Voting for president in the U.S.-Mexico border region

Reasoning that life in the U.S.-Mexico border region is sufficiently different from life in non-border regions this paper asks whether proximity to the border has a significant impact on presidential voting. County level data from four border states, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, over five presidential elections, 1992-2008, are examined using a both cross-sectional and panel data analysis. The authors conclude that there is a border effect that favors Democratic candidates and that fades as distance from the border increases.     

Two definitions of collegiality and their inter-relation: The case of a Roman Catholic diocese

Against the backdrop of the conflict observed between managers and professionals, two definitions of collegiality emerge: on one hand, a specific organizational form (bottom up) and, on the other, a procedure of bureaucratic management (top down). A study of networks of priests in a Roman Catholic diocese in France is used to explore how those two definitions are related. Questions are raised as to the effects of a too narrow organizational rationalization that uses collegiality only as a top down, bureaucratic, managerial procedure. This always entails the risk of making the work done by experts sterile because it overlooks the first type of collegiality, which is based on the nature of non-routine tasks that members perform together thanks to an endogenous organizational structure of a bottom up type.     

“Making work pay” in a rationed labor market

This paper empirically analyzes the labor supply effects of two “making work pay” reforms in Germany. We provide evidence in favor of policies that distinguish between low effort and low productivity by targeting individuals with low wages rather than those with low earnings. We discuss our results more generally and with comparisons to the family-based tax credits in force in the US and the UK. For the evaluation of the policies, we apply a static structural labor supply framework and explicitly account for demand-side constraints by using a double-hurdle model.     

DATA‐DRIVEN SMOOTH TESTS AND A DIAGNOSTIC TOOL FOR LACK‐OF‐FIT FOR CIRCULAR DATA

Two contributions to the statistical analysis of circular data are given. First we construct data‐driven smooth goodness‐of‐fit tests for the circular von Mises assumption. As a second method, we propose a new graphical diagnostic tool for the detection of lack‐of‐fit for circular distributions. We illustrate our methods on two real datasets.     

过去与当代教育模式在亚洲国家的比较：印度、东南亚、中国

人类学目前还较少关注于教育问题,但研究教育有助于我们更好地理解不同的亚洲社会面对现代化所采取的应对措施。基于让-马克?德格拉夫（Jean-Marc de Grave）主编的《东亚国家正式与非正式教育：社会化及学习内容的关系》（2012）一书,本文将论及新型教育模式：印度英语的普及;印度和印度尼西亚现代学校的建立;印度尼西亚新兴的捕鱼技术;泰国克伦族人对“生态传统”的推广;中国村庄“故事堂”的成立;印度传统舞姬的消失以及当代社会家境良好的家庭对年轻女孩学习舞蹈的重视,并探讨不同社会中“传统”教育模式的同质性与价值观层面上的共通性,以及随着新型教育模式的引入,这些社会在教育领域所经历的不同程度的转型。     

Behavior in the loss domain: An experiment using the probability trade-off consistency condition

In gambles with two or more outcomes, the two versions of prospect theory, i.e., original prospect theory and cumulative prospect theory, make use of different composition rules and therefore yield different valuations of gambles. We test these composition rules in the loss domain using the probability trade-off consistency condition. The probability trade-off consistency condition offers a convenient and efficient way to compare gambles under risk and decision makers’ behavior. Experimental findings suggest that the rank dependent version of prospect theory, or cumulative prospect theory, cannot be rejected in the loss domain while original prospect theory is clearly rejected when a certainty effect is taken into account.     

Learning from your neighbor: tax-benefit systems swaps in Latin America

Over the last decades, Latin American countries have experienced a noticeable decrease in income inequality. While this trend is mainly associated with a decline in wage inequality, progressive reforms of the tax-benefit systems of the region may have played a role. While redistributive systems in Latin America are still in their infancy, they are constantly expanding and do so at different pace in the region. To investigate this point in a comparative way, the present study exploits newly developed tax-benefit microsimulation models for Ecuador and Colombia. These two neighboring countries show contrasted situations in terms of income distribution and we characterize the extent to which this difference is explained by different tax-benefit systems. The comparative nature of our microsimulation models allows us to swap tax-benefit systems between countries to produce counterfactual simulations whereby the system of a country is applied to the population of the other. In this way, we can decompose the total country difference in income distribution to extract the role of different tax-benefit policies. We confirm that the Ecuadorean system is more redistributive and quantify the difference: if the Ecuadorean system was applied to the Colombian population, the Gini coefficient would be reduced by 1.7 points in Colombia. Headcount poverty would decrease by around 10% and the intensity of poverty by up to 14.7%. This analysis contributes to the recent literature on the redistributive role of tax-benefit systems in Latin America and highlights the role of microsimulation techniques to show how countries in the region can learn from each other in order to improve social protection and reduce income inequality.     

生产性破坏:破坏作为社会生活的中心组织形式

This paper is a reflection on observations about the place of destruction in the or-ganization of social life .In contemplating the model of sacrifice , the author draws upon sources ranging Hubert, Mauss, and Evan-Pritchard to Levi-Strauss, and considers the circumstances of his life as a scholar of Melanesia and as a resident of the United States .The question that in-trigues the author the most is：＂ what quality is there in social life that makes destruction so often the condition of creation？＂ The author names this kind of destruction as a productive destruction and gives an analysis .He argues that destruction not only makes creation possible , it also pro-duces the conditions for the formation of not just difference , but a rank order or hierarchy .He suggests that it is not religion which creates the ritual hierarchies of power and destruction , but the latter which gets taken up by religion and ritual , and, thence, by the development of forms of social order .