A QUARTET OF SEMIGROUPS FOR MODEL SPECIFICATION,ROBUSTNESS, PRICES OF RISK,AND MODEL DETECTION

A representative agent fears that his model, a continuous time Markov process with jump and diffusion components, is misspecified and therefore uses robust control theory to make decisions. Under the decision maker's approximating model, cautious behavior puts adjustments for model misspecification into market prices for risk factors. We use a statistical theory of detection to quantify how much model misspecification the decision maker should fear, given his historical data record. A semigroup is a collection of objects connected by something like the law of iterated expectations. The law of iterated expectations defines the semigroup for a Markov process, while similar laws define other semigroups. Related semigroups describe (1) an approximating model; (2) a model misspecification adjustment to the continuation value in the decision maker's Bellman equation; (3) asset prices; and (4) the behavior of the model detection statistics that we use to calibrate how much robustness the decision maker prefers. Semigroups 2, 3, and 4 establish a tight link between the market price of uncertainty and a bound on the error in statistically discriminating between an approximating and a worst case model. (JEL: C00, D51, D81, E1, G12)     

What you really want: Two-year-olds prioritise ultimate goals when helping

Toddlers are motivated to help others achieve their goals, but providing effective help also requires toddlers to consider what will be most helpful to another individual. Sometimes, helping requests provide conflicting information about an individual's goals, so we need to decide which information to prioritise in order to decide how is best to help. The current studies investigate how toddlers prioritise conflicting information about immediate and ultimate goals when helping. In Study 1, 2-year-olds were shown an opaque container of blocks (hidden blocks), a transparent container of blocks (visible blocks), and a colourful tube that plays music when a block is dropped inside. For half of the participants, both hidden and visible blocks played music but, for the other half, only the hidden blocks worked. A naïve experimenter asked for a block (immediate goal) to play music with (ultimate goal), and when both blocks were equally functional, we found that toddlers prioritised fulfilling the immediate request by providing a visible block; but when only the hidden block was functional, toddlers prioritising fulfilling the ultimate goal and helped by providing the functional but hidden block. Study 2 demonstrated that toddlers considered the experimenter's goal when helping, and not just their own attraction to the musical toy. This work adds to a growing body of literature investigating not only whether young children help, but also how young children reason when engaging in helping behaviour.     

Evaluating the Effects of Similar and Distinct Discriminative Stimuli During Auditory Conditional Discrimination Training With Children With Autism

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - Children with autism are often taught auditory conditional discriminations in the form of personal information questions that might prove useful in conversation...     

Unlicensed care homes in the United States: a clandestine sector of long-term care

Residential care facilities operating without a state license are known to house vulnerable adults. Such unlicensed care homes (UCHs) commonly operate illegally, making them difficult to investigate. We conducted an exploratory, multimethod qualitative study of UCHs, including 17 subject matter expert interviews and site visits to three states, including a total of 30 stakeholder interviews, to understand UCH operations, services provided, and residents served. Findings indicate that various vulnerable groups reside in UCHs; some UCHs offer unsafe living environments; and some residents are reportedly abused, neglected, and financially exploited. Regulations, policies, and practices that might influence UCH prevalence are discussed.     

Neoliberal feminism: The neoliberal rhetoric on feminism by Australian political actors

Feminism seems to be experiencing a resurgence. This research examines an Australian case where this resurgence produces some bizarre outcomes and an uncomfortable mix of moderate and neoliberal feminisms, as conservative women distance themselves from the term feminist and conservative men embrace it. We rhetorically analyse the discourse of four conservative leaders using an ideographic analysis to reveal how political actors evoke ideologically laden terminology to support specific courses of action. For the conservative women, the ideograph feminist was too heavily laden with history. A more feminine‐liberal political discourse allowed them to explain their own success in individual terms and, by substituting support for feminism with a broader gender equality agenda, they could explain the government's policy approach of individualized rather than collective or state support to advance the needs of women. They are articulating a postfeminism sensibility themselves and neoliberal feminist other. For the conservative men, the ideograph feminist did not reflect on their own personal success or careers; they were happy to embrace it for purely political purposes to advance their standing with the voting public and saw no significance in terms of the government's policy approach of neoliberal feminism.     

