Tagging and redistributive taxation with imperfect disability monitoring

This paper studies the optimal income redistribution and optimal monitoring when disability benefits are intended for disabled people but some of the disabled do not claim disability benefits and enter the labor force. Classification errors also occur. Some able applicants with high distaste for work are falsely granted disability benefits (type II errors) and some disabled applicants are denied disability benefits (type I errors). The accuracy of monitoring depends on the resources devoted to it. Labor supply responses are at the extensive margin. The paper derives the optimal income tax-transfer schedule that incorporates welfare and disability benefits and takes into account monitoring costs. The cost of monitoring and the co-existence of welfare and disability benefits play in favor of Earned Income Tax Credits for disabled workers who forgo disability benefits as well as for disabled workers who forgo welfare assistance.     

Critical incident stress debriefing and its effects on coping strategies and anger in a sample of Australian police officers involved in shooting incidents

This study investigates appraisal and coping behaviours, and symptom and expectation outcomes following a critical incident and Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD). Two groups of 30 Australian police officers from the New South Wales Police Service who had been involved in shooting incidents were examined. One group received CISD and the other did not. The group that received CISD showed a significant reduction in anger levels and greater use of some specific adaptive coping strategies. However, one cannot be certain as to the extent of CISD's contribution to this improvement, since a variety of other factors in the officers' lives, as evidenced by other measures taken throughout the study, may help to explain the variation. Results are discussed in light of the contextual features in officers' lives that impact upon the outcome responses to such incidents.     

Social Movements Research and the 'Movement of Movements': Studying Resistance to Neoliberal Globalisation

This article explores the state of research on the 'movement of movements' against neoliberal globalisation. Starting from a general consideration of the significance of the movement and the difficulties inherent in studying it, it discusses the literature on the movement from within social movement studies, and argues that the response from social movement researchers falls short of what could be expected in terms of adequacy to the movement and its own knowledge production. It explores some effects of this failure and locates the reasons for it in the unacknowledged relationship between social movements theorising and activist theorising. The article then discusses the possible contributions that can be made by Marxist and other engaged academic writers, as well as the significance of the extensive theoretical literature generated by activists within the movement. It concludes by stating the importance of dialogue between activist and academic theorising and research in attempting to understand the movement.     

A NOTE ON ADJUSTMENT TO PRODUCTION UNCERTAINTY AND THE THEORY OF THE FIRM

This paper analyzes the impact of production uncertainty on the firm's optimal output decision. If uncertainty is introduced by an additive risk variable, then short-run optimal output is unchanged, but the owner-manager's expected utility can change causing long-run output effects. If uncertainty is introduced by a multiplicative random variable, then short-run output can change as well.     

Various Approaches for Predicting Land Cover in Mountain Areas

Using former maps, geographers intend to study the evolution of the land cover in order to have a prospective approach on the future landscape; predictions of the future land cover, by the use of older maps and environmental variables, are usually done through the GIS (Geographic Information System). We propose here to confront this classical geographical approach with statistical approaches: a linear parametric model (polychotomous regression modeling) and a nonparametric one (multilayer perceptron). These methodologies have been tested on two real areas on which the land cover is known at various dates; this allows us to emphasize the benefit of these two statistical approaches compared to GIS and to discuss the way GIS could be improved by the use of statistical models.     

Some remarks on numerical convolution

McConalogue (1980) describes an extension t o the Clérour-McConalogue cubic splining algorithm which permits the convolution of distributions whose densities exhibit a singularity at the origin. Reasons for generalising the original algorithm are discussed and a brief survey of other methods for numerical convolution is given. An example illustrates an application of the extended algorithm.     

The Subjective Well-being of Adolescents from Two Different Cultures: Applying Three Versions of the PWI in Algeria and Spain

This paper analyses the crosscultural comparability of well-being among 13–20 year-old adolescents using two samples, one from Oran County (Wilaya) in Algeria and another from Catalonia (Spain). The following are used as well-being indicators: a modified version of the original Personal Well-being Index (PWI) (Cummins et al. in Soc Indicat Res 64:159–190, 2003b), a single-item scale on overall life satisfaction (OLS) and a list of complementary items on satisfaction with various life domains. This research tests the original version of the PWI with some changes and two other versions with additional items. Confirmatory factor analyses show good fit statistics for the three versions with the pooled sample of adolescents from the two countries. The multigroup models show that correlations and regressions may be compared between the two samples, but not means, probably due to different cultural response styles among adolescents in the two countries. Structural equation models including OLS also show good fit statistics. When gender and age are included in these models, the former does not show any correlation with PWI11 in either of the two countries, whereas age shows a clearly negative correlation in both. A new version of the PWI with 11 items has shown higher standardized regression coefficients when the items are regressed on OLS and higher R² and each of the items has shown to contribute with unique explained variance using the pooled sample, although 3 of the original scale items do not show a significant contribution in Algeria. The fact that a multigroup model using this 11-item version shows good fit with constrained loadings when comparing samples from such different cultural and linguistic contexts as Catalonia and Algeria offers new opportunities for international comparative research of adolescents’ subjective well-being.     

Development Trends in Islamic Societies: From Collective Wishes to Concerted Actions

Today, approximately one-fourth of the world’s population includes 1,620 million persons who are part of the expanding Islamic Ummah. Muslims are found in large numbers in all regions of the world but are concentrated in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and selected successor states to the former Soviet Union. Despite the obvious wealth of some Islamic nations most Muslims live under conditions of poverty, joblessness, illiteracy, ill health, social and political unrest and, in some regions, religious extremism. Using the extensively pre-tested Weighted Index of Social Progress, this paper reports a 40-year time series analysis of the nature, extent, and pace of social change that is taking place within 53 of the 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Data are reported at four levels of analysis. Selected data also are reported for both the OIC-as-a-whole and for the world-as-a-whole. The present analysis offers a sometimes bleak, but generally optimistic, picture of the dramatic differences that characterize development patterns within Islamic countries, subregions, and regions. Particular attention is given to: (a) the legacy of colonialism that persisted for some OIC states until as recently as 1991; (b) the recurrent social unrest that continues to characterize development in many Islamic states, e.g., the “Arab Spring” (Vision of Humanity 2012); (c) the presence or absence of marketable natural and human resources; and, (d) the significant contributions being made to the development of Islamic countries by the United Nations’ Millennium Development Campaign (United Nations 2005) and the OIC’s Ten-Year Programme of Action (OIC 2005). However, the important social gains reported in this paper for some countries and geographic regions remain highly variable, potentially reversible, unless the collective wishes of Islamic nations are translated into concerted actions both within OIC member states and the larger world community of nations.