Job insecurity, coping resources and personality dispositions in occupational strain

This paper presents research on the relationships between the work-related stressor of perceived job insecurity and various indicators of occupational strain, taking into account employees' personality dispositions (trait negative and positive affectivity) and coping resources. Respondents were 222 Australian public servants surveyed during organizational restructuring that involved downsizing and threat to job certainty. The research was formulated within an adaptation of Osipow, Doty, and Spokane's (1985) framework of stress-strain-coping that included the possible direct as well as moderating effects of personality dispositions in reporting occupational strain (Parkes, 1990). Findings from hierarchical regression analyses indicate consistent significant independent effects of personality dispositions, coping resources and perceived job insecurity on various indicators of strain. There was also support for the moderating roles of negative affectivity and self-care in the relation between perceived job insecurity and physical strain. Implications for the role of dispositional factors, especially negative affectivity, and the utility of various coping resources in accounting for occupational strain in times of threatened job security are discussed.     

Bayesian nonparametric statistics: A new toolkit for discovery in cancer research

Many commonly used statistical methods for data analysis or clinical trial design rely on incorrect assumptions or assume an over‐simplified framework that ignores important information. Such statistical practices may lead to incorrect conclusions about treatment effects or clinical trial designs that are impractical or that do not accurately reflect the investigator's goals. Bayesian nonparametric (BNP) models and methods are a very flexible new class of statistical tools that can overcome such limitations. This is because BNP models can accurately approximate any distribution or function and can accommodate a broad range of statistical problems, including density estimation, regression, survival analysis, graphical modeling, neural networks, classification, clustering, population models, forecasting and prediction, spatiotemporal models, and causal inference. This paper describes 3 illustrative applications of BNP methods, including a randomized clinical trial to compare treatments for intraoperative air leaks after pulmonary resection, estimating survival time with different multi‐stage chemotherapy regimes for acute leukemia, and evaluating joint effects of targeted treatment and an intermediate biological outcome on progression‐free survival time in prostate cancer.     

The Effects of Electronic Data Collection on the Percentage of Current Clinician Graphs and Organizational Return on Investment

Behavior analysts rely on frequent access to graphed data to facilitate clinical decision making and enhance their programming. Several new electronic data collection (EDC) products have recently been developed and marketed to behavior analysts. We evaluated the effects of an EDC software system on the percentage of current graphs. We also evaluated the potential return on investment (ROI) of the tool for a large human services agency. During baseline, graphs were seldom updated at the designated time the supervisor examined the file. When the EDC software was implemented, 100% of graphs were updated at all checks for all consumers with minimal or no corresponding increase in clinician hours. A comprehensive index of ROI was calculated using various costs of implementation and observed and estimated savings. Implementing the EDC software across the human services agency resulted in a projected cumulative positive average ROI of 59% over five years. These results are discussed in terms of strategies for systematically evaluating the costs and benefits of organizational efforts to use technology to enhance staff performance in human service settings.     

Intergenerational justice and the social discount rate

This paper applies the Harsanyi social welfare function to the problem of determining the social discount rate. It thus views the social discount question as one of justice between generations under conditions of individual uncertainty over position, rather than as one generation's paternalism or altruism for the next generation. Whether there is an accumulation of capital for future generations is shown to depend on the form of the individual (or collective) utility function. More importantly, the approach lends some insight into the kind of institutional structure which should be used to determine the social discount rate.This paper was written while the author was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Study of Public Choice at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Helpful comments were received on an earlier draft from James M. Buchanan, Pierre Pestieau, and Robert D. Tollison.     

Reconsidering Durkheim's Assessment of Tarde: Formalizing a Tardian Theory of Imitation,Contagion, and Suicide Suggestion

Emile Durkheim summarily rejected Gabriel Tarde's imitation thesis, arguing that sociology need only concern itself with social suicide rates. Over a century later, a burgeoning body of suicide research has challenged Durkheim's claim to a general theory of suicide as 4 decades worth of evidence has firmly established that (1) there is a positive association between the publicization of celebrity suicides and a spike in the aggregate suicide rate, (2) some social environments are conducive to epidemic‐like outbreaks of suicides, and (3) suicidal ideas or behavior spreads to some individuals exposed to a personal role model's suicidal behavior—for example, a friend or family member. Revisiting Tarde, the article examines why Tarde's theory deserves renewed attention, elucidates what he meant by imitation, and then formalizes his “laws” into testable theses, while suggesting future research questions that would advance the study of suicide, as well as other pathologies. Each “law” is elaborated by considering advances in contemporary social psychology as well as in light of its ability to supplement Durkheim's theory in explaining the “outlier” cases.     

