The Extensively Corrected Score for Measurement Error Models

In measurement error problems, two major and consistent estimation methods are the conditional score and the corrected score. They are functional methods that require no parametric assumptions on mismeasured covariates. The conditional score requires that a suitable sufficient statistic for the mismeasured covariate can be found, while the corrected score requires that the object score function can be estimated without bias. These assumptions limit their ranges of applications. The extensively corrected score proposed here is an extension of the corrected score. It yields consistent estimations in many cases when neither the conditional score nor the corrected score is feasible. We demonstrate its constructions in generalized linear models and the Cox proportional hazards model, assess its performances by simulation studies and illustrate its implementations by two real examples.     

Reports of past conferences

Since the advent of the People's Republic, the school has served as a metonym for the city in China, both in the public imagination and in state policy. This article explores how two different ideologies (socialist and post‐socialist) were manifested in two different visual images of the city and school, which in turn shaped the urban institutions and landscapes. In the socialist era, party‐state propaganda offered an image of a model society which was predominantly rural, and where formal education had been marginalized by alternative forms of learning. Cities and schools were understood to be dangerous repositories of bourgeois capitalism which must be scoured of their elitist and decadent characteristics through the importation of rural practices and values. In the post‐socialist era, the city is now envisioned as the centre of modernity and progress, and schools are seen as the path to development and ‘quality’ (suzhi). The rural is pathologized as backward. This new ideology has reshaped the Chinese urban educational landscape from one of enforced egalitarianism to one characterized by inequality and exclusion.     

Political Narratives and the Production of Legitimacy: The Case of Corruption in Post-Mao China

China watchers have predicted that corruption would lead to a crisis for the ruling regime. Instead, the Chinese Communist Party has somehow managed to retain and even strengthen its political legitimacy. This article analyzes corruption not as a crime or a political problem but as a topic of political narratives, thereby revealing the political processes which led to this result. This study, based on interviews and archival data, examines narratives on the topic of corruption produced in the post-Mao era by the ruling regime and political dissidents in their struggle to influence the populace's views on political legitimacy. In the 1980s, disgruntled intellectuals drew upon the traditionalist collective narrative of corruption to teach citizens to blame the leadership and the structure of the government for social problems, essentially rewriting the narratives used to assess and judge the regime. In doing so, they successfully threatened the political authority of the Party-state. However, in the 1990s, China's leaders and the official media revised the story of corruption so that the Party-state battled corruption on behalf of its citizens in order to bring them economic opportunities, rising living standards, and social stability. In these new narratives, the role of the state was no longer that of ideological or moral leadership, but of economic management. Through these narratives of economic management, the regime managed to control the corruption crisis and recapture its political legitimacy, but was also forced to deal with the consequences of this new vision of state-society relations.     

THE TIMING OF WELFARE PAYMENTS AND INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE

I examine transfer schedules for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and find a causal relationship between the time directly after welfare payments and intimate partner violence against women. This study supports the hypothesis that the husband uses threats of violence as an instrument to gain control over the allocation of household resources, and suggests that the increased incidence in physical violence after welfare payments is associated with alcohol use. Additionally, I find that states that pay TANF recipients twice a month do not have this effect on threats of violence. This suggests that smaller, more frequent payments may reduce the husband's incentive to use verbal violence as a bargaining tool. (JEL I38, J18, J12)     

‘Going Out’ or Staying In? The Expansion of Chinese NGOs in Africa

This article examines the overseas behaviour of Chinese non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) in two African nations, Ethiopia and Malawi, with varying political regime types. Our findings suggest that, irrespective of regime type, Chinese NGOs have yet to make a substantial impact in either nation. We argue that, despite the strength of the Chinese state and high levels of international development assistance given, domestic politics and regulatory frameworks in host nations still matter a great deal. Our study suggests that the Chinese model of international development will continue to be one in which temporary one‐off projects are favoured; and, insofar as social organisations will play a role, they will be in the domain of government‐organised NGOs rather than grassroots NGOs.     

