Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Ruleset'

Online fraud causes billions of dollars in losses for banks. Therefore, online banking fraud detection is an important field of study. However, there are many challenges in conducting research in fraud detection. One of the constraints is due to unavailability of bank datasets for research or the required characteristics of the attributes of the data are not available. Numeric data usually provides better performance for machine learning algorithms. Most transaction data however have categorical, or nominal features as well. Moreover, some platforms such as Apache Spark only recognizes numeric data. So, there is a need to use techniques e.g. One-hot encoding (OHE) to transform categorical features to numerical features, however OHE has challenges including the sparseness of transformed data and that the distinct values of an attribute are not always known in advance. Efficient feature engineering can improve the algorithm’s performance but usually requires detailed domain knowledge to identify correct features. Techniques like Ripple Down Rules (RDR) are suitable for fraud detection because of their low maintenance and incremental learning features. However, high classification accuracy on mixed datasets, especially for scalable data is challenging. Evaluation of RDR on distributed platforms is also challenging as it is not available on these platforms. The thesis proposes the following solutions to these challenges: • We developed a technique Highly Correlated Rule Based Uniformly Distribution (HCRUD) to generate highly correlated rule-based uniformly-distributed synthetic data. • We developed a technique One-hot Encoded Extended Compact (OHE-EC) to transform categorical features to numeric features by compacting sparse-data even if all distinct values are unknown. • We developed a technique Feature Engineering and Compact Unified Expressions (FECUE) to improve model efficiency through feature engineering where the domain of the data is not known in advance. • A Unified Expression RDR fraud deduction technique (UE-RDR) for Big data has been proposed and evaluated on the Spark platform. Empirical tests were executed on multi-node Hadoop cluster using well-known classifiers on bank data, synthetic bank datasets and publicly available datasets from UCI repository. These evaluations demonstrated substantial improvements in terms of classification accuracy, ruleset compactness and execution speed.
Doctor of Philosophy

Despite the breadth of research on the educational transition of young children, there has been little evidence, in Scotland, of this knowledge impacting on every day practice. The overall contention that emerges from the literature is that some children positively embrace the experience, while others face challenges and risk failure and regression. There is a need for research into the transition from the early years setting to school, which holds promise that the findings will be disseminated to stakeholders locally, nationally and internationally with the aim that the perspectives of young children are heard. This ethnographic study is an examination of the perspectives of 16 young children as they transition from an early years centre, Lilybank, to four primary schools, Northfield, Southfield, Eastfield and Westfield, in a Scottish city. Seven key qualitative questions were asked which explored how children, parents and professionals experienced this educational transition. Data was gathered from empirical methods such as participant observations, mind–mapping sessions, interviews and documentation – e.g., council procedures and school handbooks. Participant observations took place in the early years setting and the participating schools. Most of the interviews took place in the children’s homes, or in a convenient environment for the family, such as a local cafeteria. An analysis of the data shows that power is a central concept in understanding transitions. The voices of children, and their families, are often silenced by policy-makers, bureaucrats and professionals during the process, or overshadowed and undermined by mainstream procedures. Children are expected to become acquiescent, adjusting to coercive practices used in the school institution. However, the findings also show that some children find ways to creatively resist organisation. Unique life journeys involve differences and from their individual experiences, children construct elaborate knowledge. The views of children can (and do) add nuance to our understanding of how power impacts on their transition experience. Children’s accounts of discipline strategies used by the schools were insightful. The concept of power is under-theorised and under-explored in transitions. This study, therefore, adds to the growing body of transition research. Further, the findings of this study stress the need for policy makers and institutions to reflect on and question the complex role of power in young children’s transitions.

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Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos
Machine learning is an area of Artificial Intelligence that deals with methods and techniques for implementing automatic learning in computational systems. This research work investigates a machine learning neural model called RuleNet and its extension for fuzzy domains named Fuzzy RuleNet. Among the advantages of the RuleNet proposal are its simplicity, easiness and fast training as well as the way it represents the induced concept, which can be characterized as symbolic. This aspect makes RuleNet suitable for participating in cooperative systems. This research work investigates both the contribution of the RuleNet model as a stand alone learning technique as well as part of a cooperative system. It presents and discusses the results obtained in several experiments, evaluating RuleNet as a stand alone machine learning (versus two other machine learning methods, the ID3 and the NGE) and as part of a cooperative system, articulated to ID3 and to NGE.
Aprendizado de máquina é uma área da Inteligência Artificial que investe na pesquisa de métodos e técnicas para viabilizar o aprendizado automático em sistemas computacionais. Este trabalho de pesquisa investiga um modelo neural de aprendizado de máquina chamado RuleNet e sua extensão Fuzzy RuleNet, para domínios fuzzy. Dentre as vantagens da proposta RuleNet estão sua simplicidade, facilidade e rapidez no treinamento bem como a maneira como representa o conceito induzido, que pode ser caracterizada como simbólica. Esse aspecto torna o RuleNet adequado a ser incorporado a sistemas cooperativos de aprendizado. O trabalho de pesquisa investiga a contribuição do modelo RuleNet tanto como uma técnica de aprendizado stand-alone quanto como parte de um sistema cooperativo. O trabalho apresenta e discute os resultados obtidos em vários experimentos que avaliam o RuleNet como método de aprendizado stand-alone (versus dois outros métodos de aprendizado de máquina, o ID3 e o NGE) e como parte de um sistema cooperativo, articulado tanto ao ID3 quanto ao NGE.

