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2014

University of Massachusetts Amherst

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Articles 181 - 204 of 204

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

E-Resource Acquisitions In Academic Library Consortia, Christine N. Turner Jan 2014

E-Resource Acquisitions In Academic Library Consortia, Christine N. Turner

Christine Turner

Scholarly publishing is the information marketplace in which academic libraries function, and major shifts in traditional publishing and pricing models are in process. Library consortia have long been viewed as a means of increasing purchasing power and reducing costs. In late 2010, the Five College Libraries (FCL) hired R2 Consulting, LLC to investigate and make recommendations regarding how the Libraries cooperate more closely on the acquisition, management, and delivery of electronic resources. This study examines and evaluates how other academic library consortia are licensing and acquiring electronic books, databases, journals and streaming media. The organizations, activities, processes, history and trends …


Do Black-White Racial Disparities In Breastfeeding Persist In The Military Community?, Jennifer H. Lundquist, Zhun Xu, Wanda Barfield, Irma Elo Jan 2014

Do Black-White Racial Disparities In Breastfeeding Persist In The Military Community?, Jennifer H. Lundquist, Zhun Xu, Wanda Barfield, Irma Elo

Dr. Jennifer H. Lundquist

Objective: We conduct a comparative analysis of breastfeeding behavior between military and civilian-affiliated mothers. Our focus is on African American mothers among whom breastfeeding rates are lowest. The military context may mitigate conditions associated with low breastfeeding prevalence by a) providing stable employment and educational opportunities to populations who face an otherwise poor labor market and b) providing universal healthcare that includes breastfeeding consultation. Methods: Using Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) data for which we received special permission from each state to flag military affiliation, we analyze civilians and military affiliate in breastfeeding initiation using logistic regression and breastfeeding …


Academic Librarians And The Sustainability Curriculum: Building Alliances To Support A Paradigm Shift, Madeleine K. Charney Jan 2014

Academic Librarians And The Sustainability Curriculum: Building Alliances To Support A Paradigm Shift, Madeleine K. Charney

Madeleine K. Charney

Sustainability is a fast evolving movement in higher education demonstrated by a proliferation of academic programs and co-curricular initiative and projects. After a review of sustainability-related LibGuides (online resource guides) created by academic librarians, a survey was administered to their developers during the spring of 2011 and posted on library listservs. Librarians returned 112 survey responses which reflected active roles in the paradigm shift toward sustainability through the forging of partnerships across campus and development of teaching resources and events. Telephone interviews conducted with 24 of the respondents showed librarians’ wide-ranging personal and professional interest in sustainability, and their initiatives …


Gains From Sharing: Sticky Norms, Endogenous Preferences, And The Economics Of Shareable Goods, Anders Fremstad Jan 2014

Gains From Sharing: Sticky Norms, Endogenous Preferences, And The Economics Of Shareable Goods, Anders Fremstad

Economics Department Working Paper Series

There are often “gains from sharing” underutilized goods with others. People routinely share tools, media, gear, electronics, toys, space, and vehicles with relatives, friends, and neighbors, and the internet is opening up new opportunities to share them with strangers. Drawing on the work of James Buchanan, Elinor Ostrom, and Yochai Benkler, I develop an economic framework of decentralized sharing. My analysis challenges the implications of simple economic models, which ignore the role of sticky norms and endogenous preferences and, therefore, suggest that people are always sharing at efficient levels. I argue that the online platforms may gradually transform norms and …


Re-Distribution, Aggregate Demand, And Growth In An Open Economy: The Crucial Interaction Of Portfolio Considerations And External Account Constraints, Arslan Razmi Jan 2014

Re-Distribution, Aggregate Demand, And Growth In An Open Economy: The Crucial Interaction Of Portfolio Considerations And External Account Constraints, Arslan Razmi

Economics Department Working Paper Series

A large body of literature inspired by the seminal contribution of Marglin and Bhaduri (1988) has debated the distributional determinants of demand and growth. A general conclusion has been that open economy considerations weaken the potential for a wage-led growth regime. How- ever, this literature has largely ignored asset portfolio considerations and the stock and flow interactions that result from the feedback from savings to wealth and from wealth to the current account. This paper develops a theoretical framework that speci.es a fuller system of (instantaneous) flow equilibria embedded in a medium-run framework with stable steady state stocks of real …


Bjp’S Demographic Dividend In The 2014 General Elections: An Empirical Analysis, Deepankar Basu, Kartik Misra Jan 2014

Bjp’S Demographic Dividend In The 2014 General Elections: An Empirical Analysis, Deepankar Basu, Kartik Misra

Economics Department Working Paper Series

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept the 2014 General Elections in India and emerged as a single party with absolute majority, a result not witnessed since 1984. Not only did it win a majority of seats, it also managed to increase its vote share in almost all states between 2009 and 2014. Using state-level data, we show that BJP’s extraordinary poll results relied crucially on attracting young, especially first time, electors.