Income Inequality and Chronic Health Conditions: A Multilevel Analysis of the U.S. States

Recently, scholarly work has examined the effect of rising income inequality on health outcomes. However, this work is somewhat inconclusive. The mechanisms that could produce such an association are still being sorted out. Much of this work focuses on mortality outcomes with little attention to how this process operates for actual health conditions, including chronic health problems—arguably the main public health concerns of the developed world. In a series of multilevel binary logistic regression models using data from the 2005 and 2007 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we examine the association between state-level income inequality, poverty, and social welfare measures on spending and policy to examine the association between these factors for three chronic health outcomes: diabetes, hypertension, and coronary heart disease. We find that income inequality is conditionally positively related only to the diagnosis of diabetes and hypertension, and only in 2007. However, absolute poverty is related to the outcome across all three dependent variables. Certain social welfare measures attenuate the effects of both income inequality and absolute poverty, suggesting that some policies reduce this association.     

Racial Residential Segregation,Perceived Neighborhood Conditions,and Self-Rated Health: The Case of Houston,Texas

Previous research has linked racial residential segregation to a number of poor health outcomes. Yet, the mechanisms that could account for this association remain poorly understood and have seldom been empirically tested in the literature. In an analysis of the Houston area, we test one potential mechanism—perceived neighborhood conditions, as measured by two indices for neighborhood disorder and environmental quality. Using individual-level health data from a survey of Houston residents and neighborhood-level sociodemographic data from the U.S. Census, we estimate a series of multilevel models. We find that black and Latino segregation are linked to the perceived neighborhood disorder index, but no such relationship for the environmental quality index. Moreover, we find that both indices are related to poor self-rated health in that residents who evaluate their neighborhood conditions negatively are more likely to evaluate their health as poor. We also find a direct effect of black and Latino segregation on poor self-rated health, and that perceived neighborhood disorder partially mediates this relationship. We do not find a mediation effect for environmental quality. The results suggest that in order to improve the health of these communities, both residential segregation and neighborhood conditions need to be addressed.     

Genetic diversity and relatedness of a recently established population of eastern coyotes (Canis latrans) in New York City

Little is known about the relatedness structure of carnivores living in urban areas, where green spaces may vary in size and resource availability. We examined the minimum population size, relatedness structure, and genetic diversity of a recently established population of eastern coyotes (Canis latrans) inhabiting New York City (NYC). The population has been established for approximately 25 years, and sample collection for genetic analysis has been ongoing since 2010. We genotyped 234 scat, eight tissue, and three blood samples at nine microsatellite loci. We identified 45 individual coyotes with a male-biased sex ratio of 2.2:1. We also found moderate to high levels of genetic diversity, with average observed heterozygosity of 0.779 and mean number of alleles per locus of 7.8. Most of the green spaces surveyed supported a single group of closely related coyotes in each. Relatedness comparisons between parks also indicated that coyotes compared across different parks were also closely related. We identified two unrelated mated pairs and found no support for polygamy. The high incidence of relatedness suggests that the coyote population is descended from a small number of founding individuals. Additionally, we genetically recaptured several coyotes, including one individual sampled in the Bronx and in Queens, with a median of 103 days between resampling. This result indicates that the coyotes are persisting in some of the isolated greenspaces of New York City and able to move successfully between them.

     

Continuity,change and complexity in the performance of masculinity among elite young footballers in England

Following recent research evidencing that young men are redefining the essential components of what it is to be a man, this paper draws on qualitative interviews with 22 elite‐level, English Premier League academy level football (soccer) players to investigate their performances and understandings of masculinity in relation to decreasing homohysteria. Even in this gender‐segregated, near‐total institution, these working‐class, non‐educationally aspiring adolescents evidence an attenuated performance of ‘maleness’ and improved attitudinal disposition toward homosexuality. Congruent with insights developed by inclusive masculinity scholars, respondents maintained emotional closeness and physical tactility with male teammates and friends. These more inclusive attitudes and homosocial behaviours were, however, slightly more conservative than in other recent research. We close by explaining this variation with reference to theoretical apparatus’ provided by Goffman and Bourdieu to advance theoretical debates about social class and masculinities.