Abstrakt I detta arbete undersöks hur konceptet lek går att applicera på digitala spel och hur man presenterar ett fiktivt universum och de regler som definierar det universumet. Syftet med denna undersökning är att öka kvaliteten på digitala spel för spelare genom att öka förståelsen för hur sådana regler introduceras. Frågeställningen som ämnas att besvaras är “hur kan man introducera realistiska, semi-realistiska och fiktiva regler i ett spel?”. Undersökningen baseras delvis på analyser kring varför vissa introduktioner av regler ofta accepteras och andra inte, dels på utvärdering av en gestaltning och dels på tidigare forskning. Denna undersökning är indelad i två delar; en researchdel och en produktionsdel. För att besvara frågan har research skett kring vad som känns till sedan tidigare och ett digitalt spel har producerats där den stora regeln som skiljer verkligheten från detta fiktiva universum är paranormal aktivitet, eller spöken. Nyckelord: regler, magisk cirkel, inlevelse och spelproduktion. Abstract In this work the concept of play and how it may be applied to digital games and how to introduce a fictional universe and the rules that define that universe is being investigated. The purpose of this work is to increase the quality of digital games by increasing our understanding of how such rules may be introduced. The question to be answered is “how may realistic, semi-realistic and fictional rules be introduced in a digital game?”. This work is based partly on analyses on why some introductions of rules are often accepted and some often not, partly on evaluation of a product created by us and partly on earlier research. This work is split into two parts; one research part and one production part. To answer the question research about what is previously known has been conducted and a digital game has been produced where the main rule that separates the fictional universe from ours is paranormal activity, or ghosts. Keywords: Rules, magical circle, immersion and game production.
Detta är en reflektionsdel till en digital medieproduktion.

In the field of machine learning, methods for learning from single-table data have received much more attention than those for learning from multi-table, or relational data, which are generally more computationally complex. However, a significant amount of the world's data is relational. This indicates a need for algorithms that can operate efficiently on relational data and exploit the larger body of work produced in the area of single-table techniques. This thesis presents algorithms for learning from relational data that mitigate, to some extent, the complexity normally associated with such learning. All algorithms in this thesis are based on the generation of random relational rules. The assumption is that random rules enable efficient and effective relational learning, and this thesis presents evidence that this is indeed the case. To this end, a system for generating random relational rules is described, and algorithms using these rules are evaluated. These algorithms include direct classification, classification by propositionalisation, clustering, semi-supervised learning and generating random forests. The experimental results show that these algorithms perform competitively with previously published results for the datasets used, while often exhibiting lower runtime than other tested systems. This demonstrates that sufficient information for classification and clustering is retained in the rule generation process and that learning with random rules is efficient. Further applications of random rules are investigated. Propositionalisation allows single-table algorithms for classification and clustering to be applied to the resulting data, reducing the amount of relational processing required. Further results show that techniques for utilising additional unlabeled training data improve accuracy of classification in the semi-supervised setting. The thesis also develops a novel algorithm for building random forests by making efficient use of random rules to generate trees and leaves in parallel.

This work proposes Hs-RuleFit, a learning method for regression and classification, which combines rule ensemble learning based on the RuleFit algorithm with Bayesian regularization through the horseshoe prior. To this end theoretical properties and potential problems of this combination are studied. A second step is the implementation, which utilizes recent sampling schemes to make the Hs-RuleFit computationally feasible. Additionally, changes to the RuleFit algorithm are proposed such as Decision Rule post-processing and the usage of Decision rules generated via Random Forest. Hs-RuleFit addresses the problem of finding highly accurate and yet interpretable models. The method shows to be capable of finding compact sets of informative decision rules that give a good insight in the data. Through the careful choice of prior distributions the horse-shoe prior shows to be superior to the Lasso in this context. In an empirical evaluation on 16 real data sets Hs-RuleFit shows excellent performance in regression and outperforms the popular methods Random Forest, BART and RuleFit in terms of prediction error. The interpretability is demonstrated on selected data sets. This makes the Hs-RuleFit a good choice for science domains in which interpretability is desired. Problems are found in classification, regarding the usage of the horseshoe prior and rule ensemble learning in general. A simulation study is performed to isolate the problems and potential solutions are discussed. Arguments are presented, that the horseshoe prior could be a good choice in other machine learning areas, such as artificial neural networks and support vector machines.

Association rule mining is an essential part of data mining, which tries to discover associations, relationships, or correlations among sets of items. As it was initially proposed for market basket analysis, most of the previous research focuses on generating frequent patterns. This thesis focuses on finding infrequent patterns, which we call sporadic rules. They represent rare itemsets that are scattered sporadically throughout the database but with high confidence of occurring together. As sporadic rules have low support the minabssup (minimum absolute support) measure was proposed to filter out any rules with low support whose occurrence is indistinguishable from that of coincidence. There are two classes of sporadic rules: perfectly sporadic and imperfectly sporadic rules. Apriori-Inverse was then proposed for perfectly sporadic rule generation. It uses a maximum support threshold and user-defined minimum confidence threshold. This method is designed to find itemsets which consist only of items falling below a maximum support threshold. However imperfectly sporadic rules may contain items with a frequency of occurrence over the maximum support threshold. To look for these rules, variations of Apriori-Inverse, namely Fixed Threshold, Adaptive Threshold, and Hill Climbing, were proposed. However these extensions are heuristic. Thus the MIISR algorithm was proposed to find imperfectly sporadic rules using item constraints, which capture rules with a single-item consequent below the maximum support threshold. A comprehensive evaluation of sporadic rules and current interestingness measures was carried out. Our investigation suggests that current interestingness measures are not suitable for detecting sporadic rules.

