Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Os Erros De Bernoulli, Sergio Da Silva

Sergio Da Silva

No abstract provided.

An Empirical Case Against The Use Of Genetic-Based Learning Classifier Systems As Forecasting Devices, Jaqueson Galimberti, Sergio Da Silva

Sergio Da Silva

We adapt a genetic-based learning classifier system to a forecast evaluation exercise by making its key parameters endogenous and taking into account the need of convergence of the learning algorithm, an issue usually neglected in the literature. Doing so, we find it hard for the algorithm to beat simpler ones based on recursive regressions and on the random walk in forecasting stock returns. We then argue that our results cast doubts on the plausibility of using learning classifier systems to represent agents process of expectations formation, an approach commonly found into the agent-based computational finance literature.

Complexities Of Collapse: The Evidence Of Maya Obsidian As Revealed By Social Network Graphical Analysis, Gary M. Feinman, Mark Golitko, James Meierhoff, Patrick Ryan Williams

Gary M. Feinman

The authors use a social network analysis to map the changing patterns of obsidian supply among the Maya during the period of Classic to Postclassic transition. The quantity of obsidian received from different sources was calculated for 121 sites and the network analysis showed how the relative abundance of material from different sources shifted over time. A shift from inland to coastal supply routes appears to have contributed to the collapse of inland Maya urban centres. The methods employed clearly have a high potential to reveal changing economic networks in cases of major societal transitions elsewhere in the world.

"Recent Preservation And Conservation Activities For Northern Nigerian Manuscripts In Arabic Script", Michaelle L. Biddle

Michaelle Biddle

Nigeria has a rich Islamic manuscript heritage in danger of being lost due to lack of in-country preservation and conservation efforts. Of interest to scholars world-wide, these manuscripts in Arabic script are dispersed throughout Nigerian institutions and private collections. Since 2007 there has been a sustained effort to increase local awareness and Northern Nigerian regional capacity for care, conservation and maintenance of these collections

Acs Scholarship To The Charleston Conference Essay, Megan Sheffield

Megan Sheffield

No abstract provided.

Kevin Major's Hold Fast And The Critical Reception Of A Milestone Canadian Novel For Young Adults, Paulette Rothbauer

Paulette Rothbauer

No abstract provided.

Legal Consciousness And Lgbt Research: The Importance Of Law In The Everyday Lives Of Lgbt Individuals, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The law occupies a prominent place in the everyday lives of LGBT individuals, and the continuing regulation and policing of sexuality and gender weighs heavily on many people who identify as LGBT. Despite remarkable progress in the area of LGBT civil rights, LGBT individuals in the United States still lack formal equality and are denied many of the protections that are afforded other historically disadvantaged groups. These legal disabilities represent an ongoing source of minority stress and can produce a correspondingly high degree of “legal consciousness” within the LGBT community. Given the importance of law in LGBT lives, it is …

Fighting Poverty One Experiment At A Time: A Review Essay On Abhijit Banerjee And Esther Duflo, Poor Economics, Martin Ravallion

Martin Ravallion

Banerjee and Duflo offer a coherent vision for an economics of poverty and anti-poverty policy. Their economics is grounded in an effort to understand the economic and psychological complexities in the lives of poor people, informed by social experiments and field observations. Their preferred policies entail small reforms at the margin, also informed by experiments—specifically randomized control trials. While the book provides some interesting insights, I question how far its approach will get us in fighting global poverty.

Scenes From A Power Struggle: The Rise Of Retail Investors In The Us Stock Market, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

This chapter examines the mass movement of Americans into investing during the 1990s as both a consequence and a cause of contested power between corporations and individuals. This movement was part of a larger historical pattern of economically marginalized people consolidating their power through associational strategies in the realm of finance. Using US investment clubs as a case study, the chapter draws on Foucault’s theories to illuminate the bilateral power structure of modern capitalism, in which market institutions and small groups at the grassroots level mutually influence one another. While the investment club movement was in part a response to …

Trust And Estate Planning: The Emergence Of A Profession And Its Contribution To Socioeconomic Inequality, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

This article offers a new perspective on the connection between socioeconomic inequality and occupations by examining the impact of trust and estate planners on global wealth stratification. While many studies treat the professions as mirrors of inequalities in their environments, this article looks at the ways professionals participate in the creation of stratification regimes. Trust and estate planners do this by sheltering their clients’ assets from taxation, thereby preserving private wealth for future generations. Using tools such as trusts, offshore banks, and shell corporations, these professionals keep a significant portion of the world’s private wealth beyond the reach of the …

