Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Learning To Disagree In A Game Of Experimentation, Alessandro Bonatti, Johannes Hörner

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We analyse strategic experimentation in which information arrives through fully revealing, publicly observable “breakdowns.” With hidden actions, there exists a unique equilibrium that involves randomization over stopping times. This randomization induces belief disagreement on the equilibrium path. When actions are observable, the equilibrium is pure, and welfare improves. We analyse the role of policy interventions such as subsidies for experimentation and risk-sharing agreements. We show that the optimal risk-sharing agreement restores the first-best outcome, independent of the monitoring structure.

The Marriage Market, Labor Supply And Education Choice, Pierre-André Chiappori, Monica Costa Dias, Costas Meghir

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We develop an equilibrium lifecycle model of education, marriage and labor supply and consumption in a transferable utility context. Individuals start by choosing their investments in education anticipating returns in the marriage market and the labor market. They then match based on the economic value of marriage and on preferences. Equilibrium in the marriage market determines intrahousehold allocation of resources. Following marriage households (married or single) save, supply labor and consume private and public under uncertainty. Marriage thus has the dual role of providing public goods and offering risk sharing. The model is estimated using the British HPS.

The Marriage Market, Labor Supply And Education Choice, Pierre-André Chiappori, Monica Costa Dias, Costas Meghir

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We develop an equilibrium life cycle model of education, marriage and labor supply and consumption in a transferable utility context. Individuals start by choosing their investments in education anticipating returns in the marriage market and the labor market. They then match based on the economic value of marriage and on preferences. Equilibrium in the marriage market determines intrahousehold allocation of resources. Following marriage households (married or single) save, supply labor and consume private and public commodities under uncertainty. Marriage thus has the dual role of providing public goods and offering risk sharing. The model is estimated using the British HPS.

Relational Contracts With Subjective Peer Evaluations, Joyee Deb, Jin Li, Arijit Mukherjee

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We study optimal contracting in a setting where a firm repeatedly interacts with multiple workers, and can compensate them based on publicly available performance signals as well as privately reported peer evaluations. If the evaluation and the effort provision are done by different workers (as in a supervisor/agent hierarchy), we show that, using both the private and public signals, the first best can be achieved even in a static setting. However, if each worker is required to both exert effort and report on his co-worker’s performance (as in a team setting), the worker’s effort incentives cannot be decoupled from his …

Insurance In Extended Family Networks, Orazio P. Attanasio, Costas Meghir, Corina Mommaerts

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We investigate partial insurance and group risk sharing in extended family networks. Our approach is based on decomposing income shocks into group aggregate and idiosyncratic components, allowing us to measure the extent to which each component is insured. We apply our framework to extended family networks in the United States by exploiting the unique intergenerational structure of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We find that over 60% of shocks to household income are potentially insurable within extended family networks. However, we find little evidence that the extended family provides insurance for such idiosyncratic shocks.

You're No Fun Anymore: The Ethics Of Acquiring Electronic Devices In Light Of E-Waste, Sweatshops, And Globalization, Jennifer Poggiali

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Using Video Prompting To Teach Math Skills To Adolescent Students With Specific Learning Disabilities (Sld) Via Ipad, Sean Elbert Edwards

Theses and Dissertations

A plethora of research exists suggesting video-based interventions such as video modeling (VM) and video prompting (VP) assist students with severe/profound disabilities, such as autism and intellectual disabilities, to learn academic skills. This study used a single subject multiple-baseline-across-subjects design to evaluate if a VP intervention on a functional, academic math skill had similar effects for adolescent students with mild/moderate specific learning disabilities (SLD). Five high school students (three female and two male) aged 16-17 viewed the video on an iPad to find out about how much money an item would cost if it were a certain percentage on sale. …

Andrews Changes The World Through Media, Becky St. Clair

Lake Union Herald

No abstract provided.