This paper empirically assesses determinants of countries' fiscal rules suggested by the political science, sociology, and economics literature. We find several of these variables to be related to the stringency of fiscal rules, providing indirect evidence for the relevance of governments' deficit bias. These determinants may also serve as instruments in models with (endogenous) fiscal rules as explanatory variable.

In law as well as in ordinary life, it matters what rules societies have; but what does it mean for a society to have a rule? HLA Hart’s famous answer is that for a society to have a rule is for there to be a certain social practice in that society, consisting of an external, behavioural aspect and an internal, attitudinal aspect. Hart’s ‘practice theory’ dominates thinking in jurisprudence about social rules, but, I argue, there are serious problems with it. It would be better to adopt what I call the ‘acceptance theory’. In the early chapters of this thesis, I argue that the practice theory is both overinclusive and underinclusive. It is overinclusive because Hart’s description of the ‘internal aspect’ is too general. It is underinclusive because the ‘external aspect’ is unnecessary. Once these criticisms are taken into account, what remains of the practice theory is the idea that a society has a rule because its members have a certain attitude. I spend much of this thesis determining the features of this attitude. Ultimately, I focus on the attitude known as “acceptance” in the philosophy of action. Acceptance of a proposition simulates belief in that proposition, though it may be held independently of that belief. I argue that a person or society has a rule when that person, or that society’s members, accept that some action ought to be performed, whatever their beliefs about the matter. This theory incorporates the plausible core of the practice theory, while avoiding its problems.

The thesis includes three independent essays that investigate the properties of monetary policy rules that modern Central Banks enact in response to different shocks. Chapter 2 considers the changes observed in the policy rules followed by the Bank of England after the financial crisis in 2007. Strong evidence indicates that the linear Taylor rule is not able to capture the behaviour of the Bank of England. Considering three different types of non-linear Taylor rules – in particular, the structural model, the threshold model and the opportunistic model – we obtain robust results showing that the Bank of England has changed its policy priorities after the crisis. In Chapter 3, we compare the endogenous switching rule, in which the weights change according to the macroeconomic conditions, with the “traditional” Taylor rule with fixed weights in the basic New Keynesian model. The results show that although the endogenous-switching rule outperforms the “original” Taylor rule, the economy could benefit from implementing the linear Taylor rule by increasing the weights of inflation and output gap. Chapter 4 evaluates different monetary policy rules in a small open economy. In this framework, there exists an optimal rule which may however be hard to implement in practice. Central Banks may thus consider alternative rules. In order to minimise the welfare loss with respect to the optimal rule, we consider discretionary rules, the Taylor rule and the Taylor rule with real exchange rate, finding that the ranking of welfare performance depends on intratemporal elasticity of substitution and the degree of openness.

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This paper studies cost-sharing rules under dynamic adverse selection. We present a typical principal-agent model with two periods, set up in Laffont and Tirole's (1986) canonical regulation environment. At first, when the contract is signed, the firm has prior uncertainty about its efficiency parameter. In the second period, the firm learns its efficiency and chooses the level of cost-reducing effort. The optimal mechanism sequentially screens the firm's types and achieves a higher level of welfare than its static counterpart. The contract is indirectly implemented by a sequence of transfers, consisting of a fixed advance payment based on the reported cost estimate, and an ex-post compensation linear in cost performance.
Este trabalho estuda regras de compartilhamento de custos sob seleção adversa dinâmica. Apresentamos um modelo típico de agente-principal com dois períodos, fundamentado no ambiente canônico de regulação de Laffont e Tirole (1986). De início, quando da assinatura do contrato, a firma possui incerteza prévia sobre seu parâmetro de eficiência. No segundo período, a firma aprende a sua eficiência e escolhe o nível de esforço para reduzir custos. O mecanismo ótimo efetua screening sequencial entre os tipos da firma e atinge um nível de bem-estar superior ao alcançado pelo mecanismo estático. O contrato é implementado indiretamente por uma sequência de transferências, que consiste em um pagamento fixo antecipado, baseado na estimativa de custos reportada pela firma, e uma compensação posterior linear no custo realizado.

Active technology in database management systems (DBMS) enables the movement of behaviour dependent on the system’s state, from the application software to a rule base in the DBMS. With active technology in database systems, the problem of how to design active behaviour has become an important issue. Modelling processes do not foresee support for design of active rules which can lead to conflicts between the event-condition-action (ECA) rules representing the active behaviour and the application systems, using the active DBMS. The unified modelling language (UML) is a widely used notation language and is the main subject in this project. Its features will be investigated to acknowledge to what extend UML modelling diagrams provide information that can be used to formulate ECA rules.

To achieve this, two methods where developed. One of the methods was applied on use-case UML modelling diagrams. The use-case models were developed by means of reflecting a real-life organisation. The results from applying the method on the use-case models were that there are features in UML that can be expressed with ECA rules.

