Consumption and poverty in the homes of the English poor,c. 1670–1834

The consumer behaviour of the poor in the long eighteenth century has attracted more historical attention in recent years. Yet, we have little understanding of whether regional factors affected consumption or how the poor’s ownership of household goods was influenced by level of poverty and the life-cycle. By focusing on Kent and drawing comparisons to other counties, this article argues that the material lives of the poor were improving by the late eighteenth century, but finds that there were distinct regional differences as the poor acquired more and better goods in London and the Home Counties than in relatively remote areas. Moreover, by using pauper inventories and labourers’ probate inventories, the research finds that the poor were not a homogeneous group with similar levels of material wealth, but should be considered in terms of different subgroups which often led very different material lives to one another due to life-cycle-related problems including sickness and old age. Labourers’ probate inventories are found to represent a minority of the poor who were materially richer than most, whilst pauper inventories appear to represent a more typical subgroup of the poor that struggled to make do and owned most types of goods in smaller numbers.     

Alarmed: sensory approaches to improving medical alarm systems

Medical alarms sound incessantly, loudly, and dissonantly, contributing to an already noisy ICU and OR soundscape, and ultimately harming both patients and staff. Sometimes triggered in error, the sheer number of alarms distracts health care professionals and results in sensory overload that contributes to hospital staff’s alarm fatigue. In turn, staff become increasingly likely to ignore alarms instead of acting on them. Furthermore, the patients’ sensitivity to alarms disturbs their hospital stay, raises their stress levels, and impedes their recovery process, with sometimes lasting effects. This article considers the sensory effects of hospital alarms and possibilities for redesigning future alarm systems, with the goal of eventually creating a more calming, less stressful, and safer hospital soundscape environment for all.     

The Politics of Expanding Healthcare Access to the Poor and Informal Sectors

How do the politics of agenda setting and policy adoption operate in the arena of healthcare reform in the industrializing world? Literature on the twenty‐first‐century developmental state emphasizes the role of democratic competition and civil society in causing political parties to take up new agendas, while power resources theory stresses the role of left‐wing political parties and labor unions in policy adoption. Yet, core tenets of these theories have not been considered extensively in light of dynamics in the industrializing world. This article examines the politics of policy adoption in countries that have recently aimed to provide healthcare access and financial protection to the poor and people in the informal sector in Mexico and Turkey. In line with literature on the twenty‐first‐century developmental state, we find democratic competition to play an important role in causing political parties to take up new agendas. However, examination of the cases illuminates surprising dynamics that challenge important elements of sociological theory: right‐leaning political parties played important roles in adoption, while labor unions and left‐wing parties oppose reform in the cases. Public health‐minded physicians leading change teams played important roles in agenda setting and leading the process of implementation.     

Schizotypal Personality Disorder: A Clinical Social Work Perspective

Schizotypal personality disorder (SPD) is considered to be a “schizophrenia spectrum disorder” as evidenced in part by its cross-listing in that chapter of the DSM-5. SPD is considered to be a condition with limited potential for positive change because one of its major features is the presence of a biologically based cognitive deficit. This assumption, however, is an example of the medical model’s creating a bias against psychosocial features that are always involved in character development. The social work profession’s bio-psycho-social perspectives focus more comprehensively on all features of the condition and promote a more optimistic view of clients’ change potentials. The purposes of this paper are to examine SPD from a social work perspective and to demonstrate, with a case example, how effective intervention can be organized and delivered.     

ACCOUNTING FOR COMPLEMENTARY SKILL SETS: EVALUATING INDIVIDUAL MARGINAL VALUE TO A TEAM IN THE NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION

Identifying an individual worker's contribution to firm production can be difficult in a team setting where spillovers in labor productivity exist among team members. This paper studies a model of labor productivity where workers have heterogeneous abilities, and can differently affect the productivity of their fellow teammates. Applying the model to the setting of the National Basketball Association (NBA), I can identify the marginal value that a basketball player brings to a particular team lineup, both through his own individual contributions and his complementary contribution to teammates' productivity. Estimates from the model imply that teammates have a significant impact on individual player productivity, and that taking into account spillovers across teammates is important to assessing both overall team productivity and an individual player's contribution to team productivity. I then evaluate whether player complementarities are valued in the NBA labor market in terms of higher salaries, and find that they are undervalued, and that players are instead paid mainly for their individual offensive production. This creates an asymmetry between player incentives and the team objective. To assess the size of this inefficiency, the top trading cycle algorithm of Shapley and Scarf (1974) is used to identify a Pareto optimal matching between players and teams, that accounts for the complementarities between heterogeneous players' skill sets. (JEL J30, L25, L83, M51)     

Analysis of the image repair discourse in the Michael Phelps controversy

The following study reviews the image repair strategies used by Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, his sponsors and the organizations that govern him as an amateur swimmer after a picture of Phelps allegedly smoking from a marijuana pipe appeared in a British tabloid. Additionally, the study reviews media coverage of the controversy to determine whether Phelps was successful in repairing his image. The study concludes that Phelps’ image repair campaign was a success. Implications for public relations practitioners and suggestions for future research also are discussed.