Think Tanks,Funding, and the Politics of Policy Knowledge in Canada

Les relations entre les centres de recherche ou groupes de réflexion et leurs bailleurs de fonds sont importantes dans les théories et les discours publics abordant la question de l'orientation politique de la recherche sur les politiques publiques. Pourtant, très peu d'études examinent systématiquement ces relations à travers un ensemble de cas. Cet article, avec des méthodes comparatives et relationnelles, teste les théories élitiste, pluraliste et de terrain, en analysant des données portant sur le financement et l'orientation politique de 30 groupes de réflexion de 2000 à 2011. Les résultats démontrent que les dons provenant de l'étranger contribuent à soutenir certains groupes de réflexions conservateurs, mais ce financement demeure tout de même marginal dans l'ensemble. Au niveau national, les groupes de réflexion sont financés de manière contrastée: les groupes conservateurs sont financés principalement par des donateurs privés, alors que les groupes de réflexion centristes sont financés principalement par l'état. Depuis 2005, les liens entre l'ensemble des groupes de réflexion conservateurs, financés par des donateurs privés, sont devenus plus serrés. En revanche, les liens entre l'ensemble des groupes de réflexion centristes se sont relâchés et leur financement dépend de plus en plus de leurs propres revenus et des intérêts de leurs investissements. Ces résultats laissent planer un certain doute sur les prédictions qui découlent des théories élitiste et pluraliste et confirment en partie les suppositions de la théorie de terrain. The relationships between think tanks and their funders are central to theory and public discourse about the politics of policy knowledge, yet very little research systematically examines these relationships across cases. This article evaluates elite, pluralist, and field theories by analyzing original data on funding and politics for 30 think tanks from 2000 to 2011 with comparative and relational methods. I find that foreign donations help support some conservative think tanks, but that it is a small amount of money relative to other funding sources. Domestically, think tank funding is structured by an opposition between donor‐funded conservatives and state‐funded centrists. Since 2005, the cluster of conservative think tanks funded by private donors has become tighter, while the cluster of think tanks supported by the state has become looser and more reliant on self‐generated revenue and interest and investments. These findings cast doubt on predictions derived from elite and pluralist theories, and offer some support for field theory.     

Accelerometry analysis of physical activity and sedentary behavior in older adults: a systematic review and data analysis

Accelerometers objectively monitor physical activity and sedentary patterns and are increasingly used in the research setting. It is important to maintain consistency in data analysis and reporting, therefore, we: (1) systematically identified studies using accelerometry (ActiGraph, Pensacola, FL, USA) to measure moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and sedentary time in older adults, and (2) based on the review findings, we used different cut-points obtained to analyze accelerometry data from a sample of community-dwelling older women. We identified 59 articles with cut-points ranging between 574 and 3,250 counts/min for MVPA and 50 and 500 counts/min for sedentary time. Using these cut-points and data from women (mean age, 70 years), the median MVPA minutes per day ranged between 4 and 80 min while percentage of sedentary time per day ranged between 62 % and 86 %. These data highlight (1) the importance of reporting detailed information on the analysis assumptions and (2) that results can differ greatly depending on analysis parameters.     

Doubling up when times are tough: A study of obligations to share a home in response to economic hardship

This study uses a factorial vignette design embedded in an Internet survey to investigate attitudes toward an adult child and parent living together in response to economic hardship. Over half of Americans said the desirability of intergenerational co-residence depends on particularistic aspects of the family, notably the quality of family relationships. Support for co-residence is greatest when the adult child is single rather than partnered. Support is weaker if the adult child is cohabiting rather than married to the partner, although groups with greater exposure to cohabitation make less of a distinction between cohabitation and marriage. Presence of a grandchild does not affect views about co-residence. There is more support for sharing a home when a mother needs a place to live than when the adult child does. Responses to open-ended questions show that individuals invoke both universalistic family obligations and particularistic qualities of family relationships to explain their attitudes.     

A UNIVERSITY EXAMINATION-SCHEDULING MODEL TO MINIMIZE MULTIPLE-EXAMINATION DAYS FOR STUDENTS

Scheduling university examinations is often done with the objective of spreading a student's required examinations over an examination week. That is the equivalent of the problem of minimizing the number of examinations a student must take on any one day. An approach to scheduling exams which relates the problem to the classical assignment problem is discussed. The model developed is a symmetry-constrained assignment model, and the solution method requires use of a branch-and-bound algorithm. Results from application of the algorithm to six semesters of actual data are presented.     

STOCHASTIC COST-VOLUME-PROFIT ANALYSIS WITH A LINEAR DEMAND FUNCTION

In this paper we incorporate a linear demand function to model the price-volume causal relationship into stochastic cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis. We assume that the objective function is to maximize expected profit; other objective functions are also discussed and compared. A linear stochastic model follows from which probabilistic statements can be easily obtained if the random variables are assumed to be multivariate normal. The basic framework is shown to be a special case of project value maximization where project value is the cash flow of the project discounted for time and risk according to the capital asset pricing model. Moreover, an intertemporal extension that considers inventory is developed. In summary, a new approach to stochastic CVP analysis that incorporates the management decision process in an uncertain environment is developed.     

USING AN UNCERTAINTY MODEL TO ASSESS SALES RESPONSE TO ADVERTISING*

Implications of a probabilistic “random walk” model of incremental sales response to advertising are developed for various timing patterns of advertising expenditures. Maximum likelihood procedures for assessing advertising effectiveness and for estimating a decay (forgetting) rate are developed and applied to artificial data of known configuration and are used to assess the impact over time of a brochure program on mail-order sales. Results are also compared to those from alternative models involving various lag patterns in advertising effects.     

A COMPARISON OF SEQUENCING RULES FOR A TWO-STATE HYBRID FLOW SHOP

A common manufacturing environment in many industries (such as the glass, steel, paper, costume jewelry, and textile industries) is a hybrid flow shop. This system has continuous-process machinery in the fist state of manufacturing and repetitive-batch equipment in the second. Little research has investigated this type system. Scheduling managers of hybrid flow shops tend either to use existing job-shop rules or to devise their own rules. These approaches often are less than adequate for efficient scheduling. In this paper we extend the rule presented by Narasimhan and Panwalker [4] to include a general class of hybrid flow shops. This extenstion, called the generalized cumulative minimum-deviation (GCMD) rule, is compared under various operation conditions to three other sequencing rules: shortest processing time, longest processing time, and minimum deviation. The operating conditions are determined by the number of machines at both stages. The results of 7200 simulation runs demonstrate that the GCMD rule is better than the other rules in minimizing each of five chosen criteria. Thus, the GCMD rule can help managers to schedule hybrid flow shops efficiently to achieve various corporate objectives.