Do perceptions of their partners’ childbearing desires affect young women’s pregnancy risk? Further study of ambivalence

We explore whether young women’s perceptions of their sexual partners’ childbearing desires contribute to their risk of pregnancy. We used weekly journal data collected from 787 young women to measure their childbearing desires and their perceptions of their partners’ childbearing desires. We then conducted hazard modelling to predict pregnancy risk with variables based on interactions between the women’s desires and their perceived partners’ desires. Models that include perceived partners’ desires perform better than one based on women’s desires alone. The best model contains three significant predictors: one confirms the importance of pronatal, ambivalent, and indifferent desires for pregnancy risk; one indicates that the perceived partners’ antinatal desires reduce women’s pregnancy risk; and one suggests that women who both perceive their partners accurately and are in agreement with them have a lower pregnancy risk. The results indicate that perceived partner data can improve prediction and enhance our understanding of pregnancy risk.     

The psychology and behavioural economics of poverty

The paper provides an overview and assessment of an emerging literature on the psychology and behavioural economics of poverty. We particularly highlight poverty experiences, role of neighbourhoods, poverty dynamics and transmission, child poverty and disability and personal finance. In addition we consider psychology and policy responses by looking and autonomy and empowerment, and poverty reduction programs. Our central thesis is that the detailed knowledge of individual experiences, cognitions and social factors in psychology and related social science complements the traditional economic emphasis on structural factors and policy instruments in a way that is exemplified by emerging work in behavioural economics. We conclude it is increasingly recognised that poverty reduction policies which are informed by behavioural insights may, as a result, be more effective.     

Disability at work: Understanding the impact of the ADA on the workplace

It has been more than 25 years since the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed by Congress. Many supporters of the law hoped that it would improve the employment outcomes for people with a disability, yet many scholars argue that it has fallen short in achieving this goal. Such judgments of success or failure are typically offered with little regard for the complex relationship between law and social change. In this paper, I apply a socio‐legal perspective to scholarly research regarding the impact of the ADA on employment. Socio‐legal studies offer a variety of concepts and perspectives, which better capture the complexity of law's impact on social life, and the various paths through which it might have an impact on social change. From this perspective, studies tend to assume that ADA law will either impact social change directly or indirectly. I discuss the findings of both of these approaches and conclude with some directions for future research.     

Technology Choice and Capacity Portfolios under Emissions Regulation

We study the impact of emissions tax and emissions cap‐and‐trade regulation on a firm's technology choice and capacity decisions. We show that emissions price uncertainty under cap‐and‐trade results in greater expected profit than a constant emissions price under an emissions tax, which contradicts popular arguments that the greater uncertainty under cap‐and‐trade will erode value. We further show that two operational drivers underlie this result: (i) the firm's option not to operate, which effectively right‐censors the uncertain emissions price; and (ii) dispatch flexibility, which is the firm's ability to first deploy its most profitable capacity given the realized emissions price. In addition to these managerial insights, we also explore policy implications: the effect of emissions price level, and the effect of investment and production subsidies. Through an illustrative example, we show that production subsidies of higher investment and production cost technologies (such as carbon capture and storage technologies) have no effect on the firm's optimal total capacity when firms own a portfolio of both clean and dirty technologies, but that investment subsidies of these technologies increase the firm's total capacity, conditionally increasing expected emissions. A subsidy of a lower production cost technology, on the other hand, has no effect on the firm's optimal total capacity in multi‐technology portfolios, regardless of whether the subsidy is a production or investment subsidy.     

Hardness results and approximation algorithm for total liar’s domination in graphs

