This dissertation combines three contributions to the literature on the determinants of well-being and the social nature of preferences. Departures from self-centred, consumption-oriented decision making are increasingly common in economic theory and are empirically well motivated by a wide range of behavioural data from experiments, surveys, and econometric inference. The first two contributions are focused on the idea that reference levels set by others’ consumption may figure prominently in both experienced well-being and in decision making. In the first paper, the well-being question is addressed empirically through the use of self-reported life satisfaction and high-resolution census and survey data in Canada. Strong income externalities are found at multiple spatial scales after controlling for various confounding factors. The second paper explores the general equilibrium consequences of a utility function having an explicit comparison with neighbours’ consumption. The question is investigated in a model in which decision makers knowingly choose their neighbours — and hence their consumption reference level — as well as their own consumption expenditure, thereby helping to set the reference level for nearby others. For both discrete and continuous distributions of types in an economy with a heterogeneous population undergoing such endogenous formation of consumption reference groups, there exist general equilibria in which differentiation of neighbourhoods occurs endogenously. The novel welfare implications of growth in such economies are described. The final paper addresses econometric reservations about the use of subjective reports as dependent variables. The date and location of survey interviews are combined with weather and climate records to construct the random component of weather conditions experienced by respondents on the day of their interview. Standard inferences about the determinants of life satisfaction remain robust after taking into account this significant source of affective bias. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

In einem wichtigen Beitrag „on self-interest and greed“ hat Gebhard Kirchgässner im Journal of Business Economics die zu beobachtende Verhaltensvielfalt von Wirtschaftssubjekten hinterfragt. Die ökonomische Standardannahme rationalen, egoistischen Verhaltens trifft die Realität nicht immer. Menschen handeln auch irrational, teils sozialorientiert und teils sozial desinteressiert, teils unmoralisch-gierig, teils aber auch altruistisch-großzügig. Welches Modell erklärt die Vielfalt? In diesem Beitrag wird die von Kirchgässner aufgezeigte Verhaltensvielfalt mit den Erkenntnissen abgeglichen, die sich aus der Hamiltonschen Fitnessthese und den Ergänzungen durch Trivers, Fiske und de Botton ergeben. Damit kann gezeigt werden, dass sich je nach Gruppe, in welcher sich ein Mensch bewegt, Verhaltensweisen einstellen, die von extrem prosozialem Verhalten (z.B. zur Statussicherung durch Vorbild oder aus Angst vor Sanktionen) bis zu sehr unsozial „gierigem“ Verhalten reichen. Der Nutzen dieser Sichtweise für die Ökonomik wird aufgezeigt. Es sind nur drei exogene Mechanismen nötig, die Verhaltensvielfalt zu erzeugen. / In an important article „on self-interest and greed” in the Journal of Business Economics, Gebhard Kirchgässner questioned the variety observed in the behavior of economic subjects. The economic standard assumption of rational, egoist behavior does not comply with reality in many cases. People act irrationally, socially oriented as well as socially uninterested, immorally-greedy as well as altruistically-generously. The variety is immense. The question occurs: which model is capable of explaining the diversity? In this article, the variety of human behavior is being compared to findings that emerge from Hamilton’s Fitness Thesis and extensions by Trivers, Fiske and de Botton. The Fitness Thesis lays the ground. Depending on the social group to which an individual belongs in a certain situation, behavior can vary from extremely prosocial (e. g. to maintain status or to avoid sanctions) to very unsocial-greedy. As any individual is part of many groups he or she can act prosocially with respect to one group and unsocially-greedy with respect to another, will say: greed and altruism is not a question of character but a consequence of the specific situation in which an individual acts. Merely three exogenous mechanisms are required to create the observed variety in behavior.

Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa no Estado do Rio Grande do Sul / The present work is dedicated to a contemporary author who emphasized the incessant movement of the human species in their search for meaning: Richard Rorty. In this age-old effort to create meanings, thought manifested itself in many ways and in many different styles, and these changes have shaped the reason through time. The philosophy of Rorty is a "disenchantment" of philosophy, because undermines traditional concepts employed in philosophical inquiry and ultimately radically change the very notion of philosophy and what is philosophize. Thus, the insistent search for a last ground of knowledge, the attempt of philosophers - and scientists - to unveil the reality in their nature, are placed in check by Rorty, in favor of a much more "modest" purpose: achieve the best possible way to deal with the world without unequivocal or absolute assumptions. The development of these critical first appears in the book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, published in 1979, a work of great impact in contemporary philosophy that put Rorty as one of the exponents of current neopragmatist. Rorty stands out in contemporary philosophy to be an essentially combative author. His writings pursue a very clear proposal: to overcome some traditional ideas that dictate the philosophical agenda at least since Plato. As a representative of pragmatism, Rorty's effort is to show the futility of certain ideas and (pseudo)problems that generate for thought and research. The result of this effort reveals a complete transformation of philosophy and, beyond this, much of the western culture. This work aims to present and evaluate some of the main theses of Rorty. / O presente trabalho dedica-se a um autor contemporâneo que deu ênfase ao movimento incessante da espécie humana em sua busca por sentido: Richard Rorty. Neste esforço milenar de criar significados, o pensamento manifestou-se de várias formas e nos mais diferentes estilos, e estas transformações moldaram a razão através do tempo. A filosofia de Rorty é um desencantamento da filosofia, pois abala concepções tradicionais empregadas na investigação filosófica e acaba por mudar radicalmente a própria noção de filosofia e do que seja filosofar. Deste modo, a insistente busca por um fundamento último do conhecimento, a tentativa dos filósofos e também de cientistas de desvelar a realidade em sua natureza intrínseca, são por Rorty colocadas em xeque, em favor de um propósito bem mais modesto : alcançar a melhor maneira possível de lidarmos com o mundo sem pressupostos unívocos, absolutos. O desenvolvimento destas críticas aparece pela primeira vez no livro A filosofia e o espelho da natureza, publicado em 1979, obra de grande impacto na filosofia contemporânea e que situou Rorty como um dos expoentes da corrente neopragmatista. Rorty se destaca na filosofia contemporânea por ser um autor essencialmente combativo. Seus escritos perseguem uma proposta bastante clara: superar algumas ideias tradicionais que ditam a agenda filosófica ao menos desde Platão. Como representante do pragmatismo, o esforço de Rorty é o de mostrar a inutilidade de certas ideias e os (pseudo)problemas que geram para o pensamento e a investigação. O resultado deste esforço revela uma transformação completa da filosofia e, indo além desta, de grande parte da cultura ocidental. A presente dissertação pretende apresentar e avaliar algumas das principais teses de Rorty.

Mobilt Kärnnät (MKN) är benämningen på kommunikationsinfrastrukturen i Försvarsmaktens Ledningssystem IO 2014. MKN realiseras genom sammankoppling av mobila noder som är grupperade vid staber och förband inom markarenan. Ett flertal transmissionssystem och transmissionsmedia kan användas för sammankoppling. I detta arbete har sammankoppling med två olika radiolänksystem studerats. Radiolänk 371 utvecklades för att hantera transmissionen i arméns tidigare sambandssystem, Telesystem 9000. Radiolänk 373 är under utveckling och införande. Utgångspunkten för jämförelsen har varit MKN kravställning. Kraven har inordnats under ett urval den militära lämplighetens indikatorer, som är en del i konceptet för militär nytta, för att ge svar på om det införandet av det nya systemet kan bidra till den militära nyttan. Arbetet indikerar att införandet av ett nytt radiolänksystem som transmissionssystem i MKN kommer att bidra till den militära nyttan genom ökad överföringskapacitet i nätet, möjligheter till större flexibilitet vid upprättande av transmissionsnätet och det nya radiolänksystemets förmåga att sända och mottaga i två riktningar samtidigt, med olika moduleringsformer, med endast en utrustning. / Radio relay links is used to connect the system nodes within the land component commands communication network structure. The radio relay link-system used today, Radio relay link 371, was developed in the mid-80s to support the former communication network structure, Telecommunication System 9000. The development of technology since has made the old radio relay link outdated and the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration has developed a new radio relay link system, RL 373, to the Swedish Armed Forces. The purpose of this study was to examine whether the new radio relay link better contributed to the military utility, by comparing the two radio relay link systems towards the demands that are set for the communication network structure. The study indicates that the implementation of the new radio relay link better contributes to the military utility by adding increased flexibility, both tactical and technical and it also supports higher transmission speeds. The new system is also able to establish two connections in different directions from one piece of equipment and the adaptive modulation capability built in the system also contributes to the desired flexibility.

