There are whispers within the agent ranks that those same critics want to oust Billy Hunter, the union's executive director.
Mr. Shaffer said that the percentage of black agents promoted from top agent ranks to managerial positions underscores the charges against the agency.
In response to an outpouring of criticism in Congress -- and from his own agent ranks -- Mr. Mueller has promised to build up the bureau's analytical ability.
However, the actual utility that an agent derives from a given item is only a fraction of its intrinsic one, and this fraction depends on how the agent ranks the item among the chosen, available, ones.
These days FBI examiners are no longer required to come up through agent ranks.
But, as Friedman points out, autonomy is not the only value, and, the case could be explained as the agent ranking her own future autonomy against other values of importance to her.
This is equivalent to supposing first that rankings are complete — that is, for any two alternatives x and y that the agent may evaluate or choose, either the agent ranks x above y (prefers x to y), or the agent prefers y to x, or the agent is indifferent.
Efficiency requires choosing the alternative the agents rank second whenever the weighted sum of their von Neumann Morgenstern utilities is higher than under either agent's favorite alternative.
Nick Johnson, a serviceable first baseman who has a career.402 on-base percentage, was listed as the fifth-best free agent, according to a free-agent ranking on SI.com.
While the two others, cornerback Derrick Strait and safety Erik Coleman, were draft selections that arrived with a pedigree of playing in top-tier conferences, Bryant's rise might be the most surprising because he rose from the free-agent ranks and played in the Sun Belt Conference.