In this paper, we initiate the study of total liar’s domination of a graph. A subset L?V of a graph G=(V,E) is called a total liar’s dominating set of G if (i) for all v∈V, |N _G (v)∩L|≥2 and (ii) for every pair u,v∈V of distinct vertices, |(N _G (u)∪N _G (v))∩L|≥3. The total liar’s domination number of a graph G is the cardinality of a minimum total liar’s dominating set of G and is denoted by γ _TLR (G). The Minimum Total Liar’s Domination Problem is to find a total liar’s dominating set of minimum cardinality of the input graph G. Given a graph G and a positive integer k, the Total Liar’s Domination Decision Problem is to check whether G has a total liar’s dominating set of cardinality at most k. In this paper, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a total liar’s dominating set in a graph. We show that the Total Liar’s Domination Decision Problem is NP-complete for general graphs and is NP-complete even for split graphs and hence for chordal graphs. We also propose a 2(lnΔ(G)+1)-approximation algorithm for the Minimum Total Liar’s Domination Problem, where Δ(G) is the maximum degree of the input graph G. We show that Minimum Total Liar’s Domination Problem cannot be approximated within a factor of $(\frac{1}{8}-\epsilon)\ln(|V|)$ for any ?>0, unless NP?DTIME(|V|^loglog|V|). Finally, we show that Minimum Total Liar’s Domination Problem is APX-complete for graphs with bounded degree 4.     

Family firms and high technology Mergers & Acquisitions

We examine whether family firms undertake value creating high technology M&A. We also examine whether level of ownership, diversification, agency issues and CEO type matter. Our sample consists of high-technology M&A undertaken by Canadian firms over the period 1997–2006. Canada offers a setting with many family firms and the use of control enhancing mechanisms such as dual class shares and pyramid structures. We find a positive relationship between family ownership and announcement period abnormal returns. This relationship, however, starts to decrease at higher levels of ownership but remains overall positive. We also show that the agency conflict between shareholders and professional managers has a detrimental impact on announcement period abnormal returns whereas the conflict between controlling and minority shareholders via control enhancing mechanisms does not. Finally, we document that founder CEO undertake better high tech M&A than descendant or hired CEO.     

The reporting of sensitive behavior by adolescents: A methodological experiment in Kenya

Does audio computer-assisted self-interviewing (ACASI) produce more valid reporting of sexual activity and related behaviors than face-to-face interviews or self-administered interviews? This analysis, based on data collected from over 6,000 unmarried adolescents in two districts of Kenya—Nyeri and Kisumu—indicates substantial and significant differences in reported rates of premarital sex across interview modes, although not always in the expected direction. Our assumption that girls underreport sexual activity in face-to-face interviews by comparison with ACASI is not confirmed by the Nyeri data, but our results from Kisumu are considerably more promising. As for boys, who we believe exaggerate their level of sexual activity in face-to-face interviews, a more nuanced set of expectations regarding the reporting of sensitive behaviors was offered; our results from Kisumu, although not always significant, by and large conform to expectations.

     

Interpersonal communication and the diffusion of family planning in West Malaysia

Using data from a 1966–1967 probability sample of West Malaysian married women 15–44 years of age, this paper analyzes the characteristics of women who were active in diffusing information about family planning. The woman’s age and her parity, her educational attainment, her race, her present residence (urban-rural), and whether or not she wanted more children were significantly related to opinion leadership in bivariate tables. However, these relationships appeared to be substantial mainly because these social and demographic characteristics were highly related to whether the woman participated in discussions about family planning with other women. Among women who did participate in such discussions, the social and demographic variables were not substantially related to opinion leadership. In fact, the critical variables for opinion leadership appeared to be participation in the discussions, greater knowledge of family planning, and a higher level of family planning use. An attempt is also made to assess the effect of interpersonal communication on the adoption of family planning among women in the sample.     

Demography as a Spatial Social Science

Scholars in many social science disciplines have taken note of the re-emerging interest in issues concerning social processes embedded within a spatial context. While some argue that this awakening is refreshing and new and, in fact, long overdue, I demonstrate that spatially focused demographic theories and research agendas clearly predate contemporary interest in these topics. I assert that recent methodological advancements have merely encouraged and brought refinement to the expanding body of spatially oriented population research—research strongly rooted in demographic tradition and practice. Indeed, I make the claim that, until roughly the mid-20th century, virtually all demography in the United States (and elsewhere, but not specifically examined here) was spatial demography. Then, shortly after mid-century, a paradigm shift occurred, and the scientific study of population quickly came to be dominated by attention to the individual as the agent of demographic action. Traditional spatial demography—macro-demography—gave way to micro-demography, and, I argue, most demographers simply abandoned the data and approach of spatial demography. In closing the paper I include a brief discussion of the recent awakening that has come to spatial demographers from developments in other disciplines, principally geography, regional science, and spatial econometrics.