Rationality,fairness and the cost of distrust

An adapted version of “the trust game with revenge” is applied to a Swedish setting. Senders – the first-movers – can keep an endowment of SEK 30, or give fractions or all to an unknown receiver. Donations are multiplied by five before reaching receivers, who may, or may not, send back part or the entire received amount. Half of the receivers are given information that the sender has the opportunity to exact revenge, while the remaining are not given this information. Results differ from Fehr and Gächter (2000), in the sense that the share of endowments sent in the first stage is around two thirds, compared to less than one third in Fehr and Gächter. Furthermore, they find a very strong effect of punishment while we find almost no effect. An efficiency frontier is defined and results show that that only 25% of the outcomes reach this frontier due to lack of trust. If senders were confident that receivers would return at least 20% of the donated amount, it is optimal to donate the whole endowment. Only about one-fifth returned of the receivers returned less than this, so for the most part the lack of trust is unwarranted.     

W(h)ither the academy? An exploration of the role of university social work in shaping the future of social work in Europe

A controversial proposal to pilot the training of child protection social workers through an intensive work-based route in England is being supported and funded by the UK Government. Frontline, the brainchild of a former teacher, locates social work training within local authorities (‘the agency’) rather than university social work departments (‘the academy’) and has stimulated debate amongst social work academics about their role in shaping the direction of the profession. As a contribution to this debate, this paper explores the duality of social work education, which derives its knowledge from both the academic social sciences and the experience of practice within social work agencies. While social work education has traditionally been delivered by the academy, this paper also explores whether the delivery of training in the allied professions of probation and nursing by ‘the agency’ is equally effective. Finally, this paper explores the Helsinki model which achieves a synergy of ‘academy’ and ‘agency’. It suggests that there are alternative models of social work education, practice and research which avoid dichotomies between the ‘academy’ and the ‘agency’ and enable the profession to be shaped by both social work academics and practitioners.     

Cross-National Coverage of Water Handling: A Community Structure Approach

A cross-national community structure survey examined the relationship between national characteristics and newspaper coverage of water handling. Sampling all relevant 250+ word articles from September 1, 2000 (the implementation of UN Millennium Development Goal target 7c) to September 1, 2010 in 21 newspapers worldwide in NewsBank and AllAfrica databases yielded 394 articles. Articles were coded for visual/editorial “prominence” and “direction” (framing of clean water access as primarily “government responsibility,” “societal responsibility,” or “balanced/neutral” coverage), then combined to produce composite “Media Vector” scores for each newspaper (+.5241 to ?.3886, a range of .9127). Thirteen of 21 Media Vectors (60%) reflected coverage favoring government responsibility for water handling. Pearson correlations revealed the potency of 4 variable cluster scales (all α = .70+) as major correlates of water handling coverage: “female empowerment,” “vulnerability,” “privilege,” and “press freedom,” with three clusters connected to “societal” responsibility. Regression analysis reinforced the strong role of female empowerment in coverage emphasizing societal responsibility. Overall, indicators of privilege and press freedom followed suit, also linked to coverage emphasizing “societal” responsibility for water handling, whereas indicators of vulnerability instead correlated with more media emphasis on government responsibility.     

Analysis of Deviance for Hypothesis Testing in Generalized Partially Linear Models

In this study, we develop nonparametric analysis of deviance tools for generalized partially linear models based on local polynomial fitting. Assuming a canonical link, we propose expressions for both local and global analysis of deviance, which admit an additivity property that reduces to analysis of variance decompositions in the Gaussian case. Chi-square tests based on integrated likelihood functions are proposed to formally test whether the nonparametric term is significant. Simulation results are shown to illustrate the proposed chi-square tests and to compare them with an existing procedure based on penalized splines. The methodology is applied to German Bundesbank Federal Reserve data.     

