=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2574/paper3
|storemode=property
|title=An Ontological Account of the Action Theory of Economic Exchanges (full paper)
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2574/paper3.pdf
|volume=Vol-2574
|authors=Daniele Porello,Giancarlo Guizzardi,Tiago Prince Sales,Glenda Amaral,Nicola Guarino
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/vmbo/PorelloGSAG20
}}
==An Ontological Account of the Action Theory of Economic Exchanges (full paper)==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2574/paper3.pdf
An Ontological Account of the Action Theory of
Economic Exchanges
Daniele Porello1 , Giancarlo Guizzardi2 , Tiago Prince Sales2 ,
Glenda Amaral2 , and Nicola Guarino1
1
ISTC-CNR Laboratory for Applied Ontology, Trento, Italy
{daniele.porello,nicola.guarino}@cnr.it
2
Conceptual and Cognitive Modelling Research Group (CORE),
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy
{giancarlo.guizzardi,tiago.princesales,gmouraamaral}@unibz.it
Abstract. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the
development of ontologically well-founded conceptual models for Infor-
mation Systems in areas such as Service Management, Accounting In-
formation Systems and Financial Reporting. Economic exchanges are
central phenomena in these areas. For this reason, they occupy a promi-
nent position in modelling frameworks such as the REA (Resource-Event
Action) ISO Standard as well as the FIBO (Financial Industry Business
Ontology). In this paper, we begin a well-founded ontological analysis
of economic exchanges inspired by a recent ontological view on the na-
ture of economic transactions. According to this view, what counts as
an economic transaction is based on an agreement on the actions that
the agents are committed to perform. The agreement is in turn based on
convergent preferences about the course of action to bring about. This
view enables a unified treatment of economic exchanges, regardless the
object of the transaction, and complies with the view that all economic
transactions are about services. In this paper, we start developing our
analysis in the framework of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO).
Keywords: Economic Exchanges, Preferences, Enterprise Modeling, Busi-
ness Ontology, Unified Foundational Ontology
1 Introduction
Economic exchanges are peculiar forms of agents’ interaction that pervades im-
portant application areas of Information Systems, such as Service Management,
Accounting Information Systems, Financial Reporting, Value Modelling, and
Business Ontologies. The nature of economic exchanges has been thoroughly
debated in philosophy since at least the Eighteen century, when the epistemo-
logical status of the crucial concepts of the economic theory has been intensively
discussed. For a succinct overview of the complex conceptual issues of this rich
debate, we refer to [15].
Two important issues in the debate on the nature of economic exchanges
—which are quite pressing for a fruitful ontological understanding of economic
157
Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
interactions— concern the nature of the things being exchanged and the matter
of the agreement between the transacting agents. Whether the matter of trans-
action are objects, actions, events, or promises; and whether the agreement is
based on (and justified by) converging or inverse interests are crucial aspects for
an ontological understanding of economic transactions.
An ontological analysis of economic exchanges has to provide an understand-
ing of what economic exchanges are, of what is exchanged in transactions, and
of the reasons that explains why the exchange happens. To approach this del-
icate issues, we shall rely on a recent perspective on these points provided by
Massin and Tieffenbach, cf. [17], and named Action Theory of Economic Ex-
changes (ATE). The motivations for using ATE as a general of view economic
exchanges are the following ones. Firstly, it allows for a quite general view of
economic exchanges concerning heterogeneous items (e.g. both goods and ser-
vices). Secondly, and more importantly, ATE is a philosophically rich view that
explains why and under which conditions an economic exchange takes places.
Finally, ATE models economic exchanges from the perspective of both agents
involved in the transactions, the so-called helicopter view, cf. [16]. For the previ-
ous reasons, we claim that ATE is more apt to guide a foundational analysis of
economic exchanges than, for instance, the (Resource-Event-Action) REA mod-
elling is. In particular, REA is focusing mainly on exchanges of resources, it does
not explain why a transaction happens, and it takes the partial perspective of a
single actor of the exchange.
