ARMEN ALCHIAN'S CONTRIBUTION TO MACROECONOMICS

Armen Alchian's contributions to macroeconomics forged important paths that are still crucial to the understanding of monetary theory and monetary policy. We outline Alchian's examination of the fundamental role of money in society and his work (with Benjamin Klein) on the measurement of inflation. We also detail how, in research with Reuben Kessel, Alchian brought insight into the problems that followed the erratic inflation policies of the 1960s and 1970s, explained the effects of anticipated and unanticipated inflation on the real economy, and described the difficulty of identifying the effects of monetary shocks in macroeconomic data.     

The disappearing link between premarital cohabitation and subsequent marital stability, 1970–2001

Previous research has demonstrated that marriages preceded by premarital cohabitation have higher rates of dissolution than those in which the couple marry without first living together. Most of this research relies on data generated by couples who cohabited in the 1970s and early 1980s when premarital cohabitation was relatively uncommon and usually of brief duration. Since then, premarital cohabitation in Australia has become normative and thus less prone to selection effects. The period of premarital cohabitation has also lengthened and is thus more likely to provide opportunities to screen out unviable matches. This paper uses national survey data from Australia to explore whether, in the light of these changes, the previously observed higher level of marital dissolution among those who live together before marrying has persisted. It demonstrates that the higher risk of marital dissolution among those who cohabited before marriage has declined substantially in the 1990s marriage cohort and, after controlling for selection factors, has disappeared altogether.     

SCHOUTEN IN THE DARK: MISSING THE FOREST AND THE TREES

The present article is a response to a paper by Schouten in the January, 1994 issue of the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy entitled, "A Scale in Search of a Construct: Comments on Gavin and Wamboldt" (Schouten, 1994) in which he comments on our 1992 paper entitled "A Reconsideration of the Family-of-Origin Scale" (Gavin & Wamboldt, 1992). We respond to Schouten's allegations of lack of methodological rigor and "unsubstantiated claims" (Schouten, 1994, p. 59). We systematically address ways in which Schouten has taken our work out of context, missed the essence of our study, and used faulty and/or vacuous logic in an attempt to discredit our findings. Despite the appearance of rigor in Schouten's work, closer scrutiny brings into question the contribution of Schouten's article to the field of family theory or measurement.     

Newborn Infants' Preference for Attractive Faces: The Role of Internal and External Facial Features

Several previous experiments have found that newborn and young infants will spend more time looking at attractive faces when these are shown paired with faces judged by adults to be unattractive. Two experimental conditions are described with the aim of finding whether the “attractiveness effect” results from attention to internal or external facial features, or both. Pairs of attractive and less attractive faces (as judged by adults) were shown to newborn infants (mean age 2 days, 9 hours), where each pair had either identical internal features (and different external features) or identical external features (and different internal features). In the latter, but not the former, condition the infants looked longer at the attractive faces. These findings are clear evidence that newborn infants use information about internal facial features in making preferences based on attractiveness. It is suggested that when newborn (and older) infants are presented with facial stimuli, whether dynamic or static, they are able to attend both to internal and external facial features.     

Rethinking Role Residual: Retired Police Officers and the Inertia of Habitus

In this paper, we bring conceptual clarity to the literature on “role residual.” Based on the extant literature and our own research involving police retirees, we first delineate three empirical variants of role residual: emotional, cognitive, and behavioral. We then make the case that a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon requires a theoretical framework capable of conceptualizing role residual in a way that is consistent with a broader theory of practice. To that end, we use Bourdieu's work to argue that role residual comprises states of being or behavior that occur at the intersection of (a) schemas and dispositions inscribed in the habitus as a result of one's prior role‐specific orientation to the field, and (b) a configuration of proximate conditions in the present that is sufficiently similar to what one would have experienced while in one's prior role.     

Legal capacity and the mental health social worker role: an international comparison

ABSTRACT

New capacity laws have been introduced to many jurisdictions over the last decade. These laws have substantially changed the way in which mental health social workers and other professionals approach decisions about, and for, clients. Most notably, there is now an expectation that mental health social workers engage more in supported decision-making to prevent the need for substitute decision-making. This article describes the legal and policy drivers that have led to these changes in practice, with a particular emphasis on the significance of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the UNCRPD) and the importance of recovery approaches in mental health services. It then uses selected literature to explore the efficacy of the laws and decision-making in this area. The second part of the article identifies the role that mental health social workers can play in supporting legal capacity, drawing from the authors’ experience and knowledge of mental health social work and law in four jurisdictions: Victoria, Australia; Ontario, Canada; England and Wales; and Northern Ireland. It is concluded that mental health and other social workers need to refine skills, knowledge and values to accommodate this paradigm shift in law, policy and practice.     

The definition of start time in cancer treatment studies analysed by non-mixture cure models

Non-mixture cure models are derived from a simplified representation of the biological process that takes place after treatment for cancer. These models are intended to represent the time from the end of treatment to the time of first recurrence of the cancer in studies when a proportion of those treated are completely cured. However, for many studies, other start times are more relevant. In a clinical trial, it may be more natural to model the time from randomisation rather than the time from the end of treatment and in an epidemiological study, the time from diagnosis might be more meaningful. Some simulations and two real studies of childhood cancer are presented to show that starting from time of diagnosis or randomisation can affect the estimates of the cure fraction. The susceptibility of different parametric kernels to errors caused by using start times other than the end of treatment is also assessed. Analysing failures on treatment and relapse after completing the treatment as two processes offers a simple way of overcoming many of these problems.