On the adjudication of conflicting claims: an experimental study

This paper reports an experimental study on three well-known solutions for problems of adjudicating conflicting claims: the constrained equal awards, the proportional, and the constrained equal losses rules. We first let subjects play three games designed such that the unique equilibrium allocation coincides with the recommendation of one of these three rules. In addition, we let subjects play an additional game that has the property that all (and only) strategy profiles in which players coordinate on the same rule constitute a strict Nash equilibrium. While in the first three games subjects’ play easily converges to the unique equilibrium rule, in the last game the proportional rule overwhelmingly prevails as a coordination device, especially when we frame the game as an hypothetical bankruptcy situation. We also administered a questionnaire to a different group of students, asking them to act as impartial arbitrators to solve (among others) the same problems played in the lab. Also in this case, respondents were sensitive to the framing of the questions, but the proportional rule was selected by the vast majority of respondents.     

Peer relationships during late childhood in internationally adopted and institutionalized children

The aim of this study was to analyse the interpersonal relationships in the school context of children living in different care settings (adoptive families, residential care centres, birth families). Participants were 76 children between eight and fourteen years of age (M = 10.78, SD = 1.38), belonging to one of three groups: international adoptees, children living in residential care in Spanish institutions, and a comparison sample of Spanish children living with their birth families with no connection with child protection. Sociometric information was collected in the classroom of each child during school hours. Internationally adopted children from Russia showed considerable difficulties in their relationships with peers; they were more likely to be rejected and their peers described them as less prosocial and somewhat more aggressive. With a better sociometric position than the adoptees, children in residential care were rated by their peers as more aggressive and less prosocial than the normative population. Coordination and integrated work between the family, protection centres, schools, and other social services should be a strategic priority in the promotion of healthy social development in these groups of children.     

Puerto rican drug users’ experiences of physical and sexual abuse: Comparisons based on sexual identities

This study integrates the results of quantitative and qualitative methods to elucidate the association between sexual identity and physical and sexual abuse among Puerto Rican drug users. A structured questionnaire was administered to 800 subjects in New York and 399 in Puerto Rico. A total of 93 subjects (7.9%) self‐identified as homosexual or bisexual. Gay males were significantly more likely than heterosexual males to report first occurrence of physical abuse by a family member in childhood. Both gay and bisexual males were more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to report first experiencing unwanted sex in childhood and intimate partner physical abuse later in life. Lesbians were more likely than female heterosexuals to report unwanted sex in childhood. Qualitative data were collected through in‐depth life histories with 21 subjects and suggest that gay and lesbian subjects perceive antihomosexual prejudice on the part of family members as one cause of childhood physical and sexual abuse.     

How Couples Manage Interracial and Intercultural Differences: Implications for Clinical Practice

This study focused on how couples managed their interracial and intercultural differences. To understand their experiences, a qualitative grounded theory analysis was used (n = 17). Analysis revealed that couples experienced most issues as cultural issues; race only occurred during their interactions with “others.” They appeared to organize their responses according to four relationship structures: Integrated, Singularly Assimilated, Coexisting, and Unresolved. Couples in each of these structures managed daily process through four sets of relationship strategies: (a) creating a “we,” (b) framing differences, (c) emotional maintenance, and (d) positioning in relationship to familial and societal context. These findings are a step toward a strength‐based and research‐informed education and clinical interventions for this population. Video Abstract     

Characterization of social choice sets in terms of individuals' maximal sets: The fixed agenda framework

In this paper we analyze the explicit representation of fixed agenda social choice correspondences under different rationality assumptions (independence, Pareto optimality, etc.). It is well known that, under some of these assumptions, the existence of dictators, oligarchies or individuals with veto power can be proven ([6] and [10]); but only a partial characterization of the social choice set is obtained. We establish a relationship between the social choice set and the individuals' maximal sets, which explicitly describes a fixed agenda social choice correspondence that satisfies these rationality assumptions. Received: 30 December 1997/Accepted: 20 December 1999     

Community Support of Ethanol Plants: Does Local Ownership Matter?*

Drawing on data from six communities in Kansas and Iowa, we explore the factors that are related to community members' current levels of overall support for local ethanol plants. What are residents' opinions about the benefits and drawbacks of local ownership of ethanol plants? How does that awareness lead to overall support of plants? Our interest is to understand how perceptions of the negative effects of the plant on the local infrastructure and environment and positive effects on the local economy influence the relationship between local versus absentee ownership and people's overall support of the plant. We use chi‐square to test whether respondents' overall support is associated with the ownership of the plant (local versus absentee), and cumulative logit mixed‐effects models to explore the factors that explain the association between ownership and overall support. Findings suggest that community members are less likely to show high support for locally owned plants, and that the greater perceived negative effects of locally owned plants on the local infrastructure and environment helps explain residents' lower support of locally owned ethanol plants in their communities. We posit several explanations for why this might be the case.     

Domains, ranges and strategy-proofness: the case of single-dipped preferences

We characterize the set of all individual and group strategy-proof rules on the domain of all single-dipped preferences on a line. For rules defined on this domain, and on several of its subdomains, we explore the implications of these strategy-proofness requirements on the maximum size of the rules’ range. We show that when all single-dipped preferences are admissible, the range must contain two alternatives at most. But this bound changes as we consider different subclasses of single-dipped preferences: we provide examples of subdomains admitting strategy-proof rules with larger ranges. We establish exact bounds on the maximal size of strategy-proof functions on each of these domains, and prove that the relationship between the sizes of the subdomains and those of the ranges of strategy-proof functions on them need not be monotonic. Our results exhibit a sharp contrast between the structure of strategy-proof rules defined on subdomains of single-dipped preferences and those defined on subsets of single-peaked ones.