Who Should Pay for Interdependent Risk? Policy Implications for Security Interdependence Among Airports

We study interdependent risks in security, and shed light on the economic and policy implications of increasing security interdependence in presence of reactive attackers. We investigate the impact of potential public policy arrangements on the security of a group of interdependent organizations, namely, airports. Focusing on security expenditures and costs to society, as assessed by a social planner, to individual airports and to attackers, we first develop a game-theoretic framework, and derive explicit Nash equilibrium and socially optimal solutions in the airports network. We then conduct numerical experiments mirroring real-world cyber scenarios, to assess how a change in interdependence impact the airports' security expenditures, the overall expected costs to society, and the fairness of security financing. Our study provides insights on the economic and policy implications for the United States, Europe, and Asia.     

Material hardship and self-rated health among low-income households in South Korea

Concerns over poverty and health inequality are growing in South Korea. Using advanced statistical methods including lagged-dependent variable and fixed-effects approaches, we investigated whether experiencing material hardship (MH) was associated with self-rated health (SRH) among low-income households in South Korea. This study found that the experience of MH was positively associated with higher likelihood of reporting poor SRH (OR = 1.42, p < .05) and that experiencing two or more items of MH presented more harmful influence on SRH (OR = 2.02, p < .001). This study also found that the negative association between MH and SRH was stronger among the unemployed households.     

Material hardship and depression among low‐income households in South Korea: Differences by household type

With the recent trend of growing poverty in South Korea, low‐income households, particularly elderly‐ and single‐headed households, are at high risk of experiencing material hardship and depression. However, less is known about the association between material hardship and depression by household type in Korea. Using data (N = 2,913) from the Korean Welfare Panel Study and employing several methodological approaches to address the omitted variables bias, this study examined: (i) the association between material hardship and depression among low‐income households, and (ii) whether the association differed by household type. We found that experiencing material hardship was associated with a higher likelihood of being depressed. In addition, we also found that the association between material hardship and depression differed by household type. The magnitude of the association was most pronounced in single‐ and elderly‐headed households. Policy implications to improve well‐being among low‐income households were discussed.     

Book Review

Monti P, Colby S, O'Leary T. Adolescents, Alcohol, and Substance Abuse: Reaching Teens Through Brief Interventions. New York: Guilford; 2001. 338 pps, ISBN 1-57230-658-0; Hard cover, $37     

Acting for Happiness: Financial Behavior and Life Satisfaction of College Students

Recent research on well-being suggests that domain-specific behaviors contribute to domain-specific satisfactions, which in turn contribute to an individual’s overall satisfaction with life. Our study is an attempt to add to the literature by observing these phenomena from a financial perspective. Using data collected from a sample of undergraduate students at a major state university in the U.S. and employing structural equation modeling, we have found evidence suggesting that positive financial behaviors contribute to financial satisfaction and financial satisfaction in turn contributes to life satisfaction. In addition, positive financial behaviors contribute to life satisfaction through two more mediating variables: academic performance and academic satisfaction.     

Quality of earnings: A key factor in financial planning

This paper presents the results of an empirical study based on the premise that, among companies with the same nominal earnings, those with higher quality of earnings will be more highly valued by investors. The price-earnings ratio should be higher for companies with better quality of earnings and lower for companies with poorer quality of earnings. The test is performed by estimating regression equations relating the price-earnings ratio to quality of earnings factors. The study should prove to be of significant value to financial decision-makers in formulating their long range plans.     

Monotone support vector quantile regression

Quantile regression (QR) models have received a great deal of attention in both the theoretical and applied statistical literature. In this paper we propose support vector quantile regression (SVQR) with monotonicity restriction, which is easily obtained via the dual formulation of the optimization problem. We also provide the generalized approximate cross validation method for choosing the hyperparameters which affect the performance of the proposed SVQR. The experimental results for the synthetic and real data sets confirm the successful performance of the proposed model.     

Propaganda or public relations campaign? International communication on the war against Iraq

Cross-cultural survey on the war against Iraq from different cultures may help to assess whether the public relations war has succeeded or failed. Overall the public of the U.S. and the U.K. formed similar evaluations of the war; whereas South Korean opinion was lay on the opposite side of the continuum. The present study suggests that public relations campaigns administered by the U.S. government did not generate favorable opinions in countries other than the U.S.     

Family leave policy and child mortality: Evidence from 19 OECD countries from 1969 to 2010

This study examined the effects of family leave policy on five age‐specific child mortality rates across 19 Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development countries from 1969 to 2010. I used the dataset developed by Ruhm and Tanaka and extended it with data from various institutions, including the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. I controlled for six relevant variables including GDP per capita and health expenditures, three child health indicators, as well as three social expenditure measures for families. I included in all models country and year fixed effects as well as country‐time trend interactions. Throughout all model specifications, the results indicated that job‐protected paid leave significantly reduces infant mortality (death at less than 1 year of age) and postneonatal mortality (death between 1 month and 1 year of age). Other leave (unpaid or nonjob protected) had no significant effects on any of the outcome indicators.     

Pierre Bourdieu and intercultural education: it is not just about lack of knowledge about others

In response to the current intersection of pluralism, globalization, the histories and persistence of inequality in society and schools, and in response to well intended but potentially dangerous tendency toward the romantic versions of everyone’s points of views are valid and let us respect each other’s viewpoints in intercultural education, some intercultural educators are adamantly arguing that the goal of intercultural education must be to work against inequality and inhumanity linked to the system of domination and to foreground social justice. Joining the commitment of such intercultural educators within the framework of anti oppressive intercultural education, this essay shows how Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological theoretical framework can help to problematize the psychologically based intercultural education that mainly focuses on benign differences. Using Bourdieu’s framework, the author demonstrates that the barrier to intercultural education is not just lack of knowledge about others, illuminates the process of intercultural exchange by at least partially unpacking the processes involved in representations and interpretations of differences in intercultural education, and suggests implications for anti oppressive intercultural education.