Measuring people's trust

Summary. We measure trust and trustworthiness in British society with a newly designed experiment using real monetary rewards and a sample of the British population. The study also asks the typical survey question that aims to measure trust, showing that it does not predict 'trust' as measured in the experiment. Overall, about 40% of people were willing to trust a stranger in our experiment, and their trust was rewarded half of the time. Analysis of variation in the trust behaviour in our survey suggests that trusting is more likely if people are older, their financial situation is either 'comfortable' or 'difficult' compared with 'doing alright' or 'just getting by', they are a homeowner or they are divorced, separated or never married compared with those who are married or cohabiting. Trustworthiness also is more likely among subjects who are divorced or separated relative to those who are married or cohabiting, and less likely among subjects who perceive their financial situation as 'just getting by' or 'difficult'. We also analyse the effect of attitudes towards risks on trust.     

Objective Bayesian analysis of counting experiments with correlated sources of background

Searches for faint signals in counting experiments are often encountered in particle physics and astrophysics, as well as in other fields. Many problems can be reduced to the case of a model with independent and Poisson-distributed signal and background. Often several background contributions are present at the same time, possibly correlated. We provide the analytic solution of the statistical inference problem of estimating the signal in the presence of multiple backgrounds, in the framework of objective Bayes statistics. The model can be written in the form of a product of a single Poisson distribution with a multinomial distribution. The first is related to the total number of events, whereas the latter describes the fraction of events coming from each individual source. Correlations among different backgrounds can be included in the inference problem by a suitable choice of the priors.     

The Concept of Modularity in Management Studies: A Literature Review

During the last decade, modularity has attracted the attention of numerous management scholars, and both theoretical and empirical studies on this topic have flourished. However, this broad‐based appeal has generated some controversies and ambiguities on how modularity should be defined, measured and used in managerially meaningful ways. This paper reviews the concept of modularity as a design principle of complex systems in management studies. Applying this criterion, 125 studies were selected and classified, grouped according to their prevalent unit of analysis: products, production systems and organizations. Although all these studies are based on Simon's seminal work on the hierarchical and nearly decomposable nature of complex systems ( Simon, H.A. (1962). The architecture of complexity. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 106, 467–482), this paper shows that they offer different definitions, measures and applications of the modularity concept. This review reveals the implicit structure of meanings underlying this literature and emphasizes that ambiguity in definitions and measures impedes rigorous empirical studies capable of understanding the relationship between modularity in product, in production and in organization design. Cautions and directions for future research are discussed.     

LEANING AGAINST WINDY BANK LENDING

Using an estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with banking, this paper first provides evidence that monetary policy reacted to bank loan growth in the United States during the Great Moderation. It then shows that the optimized simple interest‐rate rule features no response to the growth of bank credit. However, the welfare loss associated to the empirical responsiveness is small. The sources of business cycle fluctuations are crucial in determining whether a “leaning‐against‐the‐wind” policy is optimal or not. In fact, the predominant role of supply shocks in the model gives rise to a trade‐off between inflation and financial stabilization. (JEL E32, E44, E52)     

Psychophysical conditions and hormonal secretion in nurses on a rapidly rotating shift schedule and exposed to bright light during night work

The psychophysical conditions of 15 young female nurses, working in a rapidly-rotating shift system (2-2-2-2), modified according to some psychophysiological criteria, and exposed to short period (4 × 20 min) of bright light (2350 Lux) during their night duty, were studied in order to evaluate their adaptation to night work and to test a possible positive effect on it of bright light. Subjective evaluations of work load and psychophysical conditions, performance measures, hormonal excretion (cortisol, 6-sulphatoxymelatonin and catecholamines), oral temperature and activity-sleep logs were taken during the shiftwork cycle, comprising one morning, one afternoon and two consecutive nights under normal and bright light. The results showed that this rapidly-rotating shift system had little effect upon the normal circadian rhythms of the body. Moreover, the lengthening of the night shift to 10 h can be considered to be acceptable, provided that work load is reduced and there are sufficient rest pauses available. On the other hand, the reduction to 7 h of the length of the day shifts and delayed start of the morning shift to 07:00 h appeared to be convenient both in relation to the work load and sleep duration. Some positive effects of bright light upon psychophysical conditions and performance efficiency were noted, while hormonal excretion and body temperature did not show any effect of bright light; in particular, melatonin excretion was not suppressed appreciably by the bright light used.     