In the subsequent sections, we shall develop an ontological understanding of
economic exchanges according to ATE. The goal of this paper is to use ATE
as a guide to lay down the main foundational aspects for modelling economic
exchanges. To make our ontological investigation precise, we shall place our
analysis within the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO), cf. [13,14].
One of the reasons for using UFO is the rich treatment of relations that it
provides, cf. [9]. This feature is compelling, as we shall see, for modelling con-
cepts in economics. Moreover, UFO is associated to a well-founded version of
the UML 2.0 fragment of class diagrams, dubbed OntoUML, which has been ex-
tensively used for developing an ontologically sound methodology for conceptual
modelling. So to put the theory at work in possible modelling applications, we
present a simplified version of a OntoUML model of economic exchanges.
This paper contributes to our long term research program of providing a solid
ontological foundation of economics, cf. [27,24,3,2,12,26]. A closely related work
is [5], which also approaches economic exchanges in UFO. The main difference
with our approach is that we ground our analysis on Massin and Tieffenbach’s
ATE, [17]. Another related work is [28], which starts the development of com-
mercial exchanges in the foundational ontology BFO.
The remainder of this paper is organised as follows. In Section 2, we sum-
marise Massin and Tieffenbach’s theory of economic exchanges ATE [17]. Then,
in Section 3, we briefly introduce UFO, focusing in particular on its relational
aspects and its notion of relator. Section 4 proposes the treatment of economic
158
exchanges in UFO by modelling the concepts of preference, economic offering,
and economic transaction. Lastly, Section 5 concludes and indicates future work.
2 The Metaphysics of Economic Exchanges
In this section, we present the main tenets of the theory of the Action Theory of
Exchanges (ATE) proposed by Massin and Tieffenbach in [17]. The theory con-
trasted with the Standard Theory of Exchanges (STE). Briefly, the STE makes
the following claims to explain what happens when agents A and B exchange
goods x and y:
– inverse preferences: A and B have inverse preferences concerning x and y,
e.g. A prefers x to y and B prefers y to x;
– mutual transfers: A voluntary transfers y to B and B voluntary transfers x
to A; and
– the motivation for the transfer is (partially) founded in the preferences of A
and B.
The STE is convincingly criticised in [17] on the ground that it is, primarily,
an incomplete view. Firstly, STE does not immediately account for economic
transactions concerning services. In that case, what happens in the transaction
can hardly be understood in terms of a transfer of resources that pass from one
agent to another. Therefore, STE is confined to economic exchanges concerning
transferable items. Secondly, the STE fails to account for the motivations for
entering the transaction. The inverse preference hypothesis is not sufficient to
explain why, for instance, A would exchange the x for y specifically with B and
not with any other agent. The inverse preference assumption is silent about this
point.
To cope with this limitations, a new theory of economic exchanges is proposed
in [17]. The crucial assumption is that, in any economic transaction, the “object”
of the transaction is a pair of actions performed by the relevant agents.
We summarise the main points of ATE in the following definition.
Definition 1. Agents A and B are transacting about actions φ and ψ iff
1 Preferences and beliefs:
1.1 A prefers that A does φ and B does ψ, rather than A does not φ and B
does not ψ.
1.2 B prefers that A does φ and B does ψ, rather than A does not φ and B
does not ψ.
1.3 A believes that promising to B to do φ on condition that B does ψ is a
way to make B to do ψ.
2 Offer and acceptance
2.1 The offer: because of 1.1. and 1.3, A promises to B that A will do φ, if
B does ψ
2.2 The acceptance: because of 1.2, B accepts the offer.
159
3 Provisions
3.1 Because of 2.2, B does ψ. Therefore, A is obliged to do φ.
3.2 Because of 2.1 and 3.1, A does φ.
A few points are worth noticing. Firstly, by viewing the object of transactions
as actions, the ATE is more apt to include economic transactions on services.
Secondly, the inverse preference assumption is now replaced with the assump-
tion about the convergence of the agents’ preferences to the same pair of actions.
