Transition from playing with simulated gambling games to gambling with real money: a longitudinal study in adolescence

Digital technology advances have supported an expansion of gambling activities, which is notable via the advent of simulated gambling games. Simulated gambling reproduces ‘real’ gambling activities, which enables the users to gamble without investing money. According to research evidence, a certain number of adolescents are playing with these games, but until now little has been known about how they could facilitate the migration to gambling with real money. Using a longitudinal design with a one-year interval period, the goal of this study was to assess the potential transition between playing with simulated gambling and the initiation to gambling with real money. The final sample was constituted of 1220 adolescents (age range = 14 to 18 y.o.) who had never played with real money at the first measurement time. At the second measurement time, 28.8% of the participants had gambled for the first time with real money. Logistic regressions revealed that the predictive association between simulated gambling and gambling with real money only holds for adolescents who transitioned from simulated poker to poker with real money. These findings highlight the need for regulation and monitoring on Internet gambling poker sites, as well as further research to assess the mechanisms at work.     

Contrast Estimation for Parametric Stationary Determinantal Point Processes

We study minimum contrast estimation for parametric stationary determinantal point processes. These processes form a useful class of models for repulsive (or regular, or inhibitive) point patterns and are already applied in numerous statistical applications. Our main focus is on minimum contrast methods based on the Ripley's K‐function or on the pair correlation function. Strong consistency and asymptotic normality of theses procedures are proved under general conditions that only concern the existence of the process and its regularity with respect to the parameters. A key ingredient of the proofs is the recently established Brillinger mixing property of stationary determinantal point processes. This work may be viewed as a complement to the study of Y. Guan and M. Sherman who establish the same kind of asymptotic properties for a large class of Cox processes, which in turn are models for clustering (or aggregation).     

Trajectories of team and individual sports participation in childhood and links with internalizing problems

The purpose of this 5-year longitudinal study is to identify trajectories of team and individual sports participation in childhood, and to compare these trajectories on different types of internalizing problems. Parents reported their children's annual sports participation from the ages of 6–10 (n = 785) and teachers reported internalizing problems (depression, anxiety, social withdrawal) at the beginning and at the end of this period. The study used latent class growth analyses to identify two trajectories of team sports and two trajectories of individual sports participation were identified: (1) high participation, and (2) low participation. Considering baseline level of internalizing problems and gender, children in the high participation team sports trajectory show significantly fewer depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal behaviors at age 10 than those in the low participation team sports trajectory. No differences between individual sports trajectories were observed. Comparison with joint trajectory groups partially confirmed these results but also showed that sustained participation in multiple individual sports could also be linked to decreased anxiety. Our findings suggest that participation in team sports should be encouraged to promote certain aspects of children's mental health.     

Remittances and inequality: a dynamic migration model

We develop a model to study the effects of migration and remittances on inequality in the origin communities. While wealth inequality is shown to be monotonically reduced along the time-span, the short- and the long-run impacts on income inequality may be of opposite signs, suggesting that the dynamic relationship between migration/remittances and inequality may well be characterized by an inverse U-shaped pattern. This is consistent with the findings of the empirical literature, yet offers a different interpretation from the usually assumed migration network effects. With no need to endogenize migration costs through the role of migration networks, we generate the same results via intergenerational wealth accumulation.     

Towards a critical realist epistemology?

When critical realists consider epistemology they typically start from “epistemological relativism.” We find this position necessary, but we also find it insufficient because it lacks a critique of the highly unequal social relations among observers themselves—relations that shape the very production of knowledge. While it is indeed the case that all knowledge is fallible, it is also the case that all knowledge is positioned, with a particular standpoint. What is more, the social power relations between standpoints organize the production of truth in ways that produce systematic distortions. In this paper, we propose a critical realist social epistemology. We introduce feminist standpoint theory and postcolonial theory as our suggested interventions into critical realism and we use two case studies of existing work to highlight i) the social production of truth and the real, and ii) what is at stake for radicalizing epistemology in critical realism. In so doing, our paper emphasizes the epistemic complexities that continuously shape ontology, a commitment to subaltern voices or experiences, and a thorough interrogation of the relations between positions of knowledge production.     

