The Chinese-speaking Muslims (Dungans) of Central Asia: A Case of Multiple Identities in a Changing Context

Chinese-speaking Muslims, called Dungans in Central Asia and Huizu in China, were forced to migrate to present-day Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan at the end of the nineteenth century. They reconstructed their identity through interrelations with local populations and the soviet categorisation of nationality. But after 1991, their status has being gradually destabilised owing to the changes in economic, social and political rules as well as citizenship regulations in these countries. They have to readapt to the new situation created by the independence of the three former Soviet Republics, which has challenged their unity.     

Sources of family violence

This paper suggests a direction for the exploration of the causes of family violence. Explanatory models of family violence were considered in this regard, with the recommendation that a multi-determined model should be considered to ensure the most accurate explanation. We suggest that family violence will be best understood and prevented or alleviated, if a model is used that considers the interaction of structural violence and the personality features of all the family members.     

Constrained allocation problems with single-peaked preferences: An axiomatic analysis

We introduce a new class of problems that contains two existing classes: allocation problems with single-peaked preferences and bankruptcy problems. On this class, we analyze the implications of well-known properties such as Pareto optimality, strategy-proofness, resource-monotonicity, no-envy, equal treatment of equals, and two new properties we introduce, hierarchical no-envy and independence of nonbinding constraints. Unlike earlier literature, we consider rules that allow free-disposability. We present characterizations of a rule we introduce on this domain. We relate this rule to well-known rules on the aforementioned subdomains. Based on this relation, we present a characterization of a well-known bankruptcy rule called the constrained equal awards rule. Received: 22 June 2000/Accepted: 21 March 2002 This paper is based on the first chapter of my Ph.D. thesis submitted to the University of Rochester. I wish to thank my advisor, William Thomson, for helpful comments and suggestions.     

Optimal scaling of Metropolis algorithms: Heading toward general target distributions

The authors provide an overview of optimal scaling results for the Metropolis algorithm with Gaussian proposal distribution. They address in more depth the case of high‐dimensional target distributions formed of independent, but not identically distributed components. They attempt to give an intuitive explanation as to why the well‐known optimal acceptance rate of 0.234 is not always suitable. They show how to find the asymptotically optimal acceptance rate when needed, and they explain why it is sometimes necessary to turn to inhomogeneous proposal distributions. Their results are illustrated with a simple example.     

How bad can a voting location be

Two questions concerning the location of a single facility by a voting process are investigated for transportation networks:

- What is the maximum number of customers located on the network preferring some rival point over a voting solution?

- How does the average distance of the customers to the facility increase when a voting location instead of a Weber location is chosen for the facility?

Complete answers are given for general networks and for certain planar networks, viz., the so-called generalized cacti.     

Leveraging middle managers’ brokerage for corporate entrepreneurship: The role of multilevel social capital configurations

Building on recent efforts to bring a socio-political perspective to social capital research, we develop and test a multilevel framework that explains why middle managers who occupy brokerage positions differ in their ability and willingness to engage in entrepreneurial behavior. More specifically, we provide a contextualized understanding of the links among middle managers' brokerage, their political-support ties, and their personal initiative. Results derived from data on 383 middle managers and 72 top managers in 34 business units indicate that political-support ties with top managers strengthen the relationship between middle managers’ brokerage and personal initiative. However, this positive effect depends on the social capital resources available in the focal business unit. It is attenuated in business units with a supportive and trusting social context and amplified in business units with high levels of internal connectedness. By uncovering these incompatibilities and complementarities, our study demonstrates the value of accounting for different social capital configurations and the interplay of their inherent social capital resources when examining the effects of brokerage on corporate entrepreneurship.