Public income transfers and wealth accumulation at the bottom: Within and between country differences in Canada and the United States

Both Canada and the United States are considered liberal welfare states, yet exhibit notable differences in income poverty attributed to social policy. While a more generous welfare system lifts many above income poverty, models of household financial behaviour suggest that more income from the state should displace private savings via a substitution effect. Using nationally representative wealth surveys from Canada and the US from 1998/1999 to 2016 we extend knowledge on the relationship between the welfare state and private wealth accumulation. Specifically, we study household asset poverty defined as financial asset levels that fall below three-month adjusted income poverty threshold. Asset poverty rates varied over time in the two countries and were higher in the less generous US welfare state. Further, income transfer share was positively related to asset poverty in Canada but not in the US. Counterfactual estimates offered evidence of the substitution effect in Canada, where higher levels of transfers may crowd out private asset accumulation. Results invite further consideration of the concept of asset poverty and its relationship to welfare state characteristics.     

The intergenerational transmission of income mobility between mothers and their young adult daughters: The mediating role of their daughters' educational attainment

This study examines whether the daughters' educational attainment mediates the intergenerational transmission of economic mobility between mothers and their young adult daughters. To create mother–daughter dyads, two data sets were combined: The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 79 for Children and Young Adults (NLSY79 CY). A total of 2,456 dyads were included for analysis. We used a mediation model to explore the relationship between mothers' income and their young adult daughters' income. Mothers' income was associated with their young adult daughters' educational attainment and income. The mediation model indicated partial mediation of the relationship between mothers' income and their young adult daughters' income via their young adult daughters' educational attainment. Addressing issues of income inequality among mothers may serve as a buffer against the low upward mobility across generations for their young adult daughters raised by low-income mothers. It is imperative to provide programs and financial assistance for mothers to bolster their income and thereby their daughters' educational attainment and income in young adulthood and therefore improve economic mobility from mothers to daughters.     

Mothers' interoceptive knowledge predicts children's emotion regulation and social skills in middle childhood

Interoception, often defined as the perception of internal physiological changes, is implicated in many adult social affective processes, but its effects remain understudied in the context of parental socialization of children's emotions. We hypothesized that what parents know about the interoceptive concomitants of emotions, or interoceptive knowledge (e.g., “my heart races when excited”), may be especially relevant in emotion socialization and in supporting children's working models of emotions and the social world. We developed a measure of mothers' interoceptive knowledge about their own emotions and examined its relation to children's social affective outcomes relative to other socialization factors, including self‐reported parental behaviors, emotion beliefs, and knowledge of emotion‐relevant situations and non‐verbal expressions. To assess these, mothers (N = 201) completed structured interviews and questionnaires. A few months later, third‐grade teachers rated children's social skills and emotion regulation observed in the classroom. Results indicated that mothers' interoceptive knowledge about their own emotions was associated with children's social affective skills (emotion regulation, social initiative, cooperation, self‐control), even after controlling for child gender and ethnicity, family income, maternal stress, and the above maternal socialization factors. Overall, findings suggest that mothers' interoceptive knowledge may provide an additional, unique pathway by which children acquire social affective competence.     

Planning for retail change: a survey of municipal governments in Washington State

Effectively managing retail is essential for municipalities in terms of meeting land use planning goals, developing revenue sources through taxation, furthering economic growth and providing access to goods and services for residents. In 2013, a survey was conducted to examine the retail planning practices of all the 110 small- and medium-sized municipalities in Washington State. The online survey addressed data collection and analysis, land use, retail recruitment, inter-jurisdictional cooperation and evaluation. A large majority of respondents had retail planning goals in their comprehensive plans, yet only 30% dedicated staff for implementation. Jurisdictions would benefit from regional retail planning (especially in light of changes underway from e-commerce), yet the state tax structure places municipalities in competition.     

