Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Rejecting Politics Of Injury, Ananya Vajpeyi

Ananya Vajpeyi

No abstract provided.

The Knowledge Debate Reopened, Ananya Vajpeyi

Ananya Vajpeyi

No abstract provided.

Social Capital And Inequality In Latin America, Hector Faya

Hector Faya

No abstract provided.

An Overview Of The Near-Death Experience Phenomenon, David San Filippo Ph.D.

David San Filippo Ph.D.

Near-death experiences appear to be universal phenomena that have been reported for centuries. A near-death encounter is defined as an event in which the individual could very easily die or be killed, or may have already been considered clinically dead, but nonetheless survives, and continue his or her physical life. Reports of near-death experiences date back to the Ice Age. There are cave paintings, in France and Spain that depict possible after life scenes that are similar to reported scenes related to near-death experiences. Plato's Republic presents the story of a near-death experience of a Greek soldier named Er. In …

Wavelet-Based Functional Mixed Models To Characterize Population Heterogeneity In Accelerometer Profiles: A Case Study. , Jeffrey S. Morris, Cassandra Arroyo, Brent A. Coull, Louise M. Ryan, Steven L. Gortmaker

Jeffrey S. Morris

We present a case study illustrating the challenges of analyzing accelerometer data taken from a sample of children participating in an intervention study designed to increase physical activity. An accelerometer is a small device worn on the hip that records the minute-by-minute activity levels of the child throughout the day for each day it is worn. The resulting data are irregular functions characterized by many peaks representing short bursts of intense activity. We model these data using the wavelet-based functional mixed model. This approach incorporates multiple fixed effects and random effect functions of arbitrary form, the estimates of which are …

The Idea Of The Law Review: Scholarship, Prestige, And Open Access, Michael Madison

IR Research

This Essay was written as part of a Symposium on open access publishing for legal scholarship, held at Lewis & Clark Law School. It makes the claim that “open access” publishing models will succeed, or not, to the extent that they account for the existing “economy of prestige” that drives law reviews and legal scholarship. What may seem like a lot of uncharitable commentary is intended instead as an expression of guarded optimism: Imaginative reuse of some existing tools of scholarly publishing (even by some marginalized members of the prestige economy – or perhaps especially by them) may facilitate the …

New Journal: World Political Science Review, Irene Perciali

Irene Perciali

The Berkeley Electronic Press is pleased to announce the launch of an exciting new peer-reviewed journal in political science, World Political Science Review. This is the 9th new journal added in 2006, and brings the bepress journal collection total to 35.

The World Political Science Review publishes prize-winning articles nominated by prominent national political science associations around the world, and translated into English. In a field as international as political science, scholars have a vital need to know about important political research produced outside the English-speaking world. WPSR bridges the language barriers that have made this cutting-edge research inaccessible up …

Are Tourists Willing To Pay Additional Fees To Protect Corals In Mexico?, James F. Casey

James F Casey

Coral reefs have been referred to as the rainforests of the sea, maintaining the most diverse forms of life on earth. Unfortunately, fifty-eight percent of the world’s reefs are potentially threatened by human activity. The primary objective of this paper is to determine if tourists, visiting the Riviera Maya, Mexico are willing to pay an entrance fee to enhance coral reef protection. We use a discrete choice contingent valuation (CV) experiment with almost 400 visitors to determine a measure of compensating variation for contributing to a public trust to protect corals. Results suggest there are significant possibilities for implementing a …

Telemedicine And Mobile Telemedicine Systems, Vikas Singh

Vikas Singh

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Telemedicine literally means medicine at a distance. It is both the delivery of healthcare and exchange of healthcare information over long distances, combining medical knowledge with communications and information technology. It includes both, the clinical (diagnosis, treatment and medical records) and academic medicine (research, education and training).

