Random matching is often used in economic models as a means of introducing uncertainty in sequential decision problems. We show that random matching processes that satisfy standard proportionality laws are not unique. We give conditions on the payo¤s and transitions functions of sequential decision models that insure that the models are robust to the non-uniqueness of the matching process. Unde...

An analytic function method is applied to illustrate Geweke (2010)’s three econometric interpretations for a generic rational expectations (RE) model. This makes the model’s cross-equation restrictions imposed by each RE econometric interpretation explicit, formal, and simple. It is shown that the degree of identification on the deep parameters is inversely related to the strength of underlying...

One 9-year-old child was taught conditional discriminations between dictated names in Spanish and their corresponding pictures across three stimulus sets while her 10-year-old brother observed. Posttests revealed the emergence of symmetry relations in the form of oral naming skills by both children.

We study identification in a class of linear rational expectations models. For any given exactly identified model, we provide an algorithm that generates a class of equivalent models that have the same reduced form. We use our algorithm to show that a model proposed by Jess Benhabib and Roger Farmer is observationally equivalent to the standard new-Keynesian model when observed over a single po...

We show that call-by-need is observationally equivalent to weak-head needed reduction. The proof of this result uses a semantical argument based on a (non-idempotent) intersection type system called $\mathcal{V}$. Interestingly, system $\mathcal{V}$ also allows to syntactically identify all the weak-head needed redexes of a term.

Most existing formal privacy definitions for voting protocols are based on observational equivalence between two situations where two voters swap their votes. These definitions are unsuitable for cases where votes are weighted. In such a case swapping two votes can result in a different outcome and both situations become trivially distinguishable. We present a definition for privacy in voting p...

We present a new version of the Seal Calculus, a calculus of mobile computation. We study observational congruence and bisimulation theory, and show how they are related.

This paper defines a probabilistic barbed congruence which turns out to coincide with observational equivalence in a probabilistic extension of CCS. Based on this coincidence result, we provide a sound and complete axiomatisation for the barbed congruence in a finite fragment of probabilistic CCS.

In this paper we propose an algorithm suppressing useless boolean tests in object code, for programs translatable into deterministic labeled transition systems. This algorithm is based on the notion of test equivalence, a variant of the classical observational equivalence: a test is useless i each branch leads to equivalent states, the test labels being considered as invisible actions.