D. Li

Selective accessibility mechanisms indicate that anchoring effects are results of selective retrieval of working memory. Neuroimaging studies have revealed that the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is closely related to memory retrieval and performance. However, no research has investigated the effect of changing the cortical excitability in right DLPFC on anchoring effects. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can modulate the excitability of the human cerebral cortex, while anodal and cathodal tDCS are postulated to increase or decrease cortical activity, respectively. In this study, we used tDCS to investigate whether effects of increased or decreased right DLPFC excitability influence anchoring effects in willingness to pay (WTP) experiments. Ninety participants were first randomly assigned to receive either anodal, cathodal, or sham stimulation of 15 minutes, then they performed a valuation task regarding WTP. The results showed that anchoring effects were negatively related to activities of right DLPFC: the anodal stimulation diminished anchoring effects while the cathodal stimulation increased anchoring effects. These outcomes provide one of the first instances of neural evidence for the role of the right DLPFC in anchoring effects and support psychological explanations of the selective accessibility mechanisms and cognitive sets.

We examine whether investors value the disclosure of first-time standalone corporate social responsibility reports, and whether market valuations differ between government-controlled and privately controlled firms. Using a matched sample of Chinese publicly listed firms, we find that CSR initiators have higher market valuations than matched CSR non-initiators, and CSR initiators controlled by the central and local governments have lower market valuations than CSR non-initiators and CSR initiators controlled by private shareholders. Additional analyses demonstrate that CSR initiators with high CSR reporting quality and perceived credibility have higher market valuations than CSR initiators with low CSR reporting quality and medium or low perceived credibility of CSR reporting. We do not find convincing evidence that CSR mandate, litigation risk, and prior stock returns affect market reactions to CSR reporting. Overall, we find that the market values standalone CSR reports, and that CSR reporting quality and perceived credibility are important factors in market valuation.

Until this book, the available literature on fuzzy sets has been, at best, scattered throughout industrial and university libraries. Encapsulated here is a sound discussion of the basic theoretical and practical aspects involved in fuzzy database systems. With a practical, hands-on, applications-oriented approach, it develops computer models for applications to decision-making processes, introducing the basic notion of relative grades via the fuzzy set theoretic approach. Also covers fuzzy relational databases and their calculus, and the fuzzy relational (structured) query language (FSQL). The last sections present methods for treating the incomplete information in fuzzy PROLOG database (FPDB) systems. Several examples of knowledge representation, expert systems, fuzzy control, and fuzzy clustering and information retrieval illustrate the theory. An extended sample database is used throughout the book.

In the 1920s, Heyting attempted at axiomatizing constructive geometry. Recently, von Plato used different concepts to axiomatize the geometry: he used 14 axioms to describe the axiomatization for apartness geometry. Then he added axioms A1 and A2 to his apartness geometry to get his affine geometry, then he added axioms O1, O2, O3 and O4 to the affine geometry to get orthogonality. In total, this gives 22 axioms. von Plato used four relations to describe the concept of orthogonality in O1, O2 and O4. That is, all the three relations of two lines, which are convergence, unorthogonality and difference, and the relation of a point and a line. ANDP is an automated natural deduction prover developed over the years at our institute. After doing a lot of experiments using ANDP, much shorter and more intuitive axioms were found for axioms O1, O2 and O4, respectively. For example, O2 can be replaced by one of its four conjuncts. This paper shows that it is enough to use two relations on lines, which are convergence and unorthogonality, to describe the concept of orthogonality

In the 1920s Heyting attempted at axiomatizing constructive geometry. Recently, von Plato used different concepts to axiomatize it. He used 14 axioms to formulate constructive apartness geometry, seven of which have occurrences of negation. In this paper we show with the help of ANDP, a theorem prover based on natural deduction, that four new axioms without negation, shorter and more intuitive, can replace seven of von Plato's 14 ones. Thus we obtained a near negation-free new system consisting of 11 axioms

A computably enumerable degree a is called nonbounding, if it bounds no minimal pair, and plus cupping, if every nonzero c.e. degree x below a is cuppable. Let NB and PC be the sets of all nonbounding and plus cupping c.e. degrees, respectively. Both NB and PC are well understood, but it has not been possible so far to distinguish between the two classes. In the present paper, we investigate the relationship between the classes NB and PC, and show that there exists a minimal pair which join to a plus cupping degree, so that PC ⊈ NB. This gives a first known difference between NB and PC