Economics, sociobiology and behavioral psychology on preferences

Economists have become increasingly interested in hypotheses from sociobiology as a source of inspiration for filling gaps in the economic model of behavior. To avoid borrowing eclectically and arbitrarily from neighboring disciplines, this paper attempts to outline in a systematic way the similarities and differences between the approaches taken in economics and sociobiology. In doing so, special attention is given to an empirical theory of preferences that is lacking in economics. Here, inspiration from sociobiology would seem to be particularly useful. The considerations in the paper suggest that sociobiological arguments may indeed be helpful, albeit at a very elementary level only. A more comprehensive theory cannot ignore the influences of innate learning mechanisms in higher living beings. An elaborated theory of preferences in economics will have to acknowledge and incorporate insights from behavioral psychology.     

Expected sample moments of concomitants of selected order statistics

In this paper, the task of determining expected values of sample moments, where the sample members have been selected based on noisy information, is considered. This task is a recurring problem in the theory of evolution strategies. Exact expressions for expected values of sums of products of concomitants of selected order statistics are derived. Then, using Edgeworth and Cornish-Fisher approximations, explicit results that depend on coefficients that can be determined numerically are obtained. While the results are exact only for normal populations, it is shown experimentally that including skewness and kurtosis in the calculations can yield greatly improved results for other distributions.     

Hierarchy or co-operation: labour-management relations in church institutions

Aspects of industrial relations and internal co-ordination have been a major topic of empirical research in the German business enterprise sector. In contrast, there are practically no empirical investigations into labour-management relations in third sector institutions. The largest share of this sector in Germany is represented by the two Christian churches with presently about 900,000 employees. According to the notion of church officials, labour-management relations in these institutions are characterised by a specific normative concept which emphasises a trustful co-operation of all employees in the mission of the church. The major concern of our research project focused on the question whether the specific conditions of employment within church institutions favour more hierarchical or more co-operative forms of co-ordination and how employees and employee representatives perceive the ideal of the community of service (Dienstgemeinschaftsgedanke). The results of our research lead to the conclusion that church labour-management relations are characterised by a remarkable contrast between the participative or co-operative notion of the ideal of the community of service and present forms of hierarchical co-ordination inside church institutions.This article gives a selected overview of Beyer and Nutzinger (1991). The research was supported by the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung (Düsseldorf) and the University of Kassel.     

Raising rural women’s voices: From self-silencing to self-expression

Within the context of a community-academic partnership, we undertook a mixed-methods study to identify and explore health status, priorities, and management strategies among aging Wisconsin rural women. A questionnaire measuring diverse wellness needs was administered to women participating in personal development programming offered by a rural nonprofit organization. A subgroup participated in qualitative interviews to deepen the understanding of identified health priorities and methods of coping and healing. Findings provide insight into the prevalence of self-silencing among rural women and highlight mechanisms that help to facilitate the dismantling of self-silencing.     

A critical note on the role of the capability approach for sustainability economics

Can sustainability economics profit from the fusion with Amartya Sen's capability approach, thereby gaining solid normative foundations and wider applicability? We argue that this fusion is mistaken to the extent that the capability approach is essentially a static normative framework while sustainability economics demands a systematic long-term view with focus on wide-ranging societal change. These demands are best realized by taking an evolutionary perspective that focuses on the evolution and development of societies.     

Phonological Specificity in 12‐ and 17‐Month‐Old French‐Speaking Infants

The literature reports some contradictory results on the degree of phonological specificity of infants’ early lexical representations in the Romance language, French, and Germanic languages. It is not clear whether these discrepancies are because of differences in method, in language characteristics, or in participants’ age. In this study, we examined whether 12‐ and 17‐month‐old French‐speaking infants are able to distinguish well‐pronounced from mispronounced words (one or two features of their initial consonant). To this end, 46 infants participated in a preferential looking experiment in which they were presented with pairs of pictures together with a spoken word well pronounced or mispronounced. The results show that both 12‐ and 17‐month‐old infants look longer at the pictures corresponding to well‐pronounced words than to mispronounced words, but show no difference between the two mispronunciation types. These results suggest that, as early as 12 months, French‐speaking infants, like those exposed to Germanic languages, already possess detailed phonological representations of familiar words.     

A hierarchical model for ordinal matrix factorization

This paper proposes a hierarchical probabilistic model for ordinal matrix factorization. Unlike previous approaches, we model the ordinal nature of the data and take a principled approach to incorporating priors for the hidden variables. Two algorithms are presented for inference, one based on Gibbs sampling and one based on variational Bayes. Importantly, these algorithms may be implemented in the factorization of very large matrices with missing entries.     

Contradictions and crises of neoliberal–imperial globalization and the political opportunity structures for the Global Justice Movements

The Global Justice Movements emerged in the context of the contradictions and crisis of neoliberal–imperial globalization and the critique of it. They therefore express and provide a basis for the politicization of the negative consequences of post-Fordism and its crisis. This article examines the structural changes of the last 30 years from a Gramscian perspective of neoliberal globalization as a “passive revolution” and as the deepening of a “imperial mode of living” at a global scale. It is argued that examining structural changes helps us to understand why protest and social movements re-emerged around the year 2000. The article discusses some central features of the Global Justice Movements by focusing on the international Attac movement and the recent Occupy movement.