Determinants And Impact Of Subcontracting: Evidence From India's Informal Manufacturing Sector, Amit Basole, Deepankar Basu, Rajesh Bhattacharya Jan 2014

Determinants And Impact Of Subcontracting: Evidence From India's Informal Manufacturing Sector, Amit Basole, Deepankar Basu, Rajesh Bhattacharya

Economics Department Working Paper Series

There are two divergent perspectives on the impact of subcontracting on firms in the informal

sector. According to the benign view, formal sector firms prefer linkages with relatively modern firms in the informal sector, and subcontracting enables capital accumulation and technological

improvement in the latter. According to the exploitation view, formal sector firms extract surplus from stagnant, asset-poor informal sector firms that use cheap family labour in home-based production. However, direct, firm-level evidence on the determinants and impact of subcontracting is thus far lacking in the literature. We apply a modified Heckman selection model to Indian National Sample Survey data …


Social Hierarchies And Public Distribution Of Food In Rural India, Deepankar Basu, Debarshi Das Jan 2014

Social Hierarchies And Public Distribution Of Food In Rural India, Deepankar Basu, Debarshi Das

Economics Department Working Paper Series

In this paper, we develop a simple model that shows that consumption of PDS food grains is significantly different between rich and poor households in states where the PDS functions relatively well; in places where the PDS is non-functional, the difference is not significant. Using household-level data from three recent thick rounds of the consumption expenditure survey (2004-2005, 2009-2010 and 2011-2012), we find evidence in support of the predictions from the model. This suggests that one way to make the PDS functional is to make it more accessible to poor and underprivileged households.


Real Wages And Labor-Saving Technical Change: Evidence From A Panel Of Manufacturing Industries In Mature And Labor-Surplus Economies, Joao Paulo A. De Souza Jan 2014

Real Wages And Labor-Saving Technical Change: Evidence From A Panel Of Manufacturing Industries In Mature And Labor-Surplus Economies, Joao Paulo A. De Souza

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper uses panel cointegration and error correction models to unveil the direction of long-run causality between the real product wage and labor productivity at the industry level. I use two datasets of manufacturing industries: the EU-Klems dataset covering 11 industries in 19 developed economies, and the Unido Industrial Statistics Database covering 22 industries in 30 developed and developing economies. In both datasets, I find evidence of cointegration between the two variables, as well as evidence of two-way, long-run Granger causality. These findings are consistent with theories of directed technical change, which claim that a rise in labor costs sparks …


Labor Market Reform And Wage Inequality In Korea, Hyeon-Kyeong Kim, Peter Skott Jan 2014

Labor Market Reform And Wage Inequality In Korea, Hyeon-Kyeong Kim, Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Temporary workers make up a sizeable part of the labor force in many countries and typically receive wages that are significantly lower than their permanent counterparts. This paper uses an efficiency wage model to explain the wage gap between temporary and permanent workers. High-performing temporary workers may gain promotion to permanent status, and a high wage to permanent workers therefore serves a dual purpose: it affects the effort of both permanent and temporary workers. Applying the model to the Korean experience, we discuss the effects of the labor market reforms in 1998 on inequality.


The Liberal Ethics Of Non- Interference And The Pareto Principle, Marco Mariotti, Roberto Veneziani Jan 2014

The Liberal Ethics Of Non- Interference And The Pareto Principle, Marco Mariotti, Roberto Veneziani

Economics Department Working Paper Series

We analyze the liberal ethics of noninterference applied to social choice. A liberal principle capturing non-interfering views of society and inspired by John Stuart Mills conception of liberty, is examined. The principle captures the idea that society should not penalize agents after changes in their situation that do not affect others. An impossibility for liberal approaches is highlighted: every social decision rule that satisfies unanimity and a general principle of noninterference must be dictatorial. This raises some important issues for liberal approaches in social choice and political philosophy.