An estimated 100 million Americans suffer from chronic health conditions, including heart disease, lung disorders, and diabetes, and treatment for these conditions accounts for three-fourths of total U.S. health-care costs. In addition, the elderly (65 years or older) population is rapidly increasing; it is estimated that it will reach 53 million …

Economic Growth And The Environment: A Review Of Theory And Empirics, M. Scott Taylor, William Brock

M. Scott Taylor

The relationship between economic growth and the environment is, and will always remain, controversial. Some see the emergence of new pollution problems, the lack of success in dealing with global warming and the still rising population in the Third World as proof positive that humans are a short-sighted and rapacious species. Others however see the glass as half full. They note the tremendous progress made in providing urban sanitation, improvements in air quality in major cities and marvel at the continuing improvements in the human condition made possible by technological advance. The first group focuses on the remaining and often …

Non-Monotone Incentives In A Model Of Coexisting Hidden Action And Hidden Information, Suren Basov

Suren Basov

In this paper I consider a model of coexisting moral hazard and adverse selection, similar to one considered by Guesnerie, Picard, and Rey (1989). I provide an explicit solution for the optimal incentive scheme in the case, when the effort is observed with a normally distributed error. The main observation is that in this case the optimal incentive scheme often fails to be monotone. If the monotonicity constraint is imposed on the solution for economic reasons there would exist a region of profit realizations, such that the optimal compensation will be independent of on performance.

How Have The World’S Poorest Fared Since The Early 1980s?, Martin Ravallion, Shaohua Chen

Martin Ravallion

We present new estimates of the extent of the developing world’s progress against poverty. By the frugal $1 per day standard, we find that there were 1.1 billion poor in 2001 — almost 400 million fewer than 20 years earlier. Over the same period, the number of poor declined by over 400 million in China, though half of this decline was in the first few years of the 1980s. The number of poor outside China rose slightly over the period. A marked bunching up of people between $1 and $2 per day has also emerged, with an increase over time …

Are There Lasting Impacts Of Aid To Poor Areas? Evidence From Rural China, Martin Ravallion, Shaohua Chen, Ren Mu

Martin Ravallion

The paper re-visits the site of a large, World Bank-financed, rural development program in China, 10 years after it began and four years after disbursements ended. The program emphasized community participation in multi-sectoral interventions (including farming, animal husbandry, infrastructure and social services). Data were collected on 2,000 households in project and non-project areas, spanning 10 years. A double-difference estimator of the program’s impact (on top of pre-existing governmental programs) reveals sizeable short-term income gains that were mostly saved. Only small and statistically insignificant gains to mean consumption emerged in the longer-term — though in rough accord with the gain to …

China's (Uneven) Progress Against Poverty, Martin Ravallion, Shaohua Chen

Martin Ravallion

While the incidence of extreme poverty fell dramatically in China over 1980-2001, progress was uneven over time and across provinces. Rural areas accounted for the bulk of the gains to the poor, though migration to urban areas helped. Rural economic growth was far more important to national poverty reduction than urban economic growth; agriculture played a far more important role than the secondary or tertiary sources of GDP. Taxation of farmers and inflation hurt the poor; local government spending helped them in absolute terms; external trade had little short-term impact. Provinces starting with relatively high inequality saw slower progress against …

Partially Awakened Giants: Uneven Growth In China And India, Martin Ravallion, Shubham Chaudhuri

Martin Ravallion

The paper examines the ways in which recent economic growth has been uneven in China and India and what this has meant for inequality and poverty. Drawing on analyses based on existing household survey data and aggregate data from official sources, the authors show that growth has indeed been uneven—geographically, sectorally and at the household-level—and that this has meant uneven progress against poverty, less poverty reduction than might have been achieved had growth been more balanced, and an increase in income inequality. The paper then examines why growth was uneven and why this should be of concern. The discussion is …

Evaluating Anti-Poverty Programs, Martin Ravallion

Martin Ravallion

The chapter critically reviews the methods available for the ex-post counterfactual analysis of programs that are assigned exclusively to individuals, households or locations. The emphasis is on the specific problems encountered in applying these methods to anti-poverty programs in developing countries, drawing on examples from actual evaluations. Two main lessons emerge. Firstly, despite the claims of advocates, no single method dominates; rigorous, policy-relevant evaluations should be open-minded about methodology, adapting to the problem, setting and data constraints. Secondly, future efforts to draw useful lessons from evaluations call for more policy-relevant data and methods than the classic (“black box”) assessment of …

Reformas Económicas Y Consolidación Democrática En América Latina. 1980-2006, Flavia Freidenberg, Manuel Alcántara, Ludolfo Paramio, José Déniz

Flavia Freidenberg

No abstract provided.

