A characterization of the nucleolus without homogeneity in airport problems

We consider the problem of sharing the cost of a public facility among agents who have different needs for the facility. We show that the nucleolus is the only rule satisfying equal treatment of equals, last-agent cost additivity, and consistency.     

A simple test on the convergence of social security transfer in OECD countries

The growing trend toward globalization not only has aggravated international competition but also has increased interdependence among countries, inducing the need for harmonization and convergence of socioeconomic policies across countries. This paper examines whether the convergence phenomenon holds for social security transfers as a percentage of GDP in OECD countries, applying the traditional methodology of σ- and β-convergence.     

Cultural System vs. Pan‐cultural Dimensions: Philosophical Reflection on Approaches for Indigenous Psychology

The three approaches for conducting psychological research across cultures proposed by Berry (1989), namely, the imported etic, emic and derived etic approach are critically examined for developing culture‐inclusive theories in psychology, in order to deal with the enigma left by Wilhelm Wundt. Those three approaches have been restricted to a certain extent by the pan‐cultural dimensional approach which may result in the Orientalism of psychology in understanding people of non‐Western cultures. This article is designated to provide the philosophical ground for an alternative cultural system approach to construct culture‐inclusive theories in psychology. Following the principle of cultural psychology: “one mind, many mentalities” (Shweder et al., 1998), the alternative strategy contains two steps: First, based on Bhaskar's (1975, 1978) critical realism, all universal mechanisms should seek to represent the operation of the human mind. Second, based on Archer's (1995) analytical dualism, the mechanisms of the universal mind may be used as frameworks for analyzing any cultural tradition. The culture‐inclusive theories thus obtained represent the synchronic morphostasis of a cultural system, which may be used as theoretical frameworks for conducting either qualitative or quantitative empirical research in studying the diachronic morphogenesis of socio‐cultural interaction in a particular culture.     

The influence of governance on public sector efficiency: A cross-country analysis

This paper examines whether governance quality affects public sector efficiency in the policy areas of administration, education, infrastructure, and stability. Using cross-country evidence, we find that a country's measures of governance quality are positively and significantly associated with public sector efficiency in the policy areas of administration, infrastructure, and stability. However, regression results suggest that a country's governance quality cannot affect efficiency in the policy area of education, even after controlling for some explanatory variables.     

A two-phase approach to estimating time-varying parameters in the capital asset pricing model

Following the development of the economy and the diversification of investment, mutual funds are a popular investment tool nowadays. Choosing excellent targets from hundreds of mutual funds has become more and more crucial to investors. The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) has been widely used in the capital cost estimation and performance evaluation of mutual funds. In this study, we propose a new two-phase approach to estimating the time-varying parameters of CAPM. We implemented a simulation study to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed method and compared it with the commonly used state space and rolling regression methods. The results showed that the new method is more efficient in most scenarios. Meanwhile, the proposed approach is very practical and it is unnecessary to judge and adjust the estimating process for different situations. Finally, we applied the proposed method to equity mutual funds in the Taiwan stock market and reported the performances of two funds for demonstration.     

The Diversity Imperative: The Effects of Local Economic Structure and Social Capital on Local Philanthropy

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Philanthropic endeavors are a form of institutionalized collective action that enhances a community’s capacity to...     

How fair are unemployment benefits? The experience of East Asia

Despite an increasing emphasis on active labour market measures, unemployment benefits still remain a focal point of employment protection. This article takes the cases of four East Asian economies – China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Taiwan (China) –, which are often characterized as having welfare states with a strong developmental and productivist orientation, to investigate whether, as is sometimes argued, unemployment benefits are restrictive and exclusionary. In doing so, it examines the logic behind the design of unemployment benefits and argues that they are in fact progressive in design and fair when they pay out. Nonetheless, low effective coverage and low benefit rates weaken their redistribution and compensation objectives.     

Policy is not enough – the influence of the gendered workplace on fathers’ use of parental leave in Sweden

ABSTRACT

Paid parental leave for fathers is a promising social policy tool for degendering the division of labor for childcare. Swedish fathers have had the right to paid parental leave since 1974, but they take only one-fourth of leave days parents take. There are strong cultural norms supporting involved fatherhood, so couples typically want to share leave more than they do. This article explores how workplaces can constrain Swedish fathers’ use of state leave policy, in ways that fathers can take for granted, a topic that has received less attention than individual or family-related obstacles. Based on interviews with 56 employees in five large private companies, we found that masculine workplace norms can make it difficult for fathers to choose to take much leave, while aspects of traditional workplace structure building on these norms can negatively affect fathers’ capabilities of taking much leave. Workplace culture and structure seemed to be based on assumptions that the ideal worker should prioritize work and has limited caregiving responsibilities, setting limits to fathers’ ability to share leave with mothers. Gender theorists suggest such assumptions persist because of male dominance at the workplace and the endurance of gendered assumptions about the roles of men and women.     

Asymptotics for a class of generalized multicast autoregressive processes

We propose a new class of generalized multicast autoregressive (GMCAR, for short, hereafter) models indexed by a multi-casting tree where each individual produces exactly the same number of offspring. This class includes standard bifurcating autoregressive processes (BAR, cf. Cowan and Staudte (1986)) and multicast autoregressive (MCAR, cf. Hwang and Choi (2009)) models as special cases. Accommodating non-Gaussian, non-negative and count data, the class includes various models such as nonlinear autoregression, conditionally heteroscedastic process and conditional exponential family. The pathwise stationarity of the GMCAR model is discussed. A law of large numbers and a central limit theorem are established which are in turn used to derive asymptotic distributions associated with martingale estimating functions.