Active technology in database management systems (DBMS) enables the movement of behaviour dependent on the system’s state, from the application software to a rule base in the DBMS. With active technology in database systems, the problem of how to design active behaviour has become an important issue. Modelling processes do not foresee support for design of active rules which can lead to conflicts between the event-condition-action (ECA) rules representing the active behaviour and the application systems, using the active DBMS. The unified modelling language (UML) is a widely used notation language and is the main subject in this project. Its features will be investigated to acknowledge to what extend UML modelling diagrams provide information that can be used to formulate ECA rules.

To achieve this, two methods where developed. One of the methods was applied on use-case UML modelling diagrams. The use-case models were developed by means of reflecting a real-life organisation. The results from applying the method on the use-case models were that there are features in UML that can be expressed with ECA rules.

Austerity is one of the most controversial policies in Europe. Fiscal rules are a key political institution that entrench austerity as a permanent feature of government budgetary policy. These rules fix numerical targets to constrain government budgets under the assumption that, in the long run, this might help to prevent fiscal crisis. In the last 30 years, the number of countries using fiscal rules has exploded. This thesis studies the political process leading to the creation of fiscal rules. Contrary to previous research, this thesis considers explanations coming both from national and international politics. It is composed of three articles. The first uses time series analysis in a European panel to arbitrate between different mechanisms that could lead political actors to adopt fiscal rules. It finds that fiscal rules are strengthened when countries are facing fiscal stress over an extended period or when governments are in a position of relative weakness toward European institutions. The latter result suggests that fiscal rules might diffuse through coercive diplomacy. The second paper uses a process tracing approach to test the possibility that the creation of fiscal rules is driven by the coercive diplomacy of the IMF and the EU. Our conclusion is that the coercive diplomacy of these two actors explains a large proportion of all fiscal rules existing in the world today. The final paper takes this result and compares the impact of fiscal rules on debt and bond yields between those that are externally-coerced and those that are nationally-driven. The conclusion is that externally-coerced fiscal rules do not help to control government debt and favour fiscal gimmickry. The main conclusion of the thesis is that a large fraction of fiscal rules are the result of coercive diplomacy and that these rules are less efficient than those which result from national politics.
Arts, Faculty of
Political Science, Department of
Graduate

Detta examensarbete handlar om att ta fram ett kompendium beskrivande några viktiga punkter om juridik inom logistik. Målgruppen för kompendiet är nyexaminerade logistikstudenter från utbildningarna vid KTS-avdelningen. Detta då det upplevs av uppdragsgivaren att det finns för lite inslag av juridik i utbildningarna. För att ta fram ett underlag för vilket innehåll som skulle kunna vara intressant för kompendiet har en enkätundersökning genomförts där tidigare studenter från programmen besvarat frågor utifrån deras egna erfarenheter efter examen. Utöver detta har kompletterande undersökningar gjorts där arbetsgivare samt nuvarande studenter har besvarat frågor angående logistik inom juridikområdet. Med hjälp av svaren från enkätundersökningarna har kompendiet skapats, innehållande olika ämnen som kan tänkas vara bra för en nyexaminerad logistikstudent att ha kunskap om. De ämnen som behandlas i kompendiet handlar bland annat om gränsöverskridande handel, godstrafik på nationell och internationell nivå, transportvillkor samt regler kring arbetstider.

Online psychotherapy dates from 1995 and is still in its infancy. This research focuses on the therapeutic qualities of online psychotherapy and the role of ground rules in creating a secure frame for the therapeutic relationship in this new medium. Chapter 1 presents the history of online psychotherapy and a description of the main modalities for therapeutic interaction, namely, e-mail therapy and chat room therapy. Chapter 2 reviews the literature dealing with the psychotherapeutic relationship, with regard to the definition of ground rules. In this chapter I identify seven categories of ground rules that are common to all approaches to psychotherapy. These categories will serve as a prism in evaluating the options for creating ground rules in online psychotherapy. Chapter 3 explores the therapeutic qualities of e-mail and chat room therapy according to the seven categories of ground rules. It also presents a survey of 236 therapeutic web sites. According to the findings of this survey, online psychotherapy is not a substitute for face-to-face psychotherapy, although there is. a potential for creating a secure frame in a virtual clinic, which does not yet exist. In Chapter 4I present my limited experience with online psychotherapy and the virtual clinic which I have developed according to the guidelines of the seven categories of ground rules. It is too early to draw conclusions based on this limited experience, but it opens several options for further research.

This paper estimates the effects of fiscal institutions on fiscal policy outcomes, addressing issues related to measurement and endogeneity in a novel way. Recently developed indices, based on partially ordered set theory, are used to quantify the stringency of fiscal rules. Identification of their effects is achieved by exploiting the exogeneity of institutional variables (checks and balances, government fragmentation, inflation targeting), which are found to be relevant determinants of fiscal rules. Our two-stage least squares estimates for (up to) 79 countries over the period 1985-2012 provide strong evidence that countries with more stringent fiscal rules have higher fiscal balances (lower deficits), lower interest rate spreads on government bonds, and lower output volatility. (authors' abstract)
Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