The worldwide maritime network of container shipping: spatial structure and regional dynamics

Port and maritime studies dealing with containerization have observed traffic concentration and dispersion throughout the world. Globalization, intermodal transportation, and technological revolutions in the shipping industry have resulted in both network extension and rationalization. However, lack of precise data on inter‐port relations prevent the application of wider network theories to global maritime container networks, which are often examined through case studies of specific firms or regions. In this article, we present an analysis of the global liner shipping network in 1996 and 2006, a period of rapid change in port hierarchies and liner service configurations. While we refer to literature on port system development, shipping networks, and port selection, the article is one of the only analyses of the properties of the global container shipping network. We analyse the relative position of ports in the global network through indicators of centrality. The results reveal a certain level of robustness in the global shipping network. While transhipment hub flows and gateway flows might slightly shift among nodes in the network, the network properties remain rather stable in terms of the main nodes polarizing the network and the overall structure of the system. In addition, mapping the changing centrality of ports confirms the impacts of global trade and logistics shifts on the port hierarchy and indicates that changes are predominantly geographic.     

Reports of Wins and Risk Taking: An Investigation of the Mediating Effect of the Illusion of Control

Two experiments examined the relationships between the knowledge that another person has won in a gamble, the illusion of control and risk taking. Participants played a computer-simulated French roulette game individually. Before playing, some participants learnt that another person won a large amount of money. Results from a first experiment (n = 24) validated a causal model where the knowledge of another person’s win increased the illusion of control, measured with betting times, expectancy and self-reports on scales, which in turn encourages risk taking. In the second experiment (n = 36), some participants were told the previous player acknowledged the win to be fortuitous. The suppression of the belief that the previous winner had himself exerted control over the outcome resulted in lower rates of risk-taking behaviors. This suggests that it was not the knowledge of another person’s win in itself that increased risk taking, but rather, the belief that the other person had some control over the gamble’s outcome. Theoretical implications for the study of social mechanisms involved in gambling behavior are discussed.     

WebStress: A web interface to explore a multidatabase bibliographic corpus on occupational stress

A bibliographic study on a multidisciplinary subject, such as occupational stress, requires a multidatabase query facility. Given this, we searched eight databases belonging to different fields (medicine, psychology, etc.) and from different countries. Thus, more than 26000 references on occupational stress were gathered. A bibliographic corpus of this sort is unusable because of the heterogeneous format of the records and the number of duplicate entries. Considering the limitations of commercial programs, we have developed a system, called WebStress, for reformatting the data and removing duplicates. The huge number of references and the research needs of updating and searching have necessitated the addition of several other functions to WebStress. Therefore WebStress comprises a web interface that makes it possible to search the corpus with advanced features (using clustering, a specialized thesaurus on stress and Boolean queries). In addition to the usual bibliographic queries on a specific database such as Medline, WebStress provides bibliometric analysis of the corpus, which might contribute to a detailed analysis on occupational stress in order to highlight the networks of researchers and to find the main topics studied in this area. WebStress is not yet available to researchers in general. It is being further developed, and also permission needs to be obtained from the eight commercial bibliographic databases that it consults.     

BRAIN DRAIN IN GLOBALIZATION: A GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM ANALYSIS FROM THE SENDING COUNTRIES' PERSPECTIVE

According to the economic literature, high‐skilled emigration may either harm or benefit developing economies. Recent research highlighted several positive and negative channels through which the brain drain operates. This paper aims at evaluating the relative magnitudes of various brain drain channels and quantifying their global impact on migrants' sending countries. For this purpose, we develop a 10‐region general equilibrium model of the world economy characterized by overlapping‐generations dynamics. Our findings suggest that the short‐run impact of brain drain on resident human capital is extremely crucial, as it affects not only the number of high‐skilled workers available to domestic production, but also the sending economy's capacity to innovate/adopt modern technologies. This latter effect is particularly important in globalization, where capital investments are made in places with high production efficiencies. Hence, despite positive feedback effects, those countries facing prevalent high‐skilled emigration are the most candid victims to brain drain. (JEL F22, J24, O57)