Secondary issues and party politics: an application to environmental policy

This article develops a political economy model to assess the interplay between party formation and an environmental policy dimension viewed as secondary to the redistributive dimension. We define being a secondary issue in terms of the intensity of preferences over this issue rather than in terms of the proportion of voters who care for the environment. Equilibrium policies are the outcome of an electoral competition game between endogenous parties. We obtain the following results: (i) The Pigouvian tax never emerges in an equilibrium; (ii) The equilibrium environmental tax is larger when there is a minority of green voters; (iii) Stable green parties exist only if there is a minority of green voters and income polarization is large enough relative to the saliency of the environmental issue. We also study the redistributive policies advocated by green parties.     

Identity cues and dementia in nursing home intervention

This study examines the identity cues that family caregivers and healthcare personnel use with seniors living with dementia and living in nursing homes. The identity cues represent biographical knowledge used to stimulate the dementia sufferer, trigger signals and incite interaction. Our grounded approach hinges on three objectives: to identify and categorize identity cues; to document their uses; and to gain a better understanding of their effectiveness. We interviewed nine family caregivers and 12 healthcare workers. Qualitative data indicates that the participants use identity cues that evoke seniors' sociological, relational and individual characteristics. These identity cues play a central role in communication and constitute important information that the family caregivers can share with healthcare personnel. They sustain memory, facilitate care and reinforce seniors' self-value. These results help to define identity, foster a greater role for family caregivers, and constitute a sound basis for the implementation of personalized interventions.     

Peakedness‐Based Staffing for Call Center Outsourcing

This study considers the staffing problem of a vendor call center in a co‐sourcing setting. The aim is to take short‐term variability and correlations in time for call arrivals at such a vendor call center into account. To do so, peakedness is proposed as a useful measure of the burstiness in the arrival stream. The study empirically demonstrates the presence of bursty arrivals at a call center and proposes an approach to the measurement of the peakedness of the arrival stream making use of standard call center data. The problematic nature of bursty arrivals in the context of call center co‐sourcing is demonstrated along with an asymptotic result establishing that the problem persists in large call centers. The study then analyzes two peakedness‐based staffing methods: one which is a well known extension of the square root staffing rule and another which makes use of the Hayward approximation principles. Both approaches are simple and enable the vendor to improve its staffing procedure with good accuracy.     

Analysing Low Intensity Conflict in Africa using Press Reports

In the absence of reliable and unbiased sources in most African countries, press reports can serve to evaluate some specific causes of death, on condition that a political analysis of the relation between the press and the political power is conducted. Tested on data collected from a leading Kenyan newspaper, the method proposed here is used to conduct a historical and geographical analysis of deaths due to police violence, community clashes and banditry. It also helps to point out the discrepancies between the press discourses on insecurity and political violence, and the reality of deaths reported by the very same press.     

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF GUEST REVIEWERS

Two‐month‐old infants (N = 29) participated in face‐to‐face interactions with their mothers and with strangers. The contingent responsiveness for smiles and vocalizations, while attending to the partner, was assessed for each partner in both interactions. For smiles and for vocalizations, infants were less responsive to the stranger relative to the mother when the stranger's contingent responsiveness was either more contingent or less contingent than that of the mother. Results are supportive of the hypothesis that young infants develop sensitivities to levels of social contingency present in their maternal interactions, which influence their responsiveness to others.     

可再生能源国际政策的进程和前景

由于可再生能源问题涉及环境、经济、政治等诸多因素,同时,它也不是一个国家的权利或义务,必须通过国际合作方式才能得到全球利益最大化.可再生能源政策的国际合作正在蓬勃发展.具体而言,国际合作的行动主要有六种类型,每种类型均在国际政策形成的进程中发挥着不同的功能.因为存在众多的、关系复杂的相关国际组织,可再生能源的国际政策正在形成一个由核心协议和补充计划组成的框架体系.其中,谈判达成的普遍性协议是核心的,其他形式的行动和计划都是补充性质的.补充性行动和计划也是可再生能源国际合作进程中的重要组成部分,它们推动了普遍性国际政策协议的形成,是可再生能源国际政策的前景所在.