Existence and Uniqueness of Maximal Reductions Under Iterated Strict Dominance

Iterated elimination of strictly dominated strategies is an order dependent procedure. It can also generate spurious Nash equilibria, fail to converge in countable steps, or converge to empty strategy sets. If best replies are well–defined, then spurious Nash equilibria cannot appear; if strategy spaces are compact and payoff functions are uppersemicontinuous in own strategies, then order does not matter; if strategy sets are compact and payoff functions are continuous in all strategies, then a unique and nonempty maximal reduction exists. These positive results extend neither to the better–reply secure games for which Reny has established the existence of a Nash equilibrium, nor to games in which (under iterated eliminations) any dominated strategy has an undominated dominator.     

The effect of intent and character information on children's evaluations of third-party transgressions

Research in adults suggests that their perception of moral transgressions is affected by the moral character of the agent performing the transgression, such that undesirable actions enacted by ‘good’ agents are seen as less serious than those performed by ‘bad’ agents. This may be partly driven our tendency to view undesirable acts as less intentional when the agent has a perceived good moral character. It is currently unclear whether or not children make similar judgements. Therefore, we investigated if children's use of moral character information is consistent with their judgements of transgressions when the intent behind the act was ambiguous or blatant. Children aged 6–8-years (N = 60) viewed a series of six moral transgressions in which the protagonist's intent was ambiguous or blatantly harmful, and their moral character was described as being good, mixed or bad. The children were then asked how much they felt the behaviour was intentional, how severe it was and the degree of punishment it deserved. Transgressions performed by ‘good’ characters were viewed as less intentional than those by ‘bad’ characters, but only when the intent behind it was ambiguous. Similarly, transgressions performed by good characters were viewed as less severe and deserving of less punishment than those performed by bad characters, although this effect was not moderated by intent information. These pattern of findings suggest that the view of transgressions performed by good individuals as less serious than the same act performed by bad individuals is established early in development.     

Uneven impacts of COVID-19 on the attendance rates of secondary school students from different socioeconomic backgrounds in Australia: A quasi-experimental analysis of administrative data

This paper contributes to the growing body of research that demonstrates uneven impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on educational outcomes of students from different socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. We evaluate the early impacts of COVID-19 on student attendance in secondary school and show how these impacts depend on students' SES. We employ a quasi-experimental design, using difference-in-differences (DiD) estimation extended to incorporate third-order differences over time between low-SES and other students, and pre- versus during-COVID-19, leveraging robust administrative data extracted from the registers of the Tasmanian Department of Education. Using data from multiple cohorts of secondary school students in government schools in Tasmania (N = 14,135), we find that while the attendance rates were similar pre- and during-COVID-19 for high-SES students, there was a significant drop in attendance rates during COVID-19 among socioeconomically disadvantaged students, demonstrating the more pronounced impacts of COVID-19 for these students. The findings demonstrate that even “relatively short” lockdowns, as those in Tasmania in 2020 (30–40 days of home learning), can significantly affect the learning experiences of students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. We discuss the implications of this for future pandemic planning in educational policy and practice and how this needs to be addressed in Australia's COVID-19 recovery.     

The roles of caregivers and friends in adolescent daily emotion dynamics

Daily emotion dynamics provide valuable information about individuals’ emotion processes as they go about their lives. Emotion dynamics such as emotion levels (mean), emotion variability (degree of fluctuation), and emotion network density (strength of temporal connections among emotions) are associated with risks for various psychopathology in youth and adults. Prior work has shown that caregivers and friends play crucial socializing roles in adolescent emotional well-being, but less is known about their roles in daily emotion dynamics. This study examined whether caregiver emotion coaching, caregiver-adolescent closeness, and friendship quality were associated with adolescents’ emotion levels, emotion variability, and emotion network density. Further, we examined whether caregiver-adolescent closeness moderated the associations between coaching and emotion dynamics. Participants were 150 adolescents (61% girls; M_age = 14.75) and one of their caregivers (95% female; M_age = 43.35) who completed a baseline survey and 21 daily surveys. Results showed that caregiver emotion coaching interacted with caregiver-adolescent closeness in predicting emotion levels and variability. Specifically, when closeness was higher, emotion coaching was significantly associated with lower sadness and anger levels, higher happiness levels, and lower happiness variability. Caregiver emotion coaching, independent of closeness, was also associated with lower anxiety levels, lower sadness variability, and lower emotion network density. Friendship quality was significantly associated with lower levels of sadness, anxiety, and anger, higher levels of happiness, and lower variability in anxiety and anger. These findings suggest that caregivers and friends are central to everyday emotion levels and variability and a more flexible emotion system in adolescents.     

