This paper uses an overlapping generation model with uncertainty and endogenous fertility to study households¡¦ educational and investment choices. Individuals are assumed to be selfish and the intra-family deals are ruled by a self-enforcing ¡¥family constitution¡¦. Within this framework, parents finance their children¡¦s education inasmuch as they receive a return (a share of the increased earnings accruing to the children) and degree of risk aversion. And we show that the effect of social security on fertility and saving is analyzed both in the absence and in the presence of a perfect capital market. The impact on family's decision of the ability of the bargaining power is one of the focal points that this text is discussed, too. We also show that under this arrangement, individuals purchase less education than socially optimal. This yields a rationale for public action, either via public provision or via subsidization. We analyses both policies and find that they have different implications for households¡¦ fertility decisions. In particular, subsidization should be preferred if we wish to keep the rate of population growth as high as possible.

Humans, through their actions, are both the victims and the cause of many environmental problems. The importance of attaining a sustainable future through behavioural rather than technical solutions to the environment crises is widely recognised. The aim of this study was to test multi-attribute models in the context of recycling behaviour. The Cotswold District Council facilitated this by providing the opportunity to monitor recycling behaviour, objectively and unobtrusively, without signaling in any way a connection to the prior intention measurement phase. The research process was multifaceted utilising both qualitative and quantitative research. The qualitative study consisted of interviews which clarified how and why individuals recycle. The empirical research tested the models using appropriate multivariate statistics. The findings show that a serious limitation of the models tested is that they concentrate on the alleged mental antecedents of behaviour rather than on the behaviour itself. The predictive value of research that utilises these models as their theoretical foundation is limited by the serious omission of behavioural choice. This thesis contributes to the enhancement of knowledge of the multi-attribute models tested. It develops a new model of attitudes and behaviour choice that forms the basis of a predictive model of recycling behaviour. It concludes by contributing significantly to the development of strategic programmes aimed at maximising sustainable recycling behaviour, through public participation and individual responsibility.

My aim with this research has been to see how surrogate mothers' situation in Georgia looks like, and how different aspects affect the understanding of the process itself and create different prerequisites for surrogate mothers. I interviewed staffs who meet surrogate mothers in their work. I conducted five interviews. The theories I have chosen to use in the study is Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Goffman's labeling theory. I concluded that surrogacy is a controversial subject that is interesting to analyze, based on these theories. After I had interviewed people, it turned out that there are some hierarchical differences between surrogate mothers and biological mothers. The study shows those surrogate mothers' motives and perception is different in society, leading to stigma and categorized ring of the phenomenon. In the future it will be interesting to formulate, visualize, debate and discuss how surrogacy affects society and the professionals' assessments of the phenomenon. I hope that the study raises future interest in others and brings new perspectives which professionals can benefit from. / Mitt mål med denna uppsats har varit att se hur surrogatmödrars situation i Georgien ser ut, och hur olika aspekter påverkar förståelsen för själva processen och skapar olika förutsättningar för surrogatamödrar.  Jag gjorde detta genom att intervjua personal som träffar surrogatamödrar i sin verksamhet. Jag genomförde fem intervjuer. De teorier jag valt att använda i studien är Maslows behovstrappa och Goffmans stämplingsteori. Jag kom fram till att surrogatmödraskap är ett omdiskuterat ämne som är intressant att analysera utifrån dessa teorier. Efter att jag intervjuat personerna visade det sig att det förekommer en del hierarkiska skillnader mellan surrogatmödrar och biologiska mammor. Studien visar att surrogatmödrarnas motiv och uppfattning ser olika ut i samhället, vilket leder till stigmatisering och kategorisering av själva fenomenet. I framtiden kommer det bli intressant att formulera, synliggöra, problematisera och diskutera hur surrogatmödraskap påverkar samhället och professionellas bedömningar på fenomenet. Jag hoppas att studien väcker framtida intresse för andra och bidrar med nya perspektiv som professionella kan ha nytta av.

