It takes two to tango: the integration of people with disabilities into society

The concept of integration is not well defined. It not known how people with disabilities experience integration. In this study qualitative methods were used. The aim of the article is to define a model of successful integration based on the perspectives of people with disabilities and people within their social environment. Integration consists of five elements: functioning ordinarily without receiving special attention, mixing with others that are not disabled, taking part in society, trying to realize one’s potential and directing one’s own life. Integration is obtained through a process of interaction between a person with a disability and society. This process is influenced by personal, societal and support factors. The individual with a disability and society have a mutual responsibility with respect to integration.     

On the logic of common belief and common knowledge

The paper surveys the currently available axiomatizations of common belief (CB) and common knowledge (CK) by means of modal propositional logics. (Throughout, knowledge — whether individual or common — is defined as true belief.) Section 1 introduces the formal method of axiomatization followed by epistemic logicians, especially the syntax-semantics distinction, and the notion of a soundness and completeness theorem. Section 2 explains the syntactical concepts, while briefly discussing their motivations. Two standard semantic constructions, Kripke structures and neighbourhood structures, are introduced in Sections 3 and 4, respectively. It is recalled that Aumann's partitional model of CK is a particular case of a definition in terms of Kripke structures. The paper also restates the well-known fact that Kripke structures can be regarded as particular cases of neighbourhood structures. Section 3 reviews the soundness and completeness theorems proved w.r.t. the former structures by Fagin, Halpern, Moses and Vardi, as well as related results by Lismont. Section 4 reviews the corresponding theorems derived w.r.t. the latter structures by Lismont and Mongin. A general conclusion of the paper is that the axiomatization of CB does not require as strong systems of individual belief as was originally thought — onlymonotonicity has thusfar proved indispensable. Section 5 explains another consequence of general relevance: despite the infinitary nature of CB, the axiom systems of this paper admit of effective decision procedures, i.e., they aredecidable in the logician's sense.     

PEER PRESSURE: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM RESTROOM BEHAVIOR

We provide experimental evidence on the effect of peer pressure on individual behavior. Specifically, we study the effect of being exposed to an observer in a public restroom on handwashing and urinal flushing behavior. Our estimates show that being exposed to an observer increases the probability of handwashing by 13 percentage points and the probability of urinal flushing by 15 percentage points. Given that handwashing and urinal flushing have social benefits that exceed individual benefits, our findings provide support for peer pressure as an additional way of addressing the social suboptimality arising from externalities. (JEL C91, C93)     

Pluralism in Organizations: Learning from Unconventional Forms of Organizations

The bureaucratic organization is still regarded as the conventional organizational form, but is ill‐suited to an increasingly pluralistic world. Research on the variety of organizational forms has increased dramatically over the past three decades and offers the potential to understand better how pluralism is manifested and managed within organizations. However, this research remains fragmented. The purpose of this paper is to review and synthesize research on unconventional organizations to explore how organizations resolve or attenuate the tensions related to pluralism. Drawing from research in leading management journals, it covers seven distinct literatures: ‘referent organization’, ‘temporary organization’, ‘pluralistic organization’, ‘meta‐organization’, ‘bridging organization’, ‘hybrid organization’ and ‘field‐configuring event’. For each literature, the authors trace the genealogy of the key concepts and review their distinct insights regarding organizational pluralism. They then synthesize and discuss their collective contributions and conclude with avenues of research for pluralism in organizations.     

Skills Heterogeneity Among Graduate Workers: Real and Apparent Overeducation in the Spanish Labor Market

This paper takes account of skills heterogeneity among workers with a higher education degree and proposes a new measure to differentiate between real and apparent overeducation based on the level of cognitive skills actually achieved by the individuals. This proposal is applied to the study of the wage effects of overeducation in the Spanish labor market using data from PIAAC. The results suggest that between a quarter and a half of the graduate workers who appear to be overeducated in the Spanish labor market could be considered as being only apparently overeducated since they show a lower level of skills than that corresponding to their educational level or, alternatively, a level of cognitive skills which is commensurate with their job. Different returns are found for each group of overeducated individuals both when compared with adequately educated peers within a similar level of education (with greater wage penalties for apparently overeducated workers) and when the comparison is done with well-matched co-workers doing a similar job (with a wage premium for real overeducation but no significant returns for apparently overeducated workers). These different returns by skill levels beyond what overeducation measures implies that the market distinguishes between education and skills and that educational attainment per se does not perfectly align with acquired skills, meaning that traditional measures of overeducation would overstate the actual level of skills mismatch in the labor market.     

The Food Crisis and its Impacts on Poverty in Senegal and Mali: Crossed Destinies

This article uses two CGE macro‐micro models to analyse the distributional impact of the food crisis and policy responses in two neighbouring African countries, both of which are strongly dependent on agriculture. The approach captures structural differences at both the macro and micro level for household income and expenditure structures, and the results reveal differences for poverty impact at the national and sub‐group levels, as well as for inequality and pro‐poor analysis. The importance of country‐specific analysis and the risk of extrapolating conclusions from one country to another are also highlighted.     

Positivism,ethics and politics in Africa

Despite the fact that the study of African politics is dominated by ethical postures, as can be seen with the self-proclaimed qualifications of African states and leaders, the debate on ethics per se is not common. The first challenge of this article is to address ethics as an entry point for African political studies. The second challenge is epistemological. It is related to my efforts to examine values and ideals as facts that should be considered seriously in political science. Therefore, positivism is not incompatible with values and ideals. They are part of the political universe. In this regard, African politics shows the symbolic triumph of democratic ethics. Current facts militate for the upholding of those values.     

DURATION MODELS FOR CREDIT RATING MIGRATION: EVIDENCE FROM THE FINANCIAL CRISIS

We introduce a specific duration model to analyze the prediction of the credit rating migration. We consider hazard rate processes based on multi‐state autoregressive conditional duration models. To take account of the economic context, we model the conditional mean of the duration between two ratings by means of a latent process. To this purpose, a dynamic‐ordered probit model is developed to describe the directions taken by the ratings in the presence of multiple states. As an illustration, we study the migration of credit rating during periods before and after the financial crisis. (JEL C14, C41, G24)     

Sequential experimental design and response optimisation

We consider the situation where one wants to maximise a functionf(θ,x) with respect tox, with θ unknown and estimated from observationsy _k . This may correspond to the case of a regression model, where one observesy _k =f(θ,x _k )+ε _k , with ε _k some random error, or to the Bernoulli case wherey _k ∈{0, 1}, with Pr[y _k =1|θ,x _k |=f(θ,x _k ). Special attention is given to sequences given by , with an estimated value of θ obtained from (x₁, y₁),...,(x _k ,y _k ) andd _k (x) a penalty for poor estimation. Approximately optimal rules are suggested in the linear regression case with a finite horizon, where one wants to maximize ∑ _i=1 ^N w _i f(θ, x _i ) with {w _i } a weighting sequence. Various examples are presented, with a comparison with a Polya urn design and an up-and-down method for a binary response problem.