Identity,causality and social cohesion

According to the Identity Thesis, sharing an identity tends to promote social cohesion. The article focuses on two aspects of social cohesion, namely trust and solidarity. It distinguishes between different versions of the Identity Thesis that differ regarding the causal efficacy attributed to specific values and the sharing of values, and with respect to the value sets that may be fed into the thesis (relying on work in political theory on nationalism, liberalism and multiculturalism). Having established the existence of different versions of the thesis, four different accounts of why shared identities could be expected to promote social cohesion are considered and assessed.     

The Effects of Channel-Consistent and Channel-Inconsistent Interpersonal Feedback on the Formation of Metaperceptions

A metaperception is an individual's perception of another's perception of him or her. Symbolic interactionists posit that metaperceptions are based on social feedback, while social cognitivists posit that metaperceptions are formed via an inward turn to self-perception. We hypothesized that a situational factor, clarity of feedback, moderates whether individuals will tune into the message itself versus to self-perception: unambiguous feedback may elicit metaperceptions based on the feedback, while ambiguous feedback may elicit metaperceptions based on self-perception. To test this, 157 undergraduates selected as low or high in self-esteem were randomly assigned to receive either clear, channel-consistent (e.g., positive verbal/positive nonverbal) feedback or unclear, channel-inconsistent (e.g., positive verbal/negative nonverbal) feedback from a confederate. Results indicated independent effects of both self-esteem and verbal feedback. In addition, counter to prediction, metaperceptions formed in response to channel-consistent feedback were more in line with the self; metaperceptions formed in response to channel-inconsistent feedback were more in line with the verbal element of the message. Possible explanations and implications are discussed.     

Influences of landscape and lifestyle on home energy consumption

Rapid urbanization coupled with concerns about global climate change has renewed interest in energy conservation and carbon dioxide emissions reduction. Urban residential energy consumption is a valuable place to start reducing emissions, and urban tree planting programs have been both proposed and utilized as an energy conservation mechanism. Home energy savings associated with urban trees are often quantified using models because of the many complex interactions among variables that can influence home energy use. However, recent empirical analyses have found that energy savings associated with trees may be minimal relative to other important factors like building characteristics and human behaviors. We surveyed 176 residents from four neighborhoods in Raleigh, NC with varying socio-economic characteristics to assess relationships between summer energy usage, tree cover, homeowner behavior, and building characteristics. As hypothesized, we found that building characteristics, demographics, and human behaviors were all significant variables in describing the variability in summertime home energy usage. Although, total percent tree cover 18?m around the home did not affect summertime energy use, the number of trees in the NE and NW quadrants around each household did predict home energy use. These results indicate that planting trees may not be a successful strategy for reducing energy use from the residential sector in the heavily forested Southeast; rather efforts should target conservation and efficiency.     

Aging and sexuality: how much do gynecologists know and care?

Enhanced knowledge and healthy attitudes toward aging sexuality can help promote the perception that full sexual expression is part of the entire extent of adulthood. We sought to determine gynecologists' knowledge and attitude regarding sexuality in older women. A total of 141 gynecologists in five hospitals responded to the survey: Aging Sexual Attitude and Knowledge Scale (ASKAS). No correlation was found between respondents' knowledge and attitude (r = .06, p = .54); no correlation found between respondents' age and knowledge (r = .20, p = .02), but 20% of the variance in attitude could be explained by age (beta 0.20, p = .02). Neither gender, ethnicity, level of training, nor hospital location demonstrated a significant correlation to either knowledge or attitude scores.     

Responses to stigmatisation and boundary making: destigmatisation strategies of Turks in Germany

This article combines the concept of responses to stigmatisation with the boundary making approach. It differentiates situational and discursive destigmatisation strategies of ethnic minority members. The analysis of in-depth interviews with Turkish residents of Germany yields four dominant response types at the level of action: (1) confronting, (2) deemphasising, and (3) ignoring/avoiding. While these responses vary situationally, the fourth category of (4) boundary work subsumes discursive strategies of boundary making and boundary blurring. This is the first systematic analysis of Turkish minority members’ destigmatisation strategies. The analysis reveals personal and situational prerequisites of particular destigmatisation strategies. The article discusses commonalities and differences between Turks in Germany and ethnic minorities elsewhere.     

