It Takes a Village (Perhaps a Nation): Families,States, and Educational Achievement

Research in the United States has shown that children growing up in 2‐parent households do better in school than children from single‐parent households. We used the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) data to test whether this finding applied to other countries as well (N = 100,307). We found that it did, but that the educational gap was greater in the United States than in the other 13 countries considered. Results from 2‐level hierarchical linear models demonstrated that international differences in the educational gap were associated with several indicators of national policy and demographic contexts. No single policy appeared to have a large effect, but several policy combinations were associated with substantially reduced educational gaps between children from different family structures.     

Suspicious minds: local context and attitude variation across Swedish municipalities

Johansson Sevä I. Suspicious minds: local context and attitude variation across Swedish municipalities
Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 225–235 © 2009 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. This article investigates whether degree of suspicion of welfare abuse relates to local context in Sweden. It is suggested that certain features of Swedish municipalities can create a local information bias influencing individual suspicion of welfare abuse. Prevalence of social problems and political climate are features of the municipal context having the potential to influence opinion formation. Social problems are captured by local unemployment, social assistance and ill‐health rates. Political climate is captured by electoral support for conservatives. The results indicate that local context can influence suspicion of welfare abuse, contexts where social problems are widespread reduce such suspicion. While local political climate seems important in itself, it also interacts with social problem level, increasing suspicion if a conservative political climate and social problems coexist. While social problems seem to generate less suspicion regarding social policy abuse, they also provide ‘raw material’ for political rhetoric regarding suspicion.     

Exclusion restrictions in instrumental variables equations

In this paper we consider two-stage estimators of parameters of a structural equation in a model with recursive exclusion restrictions on the instrumental variables equations. The estimations considered are simple OLS and GLS estimators after substitution of estimates of the systematic part of the IV equations for the endogenous variables. It is known in the literature that neither imposing the restrictions in the first stage nor ignoring them will in general be more efficient than the alternative. We introduce a class of mixed instrumental variables estimators (MIV) with these possibilities as special cases which yields an estimator which is not only more efficient than the two stage estimators considered in the literature but as efficient as an efficient system estimator like 3SLS.     

Correlates of physical violence at school: A multilevel analysis of Australian high school students

Studies of school violence have been generally been informed either by social disorganisation or social control theory. However applications of social disorganisation theory to school violence sometimes make little attempt to control for individual differences in propensity to violent behaviour. This study of 2,616 Australian high school students uses multilevel modelling techniques to see whether various characteristics of the school (e.g. lack of clarity about school rules, school responsiveness to racism, school size, ethnic composition) are related to the risk of physical violence between students, once individual and family risk factors for violent behaviour have been taken into account. The results suggest that school characteristics and developmental factors both play an important role in shaping the risk of violence at school.     

从几个视觉动词看动态语义学的实质

文章从几个典型的视觉动词入手,通过其特殊的语用行为考察动词语义结构中的动态成分,指出这些成分不仅本身具有动态特性,而且由于特定的语用因素如话语目的的改变,说话人的认知活动赋予动词新的语义成分或取消原有的语用限制,从而使看似不合法的语句合理化。因此,在考察动词语义时,一定要运用动态语义学的视点。     

The Differential Influence of Women's Residential District on the Risk of Entering First Marriage and Motherhood in Western Germany

This paper investigates the role of women's residential district in the process of family formation in western Germany during the 1980s and 1990s. Our analysis of the transition to first marriage and motherhood is based on the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), which we merge with a rich set of district-level data. The estimated multilevel discrete-time logit models suggest that (1) basically all regional heterogeneity in women's entry into parenthood is due to differences in the respondents' marital status, while there is (2) a constant and significant regional variation in women's first marriage probabilities, which cannot be explained by population composition or by structural contextual effects. Thus, regional influences on fertility behavior do not have an autonomous quality, but are merely mediated through a latent contextual effect on women's risk of entering first marriage, which we attribute to regional socio-cultural milieus.     

Managing Money in Marriage: Multilevel and Cross‐National Effects of the Breadwinner Role

We examine whether institutionalized practices and beliefs regarding breadwinning roles are associated with the choice of more or less equal money management strategies in marriage. Using cross‐national data from 21 country contexts in the International Social Survey Programme and multilevel modeling, we find that in contexts of shared breadwinning, there is a greater likelihood of shared management of money, controlling for the relative income contribution of each spouse. We also find some evidence that the effect of spouses’ relative income contributions diminishes in contexts of shared breadwinning. Our analysis comparing women’s and men’s money management is consistent with previous research indicating that women’s management may be more work than power.     

农业全要素生产率影响因素的社会嵌入性研究

农业发展的根本出路在于提升全要素生产率,并扩大其对农业增长的贡献.采用Malquist指数法测算了1998-2015年各省的农业全要素生产率,通过多层线性模型实证分析了其在社会嵌入性视角下的影响因素.结果表明:各省农业全要素生产率的总体差异中,有36.46%是由其社会嵌入性的不同所造成的;农业结构系数、城市化进程、受灾率、农村人力资本和物流关系嵌入对农业全要素生产率有直接影响,认知关系嵌入、资金量关系嵌入、结构关系嵌入、文化关系嵌入、政治关系嵌入有间接影响,间接影响可通过调节农业结构系数、城市化进程和农村人力资本与农业全要素生产率之间的关系实现.因此,提高农业全要素生产率要同时考虑基本影响因素和社会嵌入因素.     

The impact of education on third births. A multilevel discrete-time hazard analysis

We propose to use multilevel discrete-time hazard models to assess the impact of societal and individual level covariates on the timing and occurrence of third births. We focus mainly on the impact of educational attainment on third births across 15 European countries. From the analysis in this paper, the effect of education on the propensity to have a third child is found to be negative. This education effect is not significantly weakened by the Nordic countries, but living in Scandinavia does increase the hazard for a third birth.     

美国专利法的演变-从宽松到限制

美国是世界上最早建立专利制度的国家之一,殖民地时期已有专利授权。自1790年颁布专利成文法至今,审视立法及司法过程,由专利主题、授权标准、专利效力质疑难易、侵权保护强弱等几个维度考察,美国专利法大体上经历了宽松、平衡、扩张、限制的演变过程。成文法与判例法并非完全同步,在某个阶段判例法会对成文法加以修改或完善,修订的成文法则对判例法的理念和规则加以吸收。专利政策的调整与其经济、科技发展状况密切相关。