<p>Programmed death is often associated with a bacterial stress response. This behavior appears paradoxical, as it offers no benefit to the individual. This paradox can be explained if the death is `altruistic': the sacrifice of some cells can benefit the survivors through release of `public goods'. However, the conditions where bacterial programmed death becomes advantageous have not been unambiguously demonstrated experimentally. Here, I determined such conditions by engineering tunable, stress-induced altruistic death in the bacterium Escherichia coli. Using a mathematical model, we predicted the existence of an optimal programmed death rate that maximizes population growth under stress. I further predicted that altruistic death could generate the `Eagle effect', a counter-intuitive phenomenon where bacteria appear to grow better when treated with higher antibiotic concentrations. In support of these modeling insights, I experimentally demonstrated both the optimality in programmed death rate and the Eagle effect using our engineered system. These findings fill a critical conceptual gap in the analysis of the evolution of bacterial programmed death, and have implications for a design of antibiotic treatment.</p> / Dissertation

Large--scale distributed environments can be seen as a conflict between the selfish aims of the participants and the group welfare of the population as a whole. In order to regulate the behavior of the participants it is often necessary to introduce mechanisms that provide incentives and stimulate cooperative behavior in order to mitigate for the resultant potentially undesirable availability outcomes which could arise from individual actions.The history of economics contains a wide variety of incentive patterns for cooperation. In this thesis, we adopt bartering incentive pattern as an attractive foundation for a simple and robust form of exchange to re-allocate resources. While bartering is arguably the world's oldest form of trade, there are still many instances where it surprises us. The success and survivability of the barter mechanisms adds to its attractiveness as a model to study.In this thesis we have derived three relevant scenarios where a bartering approach is applied. Starting from a common model of bartering: - We show the price to be paid for dealing with selfish agents in a bartering environment, as well as the impact on performance parameters such as topology and disclosed information.- We show how agents, by means of bartering, can achieve gains in goods without altruistic agents needing to be present.- We apply a bartering--based approach to a real application, the directory services.The core of this research is the analysis of bartering in the Internet Age. In previous times, usually economies dominated by bartering have suffered from high transaction costs (i.e. the improbability of the wants, needs that cause a transaction occurring at the same time and place). Nowadays, the world has a global system of interconnected computer networks called Internet. This interconnected world has the ability to overcome many challenges of the previous times. This thesis analysis the oldest system of trade within the context of this new paradigm. In this thesis we aim is to show thatbartering has a great potential, but there are many challenges that can affect the realistic application of bartering that should be studied.The purpose of this thesis has been to investigate resource allocation using bartering mechanism, with particular emphasis on applications in largescale distributed systems without the presence of altruistic participants in the environment.Throughout the research presented in this thesis we have contributed evidence that supports the leitmotif that best summarizes our work: investigation interactions amongst selfish, rational, and autonomous agents with incomplete information, each seeking to maximize its expected utility by means of bartering. We concentrate on three scenarios: one theoretical, a case of use, and finally a real application. All of these scenarios are used for evaluating bartering. Each scenario starts from a common origin, but each of them have their own unique features.The final conclusion is that bartering is still relevant in the modern world.

Conflicts between a married couple bring about impacts upon the family. As divorce rate surges, numerous researches have pointed to the confrontations between husband and wife as the highly relevant contributing factor. Domestic violence has gone from bad to worse over the past few years as well. This study is aimed to identify different levels of physical violence resulting from arguments between married female teachers and their husbands. It further explores the influence of the wife¡¦s altruistic or egoistic attitude on marital conflicts. Some married female elementary school teachers in Kaohsiung City have been chosen as the subjects of the study. Research has been done to find the link between the wife¡¦s altruistic/egoistic character and occurrences of domestic violence amidst conflicts. This study also examines how the subjects¡¦ personality traits and other personal backgrounds interplay with egoism or altruism, which determines the likelihood of domestic violence. A conclusion may be drawn that the more egoistic a married female elementary school teacher is, the more likely domestic violence is to erupt amidst conflicts with her husband. On the contrary, the more altruistic she is, the less likely violence is to happen. The severity of domestic violence varies with the teacher¡¦s years of service, the number of children, and the degree she holds. It is noteworthy that the higher degree the husband holds, the more likely the married couple may end up in physical clashes. The number of romantic relationships the subject had prior to the marriage suggests difference in the likelihood of the couple¡¦s arguments ending in violence. Namely, the more relationships she had, the more possible it is for the marriage to witness violent episodes. If the teacher generally gets along well with her husband, they are much less likely to be involved in physical fights when having an argument. Her expectations of the marriage also determine the possibility of violent incidents. In other words, the less she expects of her marriage, the greater the possibility of abusive occurrences, and vice versa. Analyses of the female teachers¡¦ backgrounds help identify contributing factors of domestic violence. Her years of service at school may result in difference in likelihood of violence, but no significant correlation has been detected. However, the number of children, the couple¡¦s highest degree, the number of romantic relationships prior to the marriage, spousal closeness, and her expectations of the marriage are all significant variables in the probability of domestic violence. Married female teachers¡¦ attitudes have been categorized as either altruistic or egoistic in the research to facilitate the analysis of their relevance to domestic violence amidst conflicts between a couple. By means of Chi-square analysis, the subjects can be classified into four types, ranging from extremely suited for matrimonial and familial life to self-centered. Each type has significant contributing factors that determine the significant differences in degrees of domestic violence.