Health insurance in the near elderly population

A number of studies have documented therising number of persons under age 65 who do not havehealth insurance. This paper focuses on the healthinsurance status of near elderly, those persons age 55through 64. A comparison age group, persons age 45through 54, is selected for benchmark purposes. Utilizing data from the 1996 Current PopulationSurvey, logistic regression is used to generateinsurance status prediction equations for both agegroups. Household characteristics, income, educationand employment are found to be significant predictorsof health insurance status, but fewer-than-expecteddifferences are found in comparing equations betweenthe two age groups. Results are discussed in thecontext of recent proposals to extend Medicarecoverage, the effect of Medicare policy changes on thenumber of near elderly persons without healthinsurance, and how prolonged periods of time withouthealth insurance may lead to an increased burden onMedicare as newly eligible Medicare recipients seekservices to address their pent-up demand for healthcare.     

Salinization of the Bangladesh Delta worsens economic precarity

Population and Environment - Anthropogenic environmental changes are having complex effects on all aspects of the hydrological cycle. In estuarine areas, these factors are coalescing...     

THE WELFARE COST OF LAWLESSNESS: EVIDENCE FROM SOMALI PIRACY

In spite of general agreement that establishing the rule of law is central to properly functioning economies, little is known about the cost of law and order breakdowns. This paper studies a specific context of this by estimating the effect of Somali piracy attacks on shipping costs using data on shipping contracts in the dry bulk market. To estimate the effect of piracy, we look at shipping routes whose shortest path exposes them to piracy and find that the increase in attacks in 2008 led to around an 8% to 12% increase in costs. From this we calculate the welfare loss imposed by piracy. We estimate that generating around 120 USD million of revenue for Somali pirates led to a welfare loss in excess of 630 USD million, making piracy an expensive way of making transfers.     

The effect of marital dissolution on the labour supply of males and females: Evidence from Canada

The literature on divorce and labour supply generally analyzes standard labour supply measures such as annual hours worked. We include hours per day and days per week as two new dimensions of work time, and use a 3-year panel which allows us to address the effects of divorce on five time dimensions simultaneously. For males, we find that divorce can result in short-term labour supply changes as high as 10–20% of pre-divorce labour supply levels, depending on the time dimension and comparator group. For females, our data do not reveal any significant changes in labour supply.     

The financial crisis,investor activists and corporate strategy: will this mean shareholders in the boardroom?

The concept of stakeholder engagement is gaining increasing attention in the mainstream media and may feature as part of a corporation’s strategy for corporate social responsibility. Not only are boards considering how they might engage with key stakeholders, but stakeholders are also pursuing greater participation in the strategic decisions of companies in which they invest. While this is an emerging concept in companies governed by unitary boards, as in North America, the issue of stakeholder engagement in various forms is also entering debate in other countries around the world. In general, however, the idea of shareholder or stakeholder representation on the boards of most UK and Commonwealth companies is anathema. Forces now influencing the development of strategies for stakeholder engagement and the rise of active investors include changing corporate governance rules which give investors more power in the election of directors, the increasing role of pension plans and hedge fund investment groups which have produced investors who keep a close eye on company performance and value, and a sluggish or turbulent stock market as a result of the financial crisis initiated by the credit crunch in the sub-prime mortgage markets. In this paper the phenomenon of stakeholder representation is examined and results of a recent survey conducted among a large sample of New Zealand directors are presented. The findings suggest that these traditionally oriented boards are increasingly inwardly focused and are without an agenda for building and managing shareholder and stakeholder relations. Accordingly, such boards are unlikely to regard stakeholder engagement as a serious strategic issue and are thus also likely to miss significant opportunities in the changed business environment to benefit from stakeholder support.