Understanding Gaps Between the Risk Perceptions of Wildland–Urban Interface (WUI) Residents and Wildfire Professionals

Research across a variety of risk domains finds that the risk perceptions of professionals and the public differ. Such risk perception gaps occur if professionals and the public understand individual risk factors differently or if they aggregate risk factors into overall risk differently. The nature of such divergences, whether based on objective inaccuracies or on differing perspectives, is important to understand. However, evidence of risk perception gaps typically pertains to general, overall risk levels; evidence of and details about mismatches between the specific level of risk faced by individuals and their perceptions of that risk is less available. We examine these issues with a paired data set of professional and resident assessments of parcel‐level wildfire risk for private property in a wildland–urban interface community located in western Colorado, United States. We find evidence of a gap between the parcel‐level risk assessments of a wildfire professional and numerous measures of residents’ risk assessments. Overall risk ratings diverge for the majority of properties, as do judgments about many specific property attributes and about the relative contribution of these attributes to a property's overall level of risk. However, overall risk gaps are not well explained by many factors commonly found to relate to risk perceptions. Understanding the nature of these risk perception gaps can facilitate improved communication by wildfire professionals about how risks can be mitigated on private lands. These results also speak to the general nature of individual‐level risk perception.     

Topological Performance Measures as Surrogates for Physical Flow Models for Risk and Vulnerability Analysis for Electric Power Systems

Critical infrastructure systems must be both robust and resilient in order to ensure the functioning of society. To improve the performance of such systems, we often use risk and vulnerability analysis to find and address system weaknesses. A critical component of such analyses is the ability to accurately determine the negative consequences of various types of failures in the system. Numerous mathematical and simulation models exist that can be used to this end. However, there are relatively few studies comparing the implications of using different modeling approaches in the context of comprehensive risk analysis of critical infrastructures. In this article, we suggest a classification of these models, which span from simple topologically‐oriented models to advanced physical‐flow‐based models. Here, we focus on electric power systems and present a study aimed at understanding the tradeoffs between simplicity and fidelity in models used in the context of risk analysis. Specifically, the purpose of this article is to compare performance estimates achieved with a spectrum of approaches typically used for risk and vulnerability analysis of electric power systems and evaluate if more simplified topological measures can be combined using statistical methods to be used as a surrogate for physical flow models. The results of our work provide guidance as to appropriate models or combinations of models to use when analyzing large‐scale critical infrastructure systems, where simulation times quickly become insurmountable when using more advanced models, severely limiting the extent of analyses that can be performed.     

Contextualization and Context Theorizing in Teams Research: A Look Back and a Path Forward

In this paper we review recent field research on teams in the workplace with the objective to help advance research about teams and their external context. We investigate contextualization by reviewing the research settings in which teams have been studied, and we investigate context theorizing by reviewing work where external context variables have been explicitly modeled. We propose guidelines to improve contextualization and avenues to explore context theorizing.     

The Optimal Income Taxation of Couples

This paper analyzes the general nonlinear optimal income tax for couples, a multidimensional screening problem. Each couple consists of a primary earner who always participates in the labor market, but makes an hours‐of‐work choice, and a secondary earner who chooses whether or not to work. If second‐earner participation is a signal of the couple being better (worse) off, we prove that optimal tax schemes display a positive tax (subsidy) on secondary earnings and that the tax (subsidy) on secondary earnings decreases with primary earnings and converges to zero asymptotically. We present calibrated microsimulations for the United Kingdom showing that decreasing tax rates on secondary earnings is quantitatively significant and consistent with actual income tax and transfer programs.     

Bildung and intercultural understanding

The concept of Bildung, sometimes translated as self-cultivation, is located at the core of an influential tradition of educational thought. A key question concerns the relationship between Bildung and interculturality. Drawing on Wilhelm von Humboldt and Hans-Georg Gadamer, and on the so-called transformative learning theory, Bildung can be interpreted as a process of transforming one’s meaning perspective in encounters with others. A meaning perspective is a set of largely implicit presuppositions underlying one’s habitual ways of thinking, feeling and acting. Confrontation with alternative perspectives can be an opportunity to become aware of one’s own perspective, to critically assess it and to transform it. Thus conceived, Bildung is closely related to interculturality.     

Hidden Eating Disorders: Attachment and Affect Regulation in the Therapeutic Relationship

From the time I began working at a clinic that specialized in therapy with individuals with eating disorders, I have repeatedly encountered cases of clients hiding these symptoms from their therapists. When they finally do reveal the disorder, their therapists often worry that their clients are more disturbed than they thought and that, they, the therapists, did something wrong in the therapy. Although some therapeutic rupture can be part of the picture, I have found that these disclosures often reflect a client’s growing trust in the therapist’s presence and ability to help with feelings that have been, until now, dealt with through the eating behaviors themselves. In my attempts to understand what happens before and after an individual shares a hidden eating disorder with a therapist, I have found ideas from attachment theory, in particular those that explore links between attachment, affect regulation, and self-reflection, to be very helpful. Many authors have noted that eating disorders are related to problems with attachment, loss and separation, and affect regulation. Difficulties in these areas make it hard for clients to be self-reflective or use insight productively. In this article, I discuss my experience with the integration of these dynamics, which I have found to be key to successful psychotherapy with clients who hide their eating disorders.

Developmental outcomes after five years for foster children returned home, remaining in care, or adopted

A substantial proportion of children who enter foster care in the US are infants or toddlers and will exit from foster care before they have been in care for long, either returning home or to adoption. These first years of involvement may predict a significant amount about children's longer term development so understanding developmental outcomes after five years is valuable to understanding if child welfare services (CWS) are serving the intention of promoting the well-being of children. A subsample of 353 infants (less than 13 months of age when investigated by CWS) and subsequently placed into foster care were selected from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being. After 66 months, these infants had been reunified, adopted, or were still in foster care. Bivariate comparisons were completed. Statistical controls for maltreatment type and severity, demographic traits, and current caregiver education were implemented to help clarify the role of terminal child welfare placement, current caregiver behaviors, and household income, on eight linear regression models of developmental outcomes. Results support the longstanding tenet of child welfare services policy that remaining in foster care is less developmentally advantageous than having a more permanent arrangement of return home or adoption.     

Democracy: The Rule of the 'Demos' - Who is That? The Inherent Contradictions of Modern 'Democratic' Mass Societies

Real-existing democracies tend towards ethnocracies and closed-shop systems. Over-coming the crisis of democracy necessitates its transformation in a new 'commonwealth of persons'. This, in turn, requires the re-theorizing of political action, including of the role of political parties, and the reclaiming of citizenship based on responsibility.     

A WHITER SHADE OF PALE: ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF REGULATORY INSTRUMENTS

We consider an intertemporal policy game between changing governments that differ in their attitudes towards a particular feature of market outcomes, exemplified with environmental pollution. When in power, a government will choose policy instruments and set strictness of regulation with a view to influencing the policy of future, possibly different, governments. We demonstrate that a “brown” government favours emission quotas over effluent taxes, as quotas establish property rights that are costly to reverse. Conversely, a “green” government prefers to regulate by taxes, in order to limit the incentives of future brown governments to ease regulations. Strategic behaviour tends to exaggerate policy differences (making green governments greener and brown governments browner) compared to when such strategic considerations were not an issue. (JEL: D81, D9, H23, L51, Q28, Q38)