The across-trial effect of maskers in conditions of informational masking was evaluated from performance on occasional trials in which the signal was presented alone. For 6 of 12 listeners participating in the study, a significant number of errors were obtained on signal-alone trials; in some cases equivalent to that signal+ masker trials. On immediately preceding trial blocks for which there w...

*Thanks are due to Hans Rott and Maurice Pagnucco who have commented on the July draft of this essay and who subsequently sent me a draft of their ideas on contraction. I have sought here to explain how I came to change my mind and favor mild contractions (or severe withdrawals as Rott and Pagnucco call such contractions) and to indicate some of the relations between the approach of Rott and Pa...

First-order languages of imperfect information (IF rst-order languages) have been introduced by Hintikka and Sandu 2]. These languages contained independent quantiiers and connectives of the form (9x=W); (8x=W); (_=W); (^=W) where W is a set of variables (x = 2 W), the values of which the quan-tiiers and the connectives on the left side of the slash are supposed to be independent of. The notion...

We propose a model of price competition where consumers exogenously differ in the number of prices they compare. Our model can be interpreted either as a non–sequential search model or as a network model of price competition. We show that i) if consumers who previously just sampled one firm start to compare more prices all types of consumers will expect to pay a lower price and ii) if consumers...

We develop simple methods for the stochastic comparisons of informational energy functions. We introduce modified informational energy functions and uncertainty of parameter functions are introduced for models with realistic parameter spaces. We present inequalities, comparisons, and applications including test procedures for testing the equality of informational energy functions. Some illustra...

We show that information sharing among banks may serve as a collusive device. An informational sharing agreement is an a-priori commitment to reduce informational asymmetry between banks in future lending. Hence, information sharing agreements tend to increase the intensity of competition in future periods and, thus, reduce the value of informational rents in current competition. We contribute ...

In a model of majority voting with common values and costly but voluntary participation, we show that in the vicinity of equilibrium, it is always Pareto-improving for more agents, on the average, to vote. This demonstrates that the negative voting externality identified by Borgers(2001) in the context of private values is always dominated by a positive informational externality. In addition, w...

The cost and schedule required to design and develop modern computer based systems has grown dramatically over the past decade. Advanced system engineering development methods and automation techniques are required to manage the complexity inherent in the design of large complex computer based systems to provide an efficient means for evaluating various requirements options. OML is an approach,...

A common rationale for bicameralism is that a second look at proposed legislation results in the enactment of informationally better legislation than that enacted by unicameral legislatures. This argument neglects that choices by bicameral chambers to acquire information arise within the strategic environment formed by the interplay of the chambers. Because information is costly, bicameral cham...