Principles for Conduct of Pest Risk Analyses: Report of an Expert Workshop

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) have focused attention on risk assessment of potential insect, weed, and animal pests and diseases of livestock. These risks have traditionally been addressed through quarantine protocols ranging from limits on the geographical areas from which a product may originate, postharvest disinfestation procedures like fumigation, and inspections at points of export and import, to outright bans. To ensure that plant and animal protection measures are not used as nontariff trade barriers, GATT and NAFTA require pest risk analysis (PRA) to support quarantine decisions. The increased emphasis on PRA has spurred multiple efforts at the national and international level to design frameworks for the conduct of these analyses. As approaches to pest risk analysis proliferate, and the importance of the analyses grows, concerns have arisen about the scientific and technical conduct of pest risk analysis. In January of 1997, the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (HCRA) held an invitation-only workshop in Washington, D.C. to bring experts in risk analysis and pest characterization together to develop general principles for pest risk analysis. Workshop participants examined current frameworks for PRA, discussed strengths and weaknesses of the approaches, and formulated principles, based on years of experience with risk analysis in other setting and knowledge of the issues specific to analysis of pests. The principles developed highlight the both the similarities of pest risk analysis to other forms of risk analysis, and its unique attributes.     

Attenuating Initial Beliefs: Increasing the Acceptance of Anthropogenic Climate Change Information by Reflecting on Values

Anthropogenic climate change information tends to be interpreted against the backdrop of initial environmental beliefs, which can lead to some people being resistant toward the information. In this article (N = 88), we examined whether self‐affirmation via reflection on personally important values could attenuate the impact of initial beliefs on the acceptance of anthropogenic climate change evidence. Our findings showed that initial beliefs about the human impact on ecological stability influenced the acceptance of information only among nonaffirmed participants. Self‐affirmed participants who were initially resistant toward the information showed stronger beliefs in the existence of climate change risks and greater acknowledgment that individual efficacy has a role to play in reducing climate change risks than did their nonaffirmed counterparts.     

Is Tattooing a Risk Factor for Adolescents’ Criminal Behavior? Empirical Evidence from an Administrative Data Set of Juvenile Detainees in Taiwan

Juvenile crime affects not only the victims of the crime but also the delinquents’ future. How to prevent adolescent criminal behavior has become an important public policy issue. This study contributes to this interesting issue by examining the relationship between tattooing and adolescents’ criminal behavior. In particular, this study investigates whether or not having a tattoo/tattoos is connected to the incidence of various criminal activities, including: larceny, robbery, fraud, assault, drug use, and homicide. A unique sample of 973 juvenile detainees drawn from the administrative profiles in Taiwan and the coarsened exact matching method were utilized. Results show that compared to their nontattooed counterparts, tattooed juvenile detainees were significantly more likely to commit fraud, assault, drug abuse, and homicide by 3%, 13%, 9%, and 9%, respectively. In contrast, tattooing was not significantly associated with larceny or robbery. From a policy perspective, given the significant link between tattooing and criminal behavior, the presence of a tattoo in adolescents may serve as a valuable indicator regarding adolescents’ high probability of committing crimes.     

Putting Process (Back) In: Research on the Internationalization Process of the Firm

This paper provides a critique of existing research on the internationalization process of the firm and proposes an agenda for future inquiry. In recent years, process approaches have received increasing attention in management research, leading to a more refined understanding of the distinction between process and variance paradigms. We apply a process lens to a well‐established sub‐field of international business, namely the internationalization process of the firm. We review how this research tradition has evolved over four decades. The review commences with a reassessment of the seminal ‘stage models’ that date back to the 1970s. It then proceeds to classify subsequent research on the basis of whether it includes process data and/or process theorizing. It is found that the majority of studies in this review do not combine process data with process theorizing. We show how, even in studies that contain some process elements, a process approach is not always sustained throughout the paper. On the basis of this review, six research themes are proposed, which would form the basis for a process agenda for future research.     

