Effect of COVID-19 on Household Food Insecurity and Poverty: Evidence from Ghana

Social Indicators Research - Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and its heavy toll on the global community and humanity, a fierce debate on the pandemic and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)...     

Whom should we believe? Aggregation of heterogeneous beliefs

We examine the collective risk attitude of a group with heterogeneous beliefs. We prove that the wealth-dependent probability distribution used by the representative agent is biased in favor of the beliefs of the more risk tolerant consumers. Moreover, increasing disagreement on the state probability raises the state probability of the representative agent. It implies that when most disagreements are concentrated in the tails of the distribution, the perceived collective risk is magnified. This can help to solve the equity premium puzzle. We show that the trade volume and the equity premium are positively correlated.

The economics of adding and subdividing independent risks: Some comparative statics results

In this paper we address the problem of determining whether adding independent risks or subdividing them is a good substitute for insurance. Despite the fact that accepting more i.i.d. risks increases total risk, it is shown that some risk-averse decision makers can rationally reduce their demand for insurance by doing so. Similarly, a better diversified portfolio of i.i.d. risky assets can rationally be more insured, even if diversification is a risk-reduction scheme. We derive conditions sufficient to obtain unambiguous comparative statics results. Assuming that absolute risk aversion is decreasing and that the fourth derivative of the utility function is positive, we show that diversification is an exceptionally good substitute for insurance. Under the same conditions, adding independent risks to wealth reduces the demand for insurance on each unit.     

The East Asian welfare model

This article aims to outline main features of the East Asian welfare model, to understand its past development and assess lessons that can be learned for other developing and developed countries. It describes the particular path of welfare state development in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, by focusing particularly on developmental and political aspects of welfare state development. In the final part of the study, particular features of the East Asian welfare model are outlined, and thus the existence of a distinct, ideal-typical welfare regime in East Asia substantiated.     

Differences in the Seriousness of Problems and Deservingness of Help: Swedish Social Workers' Assessments of Single Mothers and Fathers

In this vignette study, three hypotheses concerning differencesin social workers’ assessment off single fathers and mothersare tested: first, that single fathers with custody of theirchildren, who have problems similar to those often faced bysingle mothers, are assessed as having more serious problemsthan the mothers; secondly, that single fathers in such a situationtend to be assessed as being less deserving of support thansingle mothers in the same situation; thirdly, that the helpoffered to both sexes follows gender-traditional patterns. Theresults support the hypotheses. The overall problems and mentalhealth tended to be assessed as more serious in the case ofthe father than in the case of the mother. The single fatherwas assessed as being more responsible for his situation. Thesingle mother was assessed as being in need of assistance inmore areas and more varied social welfare measures were recommendedfor her than for the father. Finally, the results also showthat only support which could enable the client to obtain paidwork and be able to pay off the debts on his car was given higherpriority in the case of the father.     

Cross-country determinants of life satisfaction: exploring different determinants across groups in society

This paper explores a wide range of cross-country determinants of life satisfaction exploiting a database of 90,000 observations in 70 countries. We distinguish four groups of aggregate variables as potential determinants of satisfaction: political, economic, institutional, and human development and culture. We use ordered probit to investigate the importance of these variables on individual life satisfaction and test the robustness of our results with Extreme Bounds Analysis. The results show that only a small number of factors, such as openness, business climate, postcommunism, the number of chambers in parliament, Christian majority, and infant mortality, robustly influence life satisfaction across countries while the importance of many variables suggested in the previous literature is not confirmed. This remains largely true when the analysis splits national populations according to gender, income, and political orientation also. We thank Stephen Lea, participants at the 30th IAREP conference in Prague and the referees of this journal for comments on earlier versions. Gilles Winkler provided excellent research assistance.     

On moment indeterminacy of the Benini income distribution

The Benini distribution is a lognormal-like distribution generalizing the Pareto distribution. Like the Pareto and the lognormal distributions it was originally proposed for modeling economic size distributions, notably the size distribution of personal income. This paper explores a probabilistic property of the Benini distribution, showing that it is not determined by the sequence of its moments although all the moments are finite. It also provides explicit examples of distributions possessing the same set of moments. Related distributions are briefly explored.     

The value of rescheduling functionality within standard MRP packages

One of the basic functions of an MRP system is to issue rescheduling messages that urge the planner tospeed up or slow down open orders. It seems in practice that these messages are not used at all by planners. This is mostly due to the inaccuracy of MRP, that more or less ignores safety time, safety stocks and lotsize flexibility in the calculation of reschedule-in messages. Reschedule-out messages are usually ignored because planners do not see the value of the message. Other reasons for not adhering to rescheduling messages are a lack of maintenance of MRP parameters or simply the wrong use of the MRP function. In the future, MRP rescheduling functionality will be used even less than today, due to the changing role of MRP within the planning framework. With the uprise of finite capacity scheduling packages, MRP is being pushed one level upward in the planning hierarchy. This means that rescheduling functionalities for the short term will become completely obsolete in MRP systems.     

Engendering Response: Professional Gesture and the Assessment of Eyesight in Optometry Consultations

Many of the procedures undertaken within healthcare require specialized forms of participation that may be unfamiliar, even disturbing, to patients or clients. The practitioner has to encourage and enable participation in the investigation in an appropriate fashion while preserving the structure and integrity of the procedure. In this article, we consider optometry and the deployment of a vision test, known as subject refraction, that provides data to help determine the characteristics of any corrective lens that may be required by clients. The procedure's ability to establish robust and reliable data relies upon the optometrist's ability to encourage the client to respond to a series of stimuli without consideration or reflection. That is, the client is required to produce an unwitting response—conduct that might be considered nonsymbolic rather than symbolic. In this article, we also consider the optometrist's talk and bodily comportment during subjective refraction and how it serves to shape and determine the quality of the client's response and participation, and in turn to produce reliable test results.