DOES NATION BUILDING SPUR ECONOMIC GROWTH?

Nation building, the allocation of economic aid conditional on military assistance in conflict and post‐conflict environments, has cost the world trillions of dollars over the last half century. Yet few attempts have been made to quantify the potential economic growth effects for the recipient country from the provision of this aid. Using a 45‐year panel dataset, we construct a measure of nation building using a three‐way interaction term between military assistance, economic aid, and conflict regime. Considering that slow growing and problem‐prone countries may be less likely to receive aid, we instrument for economic aid by estimating donor‐to‐donee aid flows in a first‐stage procedure. Using this approach, we find that spending on nation building has positive growth effects during conflict periods, but that these effects disappear after conflict. (JEL F3, F4, O5)     

Long‐Term Effects of Fathers' Depressed Mood on Youth Internalizing Symptoms in Early Adulthood

While an accumulating body of research has documented increased risk of psychopathology among children of depressed fathers, most studies have used cross‐sectional design, and little is known about offspring outcomes beyond childhood. Using prospective data from a community sample (N = 395), we found that paternal depressive symptoms when children were in early adolescence (age 13) predicted offspring depressive and anxiety symptoms at age 21, controlling for baseline youth symptoms, maternal depressive symptoms, and other known correlates of internalizing problems in early adulthood. Associations were not moderated by maternal depressive symptoms or child gender. These results suggest that the unique and long‐term effects of paternal depression on children's risk of mood disorders may persist into adulthood.     

Changing from Single to Separate Records: A Case Study from the University of Nevada,Reno

The University of Nevada, Reno Libraries made the decision in early 2012 to convert its bibliographic records from a single record approach, with multiple formats of a title on one bibliographic record, to a separate record approach, where each format receives its own record. This decision was several years in the making, as it was a change that would potentially require breaking apart more than 20,000 records. It would involve numerous staff from different departments and would require adjustments for all staff who worked with library users. This article will discuss the factors that pushed the UNR Libraries to make this decision to split its records and the challenges technical services staff faced in managing the project. The authors will present the different procedures developed for splitting monographic and serial records and the different tools that were used to make the process work: Millennium (especially the ERM and Global Update modules), MarcEdit, and Serials Solutions' MARC Updates service.     

Pathways of children’s long-term living arrangements: A latent class analysis

This study employed latent class analysis to create children’s family structure trajectories from birth through adolescence using merged mother and child data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 1870). Input variables distinguished between biological fathers and stepfathers as well as mother’s marriages and cohabitations. The best-fitting model revealed five latent trajectories of children’s long-term family structure: continuously married biological parents (55%), long-term single mothers (18%), married biological parents who divorce (12%), a highly unstable trajectory distinguished by gaining at least one stepfather (11%), and cohabiting biological parents who either marry or break up (4%). Multinomial logistic regression indicated that mother’s education, race, teen birth status, and family of origin characteristics were important predictors of the long-term family trajectories in which their children grew up. These findings suggest that latent class analysis is a valuable statistical tool for understanding children’s complete family structure experiences.     

Pitman Closeness of Order Statistics to Population Quantiles

In this article, Pitman closeness of sample order statistics to population quantiles of a location-scale family of distributions is discussed. Explicit expressions are derived for some specific families such as uniform, exponential, and power function. Numerical results are then presented for these families for sample sizes n = 10,15, and for the choices of p = 0.10, 0.25, 0.75, 0.90. The Pitman-closest order statistic is also determined in these cases and presented.     

“It's Difficult to Hide It”: The Presentation of Self on Internet Home Pages

This paper explores identity and interaction with reference to Internet home pages. All home pages reveal identity, whether or not that is the intention of their authors. Identity statements can take categorical, relational, or narrative forms. A survey of home page owners reveals that some home pages are created to maintain relationships formed apart from the Internet (extrinsic pages) and some are created to contact the denizens of the Internet (intrinsic pages). The different motives for creation do not affect home page design and contents, but do relate to differences in overall Internet use and in authors' conceptualizations of the Internet. Both intrinsic and extrinsic pages are analyzed in light of charges that the Internet self is postmodern, transitory, deceptive, and fragmented. The charge of postmodernity is found to be overstated, however, because while the Internet shapes identity statements, it does not determine their form or usage.     

"Mapping the New Mental World Created by Radio": Media Messages, Cultural Politics, and Cantril and Allport's The Psychology of Radio

During the 1930s a number of interesting critiques of science and society emerged in the social sciences in general, and in psychology in particular. One example of this trend is The Psychology of Radio (1935), authored by Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport and his former student Hadley Cantril. The book, which was intended for both professional and lay audiences, sought to open discussion on the effects of the pervasive presence of radio, and to throw into relief the political, cultural, and economic contexts in which this new form of mass communication was embedded.