The present study integrated social exchange theory and motivational perspective to explore the mediating role of felt obligation and boundary condition of personal motives in the relationship between psychological contract fulfillments (PCF) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). We hypothesized that (a) PCF exerts influences on OCB through felt obligation; (b) the PCF-OCB relationship would be stronger when employees are high in altruistic and high in egoistic motive. Accordingly, an integrative model of exchange theory and motivational theory would be proposed to simultaneously examine the mediated effect and interactive effect on organizational citizenship behaviors. We tested the hypothesized model by using data of supervisor-subordinate dyads. Data are collected through employees¡¦ self-reports and employees¡¦ supervisors, so two questionnaires are use. Obtaining measures of the predictor and criterion variables from different source is one of the procedures used to control common method bias, a critical limitation in cross-sectional correlational research (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, and Lee, 2003). A sample of 485 supervisor-subordinate dyad was obtained from supervisory MBA graduates and their randomly-selected subordinates. All survey measures process the back translation procedure recommended by Brislin (1980) to assure the equivalence before administration. Confirmatory factor analysis is employed to examine the psychometric properties of all measures used. Finally, to test hypotheses, structure equation modeling using statistical package Liseral 8.5 and hierarchical moderated regression were employed. Resulted showed that social exchange theory and motives significantly explained the PCF-OCB association in different way, as we expected. First, we found that felt obligation is influenced by balance and relational PCF and then in turn has impact on etic OCB, while transactional PCF had no effects on either felt obligation or two forms of OCBs. Additionally, results strongly suggested that the negative effect of transactional PCF on OCB occurred for people low in altruistic motive to help, but would be positive associated for people high in altruistic motive. The findings signify that altruistic motive interacted in such a way that a strong altruistic motive was needed to buffer the negative effect of transactional PCF on etic OCB. It¡¦s important to note that transactional PCF had no direct effect on any forms of OCB, thus it appeared that altruistic motive played a role of ¡§switch¡¨ to activate the relationship between transactional PCF and every forms of OCB. Finally, we found altruistic motive, instead of egoistic motive, is the key determinant for OCB.

Abstract The main purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between external-organizational altruistic behavior, which is known as voluntary behavior, and internal-organizational altruistic behavior, which is called ¡§ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)¡¨. Multiple regression analysis was employed with 369 employees of automobile industry. Results showed that individual volunteer behavior, volunteer behavior performed by organization and reference groups around, and transformational leadership had positive influence on organizational citizenship behavior. Leaders¡¦ Transformational leadership took more significant change than volunteer behavior on shaping subordinates¡¦ organizational citizenship behavior.

This thesis examines whether juvenile feral pigeons, Columba livia, form sibling alliances when competing for access to a defensible food source. When tested as a flock at a non-depletable column feeder, with room for either one or two birds to feed, siblings associated with each other more often than expected by chance. Frequency of aggression between siblings at these feeders tended to be lower than expected on the basis of their association. Removal experiments showed that sibling presence had a positive effect on relative feeding success at the single column feeder: a juvenile who lost to another juvenile on a one-to-one basis tended, in the presence of its sibling, to lose less badly to, or even beat, that same juvenile. In contrast, presence of the winner's sibling tended not to affect the relative feeding success of competitors. These results support the hypothesis that pigeon siblings form aggressive alliances when competing for food that is defensible.

If altruistic surrogacy should be legal in Sweden, laws concerning screening of the parents should be mandatory and adoption should be promoted as an alternative to surrogacy to a larger extent. Both in surrogacy and adoption the best interest of the child should be a priority, but parents regardless of sexuality, income and to some extent age, should qualify as long as they can prove their ability as parents.