Dilemma

About: Dilemma is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 16202 publications have been published within this topic receiving 250251 citations. The topic is also known as: Dilemna.

Carnivals, Rogues and Heroes. An Interpretation of the Brazilian Dilemma

Abstract: In this work on Brazilian social rituals, Roberto DaMatta focuses on the trajectories of three types of public ritual (carnival, Independence Day and other military parades, and local-level religious processions) as principal axes in defining the values and attitudes that shape urban Brazil. At this level, he seeks to contribute to theories of dramatisation and ideology, by examining the styles, forms and actors of these three sets of rituals. Emphasis is upon three particular ways that ritual manipulates and transforms elements and relationships: reinforcement, inversion and neutralisation. This theoretical approach should be of interest to philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists and students of comparative religion.

Memory and Anticipation

Abstract: The introduction of memory imperfections into models of economic decision making creates a natural role for anticipatory emotions. Their combination has striking behavioural implications. The paper first shows that agents can rationally select apparently dominated strategies. We consider Newcomb's Paradox and the Prisoners' Dilemma. We provide a resolution for Newcomb's Paradox and argue it requires the decision maker to ascribe only a tiny weight to anticipatory emotions. For some ranges of parameters, it is possible to obtain cooperation in the Prisoners' Dilemma with probability arbitrarily close to unity. The second half of the paper provides a theory of reminders.

Prisoner's Dilemma Game with Heterogeneous Influential Effect on Regular Small-World Networks

Abstract: The effect of heterogeneous influence of different individuals on the maintenance of co-operative behaviour is studied in an evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma game with players located on the sites of regular small-world networks The players interacting with their neighbours can either co-operate or defect and update their states by choosing one of the neighbours and adopting its strategy with a probability depending on the payoff difference The selection of the neighbour obeys a preferential rule: the more influential a neighbour, the larger the probability it is picked It is found that this simple preferential selection rule can promote continuously the co-operation of the whole population with the strengthening of the disorder of the underlying network

To serve the community or oneself - the public servant's dilemma

Abstract: Embezzlement of resources is hampering public service delivery throughout the developing world. Research on this issue is hindered by problems of measurement. To overcome these problems, the authors use an economic experiment to investigate the determinants of corrupt behavior. They focus on three aspects of behavior: 1) Embezzling by public servants. 2) Monitoring effort by designated monitors. 3) Voting by community members when provided with an opportunity to select a monitor. The experiment allows the authors to study the effect of wages, effort observance, rules for monitor assignment, and professional norms. Their experimental subjects are Ethiopian nursing students. The authors find that service providers who earn more embezzle less, although the effect is small. Embezzlement is also lower when observance (associated with the risk of being caught and sanctioned) is high, and when service providers face an elected, rather than a randomly selected monitor. Monitors put more effort into monitoring when they face reelection, and when the public servant receives a higher wage. Communities reelect monitors who put more effort into exposing embezzlement. Framing-whereby players are referred to as"health workers"and"community members"rather than by abstract labels-affects neither mean embezzlement nor mean monitoring effort, but significantly increases the variance in both. This suggests that different types of experimental subjects respond differently to the framing, possibly because they adhere to different norms.