges. / La teoría económica tradicional postula que las personas son racionales. Esto implica que las personas toman decisiones para maximizar sus funciones de utilidad, y que para hacer esto han evaluado de forma completa y correcta sus preferencias y limitaciones. La economía del comportamiento reconoce que esto no es siempre verdad; que a veces no existe suficiente información. En este artículo, examino algunos de los efectos de la economía del comportamiento (que vienen en gran parte de la psicología cognitiva) en la toma de decisiones por los inversionistas en las bolsas de valores.

Escalation of Commitment (EoC) behaviour occurs when a Decision Making Unit (DMU), such as an individual or group, continues with a course of action despite receiving negative feedback about it. Much research exists, within multiple disciplines, which attempts to explain why DMUs continue with failing courses of action. To date however, there has been very little critical inquiry of such research. Using a historical research approach, this thesis reviews and critically assesses all existing EoC behaviour research and concludes that a number of serious issues exist. These include the use of multiple labels by authors to describe the phenomenon; the considerable uncertainty that exists regarding which DMUs are subject to EoC behaviour; the existence of multiple, concurrent definitions for each ‘theory label’ and important EoC behaviour concepts, such as escalation, DMU, resource, success, failure and commitment, not being adequately defined. It is contended that these and other issues exist primarily because of the scope of the phenomenon and the resultant high quantity and complexity of research; all of which impair research technique. However, independent, pre-existing research technique issues are also proposed as reasons. Ultimately, it is argued that the state of EoC behaviour research is poor. It is considered that the mere recognition of the issues raised in this thesis will assist in the improvement of the research. Yet this aspect in isolation is deemed inadequate. In response, a prescriptive technique is developed which is bifurcated between resolutely defining the important concepts related to EoC behaviour research and creating an ‘integrated framework’ which includes all existing EoC behaviour determinants from all research disciplines. The proposed framework also identifies a number of new potential determinants of EoC behaviour, including the Autoepistemic Sunk Cost Effect (ASCE), the age of the DMU and anthropomorphic revenge motives. It is suggested that these two prescriptive responses will also promote focussed future EoC behaviour research, designated in the thesis as research direction. This thesis contributes to existing knowledge by not only recognising research issues that have not previously been acknowledged but also by prescribing for these issues through a complete concept exploration, coupled with a complete collective framework.

Submitted by Maicon Juliano Schmidt (maicons) on 2015-06-26T19:12:37Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Rosivaldo Toscano dos Santos Júnior.pdf: 1193171 bytes, checksum: a3313a4b0a9478f1120d823247b76270 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-06-26T19:12:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Rosivaldo Toscano dos Santos Júnior.pdf: 1193171 bytes, checksum: a3313a4b0a9478f1120d823247b76270 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-12-20 / Nenhuma / O estudo investiga duas posturas que deformam a interpretação do direito no Brasil e propõe a solução para resolver esse problema. Identifica, em ambas, o decisionismo fundado na vontade de poder, rompendo-se a normatividade. Na cúpula, sob a ideia do Judiciário como corporação, e a pretexto de maior eficiência, mas na vontade do Mercado, são importados institutos que, pretensamente, seriam da common law, mas que estão fora do contexto de sua criação e são aplicados de maneira deturpada, ou por não guardarem as especificidade do caso concreto ou por se descolarem na normatividade, constituem exercício escamoteado da vontade de poder. Súmulas, vinculantes ou não, e pretensos precedentes geram violência contra a independência funcional do magistrado de instâncias inferiores e contra as partes, pois a atribuição de sentidos não advém do caso concreto. Nas bases do Judiciário, nosso estudo investiga a predominância da aceitação acrítica e obediente desse common law à brasileira, expresso em súmulas e em enunciados assertóricos abstratizados. Criam-se mimetismos. Contudo, nossa formação histórica autoritária e estamental impede a percepção de que há uma diferença ontológica entre potestas e potentia - de que um não subsiste sem ou outro sem que se torne poder ilegítimo. Assim, nas bases o fenômeno do decisionismo subsiste como prática suplementar, numa aprendizagem por observação das cúpulas - a modelagem, criando-se ou se aderindo a princípios ad-hoc e a conceitos assertóricos. Tanto verticalmente (hierarquização - solipsismo da cúpula para as bases) quanto horizontalmente (solipsismo pelas bases), rompe-se