A central challenge of the twenty-first century is to transition to a low-carbon energy system to reduce the risks of climate change. For Pima County, Arizona, where electricity accounts for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions, this requires rapid deployment of grid-tied renewable energy resources. In light of this challenge, photovoltaic solar has emerged as an important solution, providing the top source of new US electric generating capacity installed in 2016. However, there is still no consensus about the optimal scale for solar (centralized power plants, or small, decentralized systems) and the socio-economic implications for low income households. This thesis explores the implications of rooftop solar for energy justice through empirical research about a southern Arizona electric utility rate case. Utilities argue that existing rate structures shift costs from solar owners to lower-income ratepayers, while critics say the utility's proposed rate changes are unjust and that rooftop solar benefits all ratepayers. Drawing on my empirical data and an urban political ecology (UPE) approach, I analyze competing narratives that speak to three types of justice: distributive, procedural, and recognition. While dominant justice claims revolve around the distribution of costs through rates, competing narratives emphasize procedural and recognition (in)justice. Focusing on political economy, power relations, and the materiality of the grid, I reframe the utility’s cost shift argument as a strategic narrative and explain why this justice claim is ultimately validated. I propose that UPE can further an energy justice analysis by understanding procedural and recognition injustice as systemic products of rate of return regulation and the material configuration of the electric grid.