Moreover, the actions to which the agents commit explicitly mention the relevant
agents of the actions, which are in fact the very agents involved in the transac-
tion. Thirdly, an economic transaction starts with an offering, cf. point 2.1, which
is based on the preference of one agent for a certain course of action and on the
belief that, by promising something to another agent, this course of action can
take place. Finally, an economic transaction generates commitments and claims.
In point 2.1, A commits to do φ if B does ψ (a conditional commitment). In
point 3.1, since B has accepted the offer, B is committed to do ψ, then once
B has done ψ, A is obliged to do φ (an unconditional commitment). Moreover,
when B accepts the offer, A has a claim towards B to do ψ and, when B does
ψ, B has a claim towards A that she or he does φ. Thus the mechanism of ATE
works by turning a conditional commitment into an unconditional commitment
under the suited conditions. For this reasons, ATE also provides an explanation
of why and under which circumstances an economic exchange happens. In Sec-
tion 4, we shall see how to understand and model the main points of Definition
1 within UFO.
3 The Unified Foundational Ontology
As we shall see, a crucial aspect for dealing with economic exchanges is the
rich treatment of relations provided by UFO, cf. [9]. Simplifying a bit, in UFO,
we separate types, i.e. entities that classify, from endurants (aka objects) and
perdurants (aka events), i.e. entities that may be instance of types, cf. [13,14,9].
Types are also separated into relational (or n-ary) types (Relation) and unary
types, in particular, Endurant Type that classify endurants, cf. [9].
Fig. 1. The taxonomy of UFO
160
We focus here on the type of endurants. As the taxonomy in Figure 1 shows,
endurants comprise Substantial, e.g. ordinary objects, and Moments, that is,
aspects of the objects: the colour of a rose, the courage of a person, the maternal
commitment of a mother towards her child. An important distinction between
moments is that between Intrinsic Moment and Extrinsic Moment. The
former include qualities of objects that do not depend on other entities (e.g. in-
dividual qualities, such as the colour or the weight). The latter include relational
qualities that inhere in an endurant but existentially depend on something ex-
ternal to that endurant. This class includes, for instance, the love of a mother
for her child and the mutual commitments of a conjugal relationship. Extrin-
sic Moment are in turn divided into two subclasses: Externally dependent
modes (or single-sided relators, [9]) and Relators. The ontological distinction
between this two classes is that externally dependent modes are modes that in-
here in an endurant and that are externally dependent on another endurant.
So, the love of a mother for her child is a mode that inheres in the mother and
externally depends on the child. By contrast, a relator requires a mutual pattern
of dependence between the relational qualities that inhere in (at least) two dis-
tinct entities. For instance, the conjugal commitments in a marriage constitute
a relator as the (mereological) sum of the commitments of the two partners,
each commitment being externally dependent on the other partner. A further
condition on externally dependent modes and on relations that we put in UFO
is that each of them is founded on a unique event, e.g. the conjugal relator is
founded on the marriage event. For a formalisation of this notions, we refer to
[9]. Here we informally report the definition of relator:
An n-ary relator among n entities is the mereological sum of a number of
externally dependent modes such that: i) each mode inheres in one the
n entities, ii) each mode externally depends on another of the n entities
and iii) each mode is founded on a same event.
4 The Action Theory of Economic Exchanges in UFO
The core ingredients for representing the action theory of exchanges (ATE) in
UFO are: agents, preferences, actions, beliefs and commitments (discussed in
particular in [19]), economic offerings, and economic transactions. In this pa-
per, we focus on economic offerings and transactions. Before approaching them,
however, we start by summarising the treatment of preferences proposed in [24].
4.1 Preferences in the Action Theory of Exchanges
We assume a type for agents Agent (as endurants), which classifies the entities
to which preference relations may be ascribed. Agent is a rigid non-sortal type,
i.e., a type that essentially classifies individuals of different kinds, i.e., individuals
that have different ontological natures [13]. For instance, in separating between
individual and collective preferences, the class Agent may include individual or
161
collective agents (e.g. organisations), with their specific ontological differences
[23,7,21,22].
