The Welfare State as Safety Net in Migration Preferences: Empirical Evidence from an Experiment Among Dutch Master Students

Population Research and Policy Review - The welfare state can be perceived as a safety net which helps individuals adjust to situations of risk or transition. Starting from this idea of the welfare...     

Does a universal non-contributory social pension make sense for rural China?

China’s pension reform during the past three decades has allowed a majority of China’s population to be covered by a pension scheme. Of particular note has been the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS), a voluntary programme introduced starting in 2009. One goal of our analysis is to assess that pension scheme, using a variety of sources of information including data drawn from recent (2013 and 2015) nationwide China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Surveys (CHARLS). Our analysis involves an exploration of differences between the generosity and structure of the NRPS and other pension schemes currently in place. We also explore the feasibility of reforming the current “quasi-social pension” component of the NRPS by substituting a universal non-contributory social pension pillar. In connection with our assessment of the NRPS, we note the unusually low benefit levels for rural China.     

Can Children Recognize Bodily Expressions of Emotion?

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior - Past research has demonstrated that children understand distinct emotion concepts and can accurately recognize facial expressions of distinct emotions by a young...     

Price bias and common practice in option pricing

Generally, the semiclosed-form option pricing formula for complex financial models depends on unobservable factors such as stochastic volatility and jump intensity. A popular practice is to use an estimate of these latent factors to compute the option price. However, in many situations this plug-and-play approximation does not yield the appropriate price. This article examines this bias and quantifies its impacts. We decompose the bias into terms that are related to the bias on the unobservable factors and to the precision of their point estimators. The approximated price is found to be highly biased when only the history of the stock price is used to recover the latent states. This bias is corrected when option prices are added to the sample used to recover the states' best estimate. We also show numerically that such a bias is propagated on calibrated parameters, leading to erroneous values. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 48: 8–35; 2020 © 2019 Statistical Society of Canada     

Australia and the Global South: Knowledge and the Ambiguities of Place and Identity

Australia was settled as a colony of Britain from the 17th century, and its early history of violent occupation has gradually given way to a relatively peaceful, wealthy, multicultural society. As a post-colonial country, its people share characteristics with those of Britain, but, as a multicultural society, national identity is increasingly influenced by the cultures of many countries, from both the global North and South. In this paper, the question of Australia's placement as a country of the global North or South is explored. Considerations of geography, the economy, political regimes and national identity are the backdrop to an investigation of Australian scholarship and the attitudes of scholars to the inclusion of Australia as a country of the global South.     

BayesProject: Fast computation of a projection direction for multivariate changepoint detection

Statistics and Computing - This article focuses on the challenging problem of efficiently detecting changes in mean within multivariate data sequences. Multivariate changepoints can be detected by...     

Myriad potential for mentoring: Understanding the process of transformational change through a gender equality intervention

This article contributes to understanding transformational change towards gender equality by examining the transformational change potential of a mentoring programme for women, a type of gender equality intervention both criticized and praised for its ability to bring about change. Drawing upon an empirical case study of a mentoring programme for women academics in a Dutch university, we explore three dimensions of transformational change: organizational members (i) discussing and reflecting upon gendered organizational norms and work practices; (ii) creating new narratives; and (iii) experimenting with new work practices. Our findings indicate five specific conditions that enable transformational change: cross‐mentoring, questioning what is taken for granted, repeating participation and individual stories, facilitating peer support networks and addressing and equipping all participants as change agents. We suggest that these conditions should be taken into account when (re)designing effective organizational gender equality interventions.