Perspectives On Abandoned Houses In A Time Of Dystopia, Kermit J. Lind

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article describes various perspectives on abandoned houses in urban neighborhoods and the reactions from those perspectives. It notes how conflicting reactions perpetuate the crisis of blight for individual residents and their communities. It argues that real solutions for management of abandonment must be based in local communities and tailored to local conditions. Priority must be placed on consistent maintenance in compliance with local housing and neighborhood health, safety and environmental codes. Housing preservation, rehabilitation, reutilization programs will not succeed without improved and sustained maintenance. Localities will need to take the lead in remodeling residential maintenance using new strategies, methods …

The Pursuit Of Civic Engagement: Youth Civic Engagement And The Role Of Higher Education, Aideen Mccormack, Aiden Carthy, Cormac Doran

Conference Papers

Putnam (2000) argues that, in recent years, there has been a steady decline of social capital and civic engagement in western societies. However, arguments claiming a 'crisis' of civic engagement have also been met with fierce academic disagreement, leading to a strongly contested debate as to whether civic engagement is in decline or simply evolving. Using a mixed methods approach, this research sought to explore youth civic engagement among the students of the Technological University Dublin aged 18 to 25. Preliminary quantitative results provide evidence of both disengagement with traditional routes and a re-routing of engagement towards more lifestyle orientated, …

Breathing Life Into Information Literacy Skills: Results Of A Faculty-Librarian Collaboration, Divonna M. Stebick, Janelle L. Wertzberger, Margaret E. Flora, Joseph W. Miller

Education Faculty Publications

When an education professor and a reference librarian sought to improve the quality of undergraduate student research, their partnership led to a new focus on assessing the research process in addition to the product. In this study, we reflect on our collaborative experience introducing information literacy as the foundation for undergraduate teacher education research. We examine the outcomes of this collaboration, focusing on the assessment of the process. Using a mixed methods approach, we found that direct instruction supporting effective research strategies positively impacted student projects. Our data also suggest that undergraduate students benefit from not only sound research strategies, …

Interest In Nonsurgical Female Permanent Contraception Among Men In Portland, Oregon And Eastern Maharashtra, India, Elizabeth K. Harrington, Diane Gordon, Pramod Bahulekar, B.S. Garg, Isabel Osgood-Roach, Jeffrey T. Jensen, Jennifer Aengst

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Objective: We examined the men’s attitudes and perceptions toward the concept of nonsurgical female permanent contraception (NSPC), or novel approaches to permanent contraception (PC) that do not require incisions or surgical equipment/hysteroscope.

Study design: Cross-sectional survey of married/partnered men in Portland, OR and rural eastern Maharashtra, India. Descriptive analysis was performed.

Results: In India (N=150), most men (80%) anticipated their partners would undergo PC in the future, compared to 30% in Portland (N=170). About a third (39.6% in India, 82% in Portland) reported being uncomfortable with PC for partners due to the need for surgery. Most men …

The Ninja: An Invented Tradition?, Stephen Turnbull

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

The ninja is a well known phenomenon in Japanese military culture. The popularity of the tradition is centered on the neighboring areas of Iga and Kōka where ninja are a profitable tourist attraction. This paper examines the historical sources on which the ninja tradition is based to see if the pre-eminence claimed by Iga and Kōka is justified. It is shown that they were no different from several other places in their geography or their politics and that only one reliable account of secret warfare can be identified before 1581, the year when Iga Province ceased to exist as an …

She Who Laughs Loudest: A Meditation On Zen Humor, Andrew Whitehead

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Articulating a Zen Buddhist perspective on humor, this paper examines the Japanese Zen Buddhist response of humor in the face of the suffering of situated existence and the motivations for this response. The examination will take the school of Rinzai Zen Buddhism as its exemplar. I argue that in order to appreciate the function of humor in Zen a number of cultural and historical influences must be considered: correlative ontology; the Buddhist notion of emptiness; the impotence of language; sense and nonsense; and the senselessness of transgression.

Japan's Food Security Issues: A Geopolitical Challenge For Africa And East Asia?, Thomas Feldhoff

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Japan’s food self-sufficiency ratio is remarkably low compared to other industrialized nations. Growing world population, food, water, and energy shortages in combination with climate change and the rising competition for the world’s limited resources are the transnational dimensions of food and nutrition security related risks that are already affecting Japan. This paper analyzes the development and institutional context of Japanese policies related to its food security, particularly in relation to its commitments to support developing countries and to promote food security in Africa. One dimension of particular interest is the Japanese engagement in large-scale land investments in Africa. ProSAVANA, Japan’s …

Wasuren! ---We Won't Forget! The Work Of Remembering And Commemorating Japan's And Tohoku's (3.11) Triple Disasters In Local Cities And Communities, Millie Creighton

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Based on estensive Fieldwork, this paper explores the needs of people and communities in hard hit areas of Japan's 3.11 triple disasters including Sendai, Fukushima, Ishinomaki, Kesennuma, Kamaishi, and Yoriage to commemorate the event and their dead, while redirecting efforts to the future. It discusses the activities of Sendai's Wasuren! (We Won't Forget!) Center to document the disaster and Project Fukushima! organized by Fukushima residents to consider the city's future after the nuclear disaster as well as examining memorials (as memoryscapes and mourning work) created by other communities in the region where the disaster occurred. It compares local narratives of …

About The Contributors

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

No abstract provided.

