Digital Commons Network^™

Time Discounting In Strategic Contests, Cary Deck, Salar Jahedi

ESI Publications

In many contests, such as political campaigns or R&D expenditures, there is at least some trade-off between immediate money outlay and potential future benefits. This timing aspect has mostly been ignored by the contest literature. If contestants exhibit a strong present bias, such as that shown by past individual choice experiments, then benefits that are deferred to the future will lead to a significant drop in investment. This paper uses controlled laboratory experiments to explore how the timing of prize payment impacts behavior in a contest with a unique Nash equilibrium strategy. We find no evidence that people significantly discount …

An Experimental Investigation Of Time Discounting In Strategic Settings, Cary Deck, Salar Jahedi

ESI Publications

Several studies have shown that people greatly discount future benefits and costs, but few have examined how discounting is manifested in strategic settings. This paper investigates the degree to which the timing of payments affects behavior in four commonly studied strategic settings: a Prisoners’ Dilemma, a Stag-Hunt Game, a First Price Auction, and a Second Price Auction. In general, a two week delay in the date of payment has a comparable effect on outcomes as a substantial reduction in current payoffs. A follow-up study compares individual’s own discount rates with their beliefs of others’ discount rates and finds that people …

The Effect Of Cognitive Load On Economic Decision Making: A Survey And New Experiments, Cary Deck, Salar Jahedi

ESI Publications

Psychologists and economists have examined the effect of cognitive load in a variety of situations from risk taking to snack choice. We review previous experiments that have directly manipulated cognitive load and summarize their findings. We report the results of two new experiments where participants engage in a digit-memorization task while simultaneously performing a variety of economic tasks including: (1) choices involving risk, (2) choices involving intertemporal substitution, (3) choices with anchoring effects, (4) choices over healthy and unhealthy snacks, and (5) math problems. We find that higher cognitive load reduces numeracy as measured by performance in math problems. Moreover, …

Risky Business: An Analysis Of Teacher Risk Preferences, Daniel H. Bowen, Stuart Buck, Cary Deck, Jonathan N. Mills, James V. Shuls

ESI Publications

A range of proposals aim to reform teacher compensation, recruitment, and retention. Teachers have generally not embraced these policies. One potential explanation for their objections is that teachers are relatively risk averse. We examine this hypothesis using a risk-elicitation task common to experimental economics. By comparing preferences of new teachers with those entering other professions, we find that individuals choosing to teach are significantly more risk averse. This suggests that the teaching profession may attract individuals who are less amenable to certain reforms. Policy-makers should take into account teacher risk characteristics when considering reforms that may clash with preferences.

Humankind In Civilization’S Extended Order: A Tragedy, The First Part, Bart J. Wilson

ESI Publications

This article is a short, scientific story of the labyrinthian human career, of humankind’s place in the natural order of the world, and of the evolution of moral rules and rule following that make the extended order of civilization possible. Drawing upon work in anthropology, biology, and linguistics, I weave a science-based narrative of how Homo sapiens came to be the only primate to convert enemy aliens into trading friends. It is a Goethean story of the human condition that postulates the common origins of and modern tension between Pleistocene and Anthropocene morality. It is also a Hayekian story of …

Dynamic Optimization And Conformity In Health Behavior And Life Enjoyment Over The Life Cycle, Hernán D. Bejarano, Hillard Kaplan, Stephen Rassenti

ESI Publications

This article examines individual and social influences on investments in health and enjoyment from immediate consumption. Our lab experiment mimics the problem of health investment over a lifetime (Grossman, 1972a,b). Incentives to find the appropriate expenditures on life enjoyment and health are given by making in each period come period a function of previous health investments. In order to model social effects in the experiment, we randomly assigned individuals to chat/observation groups. Groups were permitted to freely chat between repeated lifetimes. Two treatments were employed: In the Independent-rewards treatment, an individual's rewards from investments in life enjoyment depend only on …

Phenomenological Study Of At-Risk Youth Attending An Alternative Education Residential Program, Valeria Meschelle Harris-Richard

Theses and Dissertations

At-risk youth are the population of students who cannot manage to conform to the traditional school expectations due to their behavior choices. However, their choices are reflections of both avoidable and unavoidable conditions and circumstances. The bottom line is that those conditions usually lead them to drop out of school. There are several factors that contribute to why youth drop out of school. While some factors are more obvious than others, the overall goal should be to minimize factors that are within the control of stakeholders and decision makers so that youth have opportunities to complete high school with a …

Building On Social Capital To Improve Health: The Interactional Approach To Community Development, Matthew Charles Tomlin Mr

