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The aim of this article is to highlight the knowledge of a small sample of young Moroccans about the rule of inheritance that allows boys inherit a double portion of their sisters after the death of the father. So I will raise vocabulary, arguments, opinions that these young people develop about this rule. I will consider then how the common knowledge of these young people articulates the different lexicons of « high culture » and the positions vis-à-vis the said rule of inheritance. Moreover, the knowledge that these young people express is also linked to socio-cultural assumption that they manifest as spontaneous discourse, accessible and clear on male / female relations, on family, on the division of social roles, on the place of religion in society. It is a knowleldge organically linked to everyday life which guides the actions and helps to understand the meaning that people give to their actions.

As part of his argument for a “Copernican revolution” in social ontology, Hans Bernhard Schmid (2005) argues that the individualistic approach to social ontology is critically flawed. This article rebuts his claim that the notion of mutual belief necessarily entails infinite iteration of beliefs about the intentions of others, and argues that collective action can arise from individual contributions without such iteration. What matters is whether or when there are grounds for belief, and while extant groups and social structures may be relevant to some forms of collective action, this does not show that all forms of collective action depends on such such pre-established collectivity.

In his book, Understanding Institutions, Francesco Guala discusses two solutions to the problem of mindreading for coordination, the solution thinking approach proposed by Adam Morton and the team reasoning approach developed by Michael Bacharach, Robert Sugden, and Natalie Gold. I argue that the family resemblance between the two approaches is even stronger than Guala thinks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the current article is to introduce a propositional linear time temporal logic of common knowledge. This logic can be utilized for reasoning when the agents should commonly know the information that may change over time. This is the main advantage of our logic over the existing temporal logics of knowledge in the literature. We provide a language, as well as appropriate semantics for our logic. We also introduce a resolution-based proof method for this logic by adopting the approach proposed by Dixon et al. [11, 14]. This resolution system is based upon a separated normal form. We prove that our resolution system is sound and complete. More importantly, to justify our approach, we apply our resolution method to specify and verify the anonymity properties of Chaum's dining cryptographers protocol [4]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many everyday activities, individuals have a common interest in coordinating their actions. Orthodox game theory cannot explain such intuitively obvious forms of coordination as the selection of an outcome that is best for all in a common-interest game. Theories of team reasoning provide a convincing solution by proposing that people are sometimes motivated to maximize the collective payoff of a group and that they adopt a distinctive mode of reasoning from preferences to decisions. This also offers a compelling explanation of cooperation in social dilemmas. A review of team reasoning and related theories suggests how team reasoning could be incorporated into psychological theories of group identification and social value orientation theory to provide a deeper understanding of these phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contagion models have been used to study the spread of social behavior among agents of a networked population. Examples include information diffusion, social influence, and participation in collective action (e.g., protests). Key players, which are typically agents characterized by structural properties of the underlying network (e.g., high degree, high core number or high centrality) are considered important for spreading social contagions. In this paper, we ask whether contagions can propagate through a population that is devoid of key players. We justify the use of Erdős-Rényi random graphs as a representation of unstructured populations that lack key players, and investigate whether complex contagions—those requiring reinforcement—can spread on them. We demonstrate that two game-theoretic contagion models that utilize common knowledge for collective action can readily spread such contagions, thus differing significantly from classic complex contagion models. We compare contagion dynamics results on unstructured networks to those on more typically-studied, structured social networks to understand the role of network structure. We test the classic complex contagion and the two game-theoretic models with a total of 18 networks that range over five orders of magnitude in size and have different structural properties. The two common knowledge models are also contrasted to understand the effects of different modeling assumptions on dynamics. We show that under a wide range of conditions, these two models produce markedly different results. Finally, we demonstrate that the disparity between classic complex contagion and common knowledge models persists as network size increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modest differences in higher-order beliefs may have large price effects. We generalize a standard rational expectations equilibrium model with different information by allowing differences in higher-order beliefs. Investors have possibly different dogmatic beliefs about the mean, different dogmatic beliefs about other investors’ beliefs, and so on for higher and higher orders of beliefs. Even when every investor’s first-order expectations are unbiased, overvaluation results when investors have inconsistent higher-order beliefs that their own expectations are more optimistic than average. This lack of common knowledge destabilizes prices in an unbounded manner as market liquidity disappears. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to failures of central planning, the Chinese government has experimented not only with free-market trade zones, but with allowing non-profit foundations to operate in a decentralized fashion. A network study shows how these foundations have connected together by sharing board members, in a structural parallel to what is seen in corporations in the United States and Europe. This board interlocking leads to the emergence of an elite group with privileged network positions. While the presence of government officials on non-profit boards is widespread, government officials are much less common in a subgroup of foundations that control just over half of all revenue in the network. This subgroup, associated with business elites, not only enjoys higher levels of within-elite links, but even preferentially excludes government officials from the NGOs with higher degree. The emergence of this structurally autonomous sphere is associated with major political and social events in the state–society relationship. Cluster analysis reveals multiple internal components within this sphere that share similar levels of network influence. Rather than a core-periphery structure centered around government officials, the Chinese non-profit world appears to be a multipolar one of distinct elite groups, many of which achieve high levels of independence from direct government control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“No trade” theorems establish that, in various trading environments, investors who share a common prior will not engage in speculation, as long as expected utility, Bayesian updating and full awareness are imposed. We relax the last assumption by allowing for asymmetric unawareness and examine under which conditions speculative behaviour emerges. We find that if common knowledge is assumed (as in the settings of Aumann, 1976 and Milgrom and Stokey, 1982 ), unawareness cannot generate speculation. This is not true, however, in settings where no common knowledge is assumed, such as speculation in equilibrium ( Geanakoplos, 1989 ) and betting that is always beneficial ( Morris, 1994 ), unless stronger conditions on awareness are imposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores higher-order uncertainty about message availability in communication games with perfectly aligned preferences. It can be impossible to achieve ex post efficiency in equilibrium even when it is mutual knowledge that the size of the set of available messages would be sufficient to convey all payoff-relevant information. There are equilibria that achieve ex post efficiency whenever a rich language condition is satisfied: the set of available messages is large relative to the sender's assessment of the number of information sets of the sender the receiver considers possible. Weaker conditions suffice if one adopts an ex ante perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The increased reliance on the information and communication technologies has drastically changed the definition of security and the nature of war. Many critical infrastructures such as airports, hospitals, and oil pipelines have become potentially vulnerable to intentional cyber-attacks. A growing body of literature recognizes game theory as a sound theoretical foundation for modeling the strategic interactions between attackers and defenders. This paper explores the main challenging issues in the application of security games in cyberspace. A new game formulation combining simulation and game-theoretic approaches is proposed and illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contends that certain configurations of information networks facilitate specific cognitive states that are instrumental for decision and action on social media. Group-related knowledge and belief states—in particular common knowledge and pluralistic ignorance—may enable strong public signals. Indeed, some network configurations and attitude states foster informational pathologies that may fuel interest bubbles affecting agenda-setting and the generation of narratives in public spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]