Modeling the Adenoma and Serrated Pathway to Colorectal CAncer (ASCCA)

Several colorectal cancer (CRC) screening models have been developed describing the progression of adenomas to CRC. Currently, there is increasing evidence that serrated lesions can also develop into CRC. It is not clear whether screening tests have the same test characteristics for serrated lesions as for adenomas, but lower sensitivities have been suggested. Models that ignore this type of colorectal lesions may provide overly optimistic predictions of the screen‐induced reduction in CRC incidence. To address this issue, we have developed the Adenoma and Serrated pathway to Colorectal CAncer (ASCCA) model that includes the adenoma‐carcinoma pathway and the serrated pathway to CRC as well as characteristics of colorectal lesions. The model structure and the calibration procedure are described in detail. Calibration resulted in 19 parameter sets for the adenoma‐carcinoma pathway and 13 for the serrated pathway that match the age‐ and sex‐specific adenoma and serrated lesion prevalence in the COlonoscopy versus COlonography Screening (COCOS) trial, Dutch CRC incidence and mortality rates, and a number of other intermediate outcomes concerning characteristics of colorectal lesions. As an example, we simulated outcomes for a biennial fecal immunochemical test screening program and a hypothetical one‐time colonoscopy screening program. Inclusion of the serrated pathway influenced the predicted effectiveness of screening when serrated lesions are associated with lower screening test sensitivity or when they are not removed. To our knowledge, this is the first model that explicitly includes the serrated pathway and characteristics of colorectal lesions. It is suitable for the evaluation of the (cost)effectiveness of potential screening strategies for CRC.     

The Boston Vocation Bureau's First Counseling Staff

Although much has been written about Frank Parsons, the founder of the vocational guidance movement, little is known about the 1st counseling staff of the Vocation Bureau. Lucinda Wyman Prince, Ralph Albertson, and Philip Davis each deserve recognition for their role in founding vocation guidance as well as their civic contributions. This article describes the roles and contribution of the profession's 1st counselors.     

The Political Economy of Moral Conflict: An Empirical Study of Learning and Law Enforcement Under Prohibition

The U.S. Prohibition experience shows a remarkable policy reversal. In only 14 years, a drastic shift in public opinion required two constitutional amendments. I develop and estimate a model of endogenous law enforcement, determined by beliefs about the Prohibition‐crime nexus and alcohol‐related moral views. In turn, the policy outcomes shape subsequent learning about Prohibition enforcement costs. I estimate the model through maximum likelihood on Prohibition Era city‐level data on police enforcement, crime, and alcohol‐related legislation. The model can account for the variation in public opinion changes, and the heterogeneous responses of law enforcement and violence across cities. Results show that a 15% increase in the homicide rate can be attributed to Prohibition enforcement. The subsequent learning‐driven adjustment of local law enforcement allowed for the alcohol market to rebound to 60% of its pre‐Prohibition size. I conclude with counterfactual exercises exploring the welfare implications of policy learning, prior beliefs, preference polarization, and alternative political environments. Results illustrate the importance of incorporating the endogenous nature of law enforcement into our understanding of policy failure and policy success.     

Empirical likelihood based detection procedure for change point in mean residual life functions under random censorship

The mean residual life (MRL) function is one of the basic parameters of interest in survival analysis that describes the expected remaining time of an individual after a certain age. The study of changes in the MRL function is practical and interesting because it may help us to identify some factors such as age and gender that may influence the remaining lifetimes of patients after receiving a certain surgery. In this paper, we propose a detection procedure based on the empirical likelihood for the changes in MRL functions with right censored data. Two real examples are also given: Veterans' administration lung cancer study and Stanford heart transplant to illustrate the detecting procedure. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Collective versus Individual Effects in Survival Analysis of Multiple Failures

In survival analysis, we sometimes encounter data with multiple censored outcomes. Under certain scenarios, partial or even all covariates have ‘similar’ relative risks on the multiple outcomes in the Cox regression analysis. The similarity in covariate effects can be quantified using the proportionality of regression coefficients. Identifying the proportionality structure, or equivalently whether covariates have individual or collective effects, may have important scientific implications. In addition, it can lead to a smaller set of unknown parameters, which in turn results in more accurate estimation. In this article, we develop a novel approach for identifying the proportionality structure. Simulation shows the satisfactory performance of the proposed approach and its advantage over estimation under no assumed structure. We analyse three datasets to demonstrate the practical application of the proposed approach.     

A Necessary Condition for the Strong Oracle Property

A problem of using a non‐convex penalty for sparse regression is that there are multiple local minima of the penalized sum of squared residuals, and it is not known which one is a good estimator. The aim of this paper is to give a guide to design a non‐convex penalty that has the strong oracle property. Here, the strong oracle property means that the oracle estimator is the unique local minimum of the objective function. We summarize three definitions of the oracle property – the global, weak and strong oracle properties. Then, we give sufficient conditions for the weak oracle property, which means that the oracle estimator becomes a local minimum. We give an example of non‐convex penalties that possess the weak oracle property but not the strong oracle property. Finally, we give a necessary condition for the strong oracle property.