Gregory Todd Jones

Cooperative strategies to reduce ambulance diversion

Overcrowding in the emergency departments (ED) has led to an increase in the use of ambulance diversion (AD), during which a hospital formally is not accepting patients by ambulance. We use a number of tools to considers methods by which hospitals in a metro area may cooperate to reduce diversion, including contracts and pressure from outside regulators. The tools include a birth-death process, discrete event simulations, agent-based simulation model, and some game theory to examine the potential for cooperative strategies. We use data to suggest a functional form for the payoff of such games. We find that a centralized form of routing is needed, as voluntary cooperation does not appear to be robust in the presence of noise or strategic behavior, and ethical considerations also have a significant impact.

Marketing in Heterozygous Advantage

As the rapidly advancing possibilities of biotechnology have outstripped the adaptive capacity of current legal and ethical institutions, a vigorous debate has arisen that considers the boundaries of appropriate use of this technology, particularly when applied to humans. This article examines ethical concerns surrounding the development of markets in a particular form of human genetic engineering in which heterozygotes are fitter than both homozygotes, a condition known as heterozygous advantage. To begin, we present a generalized model of the condition, illuminated by the application to sickle-cell anemia. Next, we propose a typology of related markets, some of which are currently functioning with available products and services, and others that are widely viewed as imminent. We suggest the manner in which perverse incentives may arise for firms that market genetic intervention in circumstances where heterozygous advantage is possible. Finally, we propose that this misalignment of incentives with social welfare has arisen from both ill-conceived market intervention where markets are capable of achieving efficient outcomes and the lack of market intervention where markets have failed. We offer specific legal and regulatory approaches for reform.

Essay Question Formative Assessments in Large Section Courses: Two Studies Illustrating Easy and Effective Use

Do formative assessments, via practice exercises accompanied by generalized feedback, make a difference in student final essay and short-answer examination performance? If so, does the practice help some students more than others? We sought to answer these questions in two studies performed with law students. We also sought to devise a duplicable model for examining those same questions across disciplines. Finally, we hoped to develop an easily workable method to provide practice and feedback to large section courses without unduly burdening faculty. This chapter discusses our findings that practice exercises and generalized feedback formative assessments can be done in large section courses with minimal additional professorial work and that the effects of that practice can be easily studied. The chapter also discusses our findings that although practice exercises accompanied by annotated model answers and grading rubrics had a positive effect on student final-examination performance on essay questions and short-essay/short-answer test questions, the effects of the practice and feedback did not benefit all students equally—the students with the highest-grade predictors received the greatest benefit from the formative assessments. This chapter explains the work and its implications for student learning as well as for future research.

Social Contracts on Social Networks: Local Patterns of Interaction, Local Strategy Dynamics and the Emergence of Reciprocity

Cooperation has been vital to the evolution of all living things, including single-celled organisms (Velicer, 2005, 2003; Velicer and Stredwick, 2002; Crespi, 2001; Velicer et al., 2000; Boorman and Levitt, 1980), fish (Brosnan et al., 2003; Dugatkin, 1991, 1992, 1997; Milinski, 1987), birds (Brown and Brown, 1996; Faaborg et al., 1995), canines (Creel and Creel, 2002; Courchamp and Macdonald, 2001; Fentress and Ryon, 1986), felines (Caro, 1994; Packer and Pusey, 1982), non-human primates (Brosnan and de Waal, 2003; de Waal, 1996, 1982; Harcourt and de Waal, 1992; Chapais, 1992), and humans (Ostrom et al., 1999; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Johnson et al., 2003).Even so, the evolution of cooperative, prosocial behavior under circumstances in which individual interests are at odds with common interests, (circumstances characterized as social dilemmas (Gotts et al., 2003; Dawes and Messick, 2000)), remains a largely unsolved, multidisciplinary puzzle (Hammerstein, 2003). Approaches to these types of problems have, for the most part, been applications of evolutionary game theory (Gintis, 2000; Hofbauer and Sigmund, 1998; Maynard-Smith, 1982; Maynard-Smith and Price, 1973; Trivers, 1971; Hamilton, 1967; von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1944) and due to their importance as generalized models of many important socio-economic situations (Tomassini, 2006), iconic games such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma have been widely employed as metaphors (Doebeli and Hauert, 2005; Axelrod and Hamilton, 1981; Axelrod, 1984; Nowak and Sigmund, 1992, 2004; Nowak and May, 1992; Maynard-Smith, 1982; Sugden, 1986).