Coordination in a Single‐Supplier,Multi‐Retailer Distribution System: Supplier‐Facilitated Transshipments

We consider supplier‐facilitated transshipments for achieving supply chain coordination in a single supplier, multi‐retailer distribution system with non‐cooperative retailers. The previous transshipment literature has focused on coordination through retailer‐negotiated transshipments and thus does not consider the supplier's decision‐making. In contrast, in this study, we assume the supplier is an active participant in the system and we seek to understand how the supplier can facilitate the implementation of coordinating transshipments. We study a two‐period model with wholesale orders at the start of the first period and preventive transshipments performed at the start of the second period. Inspired by a supplier‐facilitated transshipment scheme observed in practice, we assume the supplier implements transshipments through a bi‐directional adjustment contract. Under this contract, each retailer can either buy additional inventory from, or sell back excess inventory to, the supplier. We show that coordination can be achieved through carefully designed contracts with state‐dependent adjustment prices and a wholesale price menu. We demonstrate that the supplier's role in facilitating coordinating transshipments is critical. In addition, we use our understanding of the coordinating contract form to derive some simpler and easier‐to‐implement heuristic contracts. We use a numerical study to demonstrate the value, to the supplier, of using the coordinating adjustment and wholesale prices, and to evaluate the heuristics’ performance.     

Hierarchical linear modeling as an example for measuring change over time in a leadership development evaluation context

One of the difficulties in evaluating leadership development is measuring whether and how people change over the time period of the leadership development initiative. Even when change over time is an inherent part of the design and evaluation of leadership development, events may occur outside of the control of evaluators that limit the effectiveness of adequately and accurately assessing change over time. With data from a leadership development initiative designed to account for change over time, this article suggests hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) as a multilevel methodological technique to assess change over time in a leadership development context. This article will use real change over time data from a leadership development initiative and discuss the logic and rationale of HLM. We use HLM as an example of a multilevel methodological tool to investigate typical change over time questions in leadership development evaluation.     

Leader individual differences,situational parameters,and leadership outcomes: A comprehensive review and integration

In this article, we provide a wide-ranging review of recent research on leader individual differences. The review focuses specifically on the explosion of such research in the last decade. The first purpose of this review is to summarize and integrate various conceptual frameworks describing how leader attributes influence leader emergence and leader effectiveness. The second purpose is to provide a comprehensive review of empirical research on this relationship. Also, most prior reviews primarily examined leader personality traits; this review includes a broader array of leader attributes, including cognitive capacities, personality, motives and values, social skills, and knowledge and expertise. The final broad purpose of this paper is to review and integrate situational and contextual parameters into our conceptual framing of leader individual differences. Few, if any, prior reviews have systematically accounted for the critical role of such parameters in cuing, activating, or delimiting the effects of particular leader attributes. We do so in this article.     

Visualizing Vandermonde's determinant through nonintersecting lattice paths

We use the Lindström–Gessel–Viennot Theorem to count nonintersecting lattice paths in a carefully chosen acyclic weighted digraph to give a visual combinatorial proof of Vandermonde's classic determinant.     

Evaluation of two school-based HIV prevention interventions in the border city of Tijuana, Mexico

This research project examined the individual and combined effectiveness of an HIV prevention workshop and a free condom distribution program in four high schools in Tijuana, Mexico. Adolescents (N = 320) completed baseline measures on sexual practices and theoretical correlates and participated in a two-part study. In Study 1, students were randomly assigned to an HIV prevention workshop or a control condition, with a 3-month follow-up assessment. Results indicate three significant workshop benefits regarding HIV transmission by altering sexual initiation, access to condoms, and traditional beliefs regarding condoms. In Study 2, we set up a condom distribution program at two of the participating schools, and students completed a 6-month follow-up assessment. Results indicate that exposure to the workshop followed by access to the condom distribution program yielded two beneficial results for reducing HIV transmission: moderating sexual initiation and increasing condom acquisition. Access to the condom distribution program alone had no effects on behavioral and psychosocial correlates of HIV transmission. We discuss implications of these results.