Legitimacy and status groups in financial markets

Economic sociologists have argued that financial markets should be analysed as uncertainty-processing social networks and intermediary groups. Networks and intermediaries alone cannot confer legitimacy upon financial actors and transactions. Status groups are a solution to this problem. They emphasize reputation, honour and good social behaviour as stabilizers of collective action, as means of social control and as indicators of legitimacy. I examine here the emergence and evolution of status groups of brokers in London, New York and Paris, and show how emphasis on honour was used to legitimize financial transactions. I argue that financial markets should be conceived as networks, intermediary and status groups. In global, automated financial markets status groups like securities analysts are gaining in prominence.     

Training x Trainee Interactions in a family planning intervention

This study investigated the effects of introducing a family planning counseling model at clinics of Peru's Ministry of Health. Providers trained in the model presented greater quality of care and longer counseling sessions than did controls. The main effects, however, were misleading. Nearly all of the quality improvements were contributed by 37% of the trained providers; they had already been better performers at the pretest and complied with the new counseling model's requirement of job aid use at the posttest. The recognition that a majority of trained providers did not profit from training posed a challenge that led to improvements in the model. Training x Trainee Interactions should be explored in evaluations.     

Structural Changes to Electronic Gaming Machines as Effective Harm Minimization Strategies for Non-Problem and Problem Gamblers

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of three proposed modifications to the structural characteristics of electronic gaming machines as harm minimisation strategies for non-problem and probable problem gamblers. Structural changes included reducing the maximum bet size, reducing reel spin and removing large note acceptors. Behavioural patterns of play were observed in 779 participants attending clubs and hotels. Observations were conducted in the gaming venue during regular gaming sessions. Eight experimental machines were designed to represent every combination of the modifications. 210 participants played at least one modified and one unmodified machine. Following play, the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) was administered. More problem than non-problem gamblers used high denomination bill acceptors and bet over one-dollar per wager. Machines modified to accept the one-dollar maximum bet were played for less time and were associated with smaller losses, fewer individual wagers and lower levels of alcohol consumption and smoking. It was concluded that the reduction of maximum bet levels was the only modification likely to be effective as a harm minimization strategy for problem gamblers.     

ESTIMATION OF THE CONDITIONAL PROBABILITY OF TUBERCULOSIS GIVEN THE RESPONSE OF A MANTOUX TEST

For the planning of community tuberculosis, prophylaxis one must know the prevalence of tuberculosis (TB) infection as a function of response to the Mantoux intradermal tuberculin test; the standard test for indicating Mycobacterium TB infection. The skin induration size used to select individuals for prophylaxis must be chosen carefully, in view of the costs associated with carrying out and supervising such prophylaxis. The Mantoux test was used to obtain measurements on adolescents in metropolitan Victoria and on a small sample of adolescents with clinical TB. These data are employed to obtain estimates and to construct upper confidence bounds for the conditional probability of TB infection, given the level of Mantoux response. Two conservative methods are presented; one is ‘nonparametric’, the other ‘semiparametric’. The analyses indicate that for responses up to and including 13 mm, the probability of TB infection is less than.07 with ninety-five percent confidence.     

Experimental methods for studying “elementary motor mimicry”

For over two hundred years, social psychologists have been puzzled by elementary motor mimicry—overt behavior by an observer that is appropriate to the situation of the other rather than to the observer's situation. This ubiquitous but fleeting behavior has not previously been amenable to experimental study, which might elucidate its meaning or meanings. The present article describes techniques for eliciting and videotaping such reactions in the lab. A wide variety of stimuli can be used to evoke smiling, wincing, leaning, and other motor mimicries. Recording is best done in split-screen, so that the relation between the behaviors of observer and observed can be analyzed. Several reliable scoring options are described (qualitative, quantitative, microanalysis, and self-report). Experimental controls can be introduced to rule out artifacts that might appear to be motor mimicry. These methods are introduced in the hope that the many different theories that have been offered to explain this phenomenon might finally begin to be tested.     

Culture as a Moderator of Overall Life Satisfaction – Life Facet Satisfaction Relationships

The purposes of this study were to (a) provide additional competitive tests between three models of relationships between overall and life facet satisfaction [Bottom-Up (BU), Top-Down (TD), and Bidirectional (BD) models], and (b) explore whether culture moderates these relationships. Models were tested using data collected as part of Michalos' (1991) global study of student well-being from samples of college students in 32 different countries. The BD model received strongest support in 29 of the 32 samples (countries); the TD model was most strongly supported in the remaining 3 samples. Cluster analyses of samples in which the BD model was supported indicated a 7-cluster solution of reasonably homogeneous sets of OLS-LFS relationships. However, clusters were not easily interpretable in terms of evident cultural commonalities. We conclude that (a) a BD model describes OLS-LFS relationships globally, (b) and although culture appears to moderate OLS-LFS relationships, (c) additional research is needed to explain why.     

Response to Pennsylvania's Agricultural Preservation Programs1

Abstract Agriculture is the leading industry in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. At the same time, encroaching development has pressured prime agricultural land to change uses, a change usually considered irreversible. Some regions of Pennsylvania have used zoning to control and plan for the development of agricultural land, but these decisions have not always been agreed on. In response to conflicts over zoning and calls for more effective restrictions of development of prime agricultural soils, the state government implemented agricultural preservation programs designed to ensure the future viability of Pennsylvania's agriculture. While response has been reported as favorable, most reviews relied on voters' support of a state referendum to fund agricultural preservation programs. Few have examined local responses to the implementation of these programs. This paper explores local community responses to agricultural preservation and the state's programs in three regions of Pennsylvania which differ in levels of urban presence and pressure. Using secondary sources, qualitative data, and general population surveys, this analysis provides implications about strategies of agricultural preservation in a state which leads in such efforts.     

Limited role of entropy in information economics

Information transmitted is defined as the amount by which added evidence (or message received) diminishes uncertainty. The latter is characterized by some properties intuitively suggested by this word and possessed by conditional entropy, a parameter of the posterior probability distribution. However, conditional entropy shares these properties with some other concave symmetric functions on the probability space.Moreover, a given transmission channel (or, in the context of statistical inference, a given experiment) yields a higher maximum expected benefit than anotherto any user if and only ifall concave functions of the posterior probability vector have higher values for the former channel (or experiment). Hence one information system (channel, experiment) may be preferable to another for a given user although its transmission rate, in entropy terms, is lower.But only entropy has the economically relevant property of measuring, in the limit, the expected length of efficiently coded messages sent in long sequences. Thus, while irrelevant to the value (maximum expected benefit) of an information system and to the costs of observing, estimating, and deciding, entropy formulas are indeed relevant to the cost of communicating, i.e., of storing, coding and transmitting messages.Revised version of a paper presented at the 5th Colloquium on Optimization Techniques (International Federation for Information Processing, Rome, May 1973), Lecture Notes series of the Springer Verlag, Heidelberg and New York. The author wishes to thank Springer Verlag for reprint permission. Acknowledgements of support are due to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Special Program for the Cooperation of Research Institutes of F.R.G. and U.S.A.), the U.S. Office of Naval Research and the Institute for Economic Theory, University of Bonn.