Barriers to girls' education in Mozambique at household and community levels: an exploratory study

Although education of children is universally accepted as a leading mechanism of poverty eradication and social development, many developing nations continue to struggle in achieving gender parity in primary and secondary education. While Mozambique has recently accelerated its efforts to reduce this gap, girls are still enrolled and attending school at a much lower rate than boys. The present study explored the barriers to children's – especially girls' – education in central Mozambique, based on information on 738 children in two separate communities. Household, child, environmental, and social/cultural factors are examined in the context of global and regional data. The study found girls to be impacted more negatively by every correlating factor, including the lingering practice, in rural areas, of early marriage. Policy and research implications are discussed.     

Optimal Acquisition and Sorting Policies for Remanufacturing

The condition of the used items acquired by remanufacturers is often highly variable, and sorting is an important aspect of remanufacturing operations. Sorting policies—the rules specifying which used products should be remanufactured and which should be scrapped—have received limited attention in the literature. In this paper, we examine the case of a remanufacturer who acquires unsorted used products as needed from third party brokers. As more used items are acquired for a given demand, the remanufacturer can be more selective when sorting. Thus, two related decisions are made: how many used items to acquire, and how selective to be during the sorting process. We derive optimal acquisition and sorting policies in the presence of used product condition variability for a remanufacturer facing both deterministic and uncertain demand. We show the existence of a single optimal acquisition and sorting policy with a simple structure and show that this policy is independent of production amount when acquisition costs are linear.     

Efficient algorithms for shared backup allocation in networks with partial information

We study efficient algorithms for establishing reliable connections with bandwidth guarantees in communication networks. In the normal mode of operation, each connection uses a primary path to deliver packets from the source to the destination. To ensure continuous operation in the event of an edge failure, each connection uses a set of backup bridges, each bridge protecting a portion of the primary path. To meet the bandwidth requirement of the connection, a certain amount of bandwidth must be allocated the edges of the primary path, as well as on the backup edges. In this paper, we focus on minimizing the amount of required backup allocation by sharing backup bandwidth among different connections. We consider efficient sharing schemes that require only partial information about the current state of the network. Specifically, the only information available for each edge is the total amount of primary allocation and the cost of allocating backup bandwidth on this edge. We consider the problem of finding a minimum cost backup allocation together with a set of bridges for a given primary path. We prove that this problem is NP-hard and present an approximation algorithm whose performance is within of the optimum, where n is the number of edges in the primary path. We also consider the problem of finding both a primary path and backup allocation of minimal total cost. A preliminary version of this paper appears in the Proceedings of 13th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms - ESA 2005, Mallorca, Spain. J. (Seffi) Naor: This research is supported in part by a foundational and strategical research grant from the Israeli Ministry of Science, and by a US-Israel BSF Grant 2002276.     

An algorithm for the estimation of poisson regressions involving structural change

We consider the estimation of Poisson regression models in which structural variation in a subset of the parameters is permitted. It is noted that coventional estimation algorithms are likely to impose restrictions on the number of explanatory variables and the number of structural regimes. We propose an alternative algorithm that implements partitioned matrix inversion and thereby avoids restictions on the size of the model. The algorithm is applied to a model of shopping behavior Adjustments in the algorithm necessary for dealing with censored data are detailed.     

A modified Monty Hall problem

Theory and Decision - We conduct a laboratory experiment using the Monty Hall problem to study how simplified examples improve learning behavior and correct irrational choices in...     

State,Commune and Gender Inequality Among Teachers in Rural and Small-Town China, 1957–1979

Studies of Maoist China have suggested that workplace gender inequality was greater in rural areas than cities. One possible explanation is that this was a result of the different institutional arrangements that governed rural and urban spaces. Another alternative is that different ideologies were associated with different types of work irrespective of institutional context. This article examines this through an analysis of teachers in Guangdong and Jiangsu. Some teachers were employed by the state in the same way that urban workers were, while others were employed by village-level administrations within communes. Levels of gender inequality were not majorly different between the two groups of teachers. In both groups there was a high degree of pay equality in comparison to other types of work. Other types of gender inequalities existed in teaching, but their effects were mitigated by the unintended consequences of structural changes in education during the Cultural Revolution.     

Does parenting correspond with children's defending behavior? Examining linkages in the context of peer social preference

Bullying intervention research points to the important role of children standing up for victims (defending behavior). This study provides an initial look at how certain parenting practices may be generally related to the socialization of defending behavior among children. Defenders typically enjoy significant social status, allowing them the social capital to intervene. With this in mind, we also assess how parenting and children's social preference scores might uniquely or interactively predict defending behavior. This cross‐sectional study employs a sample of 219 (101 boys) fourth‐grade children living in the Western United States. Both mothers and fathers self‐reported their authoritative, authoritarian, and psychologically controlling parenting practices. A peer sociometric assessment provided each child's social preference score. Peer nominations provided each child's reputation for defending behaviors. Multiple regression results showed that a few of the parenting dimensions significantly predicted girls’ defending behavior above and beyond peer social preference. In contrast, the defending behavior scores of boys were unrelated to parenting. Finally, we used interaction analyses to probe whether the association between defending and parenting meaningfully varies according to children's levels of social preference. We did not find evidence to support this. We discuss the ramifications of these findings for future research.