Natural Implementation With Partially-Honest Agents In Economic Environments With Free-Disposal, Michele Lombardi, Naoki Yoshihara Jan 2014

Natural Implementation With Partially-Honest Agents In Economic Environments With Free-Disposal, Michele Lombardi, Naoki Yoshihara

Economics Department Working Paper Series

We study Nash implementation by natural price-quantity mechanisms in pure exchange economies with free-disposal (Saijo et al., 1996, 1999) where agents have weak/strong intrinsic preferences for honesty (Dutta and Sen, 2012). Firstly, the Walrasian rule is shown to be non-implementable where all agents have weak (but not strong) intrinsic preferences for honesty. Secondly, the class of efficient allocation rules that are implementable is identified provided that at least one agent has strong intrinsic preferences for honesty. Lastly, the Walrasian rule is shown to belong to that class.


One Million Miles To Go: Taking The Axiomatic Road To Defining Exploitation, Roberto Veneziani, Naoki Yoshihara Jan 2014

One Million Miles To Go: Taking The Axiomatic Road To Defining Exploitation, Roberto Veneziani, Naoki Yoshihara

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Exploitation, profits, axiomatic analysis


Growth Complementarity Between Agriculture And Industry: Evidence From A Panel Of Developing Countries, Joao Paulo De Souza Jan 2014

Growth Complementarity Between Agriculture And Industry: Evidence From A Panel Of Developing Countries, Joao Paulo De Souza

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Abstract: Using dynamic panel models with data for 62 developing countries, this paper examines whether growth in agriculture elicits growth in manufacturing. For identification, I use population-weighted, average temperature as an instrument for growth in agriculture. I identify large short-run effects: An increase in growth in agriculture by one percentage point is estimated to raise contemporaneous growth in manufacturing by between 0.47 and 0.56 percentage points. The baseline models also imply sizable long-run effects of permanent increases in growth in agriculture. Extensions of the empirical model suggest that growth in agriculture benefits the manufacturing sector by improving its domestic terms …


A Progressive Report On Marxian Economic Theory: On The Controversies In Exploitation Theory Since Okishio (1963), Naoki Yoshihara Jan 2014

A Progressive Report On Marxian Economic Theory: On The Controversies In Exploitation Theory Since Okishio (1963), Naoki Yoshihara

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This report explores the development of exploitation theory in mathematical Marxian economics by reviewing the main controversies surrounding the definition of exploitation since the contribution of Okishio (1963). The report first examines the robustness and economic implications of the debates on the Fundamental Marxian Theorem, developed mainly in the 1970s and 1980s, followed by the property relation theory of exploitation by Roemer (1982). Then, the more recent exploitation theory proposed by Vrousalis (2013) and Wright (2000) is introduced, before examining its economic implications using a simple economic model. Finally, the report introduces and comments on recent axiomatic studies of exploitation …


Canadian Raising With Language-Specific Weighted Constraints, Joe Pater Jan 2014

Canadian Raising With Language-Specific Weighted Constraints, Joe Pater

Linguistics Department Faculty Publication Series

The distribution of the raised variants of the Canadian English diphthongs is standardly analyzed as opaque allophony, with derivationally ordered processes of diphthong raising and of /t/ flapping. This paper provides an alternative positional contrast analysis in which the pre-flap raised diphthongs are licensed by a language-specific constraint. The basic distributional facts are captured with a weighted constraint grammar that lacks the intermediate level of representation of the standard analysis. The paper also provides a proposal for how the constraints are learned, and shows how correct weights can be found with a simple, widely used learning algorithm.


Academic Librarians And The Sustainability Curriculum: Building Alliances To Support A Paradigm Shift, Madeleine Charney Jan 2014

Academic Librarians And The Sustainability Curriculum: Building Alliances To Support A Paradigm Shift, Madeleine Charney

University Libraries Publication Series

Sustainability is a fast evolving movement in higher education demonstrated by a proliferation of academic programs and co-curricular initiative and projects. After a review of sustainability-related LibGuides (online resource guides) created by academic librarians, a survey was administered to their developers during the spring of 2011 and posted on library listservs. Librarians returned 112 survey responses which reflected active roles in the paradigm shift toward sustainability through the forging of partnerships across campus and development of teaching resources and events. Telephone interviews conducted with 24 of the respondents showed librarians’ wide-ranging personal and professional interest in sustainability, and their initiatives …


E-Resource Acquisitions In Academic Library Consortia, Christine Turner Jan 2014

E-Resource Acquisitions In Academic Library Consortia, Christine Turner

University Libraries Publication Series

Scholarly publishing is the information marketplace in which academic libraries function, and major shifts in traditional publishing and pricing models are in process. Library consortia have long been viewed as a means of increasing purchasing power and reducing costs. In late 2010, the Five College Libraries (FCL) hired R2 Consulting, LLC to investigate and make recommendations regarding how the Libraries cooperate more closely on the acquisition, management, and delivery of electronic resources. This study examines and evaluates how other academic library consortia are licensing and acquiring electronic books, databases, journals and streaming media. The organizations, activities, processes, history and trends …


