Commentary on “Measuring Constructed Preferences: Towards a Building Code” by Payne,Bettman and Schkade

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty -     

UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATORS, AGRICULTURAL BIOTECHNOLOGY, AND ACADEMIC CAPITALISM: Defining the Public Good to Promote University–Industry Relationships

The theory of academic capitalism explains how federal, state, and university policies and people have expanded university–industry relationships (UIRs) and the commercialization of knowledge. These changes represent a profound shift in the way university research is expected to contribute to the public good. Because university administrators are responsible for creating organizational policies and infrastructures that are consistent with their organizational mission and with federal and state laws, it is critical to analyze how university administrators assess UIRs in relation to public-interest scientific research. Our in-depth interviews at six prominent land-grant universities with 59 key administrators having oversight responsibilities for agricultural biotechnology research programs and UIRs reveal how administrators justify their role in promoting UIRs. They tend to interpret their university's mission to contribute to the public good in a way that is conducive to encouraging UIRs and to commercializing research discoveries. Their rationale emerges within a context of having to justify their budgets to state governments.     

UK Government Communication: The Cameron years and their ongoing legacy

This paper chronicles in detail, analyses and draws conclusions about the development of the UK Government Communication Service (GCS) from the election of the Coalition Government led by David Cameron in May 2010, to his resignation following the referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU) on 23rd June 2016. Looking at the radical changes introduced within a historical context, the paper also provides a conceptual model of Government communication from the point where it became a recognisably government-wide service in 1956 to the period under examination.The methodological approach to this paper is qualitative using case study as the main method. A variety of data collection methods were used: ethnographic, including non-participant and participant observation, in-depth, semi-structured interviews with six senior managers in the Government Communication Service (GCS), five senior operational managers and two external experts. This primary research is supplemented by secondary sources including the academic literature and Government papers most of which are in the public domain, but some of which the author had privileged access to.Context is provided through an overview of the challenges facing the UK Government in the recent past and currently, a brief literature review and background on the philosophy and origins of Government Communication in the UK along with changes in the civil service more broadly. Then the structural and operational changes introduced During the Cameron years are presented. These changes, their impact and implications are discussed in context and conclusions drawn. A novel historiological, conceptual model of four chronological stages of UK Government communication presented and this, along with the detailed analysis of the Cameron years, is its original contribution.     

A Nonparametric Estimator of Survival Functions for Arbitrarily Truncated and Censored Data

It is well-known that the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator (NPMLE) may severely under-estimate the survival function with left truncated data. Based on the Nelson estimator (for right censored data) and self-consistency we suggest a nonparametric estimator of the survival function, the iterative Nelson estimator (INE), for arbitrarily truncated and censored data, where only few nonparametric estimators are available. By simulation we show that the INE does well in overcoming the under-estimation of the survival function from the NPMLE for left-truncated and interval-censored data. An interesting application of the INE is as a diagnostic tool for other estimators, such as the monotone MLE or parametric MLEs. The methodology is illustrated by application to two real world problems: the Channing House and the Massachusetts Health Care Panel Study data sets.     

Circular balanced repeated measurements designs

The concept of a circular design is defined and when proper balance for various effects is assumed, its universal optimality is proved over the class of all designs with the same set of parameters, Such designs are shown to minimize the variance of the best linear unbiased estimators of contrasts of residual and direct effects over the class of equireplicated designs. All models assume first order residual effects and are of a circular nature. The proofs are presented in a unified manner for several models at a time. They are based on certain matrix domination which occurs when parameters are eliminated from a linear modelj this latter fact is proved for a general linear model.     

