SOCIAL BACKGROUND,EDUCATION, AND INEQUALITY

The role parents' education plays for the educational achievements of children is a source of unequal opportunities. Through this channel the number of educated affects the options of future cohorts, creating a social multiplier effect making improvements in education self‐reinforcing. Policies to compensate for inequalities of opportunities—public education or transfers—have very different implications. Transfers not only reduce inequality on impact but also reduce social mobility, while public education—even if a perfect substitute to private education—works in the opposite direction. Social impediments to education are similar to a market imperfection, and publicly provided education may lead to a Pareto improvement. (JEL D3, I2, H2, H4)     

The additive hazards model with high-dimensional regressors

This paper considers estimation and prediction in the Aalen additive hazards model in the case where the covariate vector is high-dimensional such as gene expression measurements. Some form of dimension reduction of the covariate space is needed to obtain useful statistical analyses. We study the partial least squares regression method. It turns out that it is naturally adapted to this setting via the so-called Krylov sequence. The resulting PLS estimator is shown to be consistent provided that the number of terms included is taken to be equal to the number of relevant components in the regression model. A standard PLS algorithm can also be constructed, but it turns out that the resulting predictor can only be related to the original covariates via time-dependent coefficients. The methods are applied to a breast cancer data set with gene expression recordings and to the well known primary biliary cirrhosis clinical data.     

DOES THE PUBLIC SECTOR IMPLODE FROM BAUMOL'S COST DISEASE?

The root of the Baumol cost disease is higher productivity increases for manufactured goods than for services. The implied increase in relative costs of service production is widely claimed to have devastating implications for the public sector as a provider of tax‐financed services such as health, education, and care. To match the increasing costs it appears inevitable that tax rates would be ever increasing. It is shown that this inference does not follow under standard assumptions when accounting explicitly for service provision from both the private and public sectors. Strikingly under assumptions often made in the literature, the welfare maximizing tax rate for a utilitarian policy maker would remain constant despite the Baumol cost disease, and by implication the share of public employment in total employment will remain constant. (JEL H5, H11, O41)     

Estimation of Causal Odds of Concordance using the Aalen Additive Model

A simple summary of a treatment effect is attractive, which is part of the explanation of the success of the Cox model when analysing time‐to‐event data since the relative risk measure is such a convenient summary measure. In practice, however, the Cox model may fail to give a reasonable fit, very often because of time‐changing treatment effect. The Aalen additive hazards model may be a good alternative as time‐changing effects are easily modelled within this model, but results are then evidently more complicated to communicate. In such situations, the odds of concordance measure (OC) is a convenient way of communicating results, and recently Martinussen & Pipper (2012) showed how a variant of the OC measure may be estimated based on the Aalen additive hazards model. In this study, we propose an estimator that should be preferred in observational studies as it always estimates the causal effect on the chosen scale, only assuming that there are no un‐measured confounders. The resulting estimator is shown to be consistent and asymptotically normal, and an estimator of its limiting variance is provided. Two real applications are provided.     

The Enchantment of Agriculture: State Decentering and Irrigated Rice Production in Bali

This article explores state involvement in the ‘enchanted’ aspects of irrigated rice production in Bali, Indonesia. Modernising states invariably forward what Max Weber called the rationalisation and disenchantment of the world. In irrigation management, the Indonesian colonial and postcolonial states operated staunchly on this model. ‘Enchanted’ elements of Balinese rice production involving temples and rituals were assumed irrelevant and sidelined. Recently, however, bursts of state-funded construction of irrigation temples and shrines suggest a surprising shift. The post-Suharto decentralised state appears to be supporting the enchantment of irrigated agriculture. This article deals with the relationship between legislation under the decentralised state and ritual building activities in Balinese irrigation associations (subak). We examine how contemporary farmers view the new emphasis on ‘ritual technology’. Does it constitute decentralised support of the farmers' world, of local priorities and variance, or a new homogenising project?     

Infants of Depressed Mothers Show Reduced Gaze Activity During Mother–Infant Interaction at 4 Months

Gaze is one of the main means of communication in young infants, and it has been shown to be important for subsequent socio‐emotional and cognitive development. Maternal depression is a well‐known risk factor for disrupting mother–infant interactions, but findings regarding gaze behavior in infants of depressed versus nondepressed mothers have been ambiguous. In this study, we examined gaze duration and activity in a sample of 27 infants of mothers with postpartum depression (PPD) and 49 infants of nondepressed mothers. Maternal depressive symptoms were assessed with the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, and diagnoses were confirmed in clinical interview. Infant gaze was assessed during 4‐month face‐to‐face interactions using continuous timed‐event coding with high temporal resolution. Although we found no differences in gaze duration, infants of PPD mothers had both significantly less Gaze On and also less Gaze Off events. Findings suggest that PPD is related to reduced gaze activity during mother–infant interaction in 4‐month‐olds. This reduced activity may have long‐term negative consequences for child development.     

受访者推动抽样：研究隐藏人口的方法与实践

“隐藏人口”的特点是规模较小且成员一般不愿暴露身份，因此很难使用常规抽样方法对其进行研究。近年来出现了一种新的研究隐藏人口的方法——受访者推动抽样（RDS)方法，该方法在传统“雪球抽样”方法的基础上，结合社会网络分析的理论和方法，使研究者有可能根据样本对总体特征做出合理的推论。本文对RDS方法的理论渊源、基本思路、主要操作步骤和原理进行了简要介绍，并探讨了在实际操作过程中应注意的问题。