On The Ricardian Invariable Measure Of Value: The General Possibility Of The Standard Commodity, Kazuhiro Kurose, Naoki Yoshihara Jan 2014

On The Ricardian Invariable Measure Of Value: The General Possibility Of The Standard Commodity, Kazuhiro Kurose, Naoki Yoshihara

Economics Department Working Paper Series

The purpose of this paper is to examine the critical arguments made by Burmeister, Samuelson, and others, with respect to Sraffa (1960). In his arguments about the standard commodity, Sraffa assumed that a change in income distribution has no effect on the output level and choice of techniques, while those critics argue that interdependence among changes in income distribution, output level, and choice of techniques should be taken into consideration in the arguments on the invariable measure of value and the linearity of income distribution. Given this debate, the paper considers general economies with non-increasing returns to scale, where such …


The Dynamics Of Exploitation And Class In Accumulation Economies, Jonathan F. Cogliano, Roberto Veneziani, Naoki Yoshihara Jan 2014

The Dynamics Of Exploitation And Class In Accumulation Economies, Jonathan F. Cogliano, Roberto Veneziani, Naoki Yoshihara

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper analyses the equilibrium dynamics of exploitation and class in general accumulation economies with population growth, technical change, and bargaining by adopting a novel computational approach. First, the determinants of the emergence and persistence of exploitation and class are investigated, and the role of labour-saving technical change and, even more importantly, power is highlighted. Second, it is shown that the concept of exploitation provides the foundations for a logically coherent and empirically relevant analysis of inequalities and class relations in advanced capitalist economies. An index that identifies the exploitation level, or intensity of each individual can be defined and …


Healthy, Wealthy, And Wise: How Corporate Power Shaped The Affordable Care Act, Kevin Young, Michael Schwartz Jan 2014

Healthy, Wealthy, And Wise: How Corporate Power Shaped The Affordable Care Act, Kevin Young, Michael Schwartz

History Department Faculty Publication Series

No abstract provided.


Rudd Chair Annual Report 2014, Harold D. Grotevant Jan 2014

Rudd Chair Annual Report 2014, Harold D. Grotevant

Rudd Adoption Research Program Annual Reports

2014 report from the Rudd Family Foundation Chair in Psychology.


Regulating The High: Cognitive And Neural Processes Underlying Positive Emotion Regulation In Bipolar I Disorder, Jiyoung Park, Özlem Ayduk, Lisa O'Donnell, Jinsoo Chun, June Gruber, Masoud Kamali, Melvin Mcinnis, Patricia Deldin, Ethan Kross Jan 2014

Regulating The High: Cognitive And Neural Processes Underlying Positive Emotion Regulation In Bipolar I Disorder, Jiyoung Park, Özlem Ayduk, Lisa O'Donnell, Jinsoo Chun, June Gruber, Masoud Kamali, Melvin Mcinnis, Patricia Deldin, Ethan Kross

Psychological and Brain Sciences Faculty Publication Series

Although it is well established that Bipolar Disorder (BD) is characterized by excessive positive emotionality, the cognitive and neural processes that underlie such responses are unclear. We addressed this issue by examining the role that an emotion regulatory process called self-distancing plays in two potentially different BD phenotypes—BD with vs. without a history of psychosis—and healthy individuals. Participants reflected on a positive autobiographical memory and then rated their level of spontaneous self-distancing. Neurophysiological activity was continuously monitored using electroencephalogram. As predicted, participants with BD who have a history of psychosis spontaneously self-distanced less and displayed greater neurophysiological signs of positive …


A Mechanistic Approach To Cross-Domain Perceptual Narrowing In The First Year Of Life, Hillary Hadley, Gwyneth C. Rost, Eswen Fava, Lisa S. Scott Jan 2014

A Mechanistic Approach To Cross-Domain Perceptual Narrowing In The First Year Of Life, Hillary Hadley, Gwyneth C. Rost, Eswen Fava, Lisa S. Scott

Communication Disorders Department Faculty Publication Series

Language and face processing develop in similar ways during the first year of life. Early in the first year of life, infants demonstrate broad abilities for discriminating among faces and speech. These discrimination abilities then become tuned to frequently experienced groups of people or languages. This process of perceptual development occurs between approximately 6 and 12 months of age and is largely shaped by experience. However, the mechanisms underlying perceptual development during this time, and whether they are shared across domains, remain largely unknown. Here, we highlight research findings across domains and propose a top-down/bottom-up processing approach as a guide …