LIVING IN TWO NEIGHBORHOODS—SOCIAL INTERACTION EFFECTS IN THE LABORATORY

Field evidence suggests that people belonging to the same group often behave similarly, that is, behavior exhibits social interaction effects. We conduct a laboratory experiment that avoids the identification problem present in the field and allows us to study the behavioral logic of social interaction effects. Our novel design feature is that each subject is simultaneously a member of two randomly assigned and identical groups where only members (“neighbors”) are different. We study behavior in a coordination game with multiple equilibria and a public goods game, which has only one equilibrium in material payoffs. We speak of social interactions if the same subject at the same time makes group‐specific decisions that depend on their respective neighbors' decisions. We find that a majority of subjects exhibit social interaction effects both when the game has multiple equilibria in material payoffs and when it only has one equilibrium. (JEL C91, H41, K42, H26)     

Young Adults with Childhood Experience of Divorce: Disappointment and Contentment

The aim of this study was to use in-depth interviews to identify and describe experiences of parental divorce among adult children whose parents divorced 15 years earlier. Ten out of 76 interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim, and data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Two categories of experiences were identified: disappointment and contentment. Two subcategories of disappointment were distinguished: disappointment toward mother, father, or both, and disappointment with relatives and other surrounding persons. Four subcategories of contentment were distinguished: contentment in the belief that the members of the original family received a good or even better life after the divorce, contentment with how the divorce was handled by the parents, contentment and inner strength as a part of the child's own personality, and contentment with receiving adequate help during and after the parental divorce.     

How manufacturing industries connect cities across the world: extending research on ‘multiple globalizations’

In this article, I concentrate on a macro‐level analysis of inter‐urban linkages in a ‘world city network’. Empirical research on the formation of a world city network has mostly concentrated on global service providers. Yet, globally operating manufacturing firms also choose distinct urban regions throughout the world as locational anchoring points. In this article, using social network analysis, I present the first global‐scale analysis of how manufacturing firms connected cities across the world (in 2010). To detect the differing ‘sectoral profiles’ and nodal centralities of cities functioning as geographical hubs of transnational production networks, it is necessary to analyse the network structure of distinct industrial subsectors within the global urban system. The data collected for analysis cover 120 top global firms from three manufacturing subsectors, of which two are analysed in more detail than the third. I then compare the nodal centralities of cities included in these subsectors' global networks with the GaWC research on the producer services sector that has been at the centre of previous analyses of the world city network. The comparison reveals the cities' differing positioning within ‘multiple globalizations’. The aim of the article is to extend research on world city networks.     

WHO MAKES A GOOD LEADER? COOPERATIVENESS,OPTIMISM, AND LEADING‐BY‐EXAMPLE

We examine the characteristics of effective leaders in a simple leader‐follower voluntary contributions game. We focus on two factors: the individual's cooperativeness and the individual's beliefs about the cooperativeness of others. We find that groups perform best when led by those who are cooperatively inclined. Partly, this reflects a false consensus effect: cooperative leaders are more optimistic than noncooperators about the cooperativeness of followers. However, cooperative leaders contribute more than noncooperative leaders even after controlling for optimism. We conclude that differing leader contributions by differing types of leader in large part reflects social motivations. (JEL A13, C92, D03)     

Negative Dependence in Sampling

Abstract. The strong Rayleigh property is a new and robust negative dependence property that implies negative association; in fact it implies conditional negative association closed under external fields (CNA+). Suppose that and are two families of 0‐1 random variables that satisfy the strong Rayleigh property and let . We show that {Z_i} conditioned on is also strongly Rayleigh; this turns out to be an easy consequence of the results on preservation of stability of polynomials of Borcea & Brändén (Invent. Math., 177, 2009, 521–569). This entails that a number of important π ps sampling algorithms, including Sampford sampling and Pareto sampling, are CNA+. As a consequence, statistics based on such samples automatically satisfy a version of the Central Limit Theorem for triangular arrays.     

COMMON DUE-WINDOW SCHEDULING

In this paper, we solve common due-window scheduling problems within the just-in-time window concept, i.e., scheduling problems including both earliness and tardiness penalties. We assume that jobs share the same due window and incur no penalty as long as they are completed within the due window. We further assume that the earliness and tardiness penalty factors are constant and that the size of the window is a given parameter. For cases where the location of the due window is a decision variable, we provide a polynomial algorithm with complexity O(n * log (n)) to solve the problem. For cases where the location of the due window is a given parameter, we use dynamic programming with pseudopolynomial complexity to solve the problem.     

Local and transnational care relations: relatedness and family practice among au pairs in Denmark

An increasing number of young women from the Global South have become au pairs in the Global North since the turn of the millennium. Through ethnographic analysis of three cases of au pairing in Denmark, involving Filipina and Caribbean women, this article discusses the nature of the local as well as transnational family relations in which these women are embedded as au pairs, and the opportunities and restraints that they present. We use anthropological theory to conceptualize family and kinship in terms of notions and practices of relatedness. This offers a useful framework for elucidating the different moral and contractual obligations and expectations associated with these varying family relations, the power asymmetries with which they are linked, and the agency that the au pairs display as they seek to position themselves in the most favourable way in relation to the multi‐directional ties in which they are involved.     

Board Activities and the Denationalization of Ownership – The Case of Sweden

This article investigates the effects of a denationalization of ownership on the activities of corporate boards. A simultaneous change in investors' identity on the Swedish stock exchange and the board activities of large Swedish firms was observed during the late 90s. Drawing on the heritage hypothesis we conjectured that there could be a relationship between increased international ownership and increased board activities on firm level. The results show that board activities in terms of range of activities and engagement in the decision process increased during the 90s. No relationship was found between change in ownership identity and board activities, instead the increase in activities seemed to be a general phenomenon, while ownership change was firm specific. To explain this result a hypothesis of legitimization seeking behaviour and indirect influence of denationalization, specific to the period in question, is formulated.