Since we assume that agents (that is, entities with intentionality) are neces-
sarily agents (in the modal sense), we stereotype the type Agent as a OntoUML
Category. In other words, a Category is a type that describes essential proper-
ties that are shared by entities of different kinds. Agents can play the “role” of
Value Beholder in a value ascription relation. We represent the type Value
Beholder as a role mixin because: (i) it classifies entities only contingently,
i.e., no value beholder is necessarily a value beholder; (ii) one is a value beholder
due to a relational condition; (iii) it is a mixin, i.e., it can classify entities of
multiple kinds.
A Value Ascription is an example of a mode [13]. As we discussed, a mode
is an existentially dependent entity that, as such, can only exist by inhering in
some other individual. In particular, a value is a relationally dependent mode
(or an externally dependent mode), i.e., a mode that inheres in an individual
but which is also externally dependent on a different individual. In this case,
a value ascription is a sort of mental state inhering in the value beholder but
which is also externally dependent on a number of entities in Value Entity. A
value ascription mode takes a value in at least one (but possibly several) Value
Magnitude Spaces, via the quality of Value (a quality of the value ascription).
These spaces have, in OntoUML, the semantics of abstract conceptual spaces,
delimiting the possible values an intrinsic property can be projected into, cf.
[13] (e.g. value magnitude space can account for cardinal or ordinal measures of
value).
Finally, a Preference of an agent between two entities is relational mode
(between the agent and the two entities) but a complex one (i.e., a complex
mental state). A (binary) preference concerning two entities is a mode inher-
ing a value beholder that is essentially composed of exactly two existing value
ascriptions, inhering in that very same value beholder: i) the value of the first
entity given the second entity and ii) the value of the second entity given the
first entity.3
In other words, a preference is a mereological sum of modes (value ascriptions)
and, in that sense, it is similar to a relator ; However, since in this case all the
constituents of this sum inhere in the same bearer (the value beholder) while
depending on two entities (the compared ones), preference is indeed a complex
externally dependent mode (or a single-sided relator).
A relational sentence expressing that an agent has a preference between two
entities is then captured by means of the (ternary) relation prefers (a relational
3
An important aspect of preferences is that the valuation of the two options is not
absolute, rather it depends on the act of comparison between the entities at issue.
We thank Barry Smith for highlighting this point, cf. [28]. The ascription of value to
an entity is always dependent on the goals of the agents in a certain context, see [25].
Hence, the ascription of value to the entities in a preference relation is dependent
on the context of the comparison. This view also accommodates time-dependent
preferences, in that preferences may change, when the context of comparison changes.
162
type in UFO, cf. [9,24]): “i prefers x over y” connects the rolemixin Value Be-
holder i with two other rolemixins Preferred Entity x and Deprecated
Entity y.4
The entity whose ascribed value is higher plays the role of Preferred En-
tity; the one with the lower magnitude then plays the role of Deprecated
Entity. It should be clear by now to the reader why both Preferred Entity
and Deprecated Entity are modelled as rolemixins: they both classify value
entities contingently, in the scope of a preference relation, and classify entities
of multiple kinds.
We apply now this view of preferences to ATE. To account for the preference
relations used in ATE, we need to understand ontologically what are the entities
about which agents have preferences. In ATE, preferences are definitely about
pairs of actions. Recall point 1.1, ATE assumes that an agent A prefers that “A
does φ and B does ψ” to “A does not φ and B does not ψ”.
Actions are particular types of events in UFO, so preferences are prima facie
about events that are composed of two actions.5
This point is however quite delicate mainly for three reasons. Firstly, pref-
erence relations may be about events that may never occur. For instance, if I
prefer to have pasta tonight at my place over pizza, and I have the means to
satisfy my goal, then the event of me eating pizza tonight at my place in fact
never happens. Thus, by defining preference over events, we are lead to include
in our model instances of events that may never happen.6
Secondly, ATE includes preference over negative actions, or omissions, e.g.