Student Research – Stevenson Center

Since political scientist, Robert Putnam, (1995) brought the concept of social capital into popular discourse, there has been a surge in debate over its definition, causes, and consequences in a range of social science disciplines. While social capital has been found to support self-rated overall health at the state level (Kawachi et al, 1999), there is still a dearth of data and research on localities in different regions of the country. This study analyzes survey data collected in the United Way of McLean County’s 2014 Community Assessment to better understand the dynamic between social capital and health in one Central …

Conflict In The “Tranquil Gardens”: Banks V. Housing Authority Of San Francisco And The Definition Of Equality In Multi-Racial California, Reuel E. Schiller

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Polyamorous Marriage Lessons From The Marriage Equality Struggle, Hadar Aviram, Gwendolyn Leachman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Are Private Prisons To Blame For Mass Incarceration And Its Evils? Prison Conditions, Neoliberalism, And Public Choice, Hadar Aviram

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Troubled Waters Diana Nyad And The Birth Of The Global Rules Of Marathon Swimming, Hadar Aviram

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Race In The Life Sciences: An Empirical Assessment, 1950 - 2000, Osagie K. Obasogie

Faculty Scholarship

The mainstream narrative regarding the evolution of race as an idea in the scientific community is that biological understandings of race dominated throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries up until World War II, after which a social constructionist approach is thought to have taken hold. Many believe that the horrific outcomes of the most notorious applications of biological race-eugenics and the Holocaust-moved scientists away from thinking that race reflects inherent differences and toward an understanding that race is a largely social, cultural, and political phenomenon. This understanding of the evolution of race as a scientific idea informed the way that …

Interdisciplinary Research And Environmental Law, Dave Owen, Caroline Noblet

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Multidimensional Advocacy As Applied: Marriage Equality And Reproductive Rights, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Talking about marriage equality and reproductive rights advocacy together presents an interesting, and sometimes puzzling, assortment of challenges and opportunities. Both involve efforts to secure legal protections and social recognition that are fundamentally important to those who need them yet also deeply provocative to their opponents. For both, too, advocacy takes place on a shifting terrain shaped by competing views of sexuality, autonomy, equality, personhood, and more.

Yet the two advocacy efforts have experienced very different receptions over time. Just over two decades ago, the Supreme Court expressly affirmed that women have a constitutional right to seek an abortion and …

"Watching To Banish Care": Sleep And Insomnia In Book 1 Of The Faerie Queene, Benjamin Parris

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Resiliency Of Multiple-Placed Foster Youth Experiencing Emotional Competence: A Mixed-Methods Study, Audrey Murph-Brown

Theses and Dissertations

This applied dissertation was designed to address the resilient processes of multiple placed foster youth to develop age-appropriate emotional competence. Adding texture to the study was the role played by race and culture. Inherent to the study were the voices of successful multiple-placed foster youth. The research attempted to respond to gaps in the literature regarding African American and Hispanic youth placed in foster placements that, if better understood, can positively impact the livelihoods of other multiple-placed foster youth. The minor participants, 10 to 17 years old, selected for this study were no longer wards of the state, having been …

The Changing Landscape Of Oral Cavity Cancer: Analysis Of Epidemiological And Genomic Data, Ryan Aronberg

Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library

Background: Oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma (OCSCC) has been reported to have stagnant survival rates over the last generation. This report represents the first population-based study with a rigorous subsite analysis of OCSCC. Recently, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) released a broad molecular characterization of Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma (HNSCC) – however comparative genomics has not yet been performed on individual oral cavity subsites.

Methods: The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database (1988–2010) was used to examine 16,298 adult cases of OCSCC. Trends in tumor subsite, staging, patient demographics, treatment characteristics, and survival over time were examined. …

Counting Uncounted Gunshot Injuries: A Capture‐Recapture Study Of People Minding Their Own Business, Zev Balsen

Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library

Objectives. To apply a novel statistical method to create a comprehensive estimate of incidence of firearm related injuries.

Methods. A database of firearms injuries in New Haven, Connecticut, during a five- month period was created with records from law enforcement, emergency departments, emergency medical services (EMS), news media, and the medical examiner. The overlap of these various sources was operationalized in a capture-recapture model to generate an estimate of uncounted firearms injuries, and log linear modeling was used to control for positive and negative dependencies.

Results. The combined data sources revealed 49 firearms injuries occurring during the study period within …

Case Finding For Pulmonary Tuberculosis Among People Who Inject Drugs In Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Akash Gupta

Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library

CASE FINDING FOR PULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS AMONG PEOPLE WHO INJECT DRUGS IN DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA. Akash Gupta. Jessie Mbwambo. Ibrahim Mteza. Sheela Shenoi. Barrott Lambdin. Cassian Nyandindi. Basra Ismail Doula, Said Mfaume, and Robert Douglas Bruce. Department of Internal Medicine, Yale University, School of Medicine, New Haven, CT.