A SIMULATION OF INTERACTIVE MAINTENANCE DECISIONS

In this day of automation, effective maintenance decisions are a legitimate concern. This paper broadens the traditional concept of maintenance to include any policies which tend to reduce the frequency or severity of failures. A simulation model is used to demonstrate the inter-relatedness of multiple maintenance policies for a truck depot. It is demonstrated that the proper selection of a maintenance policy set should consider the variability of the system outputs due to the daily dynamics, as well as the transient behavior of the system. It is also shown that the choice of an appropriate maintenance policy should recognize the distribution of total annual costs and should not base the analysis solely upon average total annual costs.     

Vygotsky’s Warning: General Science and the Need for Metalevel Research

Over ninety years ago Lev Vygotsky warned of a growing crisis in psychology and social science research. Vygotsky’s warning has been echoed on many occasions but his solution to the problem has not been widely acknowledged. He advocated for a form of meta-science which he called “general science”, an integrative science that could connect and guide the development of specialised disciplines and schools of research. In this paper I explore the parallels between Vygotsky’s general science and contemporary forms of meta-level research and discuss their relevance and implications for addressing global challenges.     

Uneven Divestment of the State: Social Reproduction and Sex Work in Neo-developmentalist Argentina

Abstract

Sex work has been identified as an important dimension of the ‘survival circuits’ which have developed in the majority world in the context of neo-liberalisation, as a response to the deepening misery of the Global South. Yet while much research has explored the role of sex work in contexts of ‘neo-liberal’ regimes of capital accumulation, few have paid sustained attention to sex work in regimes which are not purely ‘neo-liberal’. Drawing on data with sex workers across 10 cities in Argentina gathered between 2007 and 2014, this article examines multiple spaces of sex workers' lives, including the workplace, the home, and the state in a context of what has been dubbed ‘neo-developmentalism’. It argues that sex work contributes multiple forms of value and subsidies for the state and capital. First, sex work provides a subsidy in the form of the provision of ‘employment’; second, female sex workers provide unwaged reproductive labour in the family; and third, in the labour movement. Yet despite these three contributions to the reproduction of the working class and therefore of capital, the state undermines sex workers' capacities through violence and sustained repression. The article concludes that the neo-developmentalism has led to ‘uneven divestment of the state’ in the reproduction of particular sections of the working class, namely those outside the formal and ‘productive’ sectors.     

The effect of urban ground covers on arthropods: An experiment

Changes to the ground layer in urban areas are extensive, but the effects on arthropod fauna are poorly understood. We undertook a manipulative experiment to examine the response of arthropods to small-scale variation in ground covers commonly found in urban parks and gardens in Australia. The ground covers tested were bare ground, leaf litter, woodchips and grass, with plot sizes of 3.6 m². Epigeic arthropods were sampled with pitfall traps and Tullgren funnels over 12 months following establishment of the treatments. All epigeic arthropods were sorted to order and the ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), beetles (Coleoptera), millipedes (Diplopoda) and slaters (Isopoda: Oniscidea) were examined at lower taxonomic levels. Diverse arthropods rapidly colonised previously cleared plots in all four treatments and were most abundant in grass plots. The diversity of ants and beetles was significantly different in different ground covers and tended to be most diverse in grass plots. Despite the treatments providing very different microclimates, the fauna studied did not show strong selection for a particular cover type overall. The abundance of grass cover in the surrounding area may have led to the grass plots having the greatest abundance of arthropods. These results have important implications for developing effective small-scale conservation efforts for arthropods in anthropogenically modified landscapes, especially for species with poor dispersal abilities.