On the manipulability of approval voting and related scoring rules

We characterize all preference profiles at which the approval (voting) rule is manipulable, under three extensions of preferences to sets of candidates: by comparison of worst candidates, best candidates, or by comparison based on stochastic dominance. We perform a similar exercise for k-approval rules, where voters approve of a fixed number k of candidates. These results can be used to compare (k-)approval rules with respect to their manipulability. Analytical results are obtained for the case of two voters, specifically, the values of k for which the k-approval rule is minimally manipulable—has the smallest number of manipulable preference profiles—under the various preference extensions are determined. For the number of voters going to infinity, an asymptotic result is that the k-approval rule with k around half the number of candidates is minimally manipulable among all scoring rules. Further results are obtained by simulation and indicate that k-approval rules may improve on the approval rule as far as manipulability is concerned.     

Gross primary productivity of a large metropolitan region in midsummer using high spatial resolution satellite imagery

Although gross primary productivity (GPP) is estimated with remote sensing over large regions of Earth, urban areas are usually excluded due to the lack of light use efficiency (LUE) parameters for urban vegetation and the spatial heterogeneity of urban land cover. Here, we estimated midsummer GPP, both within and among vegetation and land-use types, across the Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota metropolitan region. We derived LUE parameters for urban vegetation types using estimates of GPP from tree sap flow and eddy covariance CO₂ flux observations, and from fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation based on 2 m resolution WorldView-2 satellite imagery. Mean GPP per unit land area (including vegetation, impervious surfaces, and soil) was 2.64 g C m^?2 d^?1, and was 4.45 g C m^?2 d^?1 per unit vegetated area. Mapped GPP estimates were within 11.4% of estimates from independent tall tower eddy covariance measurements. Turf grass GPP had a larger coefficient of variation (0.18) than other vegetation classes (~0.10). Vegetation composition was largely consistent across the study area. Excluding golf courses, mean land-use GPP for the total study area varied more by percent vegetation cover (R²?=?0.98, p?<?0.001) than by variability within vegetation classes (R²?=?0.21, p?=?0.19). Urban GPP in general was less than half that of natural forests and grasslands in the same climate zone.     

Development Mobilities: Identity and Authority in an Angolan Development Programme

This ethnographic essay considers how international non-governmental organisations are able to make claims to authoritative knowledge about development work by offering the transnational mobilities of their staff members as evidence. I examine how one professional's biography—his trajectory from Angola to Britain and back again—was differentially presented to external donors and internal staff members as befitting the institutional needs of an international good governance intervention in Angola. These presentations reflect a commoditisation of the cosmopolitanism of professionals' histories in the service of development as a regime of mobility. I argue that, in this development regime, a global hierarchy prevents some individual professionals, particularly those from developing nations, from realising the same benefits of their cosmopolitan mobility as professionals from industrialised nations. While one of mobility studies' many strengths is that it highlights global interconnectedness, social scientists should not read equality in these interconnections but examine how patterns of transnational mobility may produce and reproduce global structures of inequality.     

Strategy-proof division with single-peaked preferences and individual endowments

We consider the problem of (re)allocating the total endowment of an infinitely divisible commodity among agents with single-peaked preferences and individual endowments. We propose an extension of the so-called uniform rule and show that it is the unique rule satisfying Pareto optimality, strategy-proofness, reversibility, and an equal-treatment condition. The resulting rule turns out to be peaks-only and individually rational: the allocation assigned by the rule depends only on the peaks of the preferences, and no agent is worse off than at his individual endowment. Received: 8 September 1995/Accepted: 30 October 1996     

The Effects of Intrauterine Malnutrition on Birth and Fertility Outcomes: Evidence From the 1974 Bangladesh Famine

This article uses the Bangladesh famine of 1974 as a natural experiment to estimate the impact of intrauterine malnutrition on sex of the child and infant mortality. In addition, we estimate the impact of malnutrition on post-famine pregnancy outcomes. Using the 1996 Matlab Health and Socioeconomic Survey (MHSS), we find that women who were pregnant during the famine were less likely to have male children. Moreover, children who were in utero during the most severe period of the Bangladesh famine were 32 % more likely to die within one month of birth compared with their siblings who were not in utero during the famine. Finally, we estimate the impacts of the famine on subsequent pregnancy outcomes. Controlling for pre-famine fertility, we find that women who were pregnant during the famine experienced a higher number of stillbirths in the post-famine years. This increase appears to be driven by an excess number of male stillbirths.     

Results of a nationwide hospice and palliative care social work job analysis

The role of the hospice and palliative social worker is often ambiguous and misunderstood by colleagues and fellow team members. One reason for this is the lack of identified, clearly delineated roles, skills, and tasks employed by these specialty social workers in their daily work. This article summarizes the first nationwide job analysis of hospice and palliative social workers. A contextual, cross-sectional survey design was used to identify current and relevant job tasks from practicing hospice and palliative social workers. A sample of 482 social workers representing 46 states responded to a survey that included demographic questions and ranking of 152 tasks and importance to the position. Tasks were categorized into four broad categories: assessment and reevaluation; planning and intervention; death, grief, and bereavement; and professionalism; which includes subcategories consisting of multiple tasks and skills. Respondents identified performing a psychosocial assessment from a patient/family centered care perspective, assessment of the patient’s current and desired quality of life and of coping skills as the tasks most important to their role. This outline of the role of the hospice and palliative social worker was then used in the development of an evidence-based certification exam that may be required of those who want to receive specialty certification in the field.     

The risk of divorce as a barrier to marriage among parents of young children

Using data from the Fragile Families Study, we examine how unmarried parents’ risk of divorce influences their decision to marry. Regression results show that unmarried parents with a high predicted probability of marital dissolution (based on estimates of marital dissolution for a sample of initially married mothers with similar characteristics) had significantly lower odds of marriage to the father of their child even after controlling for individual and relationship characteristics expected to influence marriage transitions. The dissolution propensity we examine also includes a measure of the local divorce climate. As such, our results provide support for the argument that high rates of divorce in the population have led to a fear of divorce among unmarried parents which reduces their probability of marriage.