The Sociology Of Financial Fraud, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

If there is an Urtext for the sociology of fraud, it is surely Herman Melville’s 1857 novel "The Confidence Man . This “parable of the market economy” (Mihm 2007:4) follows the title character over the course of a day (April Fool’s Day, of course) as he plies his trade on a steamboat cruising down the Mississippi River—his trade being the extraction of money from his fellow passengers on pretexts ranging from donations to loans. The confidence man succeeds, Melville writes, not just because of his skill, but because the boat (much like the market as conceived in economic theory) is …

From Trustees To Wealth Managers, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

This chapter will address the question: why did trusteeship become a profession in its own right after centuries as a voluntary undertaking? The question ties into the core themes of this volume because trustees are central actors in the intergenerational transmission of wealth, and, as a result, shape patterns of inequality (Harrington, 2012a). Trustees – now more often known as wealth managers– create and oversee the structures that allow families to remain wealthy over multiple generations.

Shame And Stock Market Losses: The Case Of Amateur Investors In The Us., Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

Losing money evokes a host of emotions, most of them painful. In his earliest work, Adam Smith wrote of the “embarrassment” and shame associated with financial losses, with bankruptcy being “the greatest and most humiliating calamity” of all (2010 [1776]: 149). More recently, the financial crisis of 2008 has been defined by shame, guilt, and anger, both at the individual and collective levels (Brasset and Clarke 2012). As United States Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson observed, “we have in many ways humiliated ourselves as a nation” (2008). These emotions may be particularly troubling for Americans, used to regarding their country as …

L’Accès Au Savoir En Afrique: Le Rôle Du Droit D’Auteur, Jeremy De Beer

Jeremy de Beer

No abstract provided.

Essentials Of Comparative Politics Arabic Translation Chapter 1, Patrick H. O'Neil

Patrick H. O'Neil

No abstract provided.

National Giving Campaigns In The United States: Entertainment, Empathy, And The National Peer Group, Christopher J. Einolf

Christopher J Einolf

This study presents a narrative history and quantitative analysis of national campaigns in the United States, and analyzes how successful campaigns provide entertainment, foster empathy, and develop a national peer group with norms and networks that encourage giving. Our historical survey found that charity telethons flourished in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but changes in tax regulations and competition from other networks and cable television led most of them to discontinue operations in the 1980’s and 1990’s. In recent years, internet and text messaging fundraising have become important, but benefit concerts continue to generate a significant percentage of total revenues. In …

Bad News For John Marshall, David B. Kopel, Gary Lawson

David B Kopel

In Bad News for Professor Koppelman: The Incidental Unconstitutionality of the Individual Mandate, we demonstrated that the individual mandate’s forced participation in commercial transactions cannot be justified under the Necessary and Proper Clause as the Clause was interpreted in McCulloch v. Maryland. Professor Andrew Koppelman’s response, Bad News for Everybody, wrongly conflates that argument with a wide range of interpretative and substantive positions that are not logically entailed by taking seriously the requirement that laws enacted under the Necessary and Proper Clause must be incidental to an enumerated power. His response is thus largely unresponsive to our actual arguments.

Nine Out Of Ten. The "Losers" In Italy's Long Crisis. Changes In Income Distribution, Effects Of Policies, Rise In Inequality, Mario Pianta

Mario Pianta

"There Is A Subliminal Attitude": African American Parental Perspectives On Independent Schooling, Howard C. Stevenson Jr., Edith G. Arrington

Howard C Stevenson Jr.

Enforcing Restitution Of Cultural Heritage Through Peace Agreements, Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

Peace agreements have been an important source of international law in modern times. They have been especially important in the earliest formulations of the international and regional protection of cultural heritage. The significance of this source of international law making and its enforcement has become more pronounced with the exponential proliferation of peace processes and resultant agreements since the end of the Cold War. It is argued that how cultural heritage (and cultural rights) is historically dealt with in peace agreements falls broadly into three discernible categories: (1) restitution and restoration of cultural heritage as reparations between existing states, post …

The Effects Of Internet Access On Labor-Supply Decisions, Katrina Kosec, Sara Champion, Christopher Stanton

Katrina Kosec

The prevalence of Internet access in the home has increased markedly over the last decade. In many respects, it has changed the way people live and work. This paper examines the relationship between Internet in the home (and whether it is broadband) and various measures of labor supply using data from the Current Population Survey and the American Time Use Survey for the period 1998–2010. After including extensive controls, we document that home Internet access is highly positively cor¬related with employment, with total hours worked, and with the amount and share of work done from home. We also document that …