Nonmarket Performance: Evidence From U.S. Electric Utilities, Jean-Philippe Bonardi, Guy Holburn, Rick Vanden Bergh

Jean-Philippe Bonardi

No abstract provided.

Simulation Of The Colombian Firm Energy Market, Peter Cramton, Steven Stoft

Peter Cramton

We present a simulation analysis of the proposed Colombian firm energy market. The main purpose of the simulation is to assess the risk to suppliers of participation in the market. We also are able to consider variations in the market design, and assess the impact of alternative auction parameters. Three simulation models are developed and analyzed. The first model (Model 1) uses historical price data from October 1995 through May 2006 to assess the performance risk of hypothetical thermal and hydro generating units. The second model (Model 2) uses historical price and operating data to assess performance risk of the …

Entertainment-Retail Centres In Hong Kong And Los Angeles: Trends And Lessons, Clara Irazabal, Surajit Chakravarty

Clara Irazabal

This paper examines the evolution and recent trends in the design of Entertainment Retail Centres (ERCs) in Los Angeles and Hong Kong. Most of the literature on spaces of consumption and leisure deals with economic reasons for the development of these spaces, and with the social, cultural, and political implications of the phenomenon. There are limitations to this approach that this study addresses. First, there has been a lack of attention to processes of globalization in the analysis of these spaces. Furthermore, a largely US-centred approach has left out an understanding of the significance of the ERC phenomenon in other …

Child Laundering: How The Intercountry Adoption System Legitimizes And Incentivizes The Practices Of Buying, Trafficking, Kidnapping, And Stealing Children, David M. Smolin

David M. Smolin

This article documents and analyzes a substantial incidence of "child laundering" within the intercountry adoption system. Child laundering occurs when children are taken illegally from birth families through child buying or kidnapping, and then "laundered" through the adoption system as "orphans" and then "adoptees." The article then proposes reforms to the intercountry adoption system that could substantially reduce the incidence of child laundering.

El Fútbol Como Práctica De Identificación Colectiva, Fernando Carrión Mena

Fernando Carrión Mena

El fútbol es una de las prácticas sociales de identificación colectiva más importantes porque trasciende su condición de juego para convertirse en un hecho total -social, cultural, político y económico-y porque rompe con las fronteras de su origen como actividad de ocio, circunscrita a un territorio y a un segmento social (de las elites londinenses), para convertirse en una actividad global.

En esta dinámica incluyente del fútbol -de totalidad y globalidad-la sociedad se retrata y representa, pero también se cohesiona para dar sedimento al sentido nacional (Dávila, 2003). El fútbol es un sistema de relaciones y representaciones que produce una …

Ei Futbol Como Hecho Social Total, Fernando Carrión Mena

Fernando Carrión Mena

En este principio de milenio parece que la humanidad ha entrado en la era del futbol porque tiene un nivel de presencia generalizado en el planeta y un grado de influencia en múltiples esferas del quehacer social. Se trata, sin duda, de uno de los fenómenos globales más expansivos de la hora actual; a la extrema que su referencia es obligatoria en los ámbitos de la globalización cultural y económica.

En el Ecuador este fenómeno no es una excepción, a tal punto que ha asumido la condición de arena del poder simbólico del sentir nacional y se ha convertido en …

El Abc Del Fútbol, Fernando Carrión Mena

Fernando Carrión Mena

Varias personas de fútbol han dicho en pocas palabras muchas verdades del mundo en el que se desenvuelve. Lo han hecho desde su propia lógica interior así como desde sus impactos en y hacia la sociedad. Para ello han recurrido a la poesía, a la filosofía, la sociología, la economía, las ciencias políticas, la técnica y táctica, la tecnología y la literatura, mostrándolos mil rostros que tiene el fútbol y como -a partir de ciertas síntesis-se puede comprender este fenómeno total y global. Por eso, a continuación y en orden alfabético de autor, se presentan algunas citas de pensadores, entrenadores, …

Bolillo: Entrenador Puertas Afuera, Fernando Carrión Mena

Fernando Carrión Mena

El martes se cerró el ciclo "puertas afuera" del manejo de la selección ecuatoriana por parte del cuerpo técnico encabezado por Hernán Daría Gómez y ocurrió de una manera que no debió pasar.

