AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF IDENTITY AND CAREER CHOICE*

Standard economic models tend to be more specific about pecuniary payoffs than nonpecuniary payoffs to education. Based on the ideas of Akerlof and Kranton, we consider a model of career choice and identity where individuals derive nonpecuniary identity payoffs. Using factor analysis on a range of attitude questions, we find two factors related to identity (career orientation and social orientation), which are important for planned educational choices and for observed gender differences. The implication is that policy makers and institutions of higher education need to focus on identity‐related issues rather than just improved financial incentives if they aim at attracting high‐ability youths to certain careers. (JEL I21, J24)     

Outcome Prediction for Heart Failure Telemonitoring Via Generalized Linear Models with Functional Covariates

An effective methodology for dealing with data extracted from clinical surveys on heart failure linked to the Public Health Database is proposed. A model for recurrent events is used for modelling the occurrence of hospital readmissions in time, thus deriving a suitable way to compute individual cumulative hazard functions. Estimated cumulative hazard trajectories are then treated as functional data, and they are used as covariates along with clinical survey data within the framework of generalized linear models with functional covariates.     

Forgiveness: A Cognitive‐Motivational Anatomy

This work aims to identify the constituents of forgiveness in terms of the forgiver's beliefs and motivating goals. After addressing the antecedents of forgiveness—a perceived wrong—and distinguishing the notion of mere harm from that of offense, we describe the victim's typical retributive reactions—revenge and resentment—and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. Then we focus on the forgiver's mind‐set, pointing to the relationship between forgiveness and acceptance of the wrong, addressing the forgiver's motivating goals, and discussing both their self‐interested and altruistic implications. In so doing we also discuss the role of the forgiver's positive feelings towards the offender, arguing that, however important, they are unnecessary to forgiveness. We finally identify two kinds of forgiveness—conditional and unconditional—suggesting that they are grounded on different notions of “worth.”     

EFFECTS OF QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN ON THE QUALITY OF SURVEY DATA

The importance of format, graphic layout, and question routinginstructions on the quality of survey data has been acknowledgedfor self-administered survey instruments, but the significanceof these factors for questionnaires administered by interviewershas not been recognized equally. This paper examines two studiesin which interviewers used different questionnaire designs toadminister the same set of survey questions to randomly selectedadult respondents in housing units that made up area probabilitysamples of the Detroit metropolitan area. The paper presentsempirical evidence of specific effects (questions skipped inerror, unprobed answers) directly attributable to the choiceof questionnaire design. The analysis shows that question nairedesign choices can either help or hurt the quality of data collectedby interviewers. Furthermore, the behaviors of experienced andinexperienced interviewers are affected in similar ways. Inother words, interviewing experience does not compensate forformat deficits in the design of survey instruments.     

Diasporas and transitional justice: transnational activism from local to global levels of engagement

Scholarship on transitional justice, transnational social movements, and transnational diaspora mobilization has offered little understanding about how memorialization initiatives with substantial diaspora involvement emerge transnational and are embedded and sustained in different contexts. We argue that diasporas play a galvanizing role in transnational interest‐based and symbolic politics, expanding claim‐making from the local to national, supranational, and global levels of engagement. Using initiatives to memorialize atrocities committed at the former Omarska concentration camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we identify a four‐stage mobilization process. First, initiatives emerged and diffused across transnational networks after a local political opportunity opened in the homeland. Second, attempts at coordination of activities took place transnational through an NGO. Third, initiatives were contextualized on the nation‐state level in different host‐states, depending on the political opportunities and constraints available there. Fourth, memorialization claims were eventually shifted from the national to the supranational and global levels. The article concludes by demonstrating the potential to apply the analysis to similar global movements in which diasporas are directly involved.     

Transnational sexual and gendered violence: an application of border sexual conquest at a Mexico—US border

Drawing on transnational and postcolonial feminism, we discuss the phenomenon of border sexual conquest to highlight structural sexual and gendered violence that is exacerbated by the subjugation of local place and by the global political economy. While we have gained important insights from the literature on gender and transnationalism, the processes of sexual violence and gendered violence are underdeveloped. We focus our analysis on the Mexico—US border cities of Cuidad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico and El Paso, Texas, USA. We argue that what we call border sexual conquest confronts the feminicides in Juárez and the female proletariats on both sides of the border. Moreover, while structural violence approaches under theorize struggles over power, the perspective of border sexual conquest highlights how processes of conquest intertwine with women's resistance.     

PEER EFFECTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: DOES THE FIELD OF STUDY MATTER?

Does the peer effect vary with the field of study? Using data from a middle‐sized public university located in southern Italy and exploiting the random assignment of first‐year students to college accommodation, we find that roommate peer effects for freshmen enrolled in the hard sciences are positive and significantly larger than for freshmen enrolled in the humanities and social sciences. We present a simple theoretical model which suggests that the uncovered differences between fields in the size of the peer effect could plausibly be generated by between‐field variation in labor market returns, which affect optimal student effort. (JEL I21, Z13, J24)     

Problem Gambling related to Intimate Partner Violence: findings from the Pacific Islands Families Study

Intimate partner violence (IPV) and problem gambling are becoming increasingly significant public health issues, especially amongst Pacific populations within New Zealand, yet no general population studies have explicitly investigated the association between these factors. This study aims to determine whether problem gambling is an independent risk factor for IPV victimization in 700 couples with a Pacific infant, after accounting for problem drinking. Victimization of any and severe physical IPV was indicated for 33% and 18% mothers, and 38% and 22% fathers, respectively. For mothers, 1% were classified as problem gamblers and 15% as problem drinkers; while for fathers, 2% were defined as problem gamblers and 26% as problem drinkers. In this first published study to simultaneously relate current problem gambling to IPV victimization in a general population, no association could be found.