Rational Choice

The results obtained indicate that the ion-exchanger nature, generally not taken into account when developing ISEs for alkylammonium cations, actually influences strongly the selectivity of such ISEs and should be paid attention to when choosing optimal membrane composition. These data will be useful for finding ways to control the ISEs selectivity by rational choice of the membrane composition. 

In terms of photoelectrode material quality, single crystals comprise a rational choice since their bulk properties can be controlled better and their influence on cell performance may be evaluated in a rather accurate manner, as being microstruc-turally well-defined solids. However, the cost and convenience of single-crystal preparation are not suited to the practical requirement of cheap device components. Polycrystalline photoelectrodes are advantageous in terms of fabrication cost, ability to prepare large areas in one operation, and material economy. 

Leahy, D. E., Morris, J. J., Taylor, P. J., Wait, A. R. Membranes and their models towards a rational choice of partitioning system. In QSAR Rational Approaches to the Design of Bioactive Compounds, Silipo, G., Vittoria, A. (eds.), Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1991, pp. 75-82. 

Currently, quantitative comparisons between STEM and HRTEM are rare, which is why a rational choice of tools is difficult. Aspects of such a comparison evolve and are outlined for imaging applications next. 

The name reversed-phase chromatogn ihy was a rational choice at a time when partition chromatography was practiced almost exclusively by using a polar stationary phase and a nonpolar eluent. However, today an estimated 80-909 of chromatographic systems used in HPLC work con-... 

Advice a rational choice of bioassays and biomarkers that will provide added value to the risk management process when considering the disposal of dredged sediments. 

I. A large number of commercial preparation There are large number of commercial preparations available in the market. It is difficult for the physicians to make a rational choice from the wide range of drugs available. However, by applying sound criteria for selection the most appropriate drug could be chosen. 

This illustrates how technology - even when the technological items are privately owned - is part of the shared, public world. It means that the number of mobile phones, computers or cars that people have cannot be regarded as Votes for a world with such things. Many who possess them might prefer it if the world were without these things, but while they are part of the world the rational choice for the individual is most often to have them if others do. 

Addictive behavior is here seen as free, intentional action. Not all addictive behavior is of this sort, but addictive behavior exhibited by persons often is. There are sophisticated, rational, choice-based, explanatory approaches to such addictive behavior. Addicts might be... 

Addiction can be thought of as a specific change in some neural pathways. This approach, important as it is, is silent about whether the addictive behavior can be explained as rational behavior or not. Likewise, the explanatory approaches of rational choice theory are silent about whether our wills are unfree when we are addicted but desperately want to quit. Freedom of the will is not a concept placed within rational choice theory that theory explains free action, actions wherein we do what we want. This leaves room for a different sort of theorist, that is, a philosopher. 

According to Becker s analysis (Becker and Murphy 1988), addiction is a specific type of consumer behavior and, as such, subject to the rational choice paradigm. Some goods are habit forming, that is, they involve... 

Addicts are not people without willpower or people driven to act with out making choices. The clinical picture is of people who too often make choices that, in the long term, reduce their long-term utility and their total well being and, in addition, often burden both their families and society. These choices are suboptimal to long-term utility and, therefore, in the meaning of rational choice theory, irrational. The core problem is one of impeded rationality, of insufficient choice capacity to integrate present and future consideration in a sufficiently consistent pattern. 

In standard rational choice theory, actors are assumed to have consistent preferences and to act according to their own better judgment. In particular, rational actors are assumed to be dynamically consistent planners If actors prefer an early, small reward A to a later, bigger reward at a certain point in time, they will do so at all times. Hence, rational actors do not suffer from weakness of the will, and they never give in to temptations that they later regret. Addictions are often mentioned as an example of behavior that violates rationality Many addicts seem to act contrary to their own better judgment, as they claim that they would like to stop their self-destructive consumption behavior, but still they continue consuming the substance they are addicted to. 

The main difference between Becker and Murphy s standard rational choice theory and Ainslie s picoeconomic theory is dynamic consistency versus inconsistency. The congenital inconsistency that forms the starting in Ainslie s theory allows Ainsliean addicts to struggle to get out of their addiction, and relapse may be explained within the Ainsliean framework by erosion of personal rules and willpower. Hence, an addiction theory based on Ainslie s theory of motivation can handle the phenomena that are left unexplained by Becker and Murphy s theory of addiction. 

However, even a less radical theory of discounting than the hyperbolic theory can solve the difficulties of Becker and Murphy s addiction theory. It is sufficient to assume that people s rate of discounting typically fluctuate unsystematically over time and that people are therefore not always equally farsighted. The theory of fluctuating discount functions postulate that people discount the future recursively and that they base their judgments on realistic expectations about their own future mental states. Hence, this theory can be seen as a straightforward extension of classical rational choice theory. Still, these consu-... 

Hence, the picoeconomic theory of addiction and the modified version of the rational choice theory of addiction obtained by allowing for fluctuations in discount functions do in fact have a fairly large common core. 

Economists have proposed rational choice models of addictive behavior (Becker and Murphy 1988 Becker, Grossman and Murphy 1991,1994). These models characterize how consuming harmful addictive products can decrease future well-being while at the same time increasing the desire for those products in the future. Because these models consider only time-consistent agents, however, they a priori rule out the possibility of self-control problems. 

Like the rational choice models of addiction, our model assumes that the choice to consume an addictive product is volitional, in the sense that people balance their current desire for the addictive product against their perceptions of the future consequences of current consumption. Our model is quite different, and less extreme, than rational choice models, however, because it assumes that people may be overattentive to their immediate gratification (that is, they may have self-control problems) and... 

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