My degree project consists of several parts: a theorethical essay, sketches, modells, photos, experiments and an installation showed at Konstfack Spring Exhibition 2014. Departing from the infamous Fredric Jameson quote ”It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” I have investigated the relationship between play, daydreaming and economical system. Political scientist Wendy Brown has argued that we exist at a time in history where we have an urgent need for alternative spaces, both in the physical room and in the mind, where an alternative longing can grow. In my degree project I have taken a closer look at this space – what could it be, how does it work, what would it look like if it was made real? By exploring play theory I try to understand how and if play can be triggered and how this can be translated into a space. By deepening my knowledge about imagination and the relation between imagination and social development, I try to seek answers to how play can be used as a starting point for change. By treating play as a space in a double sense – both as a physical room and a special place inside us, I explore the possibilities this space has for creating new dreams. This is also a project where I try to restore my own belief in storytelling as something beyond escapism. Aiming to create an in-between, a fusion between scenography, illustration and installation, I seek to create a platform where my work can be the basis for new discussions and meetings. By exploring the performative elements of a room I want to invite the visitor to enter the image and merge with the content. I want to create a work that embraces the visitor and that can be experienced on many different levels depending on the visitor’s interest, age and prerequisites. The essay consists of three parts. My project started with an analysis of the current economical situation. In the first part of this essay I make a summary of this research, and give a brief background to my experiences working in the gap of storytelling and economics. In the second part I will investigate the basic functions of imagination and play, and see how our longing is linked to the development of society. In the third part I will talk about the physical outcome of my project - my process, choices, difficulties and conclusions. For practical reasons I have choose to put all images in a separate appendix at the end. These images shows extracts from my artistic process as well as a documentation of the installation showed at the Spring Exhibition.

John Taylor's (1993b) rule has revived the interest and usefulness of instrument rules in the formulation of monetary policy both among academics and practitioners. Consequently, research in this area has increased to answer among other things, which policy rule closely represent the actual monetary policy formulation of the central bank, or what is the performance of these Taylor rules compared to alternative rules. This thesis intends to add both to the theoretical and empirical literature on monetary policy rules and structured as follows: Chapter 2 attempts to examine the implication of interest rate smoothing on the persistence of a technology and monetary policy shock. Using a closed economy model of Galí (2008), I show that interest rate smoothing (Taylor rule with lagged interest rate and backward looking Taylor rule) tend to protracts the persistence of a monetary policy shock, while it truncates the persistence of a technological innovation. The persistence due to a monetary shock from the Taylor rule is however shorter, while that from a technology shock is longer. Thus, Taylor rule is considered superior to the Taylor rule with lagged interest rule or the backward looking Taylor rule when the economy is hit by a monetary policy shock. On the contrary, the Taylor rule with lagged interest rate and the backward looking Taylor rule is considered superior to the Taylor rule when the economy is faced with a technology shock. These results tend to suggest that a policy maker faces a trade off regarding the Taylor rule or the interest smoothing rules. Chapter 3, attempts to rank the performance of targeting rules against instrument rules in the presence of a cost push shock. In particular, it compares the performance of the three targeting rules (namely domestic inflation targeting rule (DIT), consumer price inflation (CPI) based targeting rule, exchange rate peg (PEG) with the original Taylor rule and the Forward looking Taylor rules of Clarida, Galí and Gertler (1998), commonly known as the CGG(+1) and CGG(+4). Using a small open economy, I show that the domestic inflation targeting rule simultaneously stabilizes the output gap and domestic inflation in the presence of a domestic technology shock and a foreign output innovation and hence superior. Among instrument rules I show that the Taylor rule is superior to its forward looking specifications CGG(+1) and CGG(+4). However, in the presence of a cost push shock the results are mixed. The domestic inflation targeting rule only stabilizes the domestic inflation, while the CGG(+1) minimizes the output gap volatilities the most. The CGG(+4) is the most inferior rule in this model and calibration, given that it maximizes the volatilities in the domestic inflation and the output gap. Chapter 4, empirically tests whether developing countries respond to domestic demand conditions or merely responds to developments in international interest rates in their interest rate reaction function. I show that developing countries do not strictly subscribe to the Taylor principle in setting nominal interest rate. Moreover, they tend to respond to international interest rates, inflation and past interest rates. Chapter 5, concludes.