La médecine est demandeuse de prédictions. Cette question de la prédiction se pose à différents moments de la prise en charge du patient, au moment du diagnostic, au moment de l'évaluation du pronostic et au moment du suivi, pour prendre les meilleures décisions possibles en termes de choix d'examens complémentaires et de choix de thérapeutique. La prédiction permet d'apporter une information au médecin et au patient pour prendre la décision. Pour construire ces modèles de prédiction, on dispose de bases de données qui nous permettent d'évaluer l'association entre des données cliniques ou biologiques et la probabilité de survenue d'un évènement. Pour quantifier ces associations, on utilise des modèles de régression logistique qui sont estimés d'après la méthode du maximum de vraisemblance. Pour évaluer ces modèles, on dispose de différents critères, qui quantifient leur adéquation, leur capacité de discrimination, leur calibration. Ces modèles vont nous permettre de prendre une décision. Les erreurs de prédiction vont mener à des erreurs de décision. Les conséquences de ces décisions sont quantifiables grâce à la théorie des utilités. C'est donc un critère quantifiant l'utilité du modèle qui nous permet de choisir le modèle le plus utile. La construction de modèles de prédiction est particulièrement importante dans le domaine clinique de l'obstétrique. En effet, il est important dans le cas des hémorragies de la délivrance de prévenir l'aggravation de la situation, et donc de distinguer les patientes qui vont s'aggraver très rapidement. Le taux de fibrinogène a été étudié, comme prédicteur d'une évolution grave de l'hémorragie. Les variables cliniques disponibles au moment du diagnostic ont ensuite été étudiées. Dans la situation de la rupture prématurée des membranes, il existe un choix à faire entre deux décisions qui induisent une morbidité néonatale et maternelle : la naissance prématurée et le risque de chorioamniotite. Des marqueurs du risque de chorioamniotite pourraient donc faciliter la prise de décision en augmentant l'information pour le clinicien. De plus en plus de modèles de prédiction sont développés dans toutes les situations cliniques. Il faut rester critique vis-à-vis de ces modèles. Leur évaluation doit tenir compte de leur utilisation, et doit donc tenir compte de leur utilité en situation de prise de décision / Medicine asks for prediction. Prediction is needed at different point in the management of a patient. To take the best decision as possible for complementary exams, or therapeutics. Prediction gives an information to the practitioner and the patient, to take a decision. To build these prediction models, we have data bases. The association between clinical or biological data and the outcome probability can be estimated thanks to these data bases. To measure these associations, logistic regression models are used. They are estimated with maximum likelihood method. To evaluate these models, different criteria exist. These criteria quantify adequacy, discrimination capacity, calibration. These models help to take a decision. Prediction errors lead to decision errors. Consequences of these decisions are measurable with utility theory. Therefore, it is a criteria that measure utility of a model that enables us to select the most useful model. Prediction model building is an important point in obstetrics. Indeed, in case of postpartum haemorrhage, it is important to prevent worsening of the clinical situation, and therefore, to identify patient who will worsen fastly. Fibrinogen level was studied as a predictor of severe postpartum haemorrhage. Clinical variables availables at diagnosis of postpartum haemorrhage was then studied. In case of preterm premature rupture of membranes, there is a decision to take, between two choices that may lead to maternal of neonatal morbidity: preterm birth and chorioamnionitis risk with pregnancy continuation. Markers of chorioamnionitis risk may help the practitioners for decision making, by increasing the information. More and more prediction models are developed in all clinical situations. We must be critical before using these models in real life. Their evaluation must take into account their use, and therefore, their utility in case of decision making

This study is concerned with the significance of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 on the public utility holding companies which were operating in Texas in 1935.

Utveckling sker konstant i Sverige och det innebär fler ledningar i marken vilket leder till fler frågor om juridiska rättigheter. Elnätet är uppdelat i tre olika storlekar; stamnät, regionnät och lokalnät. Elnätet är en viktig del i infrastrukturen och det bör då juridiskt skyddas genom till exempel ledningsrätt eller avtalsservitut. Problematik kan uppstå kring elledningarnas juridiska rättigheter såsom när en överlåtelse sker m.m. Därmed är det viktigt att undersöka hur elledningar juridiskt bör skyddas. Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur elbolagen juridiskt skyddar sina elledningar samt för- och nackdelar med de juridiska rättigheterna utifrån elbolagens och lantmäterimyndigheternas åsikter. Syftet är även att belysa vilket det mest förekommande problemet kring juridiska rättigheter av elledningar är. De frågeställningar som upprättades utefter syftet var: Hur skyddar elbolag juridiskt rätten till sina elledningar? Vilka för- och nackdelar finns det för de olika juridiska rättigheterna utifrån elbolagens samt lantmäterimyndigheternas åsikter? Vilket är det mest förekommande problemet elbolag har kring juridiska rättigheter av elledningar? Genom en kvalitativ metod i form av en intervjustudie kunde underlag till studien fås. Intervjustudien bestod av 16 intervjuer med sakkunniga personer inom området från elbolag och lantmäterimyndigheter. Då studien skulle täcka hela Sverige valdes elbolag och lantmäterikontor med en geografisk spridning. Studien visar att elbolag juridiskt skyddar sina elledningar beroende på dess storlek. Studien visar även på skillnaden mellan elbolagens och lantmäterimyndigheternas åsikter kring för- och nackdelar med de juridiska rättigheterna. Problematik kan uppstå beroende på vem som äger marken där ledningen ska anläggas. / Sweden is constantly developing and it means more lines in the ground, which leads to more questions about their legal rights. The electricity grid is divided into three different sizes; the core network, the regional network and the local network. The electricity grid is an important part of the infrastructure, and it should be legally protected through for example, utility easement or agreement easement.. Issues may arise about the legal rights of power lines such as when a transfer occurs, etc. Thus it is important to examine how the power lines should be legally protected. The purpose of the study is to examine how the electricity companies legally protect their power lines, as well as the pros and cons of the legal rights, based on the aspects of electricity companies and cadastral authorities. The purpose is also to highlight the most common issue regarding the legal rights on power lines. The questions that were formulated according to the purpose were: How do electricity companies legally protect their power lines? What are the pros and cons of the legal rights based on the views of electricity companies and surveyors? What is the most common problem that electric companies have about legal rights of power lines? By using a qualitative method in form of an interview study, the data for the study has been obtained. The interview study consisted of 16 interviews with experts from electricity companies and cadastral authorities. As the study should cover all of Sweden, electricity companies and land surveyors were selected with a geographical spread. The study shows that electricity companies legally protect their power lines depending on their size. The study also shows the differences between the electricity companies and the cadastral authorities ́ views on the pros and cons of the legal rights. Issues may occur depending on who owns the land where the lines are to be constructed.