Active case finding is a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed strategy for improving case detection of tuberculosis. Despite WHO recommendations for active case finding among people who inject drugs (PWID), there are few published studies. The historical focus of case finding has been in populations that are HIV-positive, incarcerated, or at higher occupational …

Predictors Of Response In The Multimodal Treatment Of Attention Deficit And Hyperactivity Disorder Trial, Natalie Lastra

Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library

Baseline clinical characteristics can be used to predict treatment response in children with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This analysis aimed to identify empirically derived subgroups of children with ADHD based on likelihood of response to treatment within the 4 randomly assigned treatment groups of the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (MTA).

To identify clinical characteristics of predictive value selected data points were utilized for regression and receiver operating curve (ROC) analysis. Response to treatment at 14 months (defined as a 25-30% reduction in standardized score of symptoms obtained from the SNAP scale) for each treatment …

Patients' Experiences Managing Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors In Prison, Emily Herron Thomas

Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library

Despite greater risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality in patients with a history of incarceration, little is known about how prisons manage CVD risk factors (CVR-RF) to mitigate this risk.

We conducted in-depth interviews with men and women with CVD-RF and who had been recently released from prison (n=26). Using a grounded theory approach and applying the constant comparative method, we inductively generated themes about CVD- RF care in prison. Data collection and analysis occurred iteratively to refine and unify emerging themes.

Four themes emerged from patient perspectives: (1) Access to care for chronic conditions is present, yet complicated in …

Student Characteristics Associated With Positive Attitudes Toward Interprofessional Education, Risa Liang Wong

Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library

Attitudes of health professional students may determine the effectiveness of interprofessional education (IPE). We sought to identify student characteristics associated with more positive attitudes toward IPE by surveying a cohort of medical (M), nursing (N), and physician associate (PA) students first and third year using the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS) and Interdisciplinary Education Perception Scale (IEPS). We collected demographic and experiential information and performed one-way ANOVA, independent and paired t-tests, and multiple linear regression. 110 of 213 students (52%) completed the RIPLS and 106 (50%) completed the IEPS at both time points. Nursing students consistently had the highest …

Employment Law--Hobby Lobby's Narrow Holding Guards Against Discrimination, Cristina Squiers

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Personalized Medicine In The Information Age: Myriad's De Facto Monopoly On Breast Cancer Research, Angela M. Oliver

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Essay For Professor Alan Bromberg: Removing The Taint From Past Illegal Offers And Sales, Douglas M. Branson

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Hypertensive Crisis In The Setting Of Non-Compliance, Kimberly L. Barefield, Scott Lancaster

PCOM Scholarly Works

Hypertensive crisis is defined as severe hypertension with a blood pressure of greater than 180/120 mmHg, and may be further classified as urgency or emergency. Hypertensive urgency occurs over days to weeks, whereas hypertensive emergency occurs in hours to days and the patient presents with evidence of end organ damage. Patients of any age may present with hypertensive crisis, common etiologies include undiagnosed hypertension, noncompliance with therapy or inadequate therapy. Timely assessment of the patient is important and should include appropriate measurement of blood pressure, a thorough history and physical, and laboratory testing to evaluate for end organ damage. Antihypertensive …

The Human Footprint Of Our Daily Consumption: Defetishizing Commodities Through New Media, Kelly Mcguire

Research Papers

No abstract provided.

Use Of The Health Belief Model To Understand Hpv Vaccine Behavior In Female Undergraduates, Chu He

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the US and causes several cancers. HPV vaccines can protect individuals against multiple HPV strains that can cause certain cancers. Despite the benefits, 51% of college women have received the HPV vaccine. The purpose of this study was to better understand why women choose to get the HPV vaccine and others do not. An emailed link was sent to 8,889 EMU female undergraduate students. Chi-Square Tests for Independence were used to determine relationships between variables. Data from 1,126 female undergraduates ranging in age from 18 to 26 were …

Applications Of Neuroscience In Criminal Law: Legal And Methodological Issues, John B. Meixner Jr.

Scholarly Works

The use of neuroscience in criminal law applications is an increasingly discussed topic among legal and psychological scholars. Over the past 5 years, several prominent federal criminal cases have referenced neuroscience studies and made admissibility determinations regarding neuroscience evidence. Despite this growth, the field is exceptionally young, and no one knows for sure how significant of a contribution neuroscience will make to criminal law. This article focuses on three major subfields: (1) neuroscience-based credibility assessment, which seeks to detect lies or knowledge associated with a crime; (2) application of neuroscience to aid in assessments of brain capacity for culpability, especially …