Aquesta tesi estudia regles d’assignació justes i els seus problemes associats: què són, com implementar-les i com aplicar-les en entorns econòmics. Al capítol 1, introduïm les reduccions sense valor (v-f), que són operadors que assignen un joc coalicional jugat per un conjunt de jugadors a un altre joc similar que juga un subconjunt d’aquests jugadors. Proposem propietats que les reduccions de VF poden satisfer, proporcionem una teoria de la dualitat per a elles i caracteritzem diverses reduccions de VF (entre les quals la versió sense valor dels jocs reduïts proposada per Hart i Mas-Colell, 1989 i Oishi et al. ., 2016). A diferència dels jocs reduïts, introduïts per caracteritzar els valors en termes de consistència, les reduccions v-f no es defineixen en referència als valors. No obstant això, una reducció de v-f indueix un valor. Caracteritzem les reduccions v-f que indueixen el valor de Shapley, el valor autònom i el valor de Banzhaf. Connectem el nostre enfocament a la teoria de la implementació. Finalment, demostrem que el nostre nou enfocament és una eina útil per proporcionar noves caracteritzacions de valors en termes de consistència, i presentem noves caracteritzacions de Banzhaf i els valors autònoms. Al capítol 2, introduïm dos mecanismes que implementen el valor de Shapley i la plusvàlua igual, respectivament. La característica principal d’ambdós mecanismes és que diversos proponents presenten plans d’assignació simultàniament. La implementació d’un pla requereix tant consens entre els proponents com acceptació dels enquestats. En cas de desacord entre els proponents, fem servir el procediment de licitació introduït per Perez-Castrillo i Wettstein (J. Econ. Theory 100: 274-294, 2001), que facilita la compra d’un propositor a cada ronda. Llavors, la diferència entre dos valors es redueix a la forma en què els proponents negocien amb els enquestats. Al capítol 3, definim la solució ordinal proporcional de Shapley (POSh), un concepte ordinal per a economies d’intercanvi pur en l’esperit del valor de Shapley. La nostra construcció s’inspira en la caracterització del valor Shapley de Hart i Mas-Colell (1989) amb l’ajut d’una funció potencial. El POSh existeix i és únic i és essencialment de valor únic per a una classe d’economies bastant general. Satisfà la racionalitat individual, l’anonimat i propietats similars a les propietats de jugador nul i de jugador nul en jocs d’utilitat transferibles. A més, el POSh és immune a la manipulació dels agents de les seves dotacions inicials: no és manipulable en D i no pateix la paradoxa de la transferència. Finalment, construïm un mecanisme de licitació a Pérez-Castrillo i Wettstein (2006) que implementa el POSh en equilibri perfecte de Nash del subgame per a economies on els agents tenen preferències homotètiques i dotacions positives.
Esta tesis estudia las reglas de asignación justa y sus problemas asociados: qué son, cómo implementarlas y cómo aplicarlas en entornos económicos. En el Capítulo 1, presentamos las reducciones sin valor (v-f), que son operadores que asignan un juego de coalición jugado por un conjunto de jugadores a otro juego similar jugado por un subconjunto de esos jugadores. Proponemos propiedades que las reducciones de vf pueden satisfacer, les proporcionamos una teoría de la dualidad y caracterizamos varias reducciones de vf (entre las que se encuentran la versión libre de valor de los juegos reducidos propuestos por Hart y Mas-Colell, 1989, y Oishi et al. ., 2016). A diferencia de los juegos reducidos, introducidos para caracterizar valores en términos de consistencia, las reducciones v-f no se definen en referencia a valores. Sin embargo, una reducción de v-f induce un valor. Caracterizamos las reducciones de v-f que inducen el valor de Shapley, el valor independiente y el valor de Banzhaf. Conectamos nuestro enfoque a la teoría de la implementación. Finalmente, mostramos que nuestro nuevo enfoque es una herramienta útil para proporcionar nuevas caracterizaciones de valores en términos de consistencia, y presentamos nuevas caracterizaciones del Banzhaf y los valores independientes. En el capítulo 2, presentamos dos mecanismos que implementan el valor de Shapley y la plusvalía igual, respectivamente. La característica principal de ambos mecanismos es que varios proponentes presentan planes de asignación simultáneamente. La implementación de un plan requiere tanto el consenso entre los proponentes como la aceptación de los encuestados. En caso de desacuerdo entre los proponentes, utilizamos el procedimiento de licitación introducido por Pérez-Castrillo y Wettstein (J. Econ. Theory 100: 274-294, 2001), que facilita la compra de un proponente en cada ronda. Entonces, la diferencia entre dos valores se reduce a cómo los proponentes negocian con los encuestados. En el Capítulo 3, definimos la solución proporcional ordinal de Shapley (POSh), un concepto ordinal para economías de cambio puras en el espíritu del valor de Shapley. Nuestra construcción está inspirada en la caracterización de Hart y Mas-Colell (1989) del valor de Shapley con la ayuda de una función potencial. El POSh existe y es único y esencialmente de un solo valor para una clase de economías bastante general. Satisface la racionalidad individual, el anonimato y las propiedades similares a las propiedades de jugador nulo y de jugador nulo en los juegos de utilidad transferibles. Además, el POSh es inmune a la manipulación de los agentes de sus dotaciones iniciales: no es manipulable en D y no sufre la paradoja de la transferencia. Finalmente, construimos un mecanismo de licitación al estilo de Pérez-Castrillo y Wettstein (2006) que implementa el POSh en equilibrio de Nash perfecto en subjuegos para economías donde los agentes tienen preferencias homotéticas y dotaciones positivas.
This thesis studies fair allocation rules and its associated problems: what they are, how to implement them, and how to apply them in economic environments. In Chapter 1, we introduce the value-free (v-f) reductions, which are operators that map a coalitional game played by a set of players to another similar game played by a subset of those players. We propose properties that v-f reductions may satisfy, we provide a theory of duality for them, and we characterize several v-f reductions (among which the value-free version of the reduced games proposed by Hart and Mas-Colell, 1989, and Oishi et al., 2016). Unlike reduced games, introduced to characterize values in terms of consistency, v-f reductions are not defined in reference to values. However, a v-f reduction induces a value. We characterize v-f reductions that induce the Shapley value, the stand-alone value, and the Banzhaf value. We connect our approach to the theory of implementation. Finally, we show that our new approach is a useful tool to provide new characterizations of values in terms of consistency, and we present new characterizations of the Banzhaf and the stand-alone values. In Chapter 2, we introduce two mechanisms that implement the Shapley value and the equal surplus value, respectively. The main feature of both mechanisms is that multiple proposers put forth allocation plans simultaneously. The implementation of a plan requires both consensus among proposers and acceptance of respondents. In case of disagreement among proposers, we use the bidding procedure introduced by Perez-Castrillo and Wettstein (J. Econ. Theory 100: 274-294, 2001), which facilitates a buyout of one proposer in each round. Then the difference between two values comes down to how proposers negotiate with respondents. In Chapter 3, we define the proportional ordinal Shapley (the POSh) solution, an ordinal concept for pure exchange economies in the spirit of the Shapley value. Our construction is inspired by Hart and Mas-Colell’s (1989) characterization of the Shapley value with the aid of a potential function. The POSh exists and is unique and essentially single-valued for a fairly general class of economies. It satisfies individual rationality, anonymity, and properties similar to the null-player and null-player out properties in transferable utility games. Moreover, the POSh is immune to agents’ manipulation of their initial endowments: It is not D-manipulable and does not suffer from the transfer paradox. Finally, we construct a bidding mechanism à la Pérez-Castrillo and Wettstein (2006) that implements the POSh in subgame perfect Nash equilibrium for economies where agents have homothetic preferences and positive endowments.