With the obvious evolution and acceleration of smart grid, it is crucial for its success to rely on a solid transmission protocol among its peripherals due to its real time streaming. TCP is the well known traditional transport protocol used for a reliable transmission, and is a major player for smart grid. However, it lacks a fault tolerance transmission method that overcomes potential failures which may mitigate smart grid progress and in its turn decrease its reliability. We propose that smart grid operators utilize SCTP as the principle transport protocol for their smart grid communications, by using the two very significant characteristics offered by SCTP multi-homing and multi-streaming respectively. Thus, we argue that they can override two major obstacles caused by TCP Head of Line Blocking (HLB) and the inability of handling automatically two or more paths to a final destination. Although SCTP resembles TCP in many aspects, SCTP can definitely play a dominant role in many current and future applications due to its key features that do not exist in TCP. We have used ns2.34 simulator as the tool whom we relied on to investigate whether or not smart grid may benefit over TCP by the two SCTP features, and have analyzed the output of simulated results by using other analytical tools. As we obtain results, we argue that smart grid operators should rely on SCTP as a feasible transmission protocol instead of TCP.

In this era of the Internet of Things and Big Data, a proliferation of connected devices continuously produce massive amounts of fast evolving streaming data. There is a need to study the relationships in such streams for analytic applications, such as network intrusion detection, fraud detection and financial forecasting, amongst other. In this setting, it is crucial to create data mining algorithms that are able to seamlessly adapt to temporal changes in data characteristics that occur in data streams. These changes are called concept drifts. The resultant models produced by such algorithms should not only be highly accurate and be able to swiftly adapt to changes. Rather, the data mining techniques should also be fast, scalable, and efficient in terms of resource allocation. It then becomes important to consider issues such as storage space needs and memory utilization. This is especially relevant when we aim to build personalized, near-instant models in a Big Data setting. This research work focuses on mining in a data stream with concept drift, using an online bagging method, with consideration to the memory utilization. Our aim is to take an adaptive approach to resource allocation during the mining process. Specifically, we consider metalearning, where the models of multiple classifiers are combined into an ensemble, has been very successful when building accurate models against data streams. However, little work has been done to explore the interplay between accuracy, efficiency and utility. This research focuses on this issue. We introduce an adaptive metalearning algorithm that takes advantage of the memory utilization cost of concept drift, in order to vary the ensemble size during the data mining process. We aim to minimize the memory usage, while maintaining highly accurate models with a high utility. We evaluated our method against a number of benchmarking datasets and compare our results against the state-of-the art. Return on Investment (ROI) was used to evaluate the gain in performance in terms of accuracy, in contrast to the time and memory invested. We aimed to achieve high ROI without compromising on the accuracy of the result. Our experimental results indicate that we achieved this goal.