Lobbying From Inside The System: Why Local Governments Pay For Representation In The U.S. Congress, Matt W. Loftis, Jaclyn J. Kettler

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Why do cities spend scarce resources lobbying the federal government? The hierarchy of U.S. government provides various pathways for local representation. Nevertheless, cities regularly invest in paid representation. This presents a puzzle for American democracy. Why do cities lobby, and do they lobby strategically? We quantify for the first time the extent of this phenomenon and examine its determinants using new data on 498 cities across forty-five states from 1998 to 2008. We find that economic distress pushes cities to lobby, but does not impact expenditures. Cities in competitive congressional districts, and therefore crucial to national politics, spend more on …

Losing Oneself And Manufacturing Bureaucracy In Contemporary Elite American Higher Education [A Review Of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation Of The American Elite & The Way To A Meaningful Life, By William Deresiewicz], Jesse Swan

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Commentary about higher education can seem confused and wrongheaded. There are many reasons for this, but a common problem is that the general topic is usually poorly specified. One of the great virtues of William Deresiewicz’s description of the defilement of American higher education and of his proposals for its purification is that Deresiewicz’s description and proposals are concentrated on his cogently specified topic: the effect of elite education, specifically traced to the admissions process of the most exclusive American universities, on the people subjected to it. Much flows from Deresiewicz’s humane consideration of the topic, including a discussion of …

Global Portland: Trends From Greater Portland Pulse, Sheila A. Martin, Portland State University. Institute Of Portland Metropolitan Studies

Institute of Metropolitan Studies Publications

The report measures Greater Portland's ties to the rest of the world in terms of exports, foreign direct investment, foreign visitors, foreign-born residents, and foreign students.

Jal In The Past Decade: A Comprehensive Analysis Of Academic Library Research, Lili Luo, Margaret Mckinney

Faculty Publications

A content analysis is conducted to examine the peer-reviewed articles published in the Journal of Academic Librarianship (JAL) from 2004 to 2013. Five key variables are studied: authorship, article type, topic, research methods/design, and research theories/models. About three-fourths of the articles were authored by at least one librarian, and over half of the articles were co-authored. More than two-thirds of the articles were primary research articles, and a total of 24 topics related to academic libraries were covered, among which information literacy was the most popular one. Survey and content analysis are the two most frequently used research methods in …

Creating Audience And Environment-Friendly Research Guides: Findings From A User Study, Jessica Alverson, James Lefager, Jennifer Schwartz, Amelia Brunskill

Staff Publications - University Libraries

Like many libraries, our institution had relied on a one-size-fits-all model for our subject research guides without considering the various audiences using our guides, or the different contexts in which students encounter those guides. Learn about our user study that explored how students use these guides, and where they fit into the actual research process. We will discuss how we engaged librarians and created a new model that balances diverse research needs and expectations.

Game, Set, And Match: Do Women And Men Perform Differently In Competitive Situations?, Michael Jetter, Jay K. Walker

Economics Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes potential gender differences in competitive environments using a sample of over 100,000 professional tennis matches. We focus on two phenomena of the labor and sports economics literature: the hot-hand and clutch-player effects. First, we find strong evidence for the hot-hand (cold-hand) effect. Every additional win in the most recent ten Tour matches raises the likelihood of prevailing in the current encounter by 3.1 (males) to 3.3 percentage points (females). Second, top male and female players are excelling in Grand Slam tournaments, arguably the most important events in tennis. For men, we also find evidence for top players …

Grandparental Help In Indonesia Is Directed Preferentially Towards Needier Descendants: A Potential Confounder When Exploring Grandparental Influences On Child Health, Kristin Snopkowski, Rebecca Sear