The analysis of tort law is one of the most well-developed applications of economic methodology in the study of law. in this essay, we provide an overview of the economic approach to tort law, analyzing the effects of liability rules on care incentives. We catalogue a variety of possible tort regimes, systematically breaking down possible assignments of liability in terms of primary and secondary rules, and describe how their permutations distribute the costs of accidents (and the concomitant incentives to exercise precautionary care). We further consider what factual circumstances may render one tort regime preferable to another from the perspective of policymakers.
El análisis de la responsabilidad civil extracontractual ha sido unade las aplicaciones más y mejor desarrolladas aplicaciones de la metodología económica en el estudio del Derecho. e n el presente ensayo, ofrecemos un vistazo general de la aproximación económica a la responsabilidad civil extracontractual, analizando los efectos de las reglas de responsabilidad en los incentivos de precaución. Catalogamos una variedad de regímenes de responsabilidad, desglosando sistemáticamente las posibles asignaciones de responsabilidad en términos de reglas primarias y secundarias; asi como describimos como sus transformaciones distribuyen los costos de los accidentes (y los incentivos concomitantes para tomar las medidas precautorias). Consideramos luego que circunstancias empíricas o facticas pueden determinar que un régimen de responsabilidad extracontractual sea preferido sobre otro desde la perspectiva del legislador.

Дизайн документа робить його доступним і легко сприймається завдяки використанню специфічних особливостей його розташування, таких як заголовки/ підзаголовки, візуальні засоби, міжрядковий інтервал, відповідні типи шрифтів, кольору і багато інших елементів дизайну.
Дизайн документа делает его доступным и легко воспринимается благодаря использованию специфических особенностей его расположения, таких как заголовки/ подзаголовки, визуальные средства, межстрочный интервал, соответствующие типы шрифтов, цвета и многие другие элементы дизайна.
Document design makes it easy to follow and accessible by using the correct characteristic features of its arrangement such as titles, headings/subheadings, visual aids, line spacing, appropriate font types, colors and many other design elements.

Forest fire is a keystone ecological process in coniferous forests of southwestern North America. This dissertation examines a fire regime in the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico, USA, based on an original data set collected from Monument Canyon Research Natural Area (MCN). First, I examine scale dependence in the fire regime. Statistical descriptors of the fire regime, such as fire frequency and mean fire interval, are scale-dependent. I describe the theory of the event-area (EA) relationship, analogous to the species-area relationship, for events distributed in space and time; the interval-area (IA) relationship, is a related form for fire intervals. The EA and IA also allow estimation of the annual fire frame (AFF), the area within which fire occurs annually on average. The slope of the EA is a metric of spatio-temporal synchrony of events across multiple spatial scales. The second chapter concerns the temporal distribution of fire events. I outline a theory of fire interval probability from first principles in fire ecology and statistics. Fires are conditional events resulting from interaction of multiple contingent factors that must be satisfied for an event to occur. Outcomes of this kind represent a multiplicative process for which a lognormal model is the limiting distribution. I examine the application of this framework to two probability models, the Weibull and lognormal distributions, which can be used to characterize the distribution of fire intervals over time. The final chapter addresses the theory and effects of sample size in fire history. Analytical methods (including composite fire records) are used in fire history to minimize error in inference. I describe a theory of the collector's curve based on accumulation of sets of discrete events and the probability of recording a fire as a function of sample size. I propose a nonlinear regression method for the Monument Canyon data set to correct for differences in sample size among composite fire records. All measures of the fire regime reflected sensitivity to sample size, but these differences can be corrected in part by applying the regression correction, which can increase confidence in quantitative estimates of the fire regime.

The study of geometric group theory has suggested several theorems related to subdivision tilings that have a natural hyperbolic structure. However, few examples exist. We construct subdivision tilings for the complement of every nonsingular, prime alternating link and all torus links, and explore some of their properties and applications. Several examples are exhibited with color coding of tiles.

