Contrary to my critics, voter irrationality does not imply that economists cannot mitigate political failure. With rational voters, reform-minded economists have few viable tactics; with irrational voters reformers have more options. Rational voters can be swayed only by facts and logic; irrational voters could respond to better rhetoric. Rational voters strategically punish those who ignore th...

In general, the outcome of games can deviate from the predicted equilibria, and the players’ behavior can disobey their presumed utility function. • the utility function and make it accurate? Sometimes hard to predict or to accurately model. • Faulty players can just become spontaneous or unwilling to follow a reasonable utility under a model. Hence it is attractive if an equilibrium has more r...

fifty years ago warren and root have introduced the shape factor. this fundamental parameter for modeling of naturally fractured reservoirs has been discussed stormily ever since. different definitions for shape factor have been suggested which all of them are heuristically based. recently, heinemann and mittermeir mathematically derived - based on the dual-continuum theorem assuming pseudo-ste...

We give an algorithm for testing the extremality of minimal valid functions for Gomory and Johnson’s infinite group problem that are piecewise linear (possibly discontinuous) with rational breakpoints. This is the first set of necessary and sufficient conditions that can be tested algorithmically for deciding extremality in this important class of minimal valid functions. We also present an ext...