Pay-What-You-Want Pricing in the Digital Product Marketplace: A Feasible Alternative to Piracy Prevention?

In pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing, buyers are allowed to pay any amount they want, often including a price of zero. Standard theory predicts that buyers are driven solely by their own interest and will always choose to pay nothing, making PWYW pricing impractical to use. Nonetheless, PWYW pricing has been consistently occurring in the marketplace. We build and analyze a theoretical model to explain the presence of PWYW pricing in the marketplace and identify the situations under which businesses are better off adopting it over the traditional posted pricing. Because the digital product domain is a particularly good fit for PWYW pricing because of its constant exposure to piracy threats, we focus on digital product firms and examine PWYW pricing as an alternative to their piracy prevention efforts. We show that PWYW pricing becomes a superior pricing strategy when the pirate version is quite similar to the authentic product and it is costly for the firm to improve its product quality. Moreover, if network externalities are present, PWYW pricing can outperform posted pricing only when the network externalities are weak. The results explain why PWYW pricing is rare in the established digital product marketplace, which exhibits strong network externalities.

General theory of legal design in law and economics framework of commercial contracting

We need law and economics to do the scientific measurement necessary for legal design to be seen as on the stage of science. Law and economics—which is the application of economic theory, especially microeconomic theory, to the analysis and the practice of law--is a valid tool and approach to reflect on what should be empirically investigated in the practice of legal design. The neoclassical (mainstream) theoretical foundation of economic analysis of law is, however, at times far from reality as it often predicts uncooperative and even selfish behaviour. In real life people do cooperate, have empathy, emotions and even behave in an altruistic way. For those reasons, behavioural law and economics and conventional wisdom are needed to complement the teachings from standard theory in the field of commercial contracting.

Position in Minimal Length Quantum Mechanics

Several approaches to quantum gravity imply the presence of a minimal measurable length at high energies. This is in tension with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Such a contrast is then considered in phenomenological approaches to quantum gravity by introducing a minimal length in quantum mechanics via the Generalized Uncertainty Principle. Several features of the standard theory are affected by such a modification. For example, position eigenstates are no longer included in models of quantum mechanics with a minimal length. Furthermore, while the momentum-space description can still be realized in a relatively straightforward way, the (quasi-)position representation acquires numerous issues. Here, we will review such issues, clarifying aspects regarding models with a minimal length. Finally, we will consider the effects of such models on simple quantum mechanical systems.

Gravitational waves in the extended theory of gravity

Extended theories of gravity are considered as a new approach for solving the infrared and ultraviolet scale problems; the standard theory of gravity (general relativity) and observational evidence of gravitational waves and subsequent identification of the number of existing polarizations are an effective tool for testing general relativity and extended theories of gravity. The Newman–Penrose method is used to characterize the polarization modes for specific forms of [Formula: see text] in the present study. Both the forms of the [Formula: see text] theory belong to far more general variational class of gravitational waves, capable of presenting up to six separate polarizations states. We have introduced a new [Formula: see text] gravity model as an attempt to have a theory with more parametric regulations so that the model can be used to describe existing issues and discover different directions in gravity physics. The primary goal of this research is to look into the properties of gravitational waves with new cases. The model shows the existence of scalar degrees of freedom in [Formula: see text] gravity metric notation.

The Paternalistic Turn in Behavioral Law and Economics: A Critique

The application of behavioral economics to law and economics has taken a paternalistic turn. Behavioralists believe that the fundamental assumptions regarding individual behavior in standard theory do not reflect reality. If individuals are not “rational” in the standard economic sense, then there will be decisionmaking failures: people cannot be relied upon to make individually optimal decisions and thus to maximize welfare as they see it. This Article is organized as follows. Part One is a prelude and gives context. Part Two discusses the fundamental normative standard in behavioral public policy: true preferences. I then proceed to outline the causes of the divergence between true preferences and actual observed preferences. Part Three analyzes some of the knowledge problems is ascertaining the presence of cognitive and behavioral biases. Part Four presents a case study of the difficulties of behavioral policy analysis in the area of consumer credit. Part Five concludes.

The IOD–ENSO Interaction: The Role of the Indian Ocean Current’s System

The Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) is one of the main modes characterizing the interannual variability of the large-scale ocean–atmosphere interaction in the equatorial zone of the World Ocean. A dipole manifests itself as an out-of-phase interannual fluctuation of the ocean–atmosphere characteristics in the western and eastern parts of the equatorial–tropical zone of the Indian Ocean. IOD can be a consequence of the ENSO (El Niño–Southern Oscillation) events in the Pacific Ocean, or it can be independent of them and arise due to the Indian Ocean inherent processes. Earlier, it was suggested that the generation of the long planetary waves in the Indian Ocean by the ENSO events is one of the mechanisms of the ENSO impact on the IOD. However, quite often, such a mechanism is not the case and IOD is generated itself as an independent Indian Ocean mode. We hypothesized that this generation is due to the growing oceanic disturbances, as a result of instability of the system of Indian Ocean zonal currents in the vicinity of the critical layer, in which the phase velocity of Rossby waves is equal to the average velocity of the zonal currents. In the present work, the study of the features of the formation of the critical layer in the equatorial–tropical zone of the Indian Ocean is continued using different oceanic re-analyses and standard theory of the Rossby waves. As a result of comparison of different re-analyses data with the RAMA (The Research Moored Array for African-Asian-Australian Monsoon Analysis and Prediction) measurements, the operative re-analysis ORAS5 output of European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) on potential temperature, salinity, and the zonal component of the currents’ velocity for the period 1979–2018 was used. Monthly profiles of potential temperature, salinity, and the zonal component of the currents’ velocity were selected from the ORAS5 archive for the sections situated between 7.5–15.5° S and 50–100° E. From these data and for each month, using the standard theory of planetary waves, the phase velocity of the lowest baroclinic mode of the Rossby long waves was calculated and the critical layers were determined. For each critical layer, its length was calculated. The obtained time series of the length of the critical layers were compared to the variability of dipole mode index (DMI). It is shown that the majority of the cases of the IOD generation as inherent (independent on the Pacific processes) mode were accompanied by the critical layer formation in the region of interest. Usually, the critical layers occur in spring, one to two months before the onset of the positive IOD events. This indicates that the presence of instability in the system of the zonal currents can be a reason for the generation of IOD and the asymmetry of the amplitude of the dipole mode index between positive and negative events. During the extremely intense ENSO event of 1997–1998, which was accompanied by the strong IOD event, the critical layer in the equatorial–tropical zone of the Indian Ocean was absent. This ENSO event generated the oceanic planetary waves at the eastern edge of the Indian Ocean. Therefore, it is shown that the above mechanism of the ENSO–IOD interaction is a reality.