a autonomia do direito, seja pela política, seja pela economia. "Liberdade do intérprete" como pretexto para a libertinagem normativa. "Eficiência econômica" como deficiência normativa. Outrora, o discurso patrimonialista em prol dos estamentos. Hoje, o discurso econômico neoliberal. Invade-se o direito pela economia, dessa vez em forma de Cavalo-de-Tróia: a análise econômica do direito - AED. Substitui-se a normatividade pelo utilitarismo mercadológico. Os pré-juízos inautênticos que sustentam essa dupla deformação hermenêutica nascem de um condicionamento operante (estímulo-reforço) dos profissionais do direito, desde os bancos de faculdade até a atividade profissional e, atingindo, em especial, seu principal destinatário: o magistrado. Esse discurso de poder produz realidades - tetos epistemológicos que encobrem o fato de que: a) só há interpretação no caso concreto porque não existem conceitos desprovidos de faticidade; b) não cabe argumento de autoridade para além da normatividade; c) a importação de teorias estrangeiras precisa sofrer um processo de compatibilização com nossa realidade jurídica, social, política e econômica. A partir do giro ontológico-linguístico, com a superação do esquema sujeito-objeto da filosofia da consciência e a consideração da diferença ontológica (ser e ente; texto e norma), dá-se o desvelamento da interpretação como existencial, e de que os sentidos não advêm da vontade do sujeito autônomo da modernidade, mas de uma intersubjetividade, de uma verdade que advém da fusão de horizontes dentro de uma tradição, bem como da importância da integridade e coerência do direito. A resposta constitucionalmente correta não pode depender da consciência do juiz, do livre convencimento, da busca da "verdade real". Decidir não é, definitivamente, escolher. / The study investigates two positions that distort the interpretation of law in Brazil and proposes a solution to solve this problem. Identifies, in both, the decisionism founded on the will to power, breaking up normativity. The idea of the judiciary as a corporation dominates the Supreme Court and the National Council of Justice. They imports institutes that would be the common law. Except that out of context, under the guise of efficiency and in accordance with the will of the market. Are concealed exercise of will power for neglecting the specificity of the case and normativity. Dockets, binding or not, and pseudoprecedents would generate violence against the functional independence of the judges of low courts and against the litigants because the attribution of meaning doesn’t comes the case. In the basis of the judiciary, our study investigates the prevalence of uncritical and obedient to this “Brasilian’s common law”, expressed in dockets and abstract statements. It creates memes. However, our national government history was authoritative and the states interrupts the perception that there is an ontological difference between potestas and potentia – that one can not exist without the other, or without it becoming illegitimate power. Thus, on the basis, the decisionism phenomenon subsists as an extra practice in a learning by observation of summit - modeling, creating or sticking to ad-hoc principles and abstracts concepts. Both vertically (hierarchical - solipsism from supreme court to the basis) and horizontally (on the low courts), it breaks up the autonomy of law, whether in politics and in the economy. “Freedom of the interpreter” as a pretext for libertinism of rules. “Economic efficiency” as disabiliting rules. Erstwhile, speaking on behalf of the casts. Today, neoliberal economic discourse. The economy invades the law, this time in the form of Trojan horse: the Economic Analysis of Law. Replaces up normativity by merchandising utilitarianism. The inauthentic prejudice that sustain this double deformation of hermeneutic born from a operant conditioning (stimulus-reinforcement) of legal practitioners from college to professional activity, and reaching, in particular, its main destination: the judges. This discourse of power produces realities - epistemological ceilings that hide the fact that: a) there is only interpretation in this case because there are no concepts without facticity; b) does not fit the argument from authority beyond normativity; c) the importation of foreign theories must undergo a process of 13 reconciling with our legal, social, political and economic reality. From the ontological-linguistic turn, with the overcoming of the subject-object scheme of the philosophy of consciousness and consideration of the ontological difference (between Being and beings, and text and norm), there is the unveiling of interpretation as existential and the senses will not come from the autonomous subject of modernity, but under intersubjectivity, a truth that comes from the fusion of horizons within a tradition as well as the importance of integrity and coherence of the law. The constitutionally correct answer can not depend on awareness of the judge, the free conviction or from search of the “real truth”. Deciding is not choose, definitely.

