Should Industrial Policy in Developing Countries Conform to Comparative Advantage or Defy it? A Debate Between Justin Lin and Ha‐Joon Chang

This is the first in an occasional series of DPR Debates, designed to illuminate specific issues of international development policy. Each debate will bring together two well‐known researchers or practitioners, giving them the opportunity, over three rounds, to test and challenge each other's ideas. The debates are intended to be robust but accessible, rooted in rigorous research but useful to the wide readership of Development Policy Review.     

Why Is There So Little Migrant Settlement in East Asia?1

Unlike states in Europe, East Asia settles very few migrants and has not developed a European‐style multicultural society. We seek to explain this variation using comparative analysis of two of the most advanced states in East Asia, South Korea and Japan, with several states in Europe. Focusing on family reunification – almost always the precursor to migrant settlement – we examine the effects of several independent variables, including supranational institutions, independent courts, interest groups, political culture, and the perceptions of migrants. We conclude that both Korea and Japan have less migrant settlement because of the lack of regional institutions pushing for family reunification rights, an elite political culture that still maintains the assumptions and repertoires of a “developmental state,” where rights may be sacrificed for economic growth and order, and migrant perceptions of greater immigration control in Asia.     

Risk aversion in expected intertemporal discounted utilities bandit problems

We consider a situation where an individual is facing an uncertain situation, but may costly alter his knowledge of the uncertainties. We study in this context how risk aversion may modify the individual search behavior. We consider a one-armed bandit problem (where one arm is safe and the other is risky) and study how the agent risk aversion can change the sequence of arms selected. The main result is that when the utility function is more concave, the agent has more chances to select the safe arm. We also discuss how search is affected by risk aversion.     

Predictors of Adolescent Participation in Organized Activities: A Five‐Year Longitudinal Study

This study examined (a) growth curves of youth participation in sports, performance and fine arts, and youth clubs throughout the high school years and (b) the associations between a series of predictors and the initial participation rates and growth over time. The predictors included individual, friend, and family factors. The moderating effect of youths' gender was also examined. Study participants were 272 youths (55% girls, M_age=12.4 years) and their parents. The predictors were assessed in Grade 6 and were based on reports by youths, parents, teachers, and classmates. Participation in organized activities was assessed annually from Grades 7 to 10. Altogether, the findings revealed that participation in sports, performance and fine arts, and youth clubs remains stable across the high school years. However, interindividual differences were found in the participation growth curves. This variation was predicted by individual, friend, and family factors, mostly with respect to sports activities.     

Organizational Change and Representations of Women in a North American Utility Company

Using a critical sensemaking approach, this article explores the process that leads to the formation of different types of masculinity over time. In particular it looks at organizational change programmes, the subsequent representation of organizational men and women in corporate documents and the consequences this has on the gendering of organizational culture. Annual reports from a North American electrical company, Nova Scotia Power, which underwent significant changes between 1972–2001, are used to show how the company's masculinist cultures were reflected in company policies and portrayed in the images and text in these documents. The focus of this article is on how strategic change programmes influenced different notions of masculinity over time, how these understandings were enacted through organizational policies, how this identity was (unconsciously) portrayed in images and text and what effects this had on the gendering of organizational culture.     

Smoothing parameter selection methods for nonparametric regression with spatially correlated errors

When spatial data are correlated, currently available data‐driven smoothing parameter selection methods for nonparametric regression will often fail to provide useful results. The authors propose a method that adjusts the generalized cross‐validation criterion for the effect of spatial correlation in the case of bivariate local polynomial regression. Their approach uses a pilot fit to the data and the estimation of a parametric covariance model. The method is easy to implement and leads to improved smoothing parameter selection, even when the covariance model is misspecified. The methodology is illustrated using water chemistry data collected in a survey of lakes in the Northeastern United States.     

Extreme behaviour for bivariate elliptical distributions

The authors examine the asymptotic behaviour of conditional threshold exceedance probabilities for an elliptically distributed pair (X, Y) of random variables. More precisely, they investigate the limiting behaviour of the conditional distribution of Y given that X becomes extreme. They show that this behaviour differs between regularly and rapidly varying tails.