Assessing the Global and Local Uncertainty of Scientific Evidence in the Presence of Model Misspecification

Scientists need to compare the support for models based on observed phenomena. The main goal of the evidential paradigm is to quantify the strength of evidence in the data for a reference model relative to an alternative model. This is done via an evidence function, such as ΔSIC, an estimator of the sample size scaled difference of divergences between the generating mechanism and the competing models. To use evidence, either for decision making or as a guide to the accumulation of knowledge, an understanding of the uncertainty in the evidence is needed. This uncertainty is well characterized by the standard statistical theory of estimation. Unfortunately, the standard theory breaks down if the models are misspecified, as is commonly the case in scientific studies. We develop non-parametric bootstrap methodologies for estimating the sampling distribution of the evidence estimator under model misspecification. This sampling distribution allows us to determine how secure we are in our evidential statement. We characterize this uncertainty in the strength of evidence with two different types of confidence intervals, which we term “global” and “local.” We discuss how evidence uncertainty can be used to improve scientific inference and illustrate this with a reanalysis of the model identification problem in a prominent landscape ecology study using structural equations.

Einstein gravity as a gauge theory for the conformal group

General Relativity in dimension $n = p + q$ can be formulated as a gauge theory for the conformal group $\SO\left(p+1,q+1\right)$, along with an additional field reducing the structure group down to the Poincaré group $\ISO\left(p,q\right)$. In this paper, we propose a new variational principle for Einstein geometry which realizes this fact. Importantly, as opposed to previous treatments in the literature, our action functional gives first order field equations and does not require supplementary constraints on gauge fields, such as torsion-freeness. Our approach is based on the ``first order formulation'' of conformal tractor geometry. Accordingly, it provides a straightforward variational derivation of the tractor version of the Einstein equation. To achieve this, we review the standard theory of tractor geometry with a gauge theory perspective, defining the tractor bundle a priori in terms of an abstract principal bundle and providing an identification with the standard conformal tractor bundle via a dynamical soldering form. This can also be seen as a generalization of the so called Cartan-Palatini formulation of General Relativity in which the ``internal'' orthogonal group $\SO\left(p,q\right)$ is extended to an appropriate parabolic subgroup $P\subset\SO\left(p+1,q+1\right)$ of the conformal group.

Generative Semantics 4: The Collapse

This chapter traces the collapse of Generative Semantics, which ultimately became a movement away from Noam Chomsky’s view of linguistics, more than a movement toward a unifying vision of language or linguistics. The leaders all went in various directions. Paul Postal and Jim McCawley retained their commitments to formal modeling, but Postal developed a new, non-Transformational framework with David Perlmutter, Relational Grammar, while McCawley continued to ply an increasingly idiosyncratic Transformational model he eventually called Unsyntax. Robin Lakoff led the expansion of linguistic pragmatics and founded feminist linguistics. George Lakoff and Haj Ross took overlapping but distinct forays into non-discrete linguistics. Meanwhile, the Generative Semantics ethos was losing whatever appeal it may have had. Linguists outside the movement, and some within, found the style irritating. Meanwhile, too, Chomsky’s innovations were proving very fruitful and attracting adherents under the label, the Extended Standard Theory. Chomsky’s framework emerged from the brief Generative Semantics eclipse and now seemed the clear winner of the Linguistics Wars.

Generative Semantics 2: The Heresy

This chapter examines how Generative Semantics, which had emerged from Transformational Grammar as part natural extension of, and part challenge to, Noam Chomsky’s work, became a full-blown heretical divergence with Chomsky’s 1967 “Remarks on Nominalization” lectures, in which he took his theory in countervailing directions. Generative Semanticists had extended syntactic derivations deeper, diminished the lexicon, and enriched the scope of transformations. The lectures emphasized Surface Structure semantics, enriched the lexicon, and diminished the role of transformations. They were also dismissive of specific Generative Semantic innovations, especially those of George Lakoff. Lakoff attended the lectures. Sparks flew. Chomsky and his new proposals fared poorly across the linguistic landscape, where Generative Semantics rapidly took hold, but his own students, Ray Jackendoff at the fore, were inspired by the new direction (known variously as “Lexicalism,” “Extended Standard Theory,” and, contrapuntally to the heresy, “Interpretive Semantics”).