Les industriels du secteur agro-alimentaire sont responsables de la qualité des produits mis sur le marché. Un moyen de vérifier cette qualité consiste à déterminer la distribution de la contamination. Dans cette thèse, nous avons utilisé des données portant sur L. monocytogenes durant le procédé de fabrication de lardons et du saumon fumé. Nous avons ensuite élaboré des modèles hiérarchiques pour décrire la concentration en prenant ou non en compte diverses variabilités, nous avons estimé les paramètres par inférence bayésienne, puis comparé leur capacité à simuler des données proches des observations. Nous avons également comparé l'estimation de paramètres par inférence fréquentiste sur deux modèles en utilisant les données brutes issues des analyses microbiologiques et ces mêmes données converties en concentration. Par ailleurs, nous avons amélioré un modèle décrivant le devenir de L. monocytogenes au cours de la fabrication des lardons. Le plan d'échantillonnage permettant d'estimer la qualité des produits, nous avons appliqué la théorie de la décision aux couples L. monocytogenes/lardons et L. monocytogenes/saumon fumé en sortie usine pour déterminer la taille optimale de l'échantillon à prélever par lot de manière à minimiser les coûts moyens supportés par le fabricant. Enfin, nous avons comparé plusieurs plans d'échantillonnage de mesure de la température d'un plat en sauce fabriqué dans une cuisine centrale et placé dans une cellule de refroidissement rapide. L'objectif était de sélectionner le meilleur plan d'échantillonnage en fonction du risque admissible pour le gestionnaire quant à la croissance de C. perfringens. / Food business operators are responsible for the quality of the products they sell. A way to assess the safety of food is to determine the contamination distribution. During my PhD thesis, we used data about L. monocytogenes during the process of diced bacon and of cold smoked salmon. Then, we constructed several hierarchical models to describe contamination taking or not into account several kinds of variability such as between batches variability. We compared the capacity of each model to simulate data close to the observed ones. We also compared the parameters assessment by frequentist inference using raw data (the results of the microbiological analyses) and concentration-like data. In addition to the models describing the contamination at one step of the process, we improved an existing model describing the fate of L. monocytogenes throughout the diced bacon process. A tool to assess the quality of a product is the sampling plan. We applied the Bayesian theory of decision to the pairs L. monocytogenes/diced bacon and L. monocytogenes/cold smoked salmon at the end of the process to determine the optimal size of a sample analysed per batch so that the average cost for the manufacturer is as los as possible. We also compared several sampling plans of temperature measurement of a meal cooked in an institutional food service facility and put in a blast-chiller just after cooking. The aim was to select the best sampling plan regarding the risk of C. perfringens growth that the manager is ready to take.

Operating and interacting in an environment requires the ability to manage uncertainty and to choose definite courses of action. In this thesis we look to Bayesian probability theory as the means to achieve the former, and find that through rigorous application of the rules it prescribes we can, in theory, solve problems of decision making under uncertainty. Unfortunately such methodology is intractable in realworld problems, and thus approximation of one form or another is inevitable. Many techniques make use of heuristic procedures for managing uncertainty. We note that such methods suffer unreliable performance and rely on the specification of ad-hoc variables. Performance is often judged according to long-term asymptotic performance measures which we also believe ignores the most complex and relevant parts of the problem domain. We therefore look to develop principled approximate methods that preserve the meaning of Bayesian theory but operate with the scalability of heuristics. We start doing this by looking at function approximation in continuous state and action spaces using Gaussian Processes. We develop a novel family of covariance functions which allow tractable inference methods to accommodate some of the uncertainty lost by not following full Bayesian inference. We also investigate the exploration versus exploitation tradeoff in the context of the Multi-Armed Bandit, and demonstrate that principled approximations behave close to optimal behaviour and perform significantly better than heuristics on a range of experimental test beds.

