Minimax property of stein's estimator

Stein's estimator and some other estimators of the mean of a K-variate normal distribution are known to dominate the maximum likelihood estimator under quadratic loss for K > 3, and are therefore minimax. In this paper it is shown that the minimax property of Stein's rule is preserved with respect to a generalized loss function.     

Cast in a racial mould

Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy, and Migrancy in South Africa 1900 ‐1983 by Belinda Bozzoli, with the assistance of Mmantho Nkotsoe, Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1991.

Our Precious Metal: African Labour in South Africa's Gold Industry, 1970–1990 by Wilmot G. James, David Philip, James Currey &; Indiana University Press, Cape Town, London &; Bloomington,1992.

Bounds of Possibility ‐ The Legacy of Steve Biko &; Black Consciousness by N.B. Pityana, M. Ramphele, M. Mpumlwana, &; L. Wilson, (eds), Cape Town, David Philip, 1991.

Faces in the revolution: the psychological effects of violence on township youth in South Africa by Gill Straker, with Fathima Moosa, Rise Becker and Madiyoyo Nkwale. Cape Town, David Philip, 1992 and Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press, 1992.

Lives of Courage: Women for a New South Africa by Diana E.H.Russell. New York, Basic Books, 1989.

Towards Justice? Crime and State Control in South Africa by Desiree Hansson and Dirk van Zyl Smit (eds), Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1990.

South Africa in the Nineties by DJ van Vuuren, NE Wiehahn, NJ Rhoodie en M Wiechers (eds), HSRC Publishers, 1991.

To Live in Fear: Witchburning and Medicine Murder in Venda by A de V. Minnar, D Offringa and C Payze, HSRC, Pretoria, 1992.

The Anti‐Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power by James Ferguson, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Zimbabwe's Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices by Norma J. Kriger. Cambridge University Press, African Studies Series, number 70,1992.

A Passage to England ‐ Barbadian Londoners speak of home by John Western. U.C.L. Press, London, 1992.

Breaking the formal frame: Readings in South African education in the eighties by Clive Millar, Sarah‐Anne Raynham and Angela Schaffer (eds). Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Negotiation : Theories, Strategies and Skills by Wynand Pienaar and Manie Spoelstra, Kenwyn, Juta, 1991

SUM: Selected Works by Martin Versveld. Cape Town: Carrefour Press 1991.

Projections in the Past Tense, by Kelwyn Sole. Ravan Press, 1992.     

A long way from home: On black identity in Britain

This article sets out to challenge much of the current literature on the self‐identity of blacks in British society. By looking at the long‐term historical background, the colonial heritage of cultural, political and economic oppression, a series of more subtle analyses emerges. Among the stereotypes challenged is that of the generational gap; evidence is cited to indicate a far greater common awareness and identity of aims and attitudes than previous writers have suggested. Hie conclusion examines some strategies for fighting racism within British society.     

Consumption Commitments and Habit Formation

We analyze the implications of household‐level adjustment costs for the dynamics of aggregate consumption. We show that an economy in which agents have “consumption commitments” is approximately equivalent to a habit formation model in which the habit stock is a weighted average of past consumption if idiosyncratic risk is large relative to aggregate risk. Consumption commitments can thus explain the empirical regularity that consumption is excessively sensitive and excessively smooth, findings that are typically attributed to habit formation. Unlike habit formation and other theories, but consistent with empirical evidence, the consumption commitments model also predicts that excess sensitivity and smoothness vanish for large shocks. These results suggest that behavior previously attributed to habit formation may be better explained by adjustment costs. We develop additional testable predictions to further distinguish the commitment and habit models and show that the two models have different welfare implications.     

Sign Restrictions,Structural Vector Autoregressions,and Useful Prior Information

This paper makes the following original contributions to the literature. (i) We develop a simpler analytical characterization and numerical algorithm for Bayesian inference in structural vector autoregressions (VARs) that can be used for models that are overidentified, just‐identified, or underidentified. (ii) We analyze the asymptotic properties of Bayesian inference and show that in the underidentified case, the asymptotic posterior distribution of contemporaneous coefficients in an n‐variable VAR is confined to the set of values that orthogonalize the population variance–covariance matrix of ordinary least squares residuals, with the height of the posterior proportional to the height of the prior at any point within that set. For example, in a bivariate VAR for supply and demand identified solely by sign restrictions, if the population correlation between the VAR residuals is positive, then even if one has available an infinite sample of data, any inference about the demand elasticity is coming exclusively from the prior distribution. (iii) We provide analytical characterizations of the informative prior distributions for impulse‐response functions that are implicit in the traditional sign‐restriction approach to VARs, and we note, as a special case of result (ii), that the influence of these priors does not vanish asymptotically. (iv) We illustrate how Bayesian inference with informative priors can be both a strict generalization and an unambiguous improvement over frequentist inference in just‐identified models. (v) We propose that researchers need to explicitly acknowledge and defend the role of prior beliefs in influencing structural conclusions and we illustrate how this could be done using a simple model of the U.S. labor market.     

