The Role of Cultural Inertia in Reactions to Immigration on the U.S./Mexico Border

Assimilation and multiculturalism are often contrasted as opposite interethnic ideologies about cultural integration. Here, we address models of assimilation and multiculturalism and how group identity influences attitudes toward immigrants. One overlooked issue concerns the dynamic processes involved in integration. It is proposed that cultural inertia, defined as the desire to avoid cultural change, or conversely, to continue change once it is already occurring, can account for a number of seemingly discrepant findings. In particular, cultural inertia predicts that majority groups should prefer assimilation type models, whereas minority groups should prefer multicultural models. Resistance to change is the mediating process. Cultural inertia is used as a model to understand discrepant attitudes toward assimilation and multiculturalism across different groups.     

Rhetoric to action: a study of stakeholder perceptions of aging well in two local communities

This qualitative study of local perceptions of policy goals and action in relation to aging reports 31 stakeholder interviews within 2 Australian communities exploring (a) the meaning of aging well; and (b) preferred policy actions to achieve positive aging outcomes. Findings suggest that community perceptions of aging well are broadly consistent with the goals of national and international policy frameworks in focusing on 3 dimensions--health, social engagement, and security. Further, participants believe that achievement of positive aging outcomes requires a mix of self-help, community action, and government intervention--particularly government support and encouragement for aging well initiatives.     

Testing transitivity in choice under risk

Recently proposed models of risky choice imply systematic violations of transitivity of preference. This study explored whether people show the predicted intransitivity of the two models proposed to account for the certainty effect in Allais paradoxes. In order to distinguish “true” violations from those produced by “error,” a model was fit in which each choice can have a different error rate and each person can have a different pattern of preferences that need not be transitive. Error rate for a choice is estimated from preference reversals between repeated presentations of the same choice. Results showed that few people repeated intransitive patterns. We can retain the hypothesis that all participants were transitive.     

格林伯格现代主义绘画的还原论批判

随着美国极简主义艺术的兴起,人们发现形式主义已经走到了最残酷无情的绝对状态,与此同时,也看到了它在艺术上已经走进了一个彻底的死胡同。这种 20世纪 60年代中期激进还原的艺术得出了格林伯格学说的逻辑结论,即现代主义绘画不可避免地走向绝对平面性,而现代主义雕塑则不可避免地走向绝对立体感的清晰度。本人的批评既是对格林伯格现代主义绘画理论的批评,也是对极简主义的格林伯格式鼓吹的批判。     

生态文明的未来:马克思和无为生态

工业革命以来,自然生态遭受巨大破坏,各种环境问题大量出现.西方传统经济学思想对此负有不可推卸的责任.与之相反,中国传统文化中主张无为而治的无为思想,更能与马克思的思想相契合,因为,它有利于保持生态系统的平衡,促进人与自然的和谐共处以及经济的可持续发展.     

Political Economy of Mechanisms

We study the provision of dynamic incentives to self‐interested politicians who control the allocation of resources in the context of the standard neoclassical growth model. Citizens discipline politicians using elections. We show that the need to provide incentives to the politician in power creates political economy distortions in the structure of production, which resemble aggregate tax distortions. We provide conditions under which the political economy distortions persist or disappear in the long run. If the politicians are as patient as the citizens, the best subgame perfect equilibrium leads to an asymptotic allocation where the aggregate distortions arising from political economy disappear. In contrast, when politicians are less patient than the citizens, political economy distortions remain asymptotically and lead to positive aggregate labor and capital taxes.     

Operations in the Service Industries: Introduction to the Special Issue

This special issue of Production and Operations Management offers a sample of ongoing research that focuses currently on the services industries. The articles selected cover a spectrum of application areas as well as methodologies.     

Improved adaptive group testing algorithms with applications to multiple access channels and dead sensor diagnosis

We study group-testing algorithms for resolving broadcast conflicts on a multiple access channel (MAC) and for identifying the dead sensors in a mobile ad hoc wireless network. In group-testing algorithms, we are asked to identify all the defective items in a set of items when we can test arbitrary subsets of items. In the standard group-testing problem, the result of a test is binary—the tested subset either contains defective items or not. In the more generalized versions we study in this paper, the result of each test is non-binary. For example, it may indicate whether the number of defective items contained in the tested subset is zero, one, or at least two. We give adaptive algorithms that are provably more efficient than previous group testing algorithms. We also show how our algorithms can be applied to solve conflict resolution on a MAC and dead sensor diagnosis. Dead sensor diagnosis poses an interesting challenge compared to MAC resolution, because dead sensors are not locally detectable, nor are they themselves active participants. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at SPAA 2006.