Psychometric Evaluation of the Malay Satisfaction With Life Scale

The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) is one of the most widely used scales for the measurement of subjective well-being across the globe, but no satisfactory version exists for use among Malay-speaking populations. The present study reports on the translation of a new Malay SWLS and examines its psychometric properties in a community sample of 816 Malay and 738 Chinese participants from Malaysia. Results showed that the Malay SWLS had good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.83). Confirmatory factor analysis showed support for a unidimensional factor structure which remained invariant across sex and ethnic group. These results suggest that the Malay SWLS is a valid and reliable measure of life satisfaction for Malay-speaking samples, and extends the list of available scales for measuring subjective well-being among such groups.     

Neonatal imitation: Temporal characteristics in imitative response patterns

Neonatal imitation has been an area that has attracted intense attention within developmental psychology. Reported here are data from 33 newborn infants (16 girls; mean age: 47 hr) assessed for imitation of tongue protrusion (TP) and mouth opening (MO). The stimuli were presented dynamically, in three 20‐second‐long gesture modeling intervals, interwoven with three 20‐second‐long intervals in which the presenter kept a passive face. Imitation of TP emerged among a majority of the infants during the first 60 s of the experiment. In contrast, MO showed a protracted response and a majority exhibited imitation after 60 s. The individual response pattern of the participating infants varied substantially over the course of the experiment. The study provides renewed support for neonatal imitation of MO and TP, and, in addition, suggests that the temporal organization of the responses observed is an important factor to consider, which in turn has methodological and theoretical implications.     

Bank Efficiency in Transitional Countries: Sensitivity to Stochastic Frontier Design

This article provides an empirical insight on the heterogeneity in the estimates of banking efficiency produced by the stochastic frontier approach. Using data from five countries of Central and Eastern Europe, we study the sensitivity of the efficiency score and the efficiency ranking to a change in the design of the frontier. We found that the average scores are significantly smaller when the transcendental logarithmic functional form is used in the profit efficiency measurement and when the scaling effect is neglected in the cost efficiency measurement. The implied bank ranking is robust to changes in the stochastic frontier definition for cost efficiency, but not for profit efficiency.     

Religion, Religiousness and Fertility in the US and in Europe

This article aims to assess the role of religion and religiousness in engendering higher US fertility compared to Europe. Religion is important in the life of one-half of US women, whereas not even for one of six Europeans. By every available measure, American women are more religious than European women. Catholic and Protestant women have notably higher fertility than those not belonging to any denomination in the US and across Europe. In all European regions and in the United States as well as among all denominations the more devout have more children. However, women in Northern and Western Europe who are the least religious have equivalent or even higher fertility than women in the US, and notably higher fertility than those in Southern Europe. This suggests that forces other than religion and religiousness are also important in their impact on childbearing. A multivariate analysis demonstrates that relatively “traditional” socio-economic covariates (age, marital status, residence, education, and income) do not substantially change the positive association of religiousness and fertility. Finally, if Europeans were as religious as Americans one might theoretically expect a small fertility increase for Europe as a whole, but considerably more for Western Europe.     

Enhancing the capabilities of emigration countries to protect men and women destined for low-skilled employment: the case of the Philippines

This study examined policies in receiving countries, evaluated their effectiveness in protecting low skilled Filipino migrant workers, and discusses the potential for quantifying and objectifying labor migrant gains or losses. Data were obtained from focus groups among 10 technical managers of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration and interviews with 10 policy-makers in order to establish a hierarchy of aims in labor migration and policy indicators. The aims are identified as good jobs abroad, an orderly process, efficient and fair recruitment, and easy transfers of remittances. Findings are that Philippine policies facilitate remittance transfers. Government was least effective in ensuring orderliness. Government was fairly effective in ensuring fairness and efficiency and ensuring good jobs overseas. It succeeded the most in ensuring that nationals can easily transfer their earnings. Allocation data reveal that more resources were expended on searching for good jobs and least on fairness and efficiency. Remittances increased after mandatory remittances were ended as imposed by the Marcos regime. De-skilling often resulted from overseas employment, but rehired workers received better pay on their second and third assignments. This research was exploratory and more research is needed for developing sensitive indicators and refining the process of evaluating key government policies. The Philippine Development Policy that encourages labor migration and protection of overseas workers is a necessity during the ongoing Asian economic crisis.     

On the necessary and sufficient conditions for Nash implementation

The purpose of this paper is to provide a constructive way of checking whether or not a social choice correspondence can be implemented in Nash equilibria. The results apply when there are two or more players. The usefulness of this constructive approach is illustrated for the case of single-peaked preferences over , a two-person public good economy with monotonic preferences, and a two-person exchange economy with monotonic preferences.I am grateful to Rajeev Bhattacharya, William Thomson, Takehiko Yamato, and an anonymous referee, for helpful comments. This research was supported by grants from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.