“A does not φ and B does not ψ”. The ontological status of negative actions
as events is debated, cf. [6]. Some authors endorse ontological commitments to
negative events, whereas others identify the negative event with the (positive)
action that one performs while omitting, cf. [30].
Thirdly, by defining preferences over events, we are lead to view the object
of the preference as fully determinate. That is, an agent must know to maximal
detail the courses of actions that she or he is comparing. For instance, if I am
preferring the particular event of having dinner at a Chinese restaurant to the
4
According to the taxonomy in [9,11], prefers is an external descriptive relation, as it
depends on the context of ascription of values. An insightful discussion on whether
preferences are internal or external relations is proposed in [18].
5
By assuming a mereology of events for UFO, as in [1], we may define the event
corresponding to “A doing φ and B doing ψ” as the mereological sum of the two
events “A doing φ” and “B doing ψ”.
6
An analysis of future and ongoing events has been discussed in particular in [10].
However, they would not suffice for modelling preferences, as we need to discuss
events that may never happen in the actual world. Here, we only notice that a class
of possible events is in fact compatible with the formal theory of UFO, which is
phrased within a first-order modal logic where the definition of modalities entails
the possibilia view of the particulars in the domain of the ontology (events included).
That is, we may in principle assume events that never happen in the actual world,
while happening in some other possible world. See [4] for a formalisation of events
occurring in different time lines.
163
event of having dinner at an Indian restaurant, I am implicitly comparing which
waiter is assigned to my table, the exact moment in which the dinners start and
end, the outfit that I am wearing, etc, at least if we consider events as thick
entities.
We are facing here two possible modelling choices: 1) we define preference
over possible events, we assume that the events that populate the ontology may
never happen in the actual world, that there are also events corresponding to
omissions, and that the object of the preference is fully determined; or 2) we
define preferences over types of events.
In this paper, we endorse strategy 2), and we leave a discussion of strategy
1) for a dedicated paper.
By viewing preferences as defined on types of events we can accommodate
the three previous points as follows.
Concerning the first point, a type of event may have no instances in a model
while still existing as a type. Types must have possible (in the modal sense)
instances in UFO, which does not exclude that there are worlds where a type
has no instances [14]. So we can talk about types of events that do not happen
at a world, without introducing a special class of possible events.
Concerning the second issue, by defining preferences over types, we can avoid
to take a position on the existence of negative events (or omissions): a type
classifying negative actions may have instances that are either positive action
(i.e. the actions that are performed while omitting) or truly negative actions, in
case we commit to their existence.
Concerning the third point, defining preferences over types enables us to
have preferences over sets of events, preventing the maximal determination of
the agents’ preferences. For instance, when I prefer the type of event “going out
to a Chinese restaurant” to the type “going out to an Indian restaurant”, I prefer
any event of the former type to any event of the latter type, regardless of all the
aspects that single out a particular event of each type.
Finally, by viewing the objects of preferences as types of events, we can over-
come an explicit limitation of Massin and Tieffenbach’s approach, namely, that
of generalised preferences. Generalised preferences are at work when the eco-
nomic exchange is addressed to someone, rather than to a particular agent (cf.
[17], p. 189). For example, if I am selling my bike on ebay, my preference is about
me selling the bike and someone paying the required prices. By viewing prefer-
ences, and hence economic exchanges, to be about types of actions, generalised
preferences become understandable: E.g. I prefer the type of action such that
someone pays the required price to the type of action such that nobody pays the
required price.7
7
The view that preferences are about types of events is also supported in the tra-
dition of the logic of preferences, cf. [29,20]. Preferences are modal operators that
apply to propositions, while propositions can indeed be construed as sets of possible
worlds, i.e. sets of possible events compatible with the description provided by the
proposition.
