Testing the Intransitivity Explanation of the Allais Paradox

This paper uses a two-dimensional version of a standard common consequence experiment to test the intransitivity explanation of Allais-paradox-type violations of expected utility theory. We compare the common consequence effect of two choice problems differing only with respect to whether alternatives are statistically correlated or independent. We framed the experiment so that intransitive preferences could explain violating behavior when alternatives are independent, but not when they are correlated. We found the same pattern of violation in the two cases. This is evidence against intransitivity as an explanation of the Allais Paradox. The question whether violations of expected utility are mainly due to intransitivity or to violation of independence is important since it is exactly on this issue the main new decision theories differ.     

Daily Dynamics of Adolescent Mood and Identity

Important linkages between daily mood and identity formation have been theorized, but have not been empirically tested as of yet. This study provided a first examination of these linkages within individuals (N = 392; 55.1% boys; M_age at T1 = 13.24, SD = 0.44) across 15 series of 5 days distributed over 5 years. Results revealed negative within‐time associations of educational and relational commitment with negative mood. Negative mood was positively associated with educational in‐depth exploration and educational and interpersonal reconsideration. Additionally, there were some cross‐lagged effects suggesting that identity and mood mutually affect one another across days. These results contribute to the growing knowledge on how identity unfolds in everyday life by revealing important associations with daily mood.     

Live audience responses to live televised election debates: time series analysis of issue salience and party salience on audience behavior

Televised political debates are the platforms for party leaders to outline their party's political programs and to attack those of their political opponents. At the same time journalists who moderate the debates are testing the party leaders’ ability to clearly outline and defend their programs. Television audiences of election debates evaluate these party leaders and political parties based on their television performances. Prior to the social media era, viewers’ evaluations were collected through phone surveys or web questionnaires. Nowadays viewers share their opinions in real-time on social media. Particularly Twitter is used in the Netherlands as the platform to share these opinions. In this study tweets produced by the audiences of five different televised debates that took place during the campaign for the Dutch 2012 parliamentary elections are analyzed in terms of tweeting about politicians and parties as well as political issues, as well as the content of the debates. This allowed us, using time series analysis, to test the relation between issue salience in debates and issue salience of the audience on Twitter. The issues of ‘Employment and income’ and ‘Europe’ were the most tweeted about, roughly aligning with the attention these issues received in televised debates. Findings further show there are consistent audience reactions to issues discussed in the debates: issues of ‘Housing’, ‘Care for the needy', and ‘Europe’ showing the strongest effects. However, candidates and parties are not explicitly associated by people active on Twitter when certain political issues are being debated on TV.     

Working with social complexity in a neoliberal society: challenges for social work in Estonia

This article deals with Estonian social workers' perspectives on the fundamentals of the social work profession in a society where radical social, political, and economic changes have occurred within a very short period of time. Estonia typically figures as a model country, sometimes as a positive model, sometimes as a negative one, but according to most commentators, Estonia has pursued social and economic transformations in a particularly dramatic way. Social workers have recognized that radical changes have created new types of problems and social work should deal with vulnerable people and families under uncertain and unforeseeable conditions. Estonia is a challenging example to understand social work in the context of a neoliberal market society. It is therefore necessary to find out what the new challenges for the development of social work as a profession are. This article explores a ‘direction’ toward which social work in Estonia is developing, focusing mainly on the influence of the Estonian political context. The results of the research are relevant to the entire social work profession, insomuch as they address questions about the essence of social work and the ethical principles of the social work profession in society and how they can be strongly influenced by neoliberal thinking and increasing complexity.     

Turkish and Moroccan Dutch professionals in social work

This article describes the perspective of newly started female Turkish and Moroccan Dutch professionals in social work and explores how they connect to the social work profession. Social work in the Netherlands attracts many of these young ‘new’ professionals. These second-generation women from a Muslim background are considered a ‘progressive force’ within their communities and can play an important role in ‘remaking the mainstream’. Increasing diversity and complexity go hand in hand with high expectations and claims. Muslim, gender, ethnic and professional identities have to be combined and demand high flexibility in doing boundary work.     

The Contribution of Advanced Glycation End product (AGE) accumulation to the decline in motor function

Diminishing motor function is commonly observed in the elderly population and is associated with a wide range of adverse health consequences. Advanced Glycation End products (AGE’s) may contribute to age-related decline in the function of cells and tissues in normal ageing. Although the negative effect of AGE’s on the biomechanical properties of musculoskeletal tissues and the central nervous system have been previously described, the evidence regarding the effect on motor function is fragmented, and a systematic review on this topic is lacking. Therefore, a systematic review was conducted from a total of eight studies describing AGE’s related to physical functioning, physical performance, and musculoskeletal outcome which reveals a positive association between high AGE’s levels and declined walking abilities, inferior ADL, decreased muscle properties (strength, power and mass) and increased physical frailty. Elevated AGE’s levels might be an indication to initiate (early) treatment such as dietary advice, muscle strengthening exercises, and functional training to maintain physical functions. Further longitudinal observational and controlled trial studies are necessary to investigate a causal relationship, and to what extent, high AGE’s levels are a contributing risk factor and potential biomarker for a decline in motor function as a component of the ageing process.     

NGOs in the News: The Road to Taken-for-Grantedness

The proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) since the 1970s has generated a wealth of research as to the causes and implications of the rise of this sector. Public awareness of NGOs and their activities has grown as well, at least in part due to increased media coverage of the organizations and the situations to which they respond. Although NGOs are not new to global polity, media attention to them as a sector only really began to take off in the 1990s. Using quantitative and qualitative analysis of two international newspapers from 1985-2010, this study explores the legitimation process of NGOs and examines the role of categorization and labeling in this process. The results show that the establishment of a distinct label in the media served to propel cognitive recognition of NGOs, and that media coverage reflects changes in cognitive legitimacy over time.     

Genericity and Markovian Behavior in Stochastic Games

This paper examines Markov perfect equilibria of general, finite state stochastic games. Our main result is that the number of such equilibria is finite for a set of stochastic game payoffs with full Lebesgue measure. We further discuss extensions to lower dimensional stochastic games like the alternating move game.     

Uncertainty and predictive accuracy: an empirical study

The purpose of this article was to explore the relation between uncertainty and predictive accuracy using data from a survey of inflationary expectations. Uncertainty was proxied alternatively by an interval estimate of expected inflation and a dummy variable capturing the respondents' perceived uncertainty. The relation between the former proxy and the predictive accuracy was negative, as expected, while that was not the case for the latter one. As a tentative explanation for this result we argue that the interval estimate may to some extent capture the access to information of the respondents, while the dummy may rather be conceived as a measure of the subjective feeling of uncertainty.     

Optimality of the quasi-score estimator in a mean–variance model with applications to measurement error models

We consider a regression of y$y$ on x$x$ given by a pair of mean and variance functions with a parameter vector θ$\theta$ to be estimated that also appears in the distribution of the regressor variable x$x$. The estimation of θ$\theta$ is based on an extended quasi-score (QS) function. We show that the QS estimator is optimal within a wide class of estimators based on linear-in-y$y$ unbiased estimating functions. Of special interest is the case where the distribution of x$x$ depends only on a subvector α$\alpha$ of θ$\theta$, which may be considered a nuisance parameter. In general, α$\alpha$ must be estimated simultaneously together with the rest of θ$\theta$, but there are cases where α$\alpha$ can be pre-estimated. A major application of this model is the classical measurement error model, where the corrected score (CS) estimator is an alternative to the QS estimator. We derive conditions under which the QS estimator is strictly more efficient than the CS estimator.