Testing the Granger Noncausality Hypothesis in Stationary Nonlinear Models of Unknown Functional Form

In this article, we propose a general method for testing the Granger noncausality hypothesis in stationary nonlinear models of unknown functional form. These tests are based on a Taylor expansion of the nonlinear model around a given point in the sample space. We study the performance of our tests by a Monte Carlo experiment and compare these to the most widely used linear test. Our tests appear to be well-sized and have reasonably good power properties.     

瑶族新石牌与大瑶山社会主义和谐社会的建立——黔桂瑶族侗族习惯法系列调研之一

石牌是指新中国成立后金秀大瑶山各村屯将本村屯的村规民约以石牌这种形式加以确立,以此为法,进行村屯民主管理的制度,新石牌保留了旧石牌的传统,又有所发展。在大瑶山的经济与社会发展中,尽管新石牌有各种各样的局限性,但仍然发挥着重要作用,我们应因势利导,发挥其积极作用。     

Using Panel Data to Understand the Dynamics of Human Behavior in Response to Flooding

Insights into the dynamics of human behavior in response to flooding are urgently needed for the development of effective integrated flood risk management strategies, and for integrating human behavior in flood risk modeling. However, our understanding of the dynamics of risk perceptions, attitudes, individual recovery processes, as well as adaptive (i.e., risk reducing) intention and behavior are currently limited because of the predominant use of cross-sectional surveys in the flood risk domain. Here, we present the results from one of the first panel surveys in the flood risk domain covering a relatively long period of time (i.e., four years after a damaging event), three survey waves, and a wide range of topics relevant to the role of citizens in integrated flood risk management. The panel data, consisting of 227 individuals affected by the 2013 flood in Germany, were analyzed using repeated-measures ANOVA and latent class growth analysis (LCGA) to utilize the unique temporal dimension of the data set. Results show that attitudes, such as the respondents’ perceived responsibility within flood risk management, remain fairly stable over time. Changes are observed partly for risk perceptions and mainly for individual recovery and intentions to undertake risk-reducing measures. LCGA reveal heterogeneous recovery and adaptation trajectories that need to be taken into account in policies supporting individual recovery and stimulating societal preparedness. More panel studies in the flood risk domain are needed to gain better insights into the dynamics of individual recovery, risk-reducing behavior, and associated risk and protective factors.     

论苗族歌鼟的艺术美

苗族歌鼟是湖南湘西南部靖州苗族侗族自治县锹里一带流传的多声部民歌,其旋律优美,声部和谐,唱腔独特,具有自然朴实的民族特色,给人以美的享受。这种艺术美渗透于苗族歌鼟的各个构成元素,非常注重旋律、节奏、和声、调式的美感;歌词体现出苗民们的内在美;唱腔充分发挥出演唱的声韵美;语言更是彰显了民族之本色。这些艺术美的元素综合在一起,使苗族歌鼟成为一种美的化身。     

试析鲜卑山时代鲜卑部落的族群结构

史书记载的 “鲜卑山”共有五处,通过对比分析可以发现,这五处“鲜卑山”实际上指的是三座山,即鲜卑的发源地、位于大兴安岭南段的“大鲜卑山”,朝阳附近、混有乌桓、匈奴部落的慕容鲜卑部落联盟聚居地“鲜卑山”和敦煌附近、以鲜卑为主体,包含乌桓、匈奴及氐、羌部落的吐谷浑部落联盟聚居地“鲜卑山”,这三座山不仅是鲜卑族兴起和发展阶段的展示,更是鲜卑诸政权的摇篮,对我国古代历史的走向有着重大影响。     

Domestic violence screening and service acceptance among adult victims in a dependency court setting

Many child welfare systems are unable to effectively identify and address co-occurring domestic violence and child maltreatment. In response, the Dependency Court Intervention Program for Family Violence implemented a protocol to identify indicators of domestic violence in families involved with child protection proceedings. This article highlights data that demonstrate the ability of an outreach and screening process to identify adult victims of domestic violence in dependency court and to offer them appropriate intervention services.