A small proportion of people claim to live and consume in ways they consider more sustainable in social and environmental terms. As yet, we do not know how many exactly, but possibly no more than 5-10% of the population. The thesis intentionally focuses on this minority finding there are at least three reasons why it is interesting to do so. First because they are all but ignored in sociologies of practice in the context of sustainable consumption which considers this minority an insignificance and focuses almost exclusively on 'mainstream' majority which more closely maps onto the stereotype of 'consumer society'. Second because we think we can learn much from juxtapositioning this group empirically against the spectrum of theories of practice to devise more robust and appropriate theoretical explanation of how these subjects, in the context of everyday practice, negotiate the many interpretations and contradictions involved in trying to put 'sustainability' into practice. Third because by understanding them better we can reflect on theoretical, empirical and policy implications for nudging this minority of the population to a higher percentage. The thesis sits at one end of a spectrum of positions in theories of practice applied to consumption, and in particular with a normative interest in sustainable consumption. It aligns with those who seek to re-insert the reflexive agent into accounts of practice, with particular reference to the conceptual construct of the 'citizen-consumer' and the context of political consumption (Spaargaren & Oosterveer 2010). Referring to theories of consumption, the thesis adds perspectives on how people negotiate multiple domains of consumption simultaneously since everyday practice involves interactions across multiple domains (such as eating, mobility, householding); and yet typically in theories of practice these are artificially separated into single domains. The study therefore considers the implications which domains have on how particular practices are carried out, first separately (per domain) and then as they come together (in a cross-cutting domain perspective). The study then takes theories of practice as a springboard to develop a theoretical position and framework which better fits the narrated accounts of the 37 subjects who participated in this study. In iteratively co-developing a theoretical framework and multiple 'stages' of empirical research (using grounded theory methodology) the study seeks to explain theoretically how subjects justify their 'doings' (drawing on 'conventions' and 'orders of worth' (Boltanski & Thévenot 2006)); how they appear to muddle through as best they can (introducing 'bricolage' (Lévi-Strauss 1972)); and how subjects appear to devise decision short-cuts when approaching decisions characterised by the multiple contradictions of sustainable consumption and incomplete or 'too much' information (introducing heuristics (Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier 2011)). In joining calls to re-insert the reflexive agent to account for how, when and why subjects enact changes towards trajectories which they consider 'more sustainable' in their own terms, the study takes inspiration from Margaret Archer's morphogenesis approach (1998) and explores her model of multiple modes of reflexivity, announcing certain modes as 'better fitting' conditions of late modernity. The study finally finds that contrary to a notion of the un-reflexive agent, the citizen-consumer is able to articulate visions of the 'good life'. In addition she is able to fold these visions back onto everyday practices performed in the past, present and future, laying out normative guidelines and positive accounts of how to achieve personal or societal well-being and happiness. The overarching positioning of the study is much inspired by Andrew Sayer's (2011; 2000) 'normative turn' calling upon social sciences to re-instate research into the things about which people care. The study is therefore guided by the overarching question of how people translate their environmental and/or social concerns into the ways in which they live and consume.

Sound criteria for partial order reduction for probabilistic concurrent systems have been presented in the literature. Their realization relies on a depth-first search-based approach for generating the reduced model. The drawback of this dynamic approach is that it can hardly be combined with other techniques to tackle the state explosion problem, e.g., symbolic probabilistic model checking with multi-terminal variants of binary decision diagrams. Following the approach presented by Kurshan et al. for non-probabilistic systems, we study partial order reduction techniques for probabilistic concurrent systems that can be realized by a static analysis. The idea is to inject the reduction criteria into the control flow graphs of the processes of the system to be analyzed. We provide the theoretical foundations of static partial order reduction for probabilistic concurrent systems and present algorithms to realize them. Finally, we report on some experimental results.