The Impacts of Education,Adverse Childhood Experience,and Nativity on Intimate Partner Violence

This paper tested an implication of household bargaining theory, that women with higher human capital experience less intimate partner violence. Relying on a single source of income imposes a barrier to leaving an abusive relationship. Women with higher human capital are better equipped to leave a relationship, which allows them to tolerate less violence in a relationship. Using a California health survey dataset, we found that more educated women were less likely to experience spousal violence. We used the detailed nature of the data to control for commonly omitted variables such as adverse childhood experiences. In addition, we found that the effect of education on intimate partner violence varied by nativity (US-born vs. foreign-born) and was smaller for foreign-born women. Drawing from the literature on the returns to education by race, we hypothesized that foreign-born women have a lower return on human capital, which in turn moderated the effect of education on household bargaining power.     

Partition testing in dose-response studies with multiple endpoints

Dose-response studies with multiple endpoints can be formulated as closed testing or partition testing problems. When the endpoints are primary and secondary, whether the order in which the doses are to be tested is pre-determined or sample determined lead to different partitioning of the parameter space corresponding to the null hypotheses to be tested. We use the case of two doses and two endpoints to illustrate how to apply the partitioning principle to construct multiple tests that control the appropriate error rate. Graphical representation can be useful in visualizing the decision process.     

On a sequential subset selection procedure for the least probable multinomial cell

This paper studies a sequential procedure R for selecting a random size subset that contains the multinomial cell which has the smallest cell probability. The stopping rule of the proposed procedure R is the composite of the stopping rules of curtailed sampling, inverse sampling, and the Ramey-Alam sampling. A reslut on the worst configuration is shown and it is employed in computing the procedure parameters that guarantee certain probability requirements. Tables of these procedure parameters, the corresponding probability of correct selection, the expected sample size, and the expected subset size are given for comparison purpose.     

Scheduling Problems in a Practical Allocation Model

A parallel computational model is defined which addresses I/O contention,latency, and pipe-lined message passing between tasks allocated to differentprocessors. The model can be used for parallel task-allocation on either anetwork of workstations or on a multi-stage inter-connected parallel machine.To study performance bounds more closely, basic properties are developed forwhen the precedence constraints form a directed tree. It is shown that theproblem of optimally scheduling a directed one-level precedence tree on anunlimited number of identical processors in this model is NP-hard. Theproblem of scheduling a directed two-level precedence tree is also shown tobe NP-hard even when the system latency is zero. An approximation algorithm is then presented for scheduling directedone-level task trees on an unlimited number of processors with anapproximation ratio of 3. Simulation results show that this algorithm is, infact, much faster than its worst-case performance bound. Better simulationresults are obtained by improving our approximation algorithm usingheusistics. Restricting the problem to the case of equal task executiontimes, a linear-time algorithm is presented to find an optimal schedule.     

Do Different Infant Smiles Reflect Different Positive Emotions?

Different types of infant smiles in the family of positive emotions were investigated during two mother-infant games: peekaboo and tickle. There were 27 6-month-old infants and 28 12-month-olds. Infant smiles were coded as simple (lip corner retraction only), Duchenne (simple plus cheek raising), play (simple plus jaw drop), and duplay (simple plus cheek raise and jaw drop). Results show that each type of smile has a systematic pattern of association with the game (peekaboo or tickle), component (setup or climax), trial (six trials for each game), and the direction of the infant's gaze. No significant age differences were found. We conclude that when smiling, infants may experience qualitatively different kinds of enjoyment during these two games: enjoyment of readiness to engage in play (simple smiles while gazing at mother during peekaboo), enjoyment of relief (simple smiles while gazing away from mother after being tickled), enjoyment of participation and agency (Duchenne smiles with gaze at mother during the climax of early tickle game trials), enjoyment of escape (Duchenne smiles while gazing away during tickle climax), and enjoyment of build-up (duplay smiles during the climax of later trials). These findings show that the same facial action, smiling, can reflect different positive emotions depending upon cooccurring facial actions and the dynamics of the social process, and that the positive emotional experience of infants as young as six months is more complex than previously reported.