La représentation des connaissances et le raisonnement sur le Web sémantique se sont récemment concentrés, pour des raisons pratiques, sur le sous-ensemble de la logique du premier ordre appelé règles existentielles. Dans cette thèse, nous étudions le raisonnement avec des règles existentielles en présence d'informations contradictoires et introduisons un raisonnement existentiel défaisible. Nous proposons trois résultats principaux: Premièrement, nous montrons que les techniques de raisonnement défaisibles classiques doivent être revisitées pour les règles existentielles et étudions leurs défis théoriques et de mise en œuvre. Deuxièmement, nous fournissons une nouvelle structure combinatoire qui permet de capturer diverses variantes du raisonnement défaisable et étudions son expressivité et sa polyvalence. Troisièmement, nous évaluons notre travail par rapport à l'état de l'art dans le traitement des incohérences et des inconsistances dans les règles existentielles et étudions l'intérêt humain de telles techniques de raisonnement
Knowledge representation and reasoning on the Semantic Web has recently focused, due to practical rationale, on the subset of first order logic called existential rules. In this thesis we investigate reasoning with existential rules in presence of conflicting information and introduce defeasible existential rule reasoning. We provide three main salient results as follows. First we show that classical defeasible reasoning techniques need to be revisited for existential rules and study their theoretical and implementation related challenges. Second, we provide a new combinatorial structure that allows for diverse variants of defeasible reasoning to be captured together and study its expressivity and versatility. Third we evaluate our work with respect to the state of the art in inconsistency handling in existential rules and investigate the human appeal of such reasoning techniques

Dans cette thèse, nous étudions les techniques de raisonnement utilisant des graphes d'argumentation générés à partir de bases de connaissances inconsistantes exprimées dans le langage des règles existentielles.Les trois principaux résultats sont les suivants. Tout d'abord, nous étudions les propriétés structurelles des graphes obtenus à partir de bases de connaissances exprimées avec des règles existentielles et nous donnons plusieurs indications sur la manière dont leur génération peut être améliorée. Deuxièmement, nous proposons une technique pour générer un graphe d'argumentation où plusieurs arguments peuvent attaquer collectivement, remplaçant ainsi la relation d'attaque binaire classique et montrons expérimentalement les avantages de cette technique. Troisièmement, nous nous intéressons aux approches fondées sur les classements pour le raisonnement en logique et en argumentation
In this thesis, we investigate reasoning techniques with argumentation graphs generated from inconsistent knowledge bases expressed in the existential rules language. The existential rules language is a subset of first-order logic in which a knowledge base is composed of two layers: a fact layer and an ontology layer.The fact layer consists of factual knowledge (usually stored in relational databases) whereas the ontology layer consists of reasoning rules of deduction and negative constraints.Since the classical query answering approaches fail in the presence of inconsistencies, we chose to work with an conflict-tolerant reasoning approach that is based on building graphs with structured arguments and attacks from the deductions of the underlying logical knowledge base.The three main results are the following. First, we study how argumentation graphs are obtained from knowledge bases expressed in existential rules, the structural properties of such graphs and show several insights as to how their generation can be improved. Second, we propose a framework that generates an argumentation graph with a special feature called sets of attacking arguments instead of the regular binary attack relation and show how it improves upon the current state-of-the-art using an empirical analysis. Third, we interest ourselves to ranking-based approaches in both the context of query answering and argumentation reasoning. In the former, we introduce a framework that is based on ranking maximal consistent subsets of facts (repairs) in order to have a more productive query answering. In the latter, we set up the foundation theory for semantics that rank arguments in argumentation graphs with sets of attacking arguments

This novella focuses on the lives of Walter, his mother Sabine, and his would-be love Bernadette. Walter is an awkward, unemployed thirty-year-old that still lives at home with his mother pressed into the pursuit of love by an obsession with romance novels. Walter is an outstanding cook and dishwasher but has no other notable talents. He eventually finds a job and manages to lose his virginity but changes little otherwise. The narrative is interested in the failures of family, love, and traditional societal expectations. It is interested in seeing and being seen. It is interested in a path around the conventional plot arc. Walter's Rules for Getting By wishes to disrupt the expected and the roles we often feel forced into.

This work takes place in the framework of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD), often called "Data Mining". This domain is both a main research topic and an application ¯eld in companies. KDD aims at discovering previously unknown and useful knowledge in large databases. In the last decade many researches have been published about association rules, which are frequently used in data mining. Association rules, which are implicative tendencies in data, have the advantage to be an unsupervised model. But, in counter part, they often deliver a large number of rules. As a consequence, a postprocessing task is required by the user to help him understand the results. One way to reduce the number of rules - to validate or to select the most interesting ones - is to use interestingness measures adapted to both his/her goals and the dataset studied. Selecting the right interestingness measures is an open problem in KDD. A lot of measures have been proposed to extract the knowledge from large databases and many authors have introduced the interestingness properties for selecting a suitable measure for a given application. Some measures are adequate for some applications but the others are not. In our thesis, we propose to study the set of interestingness measure available in the literature, in order to evaluate their behavior according to the nature of data and the preferences of the user. The ¯nal objective is to guide the user's choice towards the measures best adapted to its needs and in ¯ne to select the most interesting rules. For this purpose, we propose a new approach implemented in a new tool, ARQAT (Association Rule Quality Analysis Tool), in order to facilitate the analysis of the behavior about 40 interest- ingness measures. In addition to elementary statistics, the tool allows a thorough analysis of the correlations between measures using correlation graphs based on the coe±cients suggested by Pear- son, Spearman and Kendall. These graphs are also used to identify the clusters of similar measures. Moreover, we proposed a series of comparative studies on the correlations between interestingness measures on several datasets. We discovered a set of correlations not very sensitive to the nature of the data used, and which we called stable correlations. Finally, 14 graphical and complementary views structured on 5 levels of analysis: ruleset anal- ysis, correlation and clustering analysis, most interesting rules analysis, sensitivity analysis, and comparative analysis are illustrated in order to show the interest of both the exploratory approach and the use of complementary views.