Emotional balance and probability weighting

We find suggestive evidence that emotional balance has an impact on probability weighting incremental to demographic controls. Specifically, low negative affectivity (implying high emotional balance) tends to be a characteristic of those whose probability weighting functions exhibit lower curvature and more neutral elevation. In other words, emotional balance seems to push people in the direction of normative expected utility theory.     

Interplay between Friends' Aggression and Friendship Quality in the Development of Child Aggression during the Early School Years

The aim of this study was to investigate the unique and combined role of friendship quality and friends' aggression in regard to the persistence of young children's physical aggression from kindergarten to grade 2. The sample included 1555 children (808 girls) assessed annually using teacher ratings. Two theoretical perspectives (i.e., the social learning and the social bonding perspectives) served as frameworks to guide the analyses and interpret the results. In line with the social learning perspective, friends' aggression was related to a significant increase in children's physical aggression. However, in line with the social bonding perspective, good friendship quality played both a compensatory and a protective role, by, respectively, reducing children's initial level of physical aggression and by mitigating, albeit marginally, the associations between friends' and children's physical aggression. These results suggest that fostering a positive relationship between friends in the early school years may decrease physical aggression even if the friends are aggressive.     

例论中越边境地区跨国婚姻子女的政治社会化

母亲是外国人,父亲是中国人,而且又位于偏远的边境和少数民族地区,所以这种跨国婚姻的子女在政治认同方面比一般小孩更加冷漠;在国家认同方面他们也为自己的母亲难以成为中国人而遗憾;在行为规范引导方面,他们地处走私、贩毒、拐卖妇女儿童等违法犯罪现象比较普遍的边境地区,在族群文化和国家主体文化及法律存在冲突的情况下,他们也面临着一些迷茫。边境跨国婚姻的子女也是祖国边疆的花朵,尤其需要呵护。在家庭方面,需要正视他们家庭不完整、家庭功能难以正常发挥的问题,需要帮助他们解决家庭的特殊困难;在社会方面,需要通过依法加强民主政治实践来强化他们对国家政治的认可;在学校教育方面,需要加强法制教育。     

全面建设小康社会与加快民族地区发展

民族地区地域广大 ,资源丰富 ,潜在市场广阔 ,在全面建设小康社会中具有十分重要的战略地位。同时 ,民族地区经济社会发展的滞后又给全面建设小康社会带来了许多困难。只有切实克服这些困难和问题 ,才能有效地推进全面建设小康社会的伟大事业。应加大国家的扶持力度 ,认真贯彻党的民族政策 ,解放思想 ,发挥优势 ,依靠科技进步 ,采取一系列措施 ,实现民族地区的跨越式发展。     

在中国-东盟架构下的中国西南地区外语教育制度思考

本文归纳了东盟国家语言的概况,分析了东盟国家语言与中国西南地区民族语言的关系,结合在中国—东盟自由贸易区架构下中国西南地区外语人才的需求特点,指出了现行外语教育制度给当今社会特别是给西南地区带来的弊端,最后对外语教育制度提出了自愿化、专业化、基础化、区域化、激励化的系统改革构想,并从逻辑学、社会学、民族学、法学以及国际比较等角度进行了论证。     

Female Labor Supply,Human Capital,and Welfare Reform

We estimate a dynamic model of employment, human capital accumulation—including education, and savings for women in the United Kingdom, exploiting tax and benefit reforms, and use it to analyze the effects of welfare policy. We find substantial elasticities for labor supply and particularly for lone mothers. Returns to experience, which are important in determining the longer‐term effects of policy, increase with education, but experience mainly accumulates when in full‐time employment. Tax credits are welfare improving in the U.K., increase lone‐mother labor supply and marginally reduce educational attainment, but the employment effects do not extend beyond the period of eligibility. Marginal increases in tax credits improve welfare more than equally costly increases in income support or tax cuts.     

Signaling to Partially Informed Investors in the Newsvendor Model

We analyze a signaling game between the manager of a firm and an investor in the firm. The manager has private information about the firm's demand and cares about the short‐term stock price assigned by the investor. Previous research has shown that under continuous decision choices and the Intuitive Criterion refinement, the least‐cost separating equilibrium will result, in which a low‐quality firm chooses its optimal capacity and a high‐quality firm over‐invests in order to signal its quality to investors. We build on this research by showing the existence of pooling outcomes in which low‐quality firms over‐invest and high‐quality firms under‐invest so as to provide identical signals to investors. The pooling equilibrium is practically appealing because it yields a Pareto improvement compared to the least‐cost separating equilibrium. Distinguishing features of our analysis are that: (i) we allow the capacity decision to have either discrete or continuous support, and (ii) we allow beliefs to be refined based on either the Undefeated refinement or the Intuitive Criterion refinement. We find that the newsvendor model parameters impact the likelihood of a pooling outcome, and this impact changes in both sign and magnitude depending on which refinement is used.     

Further Beyond the Basic Background Check: Predicting Future Unethical Behavior

In this paper, we analyze the ethical issues of using honesty and integrity tests in employment screening. Our focus will be on the United States context: legal requirements related to applicant privacy differ in other countries, but we posit that our proposed balancing test is broadly applicable. We start by discussing why companies have ethical and legal obligations, based on a stakeholder analysis, to assess the integrity of potential employees. We then move to a consideration of how companies currently use background checks as a pre‐employment screening tool, noting their limitations. We then take up honesty and integrity testing, focusing particularly on the problems of false positives and due process. We offer a balancing test for the use of honesty and integrity testing that takes in three factors: (1) the potential harm posed by a dishonest employee in a particular job, (2) the linkage between the test and the assessment process, and (3) the accuracy and validity of the honesty and integrity test. We conclude with implications for practice and future research.     

Nonparametric Estimation of the Number of Drug Users in Hong Kong Using Repeated Multiple Lists

We update a previous approach to the estimation of the size of an open population when there are multiple lists at each time point. Our motivation is 35 years of longitudinal data on the detection of drug users by the Central Registry of Drug Abuse in Hong Kong. We develop a two‐stage smoothing spline approach. This gives a flexible and easily implemented alternative to the previous method which was based on kernel smoothing. The new method retains the property of reducing the variability of the individual estimates at each time point. We evaluate the new method by means of a simulation study that includes an examination of the effects of variable selection. The new method is then applied to data collected by the Central Registry of Drug Abuse. The parameter estimates obtained are compared with the well known Jolly–Seber estimates based on single capture methods.