Information production and bidding in IPOs

Despite their theoretical efficiency in selling shares to the public, auctions are not the preferred mechanisms in Initial Public Offerings (IPOs). Chemmanur and Liu (2006) and Sherman (2005) provide a rational explanation for this puzzle based on the notion that issuers are not only interested in the offering proceeds, but also the secondary market price, and thus try to induce investors to produce information about the IPO. In this paper, we report the results of an experimental study set up to test the basic mechanisms underlying this reasoning. Our findings strongly support the theoretical argument. If the issuer has some discretion in setting the offering price (as with bookbuilding or fixed-price offerings), he can maintain investors’ propensity to produce information by appropriately adjusting the offering price even if information costs are high. In auctions, however, high information costs inevitably result in a low propensity to produce information as investors bid too competitively to recover the costs of information production. Our results provide experimental support for the theoretical argument that an auction is not the preferable offering mechanism for young and risky IPO firms because, while there is strong demand for information about such firms, the costs of producing this information are high.     

Predicting development preferences for fishing sites among diverse anglers

Urban Ecosystems - Shifting demographics among angling communities mean that managers may need different amenities at fishing sites to satisfy new constituents. Anglers approach recreational...     

Focused information criteria for copulas

In this paper, we extend the focused information criterion (FIC) to copula models. Copulas are often used for applications where the joint tail behavior of the variables is of particular interest, and selecting a copula that captures this well is then essential. Traditional model selection methods such as the Akaike information criterion (AIC) and the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) aim at finding the overall best‐fitting model, which is not necessarily the one best suited for the application at hand. The FIC, on the other hand, evaluates and ranks candidate models based on the precision of their point estimates of a context‐given focus parameter. This could be any quantity of particular interest, for example, the mean, a correlation, conditional probabilities, or measures of tail dependence. We derive FIC formulae for the maximum likelihood estimator, the two‐stage maximum likelihood estimator, and the so‐called pseudo‐maximum‐likelihood (PML) estimator combined with parametric margins. Furthermore, we confirm the validity of the AIC formula for the PML estimator combined with parametric margins. To study the numerical behavior of FIC, we have carried out a simulation study, and we have also analyzed a multivariate data set pertaining to abalones. The results from the study show that the FIC successfully ranks candidate models in terms of their performance, defined as how well they estimate the focus parameter. In terms of estimation precision, FIC clearly outperforms AIC, especially when the focus parameter relates to only a specific part of the model, such as the conditional upper‐tail probability.     

Tree-based modeling of time-varying coefficients in discrete time-to-event models

Lifetime Data Analysis - Hazard models are popular tools for the modeling of discrete time-to-event data. In particular two approaches for modeling time dependent effects are in common use. The...     

Lot sizing with storage losses under demand uncertainty

We address a variant of the single item lot sizing problem affected by proportional storage (or inventory) losses and uncertainty in the product demand. The problem has applications in, among others, the energy sector, where storage losses (or storage deteriorations) are often unavoidable and, due to the need for planning ahead, the demands can be largely uncertain. We first propose a two-stage robust optimization approach with second-stage storage variables, showing how the arising robust problem can be solved as an instance of the deterministic one. We then consider a two-stage approach where not only the storage but also the production variables are determined in the second stage. After showing that, in the general case, solutions to this problem can suffer from acausality (or anticipativity), we introduce a flexible affine rule approach which, albeit restricting the solution set, allows for causal production plans. A hybrid robust-stochastic approach where the objective function is optimized in expectation, as opposed to in the worst-case, while retaining robust optimization guarantees of feasibility in the worst-case, is also discussed. We conclude with an application to heat production, in the context of which we compare the different approaches via computational experiments on real-world data.