Inheritances and the distribution of wealth or whatever happened to the great inheritance boom?

Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), we found that on average over the period from 1989 to 2007, about one fifth of American households at a given point of time reported a wealth transfer and these accounted for quite a sizeable figure, about a quarter of their net worth. Over the lifetime, about 30 percent of households could expect to receive a wealth transfer and these would account for close to 40 % of their net worth near time of death. However, there is little evidence of an inheritance “boom.” In fact, from 1989 to 2007, the share of households reporting a wealth transfer fell by 2.5 percentage points, a time trend statistically significant at the one percent level. The average value of inheritances received among all households did increase but at a slow pace, by 10 %; the time trend is not statistically significant. Wealth transfers as a proportion of current net worth fell sharply over this period, from 29 to 19 %, though the time trend once again is not statistically significant. We also found that inheritances and other wealth transfers tend to be equalizing in terms of the distribution of household wealth, though a number of caveats apply to this result.     

An Evolutionary Algorithm for Sequencing Production on a Paced Assembly Line

A new sequencing method for mixed‐model assembly lines is developed and tested. This method, called the Evolutionary Production Sequencer (EPS) is designed to maximize production on an assembly line. The performance of EPS is evaluated using three measures: minimum cycle time necessary to achieve 100% completion without rework, percent of items completed without rework for a given cycle time, and sequence “smoothness.” The first two of these measures are based on a simulated production system. Characteristics of the system, such as assembly line station length, assembly time and cycle time, are varied to better gauge the performance of EPS. More fundamental variation is studied by modeling two production systems. In one set of tests, the system consists of an assembly line in isolation (i.e., a single‐level system). In another set of tests, the production system consists of the assembly line and the fabrication system supplying components to the line (i.e., a two‐level system). Sequence smoothness is measured by the mean absolute deviation (MAD) between actual component usage and the ideal usage at each point in the production sequence. The performance of EPS is compared to those of well‐known assembly line sequencing techniques developed by Miltenburg (1989), Okamura and Yamashina (1979), and Yano and Rachamadugu (1991). EPS performed very well under all test conditions when the criterion of success was either minimum cycle time necessary to achieve 100% production without rework or percent of items completed without rework for a given cycle time. When MAD was the criterion of success, EPS was found inferior to the Miltenburg heuristic but better than the other two production‐oriented techniques.     

Behavior Skills Training with Voice-Over Video Modeling

The present study used behavior skills training (BST) to teach three adult participants to implement a video modeling intervention aimed at teaching social skills to adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). During baseline trials, participants were given access to written instructions before role-play with two actors (who simulated a quiet conversation) and one confederate (who played the role of an adult with ASD). During treatment, participants were given a video model with voice-over instruction depicting how to implement the video modeling intervention to teach social skills, repeated roleplay trials, and feedback following their performance. All participant scores (percentage of steps correctly implemented in each session) increased from baseline to treatment, and generalization was demonstrated with an actual consumer diagnosed with ASD. Additionally, after training participants to use a video model to teach one social skill, there was generalization to teaching as many as three additional novel social skills. Participants showed maintenance of skills during a treatment study that involved training adult clients with ASD to engage in the social skills.     

Transit Crime as a Barrier to Qualitative Urban Health Research with Older Adults

This paper reports how transit crime and perception of crime have been barriers to an area-focused and person-based ethnographic urban health and wellbeing research study in St. Louis. This study has experienced two primary challenges. First, respondent concerns about crime have impeded the ability of the study to follow best practices to strengthen ethnographic and qualitative research. Second, these concerns have impeded sampling and respondent participation in a way that decreases the voice and perspectives of older adults.     

Carl Schmitt’s politics in the age of drone strikes: examining the Schmittian texture of Obama’s enemy

When George Bush declared to his global audience that they were either ‘with us or against us’, he appeared to directly invoke the Schmittian antithesis of friend vs. enemy. Against the historical backdrop of Bush’s war on terror, and the scholarly attention his foreign policy received in relation to Carl Schmitt’s concept of the political, this paper examines whether the Obama administration’s targeted killing regime has marked a departure from Schmitt’s paradigms of war and enmity. Focusing specifically upon the rapid increase in use of drone strikes during Barack Obama’s presidency, this paper argues that the production of the enemy’s abstractness and drive for its annihilation together push at the limits of the Schmittian political logic. However, rather than denoting the point at which political relations are unexplainable through a Schmittian lens, this paper proposes that this produced enemy and its treatment in drone ‘warfare’ obfuscates the lines between a complex of Schmittian paradigms.     

A comparative analysis of Norwegian and American social workers’ views about inclusion of religion and spirituality in social work

ABSTRACT

This article presents results from a comparative analysis of national surveys of Norwegian and American social workers’ views and practice with regard to inclusion of religion and spirituality in their professional work with clients. Findings include views about professional values, educational preparation, raising the topics of religion and spirituality with clients experiencing oppression, and use of related interventions. Overall, American social workers are more likely to address religion and spirituality than Norwegians. International comparative statistical and conceptual analyses consider influences of differences in practice settings, respondents’ age and length of experience, and cultural contexts.     

Higher order moments of the estimated tangency portfolio weights

In this paper, we consider the estimated weights of the tangency portfolio. We derive analytical expressions for the higher order non-central and central moments of these weights when the returns are assumed to be independently and multivariate normally distributed. Moreover, the expressions for mean, variance, skewness and kurtosis of the estimated weights are obtained in closed forms. Later, we complement our results with a simulation study where data from the multivariate normal and t-distributions are simulated, and the first four moments of estimated weights are computed by using the Monte Carlo experiment. It is noteworthy to mention that the distributional assumption of returns is found to be important, especially for the first two moments. Finally, through an empirical illustration utilizing returns of four financial indices listed in NASDAQ stock exchange, we observe the presence of time dynamics in higher moments.     

Immigrants,Natives and Social Assistance: Comparable Take‐Up Under Comparable Circumstances

Are immigrants on welfare because they are more likely to be eligible or because they are more likely to claim benefits for which they are eligible? The answer is politically important, but because most current research on immigration and welfare is based on data from the United States, the answer is difficult due to the complexities of the transfer system which make eligibility determinations difficult. In Germany, by contrast, eligibility for the main cash transfer program, Sozialhilfe (Social Assistance), is determined by a comparatively simple nationwide formula. We use data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel to test whether immigrants to Germany are more likely than natives to claim welfare benefits for which they are eligible. We find that immigrants are more likely than native Germans to receive welfare, both because immigrants are more likely to be eligible and because they are more likely, when eligible, to claim their benefits. However, we also find that this greater propensity to take‐up benefits is not related to immigrant status per se: when other sociodemographic factors are accounted for in an appropriate manner, immigrant households are no more likely to take‐up benefits than native households.