THE BALANCED US PRESS

We measure the relative ideological positions of newspapers, voters, interest groups, and political parties, using data on ballot propositions. We exploit the fact that newspapers, parties, and interest groups take positions on these propositions, and the fact that citizens ultimately vote on them. We find that, on average, newspapers in the United States are located almost exactly at the median voter in their states—that is, they are balanced around the median voter. Still, there is a significant amount of ideological heterogeneity across newspapers, which is smaller than the one found for interest groups. However, when we group propositions by issue area, we find a sizable amount of ideological imbalance: broadly speaking, newspapers are to the left of the state‐level median voter on many social issues, and to the right on many economic issues. To complete the picture, we use two existing methods of measuring bias and show that the news and editorial sections of newspapers have almost identical partisan positions.     

Effects of a single-lesson tobacco prevention curriculum on knowledge, skill identification and smoking intention

One in five students report experimenting with tobacco before the age of 13 and most prevention efforts take place in the school setting. This study measures the effect of a single-lesson tobacco prevention curriculum, conducted by a health education center, focusing on knowledge of tobacco, ability to identify refusal techniques, and intent not to smoke. Data were collected, via electronic keypads, from students visiting a non-school, health education center in Michigan (n = 704 intervention and 85 comparison). Contingency table Chi-squared tests and t-tests demonstrated that a single lesson can improve general knowledge and ability to identify appropriate refusal techniques. Improvement in intent not to smoke was not significant because both groups had very high intent prior to implementation. Similar to results from other programs, multivariate logistic regression of gender, general knowledge, and skill identification revealed that only the skill variable was associated with intent not to smoke at pretest. Recommendations are given for further research and for designing more effective curricula or programs.     

Domestic violence screening and service acceptance among adult victims in a dependency court setting

Many child welfare systems are unable to effectively identify and address co-occurring domestic violence and child maltreatment. In response, the Dependency Court Intervention Program for Family Violence implemented a protocol to identify indicators of domestic violence in families involved with child protection proceedings. This article highlights data that demonstrate the ability of an outreach and screening process to identify adult victims of domestic violence in dependency court and to offer them appropriate intervention services.     

Gambling Behavior of Student-Athletes and a Student Cohort: What are the Odds?

This study investigated the prevalence of gambling, gambling related NCAA violations, and disordered gambling in student-athletes (n = 736) with a comparison cohort of students (n = 1,071) at four universities. Student-athletes reported similar rates of gambling frequency, use of a bookmaker, and disordered gambling as students. After accounting for demographic differences, student-athletes were less likely to engage in sports wagering than students. Several risk factors for disordered gambling were identified, including being male and reporting at least one parent with a history of gambling problems. These findings suggest that problems associated with gambling are a university-wide issue with student-athletes meriting additional attention because of implications for the integrity of intercollegiate sports. Improved prevention and intervention efforts for collegiate gambling are recommended.     

Health professionals' attitudes and practices in relation to Functional Capacity Evaluations

Functional Capacity Evaluations (FCE's) are part of practice in work injury prevention and rehabilitation, and are designed to define an individual's functional abilities or limitations in the context of safe, productive work tasks. Qualitative research methodology was used to investigate the attitudes and behaviours of health professionals in relation to FCE use. The study aimed to identify why health professionals chose a particular FCE, and to identify what factors influence health professionals' clinical judgements when providing results and recommendations for the individual being assessed. Five health professionals from the Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia, participated in semi-structured, individual interviews using a phenomenological approach. Following inductive analysis of the data, four themes reflecting participants' attitudes and behaviours of FCE use emerged: i) referrals and expectations, including why and when the assessment is completed ii) outcomes, -- what the results aim to provide iii) workplace/practice/usage issues and iv) skills of the assessor. The results indicate the need for further research on the clinical utility of FCE's. A large scale quantitative study would allow results to be generalised to a wider community of FCE users.