Chandra Sekhar Sripada
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195332834
- eISBN:
- 9780199868117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332834.003.0016
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
It is often thought that if an adaptationist explanation of some behavioural phenomenon is true, then this fact shows that a culturist explanation of the very same phenomenon is false, or else the ...
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It is often thought that if an adaptationist explanation of some behavioural phenomenon is true, then this fact shows that a culturist explanation of the very same phenomenon is false, or else the adaptationist explanation preempts or crowds out the culturist explanation in some way. This chapter shows why this so-called competition thesis is misguided. Two evolutionary models are identified — the Information Learning Model and the Strategic Learning Model — which show that adaptationist reasoning can help explain why cultural learning evolved. These models suggest that there will typically be a division of labor between adaptationist and culturist explanations. It is then shown that the Strategic Learning Model, which has been widely neglected by adaptationist thinkers, has important and underappreciated implications for a question that has long been contentious in the behavioural sciences — the question of the malleability of human nature.Less
It is often thought that if an adaptationist explanation of some behavioural phenomenon is true, then this fact shows that a culturist explanation of the very same phenomenon is false, or else the adaptationist explanation preempts or crowds out the culturist explanation in some way. This chapter shows why this so-called competition thesis is misguided. Two evolutionary models are identified — the Information Learning Model and the Strategic Learning Model — which show that adaptationist reasoning can help explain why cultural learning evolved. These models suggest that there will typically be a division of labor between adaptationist and culturist explanations. It is then shown that the Strategic Learning Model, which has been widely neglected by adaptationist thinkers, has important and underappreciated implications for a question that has long been contentious in the behavioural sciences — the question of the malleability of human nature.
Alex Gershkov and Benny Moldovanu
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262028400
- eISBN:
- 9780262327732
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262028400.001.0001
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Financial Economics
Dynamic allocation and pricing problems appear in numerous frameworks such as the retail of seasonal/style goods, the allocation of fixed capacities in the travel and leisure industries (e.g., ...
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Dynamic allocation and pricing problems appear in numerous frameworks such as the retail of seasonal/style goods, the allocation of fixed capacities in the travel and leisure industries (e.g., airlines, hotels, rental cars, holiday resorts), the allocation of a fixed inventory of equipment in a given period of time (e.g. equipment for medical procedures, bandwidth or advertising space in online applications), and the assignment of personnel to incoming tasks. Although dynamic pricing is a very old, modern Revenue Management (RM) techniques started with US Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. The basic RM issues are: 1) Quantity decisions: How to allocate capacity/output to different segments, products or channels? When to withhold products from the market? 2) Structural decisions: Which selling format to choose (posted prices, negotiations, auctions, etc..)? Which features to use for a particular format (segmentation, volume discounts, bundling, etc..)? 3) Pricing decisions: How to set posted prices, reserve prices? How to price differentiate? How to price over time? How to markdown over life time? Broadly speaking, all above questions deal in fact with issues treated in the Auction/Mechanism Design. Nevertheless, mechanism design has not been the tool of choice in RM: instead, most papers have focused on analyzing properties of restricted classes of allocation/pricing schemes. Recently, this challenge has been addressed by a more or less systematic body of work appearing under the heading of Dynamic Mechanism Design. This book illustrates some results of this strand of research, as reflected in the authors’ recent work.Less
Dynamic allocation and pricing problems appear in numerous frameworks such as the retail of seasonal/style goods, the allocation of fixed capacities in the travel and leisure industries (e.g., airlines, hotels, rental cars, holiday resorts), the allocation of a fixed inventory of equipment in a given period of time (e.g. equipment for medical procedures, bandwidth or advertising space in online applications), and the assignment of personnel to incoming tasks. Although dynamic pricing is a very old, modern Revenue Management (RM) techniques started with US Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. The basic RM issues are: 1) Quantity decisions: How to allocate capacity/output to different segments, products or channels? When to withhold products from the market? 2) Structural decisions: Which selling format to choose (posted prices, negotiations, auctions, etc..)? Which features to use for a particular format (segmentation, volume discounts, bundling, etc..)? 3) Pricing decisions: How to set posted prices, reserve prices? How to price differentiate? How to price over time? How to markdown over life time? Broadly speaking, all above questions deal in fact with issues treated in the Auction/Mechanism Design. Nevertheless, mechanism design has not been the tool of choice in RM: instead, most papers have focused on analyzing properties of restricted classes of allocation/pricing schemes. Recently, this challenge has been addressed by a more or less systematic body of work appearing under the heading of Dynamic Mechanism Design. This book illustrates some results of this strand of research, as reflected in the authors’ recent work.