164
Summarising this discussion, an OntoUML module for preferences is depicted
in Figure 2, where Preferred Entity and Deprecated Entity are thus to
be intended as types of types of events.8
Fig. 2. OntoUML model for preference relations
4.2 Economic offering and economic exchanges
We can approach now the modelling of economic exchanges. We start from an
offering event, cf. Offering. This event is the foundation (cf. creation in On-
toUML) of a relator Economic Offering which is composed of the (mereo-
logical) sum of (the externally dependent modes given by) the conditional com-
mitment of the offerer and of the conditional claim of the offeree. Offerer and
Offeree are again roles mixins here. The important aspects is that, at this
point, the commitments and claims are conditional, which corresponds to stage
2.1 of Definition 1. According to our discussion of the entity that are related by
preferences in ATE, the conditional commitments and claims are about a type of
action, cf. commits to in OntoUML. The Offered Contribution Type and
the Counterpart Contribution Type are in fact types of types of events.
The offering is based on the preferences of the offerer, according to stage 2.1
of Definition 1. Notice that here, we changed Massin and Tieffenbach’s model
of ATE by viewing preferences as defined on types of actions. Accordingly, an
instance of the class Economic Exchange Type is a type of event constructed
8
In our modelling, preferences are defined by appealing to value ascriptions, which
are approached in [25]. In fact, we have to extend that approach to include, as value
objects, also types of events. Notice also that, to completely formalise our view, we
need to enable multi-level modelling in UFO, as in [8].
165
by means of two types of events: the Offered Contribution Type and the
Counterpart Contribution Type. Here, we are modelling the constructed
type by means of the relation requires. The idea is that a type in Economic
Exchange Type classifies events that have two components: a component clas-
sified by a type in Offered Contribution Type and a component in Coun-
terpart Contribution Type.9
The relation participate to events of type models the fact that the offerer
participates in all the events of the offered contribution type and the offeree
participates in all the events of the counterpart contribution type. This point
accounts for the fact that the convergent preferences of the two agents, even
in the case of preferences defined on types, mentions the agents involved in the
transaction.10 Figure 3 represents the modelling of economic offerings.
Fig. 3. Economic offering
To simplify, here we model the situation where the offer proposed by the
offerer is immediately accepted, and no negotiation takes places between the
two parts of the economic exchange, see Figure 4. If the offer is accepted by
the offeree, then the event of the offering founds a new relator of Economic
Agreement between the two agents. This model corresponds to stage 2.2. of
Definition 1. The new relator conforms to, or complies with, the previously cre-
ated economic offering relator. This new relator has parts the new unconditional
commitments of the agents to fulfill the promised courses of actions (of the right
type). This step realises the final outcome of Definition 1, namely the actualisa-
tion of steps 2.1 and 2.2 based on the provisions 3.1 and 3.2. The actual event
9
We leave a characterisation of the requires relation for future work.
10
We simplify a number of aspects of ATE. E.g. the economic offer is also based in
[17] on the beliefs that the offeree share the same preference, cf. point 1.2 and 1.3.
166
of Economic Exchange requires then to have as parts the event (action) of
fulfilment of the offerer commitments as well as the event (action) of the fulfil-
ment of the requested counterparts. Those events are of the right type, i.e. the
Offered Contribution and the Counterpart Contribution match the
type in Offered Contribution Type and Counterpart Contribution
Type (respectively), cf. the relation instantiation.
Fig. 4. Economic exchange
5 Conclusion and Future Work
We provided the first elements for a well-founded ontological analysis of eco-
nomic exchanges based on the action theory of exchanges proposed by [17]. We
developed our analysis in UFO, which provides a very expressive ontology to
discuss relational dependencies, and we introduced the basic elements of an On-
toUML modelling of economic transactions. We highlighted the dependency of
economic offerings and transactions on the converging preferences of the agents
and we illustrated the mechanism of replacement of conditional with uncondi-
tional commitments that are in place in this forms of agents interaction. We
proposed to view preferences and economic agreements about types of actions
to avoid a number of problems of directly dealing with particular events.
An important point to notice is that this view of economic exchanges is very
general and provides a unified treatment of a wide range of economic phenomena.
For this reason, we plan to use this framework to provide a general ontology of
economic phenomena in a future dedicated paper.
.
167
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