Vassar College Digital Library

Vassar Scholarship

Vassar Scholarship, the institutional repository formerly known as Digital Window, reflects the research and scholarly output of the Vassar College community.  It provides access to a variety of collections, including senior theses and projects across a wide range of disciplines.

Coalition Power in Epistemic Transition Systems

Publication Date
2017-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

The paper proposes a bimodal logic that describes an interplay between coalition strategies and distributed knowledge. Unlike the existing literature, the paper assumes that a strategy must be not only executable but also verifiable. That is, the strategy of a...

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Cosmopolitans and locals among rural emergency service volunteers

Publication Date
1994-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

In rural regions, trained volunteer firefighters and medics provide emergency services, often with considerable personal risk and without financial reward. However, these Volunteers exhibit two different latent orientations: firefighters are more localistic in their outlook than medical volunteers. These latent...

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Everyone knows that someone knows: quantifiers over epistemic agents

Publication Date
2018-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

Modal logic S5 is commonly viewed as an epistemic logic that captures the most basic properties of knowledge. Kripke proved a completeness theorem for the first-order modal logic S5 with respect to a possible worlds semantics. A multiagent version of...

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Information Flow under Budget Constraints

Publication Date
2018-February-26
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

Although first proposed in the database theory as properties of functional dependencies between attributes, Armstrong's axioms capture general principles of information flow by describing properties of dependencies between sets of pieces of information. This article generalizes Armstrong's axioms to a...

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Second-Order Know-How Strategies

Publication Date
2018-July-10
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

The fact that a coalition has a strategy does not mean that the coalition knows what the strategy is. If the coalition knows the strategy, then such a strategy is called a know-how strategy of the coalition. The paper proposes...

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Strategic Coalitions with Perfect Recall

Publication Date
2018-February-02
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

The paper proposes a bimodal logic that describes an interplay between distributed knowledge modality and coalition know-how modality. Unlike other similar systems, the one proposed here assumes perfect recall by all agents. Perfect recall is captured in the system by...

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The sexual division of leadership in volunteer emergency medical squads

Publication Date
1992-August-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

This article reports on theoretical and empirical research that explored the hypothesis that there is a sexual division of leadership in volunteer emergency medical service (EMS) squads. This hypothesis was tested against survey data obtained from 216 current members of...

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Together We Know How to Achieve: An Epistemic Logic of Know-How

Publication Date
2017-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

The existence of a coalition strategy to achieve a goal does not necessarily mean that the coalition has enough information to know how to follow the strategy. Neither does it mean that the coalition knows that such a strategy exists...

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Unproductive expenditure in manufacturing

Publication Date
1990-August-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

A behavioral model is developed to explain the magnitude of surplus and the division of surplus into unproductive and profit for oligopoly firms in the manufacturing sector of advanced capitalist economies. Particular attention is focused upon the determinants of interfirm...

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Volunteer emergency squads and their communities: A demographic comparison

Publication Date
1992-December-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

This research compares the personal, household, and professional characteristics volunteer emergency medical service (EMS) providers in Ulster County, NY with those of the general population of this rural upstate county, using a survey instrument implemented by the author in conjunction...

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Volunteers and their communities: A comparative analysis of volunteer firefighters

Publication Date
1992-August-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

This article explores the multifaceted relationship between volunteer fire companies and their communities by examining a broad range of socioeconomic characteristics of volunteer fire fighters and general residents in rural New York State. The two data sets are generated by...

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Work without wages: The motivation for volunteer labor

Publication Date
1991-December-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

This is a theoretical and empirical exploration into the motivation of volunteer firefighters. After a brief discussion of methodology, the activities in which these volunteers engage are described and a theoretical model of volunteer motivation is presented. The central hypothesis...

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