Psychophysical conditions of air traffic controllers evaluated by the standard shiftwork index

Abstract

In the ambit of a large epidemiological survey on the Italian population of air traffic controllers, an evaluation of their health conditions was carried out using the Standard Shiftwork Index (SSI). The study took into consideration 572 male air traffic controllers, aged between 23 and 59 years, of whom 301 were engaged in three large Regional Centres, 189 in thirteen Airport Towers and 82. formerly active controllers, were working in administrative offices. The former controllers showed worse health levels, in particular minor psychological disorders and chronic fatigue. Sixteen of them had been transferred to administrative jobs because of health impairment, owing to severe diseases of the nervous, gastrointestinal and cardiovascular systems. Such disorders, and musculoskeletal ones, were mostly reported by the active controllers. The controllers engaged in Regional Centres showed more sleep disturbances than those engaged in towers. Beside age, some personal characteristics appeared to influence health and well-being. Neuroticism was correlated with chronic fatigue, digestive and cardiovascular complaints, minor psychological disorders, cognitive and somatic anxiety. On the other hand, morningness was correlated negatively with sleep disturbances on morning shift, and positively with sleep duration both on morning shift and rest days.     

Behavioural Addictions in Adolescents and Young Adults: Results from a Prevalence Study

Our study aims to assess the prevalence of behavioural addictions in an adolescent population, evaluating the effects of gender and age, and to assess the correlations among different behavioural addictions. 2853 high school students were assessed in order to evaluate the prevalence of behavioural addictions such as Pathological Gambling (PG), Compulsive Buying (CB), Exercise Addiction (EA), Internet Addiction (IA), and Work Addiction (WA), in a population of Italian adolescents. The South Oaks Gambling Screen-Revised Adolescent (SOGS-RA), the Compulsive Buying Scale (CBS), the Exercise Addiction Inventory (EAI), the Internet Addiction Test (IAT), and the Work Addiction Risk Test (WART), were compiled anonymously by the students. Overall prevalence was 7.0% for PG, 11.3% for CB, 1.2% for IA, 7.6% for WA, 8.5% for EA. PG and EA were more common among boys, while gender had no effect on the other conditions. CB was more common among younger (<18 years old) students. The scores of all of these scales were significantly correlated. The strong correlation among different addictive behaviours is in line with the hypothesis of a common psychopathological dimension underlying these phenomena. Further studies are needed to assess personality traits and other clinical disorders associated with these problems behaviours.     

Computation of Sharp Bounds on the Expected Value of a Supermodular Function of Risks with Given Marginals

We show that the rearrangement algorithm (RA) introduced in Puccetti and Rüschendorf (2012 Puccetti, G., Rüschendorf, L. (2012). Computation of sharp bounds on the distribution of a function of dependent risks. Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics 236(7):1833–1840.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to compute distributional bounds can be used also to compute sharp lower and upper bounds on the expected value of a supermodular function of d random variables having fixed marginal distributions. Compared to the analytical methods existing in the literature the algorithm is widely applicable, more easily obtained and gives insight into the dependence structures attaining the bounds.     

Dimensionality reduction approach to multivariate prediction

The authors consider dimensionality reduction methods used for prediction, such as reduced rank regression, principal component regression and partial least squares. They show how it is possible to obtain intermediate solutions by estimating simultaneously the latent variables for the predictors and for the responses. They obtain a continuum of solutions that goes from reduced rank regression to principal component regression via maximum likelihood and least squares estimation. Different solutions are compared using simulated and real data.