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A differential ring CMOS voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) with dual-delay path topology is proposed in this paper. In this work, the focus area is to improve the tuning range of VCO and phase noise performance of the VCO. The dual-delay path topology is used with P-MOS as load in series with negative-skewed delay transistors. This design gives the wider tuning range and this increases the phase noise performance of the VCO. After the post-layout simulation, frequency tuning range and power dissipation range are 730 MHz to 2.81 GHz and from 1.32 mW to 4.62 mW respectively. The phase noise for this VCO is −97.35 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset. The technology used in this work was taken from the library of SCL 180 nm technology. This design exhibits excellent phase noise performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ambiguity aversion has been widely observed in individuals’ judgments. Using scenarios that are typical in decision analysis, we investigate ambiguity aversion for pairs of individuals. We examine risky and cautious shifts from individuals’ original judgments to their judgments when they are paired up in dyads. In our experiment the participants were first asked to specify individually their willingness-to-pay for six monetary gambles. They were then paired at random into dyads, and were asked to specify their willingness-to-pay amount for the same gambles. The dyad’s willingness-to-pay amount was to be shared equally by the two individuals. Of the six gambles in our experiment, one involved no ambiguity and the remaining five involved ambiguity with different degrees of familiarity. We found that dyads exhibited both risk aversion as well as ambiguity aversion. Further, when facing ambiguity, dyads’ willingness-to-pay amounts are sometimes more and sometimes less than the average paid by the individuals making up the dyad. The majority of the dyads exhibited a cautious shift in the face of ambiguity, stating a smaller willingness-to-pay than the two individuals’ average. Our study thus confirms the persistence of ambiguity aversion in a group setting and the predominance of cautious shifts for dyads.

We consider a decision problem where a group of individuals evaluates multi-attribute alternatives. We explore the minimal required agreements that are sufficient to specify the group utility function. A surprising result is that, under some conditions, a bilateral agreement among pairs of individuals on a single attribute is sufficient to derive the multi-attribute group utility. The bilateral agreement between a pair of individuals could be on the weight of an attribute, on an attribute evaluation function, or on willingness to pay. We investigate cases in which each individual's utility function is either additive or multiplicative. In the additive case, the group utility can be represented as the weighted sum of group attribute weights and group attribute evaluation functions. In the multiplicative case, the group utility takes a more complex form.

For decisions whose consequences accrue over time, several techniques are possible to compute total utility. One is to discount utilities of future consequences at some appropriate rate. The second is to discount per-period certainty equivalents. And the third is to compute net present value of various possible streams and then apply utility function to these net present values. When consequences are income streams, our main result shows that for a strict concave utility function, discounting utilities of incomes or discounting per period certainty equivalents can result in a paradoxical preference for receiving more money later to more money now. For income streams, the correct approach is to …rst compute net present values of various possible income streams and then take the utility of such net present value. The discounted utility model is appropriate for consumption streams, provided that the time intervals between periods are sufficiently large. Otherwise, we have the unrealistic situation where a short delay in consumption produces a discontinuous jump in the utility evaluation.