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

A considerable body of evidence has now demonstrated positive correlations between grandparental presence and child health outcomes. It is typically assumed that such correlations exist because grandparental investment in their grandchildren improves child health and wellbeing. However, less is known about how grandparents allocate help to adult children and grandchildren, particularly in lower income contexts. Here we use detailed quantitative data from the longitudinal Indonesia Family Life Survey (data collected in 1993, 1997, 2000, 2007; n = 16,250) to examine grandparental help in a society transitioning both demographically and economically. We test the hypothesis that grandparents direct help preferentially towards …

Results Of Archaeogeophysical Investigations Of The Fowler - Clark Farm Mattapan, Boston, Massachusetts, Brian N. Damiata, John M. Steinberg

Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Publications

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) and Frequency-Domain Electromagnetic (FDEM) surveys were employed over an extensively modified 50 m x 65 m city lot containing a farmhouse initially constructed between 1786 and 1806 and a later barn. Both geophysical methods suggested that most of the lot had experienced substantial disturbance and that there was limited sub - surface preservation. Both the GPR and EM surveys indicated a scatter of metallic debris and other disturbance s in the back yard at depths up to 1 m. Most of the front yard also presents as disturbed, except for two unusual but limited buried surfaces …

Youth Savings Patterns And Performance In Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, And Nepal: Executive Summary, Lissa Johnson, Yungsoo Lee, David Ansong, Margaret S. Sherraden, Gina Chowa, Fred Ssewamala, Li Zou, Michael Sherraden, Mose Njenga, Joseph Kieyah, Issac Osei-Akoto, Sharad Sharma, Jyoti Manandhar, Catherine Rodriguez, Frederico Merchán, Juan Saavedra

Center for Social Development Research

This summary presents an overview of findings from the YouthSave Project's 2015 research report Youth Savings Patterns and Performance in Columbia, Ghana, Kenya, and Nepal. Created in partnership with the MasterCard Foundation, YouthSave investigated the potential of savings accounts as a tool for youth development and financial inclusion in developing countries by co-designing tailored, sustainable savings products with local financial institutions and assessing their performance and development outcomes with local researchers. This study tracked account uptake, saving patterns, and savings performance in youth savings accounts in Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, and Nepal.

Project Integrate: An Integrative Study Of Brief Alcohol Interventions For College Students, Eun-Young Mun, Jimmy De La Torre, David C. Atkins, Helene R. White, Anne E. Ray, Su-Young Kim, Yang Jiao, Nickeisha Clarke, Yan Huo, Mary E. Larimer, David Huh, The Project Integrate Team

Heads Up!

This paper provides an overview of a study that synthesizes multiple, independently collected alcohol intervention studies for college students into a single, multisite longitudinal data set. This research embraced innovative analytic strategies (i.e., integrative data analysis or meta-analysis using individual participant-level data), with the overall goal of answering research questions that are difficult to address in individual studies such as moderation analysis, while providing a built-in replication for the reported efficacy of brief motivational interventions for college students. Data were pooled across 24 intervention studies, of which 21 included a comparison or control condition and all included one or more …

Estimation Of Heterogeneous Panels With Structural Breaks, Badi Baltagi

Center for Policy Research

This paper extends Pesaran's (2006) work on common correlated effects (CCE) estimators for large heterogeneous panels with a general multifactor error structure by allowing for unknown common structural breaks. Structural breaks due to new policy implementation or major technological shocks, are more likely to occur over a longer time span. Consequently, ignoring structural breaks may lead to inconsistent estimation and invalid inference. We propose a general framework that includes heterogeneous panel data models and structural break models as special cases. The least squares method proposed by Bai (1997a, 2010) is applied to estimate the common change points, and the consistency …

Calpuff And Cafos: Air Pollution Modeling And Environmental Justice Analysis In The North Carolina Hog Industry, Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger, Liyao Huang, Hao Xin

Sustainability and Social Justice

Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) produce large amounts of animal waste, which potentially pollutes air, soil and water and affects human health if not appropriately managed. This study uses meteorological and CAFO data and applies an air pollution dispersion model (CALPUFF) to estimate ammonia concentrations at locations downwind of HOG CAFOs and to evaluate the disproportionate exposure of children, elderly, whites and minorities to the pollutant. Ammonia is one of the gases emitted by swine CAFOs and could affect human health. Local indicator of spatial autocorrelation (LISA) analysis uses census block demographic data to identify hot spots where both ammonia …

Hand In Hand, Spring 2015

Hand in Hand

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