Primero, porque el propio entrenador llegó al Perú con la derrota a cuestas. El rato de salir pregonó a diestra y siniestra la poca importancia del torneo. Como si una selección nacional –que representa a un país- pudiera tener partidos de primera y de segunda o como si se pudiera representar a medias a un país. Esto nos demuestra que la derrota estaba en sus planes, aunque …

De Iuna Al Sol: El Coyotensmo En Ei Fútbol, Fernando Carrión Mena

Fernando Carrión Mena

El caso Luna revela una parte de lo que ocurre en la Federación Ecuatoriana de Fútbol (FEF). Su comportamiento no es distinto a lo que ocurre con otras instituciones públicas y privadas del país, que se constituyen a partir de relaciones clientelares; es decir, del cambio de favores por lealtades, tal cual lo dijo el presidente de la Federación. Además se maneja patrimonialmente, es decir, como si fuera una institución propia, donde no se hace distinción entre lo público y lo privado. Por eso el coyoterismo es posible.

El Fútbol Hoy: Comunidad "Fuera De Lugar", Fernando Carrión Mena

Fernando Carrión Mena

La fase de preparación de la selección al mundial de fútbol ha servido de mucho para el Ecuador. No solo porque su selección se ha entrenado adecuadamente, sino también porque ha habido la posibilidad de un reencuentro del Ecuador profundo que se construye más allá de las fronteras patrias.

En estos últimos años salió del Ecuador mucha gente con destinos preferentemente europeos y norteamericanos. Se habla de varios cientos de miles de migrantes y de que las remesas que envían son la segunda fuente de divisas del país. Nuestra comida, la música y, hoy; el fútbol caminan por lugares distintos …

El Clásico. Liga Vs. Barcelona, Fernando Carrión Mena

Fernando Carrión Mena

EI día de mañana presenciaremos el clásico del fútbol ecuatoriano, en la final del torneo apertura, entre la Liga Deportiva Universitaria y el Barcelona. ¿Qué hace que este partido haya asumido esta condición?

Una de las condiciones primeras del fútbol es la confrontación, allí está su esencia y allí está un componente importante de las identidades -por oposición- que genera. De la confrontación se llega a la nominación de encuentro; es decir, dos voluntades distintas disputándose el objetivo común de la victoria: el gol, como el traspaso de la pelota por la meta. Gol en inglés es objetivo y meta …

Ei Futbol, Una Pasion Rnediatica, Fernando Carrión Mena

Fernando Carrión Mena

Fútbol y medios de comunicación: una relación consustancial.

EI fútbol y los medios de comunicación mantienen una relación indisoluble, porque históricamente nacieron de la mano como instituciones sociales y adicionalmente con el paso del tiempo -principalmente a 10 largo del siglo XX-se fueron haciendo mutuamente funcionales. De alii en mas, se construyo una alianza indisoluble, que fue creciendo, hasta que este deporte se ha convertido -hoy por hoy- en un acontecimiento principalmente mediático. Pero también a que los medios no puedan prescindir del mismo para su propio desarrollo, porque han construido una relación interactiva.

El Espectáculo Del Fútbol Como Negocio Espectacular, Fernando Carrión Mena

Fernando Carrión Mena

Fútbol y economía

En la actualidad, es imposible entender el fútbol si no es en relación a la economía mundial y a la microeconomía de cada unidad productiva (el club). Hoy en día, la competencia deportiva no es otra cosa que una competencia mercantil, la cual, es organizada por la "mano invisible" de la multinacional monopólica de la FIFA, bajo un sistema regulatorio absolutamente centralizado.

Se ha entrado en una dinámica dual en la que, por un lado, la unidad productiva (el club) para poder competir -incluso-localmente debe seguir una línea de internacionalización en mercados cada vez más amplios y …