The structure of fuzzy preferences: Social choice implications

It has been shown that, with an alternative factorization of fuzzy weak preferences into symmetric and antisymmetric components, one can prove a fuzzy analogue of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem even when the transitivity requirements on individual and social preferences are very weak. It is demonstrated here that the use of this specification of strict preference, however, requires preferences to also be strongly connected. In the absence of strong connectedness, another factorization of fuzzy weak preferences is indicated, for which nondictatorial fuzzy aggregation rules satisfying the weak transitivity requirement can still be found. On the other hand, if strong connectedness is assumed, the fuzzy version of Arrow's Theorem still holds for a variety of weak preference factorizations, even if the transitivity condition is weakened to its absolute minimum. Since Arrow's Impossibility Theorem appeared nearly half a century ago, researchers have been attempting to avoid Arrow's negative result by relaxing various of his original assumptions. One approach has been to allow preferences – those of individuals and society or just those of society alone – to be “fuzzy.” In particular, Dutta [4] has shown that, to a limited extent, one can avoid the impossibility result (or, more precisely, the dictatorship result) by using fuzzy preferences, employing a particularly weak version of transitivity among the many plausible (but still distinct) definitions of transitivity that are available for fuzzy preferences. Another aspect of exact preferences for which the extension to the more general realm of fuzzy preferences is ambiguous is the factorization of a weak preference relation into a symmetric component (indifference) and an antisymmetric component (strict preference). There are several ways to do this for fuzzy weak preferences, all of them equivalent to the traditional factorization in the special case when preferences are exact, but quite different from each other when preferences are fuzzy (see, for example, [3]). A recent paper in this journal [1], by A. Banerjee, argues that the choice of definitions for indifference and strict preference, given a fuzzy weak preference, can also have “Arrovian” implications. In particular, [1] claims that Dutta's version of strict preference presents certain intuitive difficulties and recommends a different version, with its own axiomatic derivation, for which the dictatorship results reappear even with Dutta's weak version of transitivity. However, the conditions used to derive [1]'s version of strict preference imply a restriction on how fuzzy the original weak preference can be, namely, that the fuzzy weak preference relation must be strongly connected. Without this restriction, I will show that the rest of [1]'s conditions imply yet a third version of strict preference, for which Dutta's possibility result under weak transitivity still holds. On the other hand, if one accepts the strong connectedness required in order for it to be valid, I show that [1]'s dictatorship theorem can in fact be strengthened to cover any version of transitivity for fuzzy preferences, no matter how weak, and further, that this dictatorship result holds for any “regular” formulation of strict preference, including the one originally used by Dutta. Received: 13 May 1996 / Accepted: 13 January 1997     

Maintaining the exchangeability assumption for a two-group permutation test in the non-randomized setting

In this note, we develop a new two-group bootstrap-permutation test that utilizes the tail-extrapolated quantile function estimator for the bootstrap component. This test is an extension of the standard two-group permutation test, that through its construction is defined to meet the exchangeability assumption, and thus it guarantees that the type I error is appropriately bounded by definition. This methodology is particularly useful in the non-randomized two-group setting for which the exchangeability assumption for the traditional two-group permutation test is untestable. We develop some theoretical results for the new test, followed by a simulation study and an example.     

Attachment and emotion regulation: Compensatory interactions and leader–member exchange

The current study draws on attachment theory (Bowlby, 1982) to examine how attachment (a relationship-based trait disposition), and the interaction between attachment and emotion regulation, relate to LMX quality. Data were collected from subordinates and supervisors in a variety of work settings. Attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance negatively predicted LMX quality. Moderator effects were found between attachment and emotion regulation.     

The role of attribution of causality in economic decision making

Research has established that economic decisions often deviate from game theoretic predictions. We explore the process of causal thinking as a possible explanation for such deviations. Specifically, we suggest that causal information affects economic decisions based on the principles advocated by Weiner, 1985, Weiner, 1986 attribution theory (AT) of motivation and emotion. Prior research in this area considered only subsets of the dimensions employed by the theory. We test the predictions stemming from AT in contexts where economic decisions involve sharing gains between party members (e.g., splitting profits) and assess how such decisions are affected by the reasons attributed for obtaining the gains. Results indicate a significant link between causal attribution and economic decisions and shed light on the rules and the rationale that guide this link. We conclude that research into economic decision making should pay a greater attention to the explanatory value of AT.     

An application of lomax distributions in receiver operating characteristic(roc)curve analysis

Receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curves are useful for studying the performance of diagnostic tests. ROC curves occur in many fields of applications including psychophysics, quality control and medical diagnostics. In practical situations, often the responses to a diagnostic test are classified into a number of ordered categories. Such data are referred to as ratings data. It is typically assumed that the underlying model is based on a continuous probability distribution. The ROC curve is then constructed from such data using this probability model. Properties of the ROC curve are inherited from the model. Therefore, understanding the role of different probability distributions in ROC modeling is an interesting and important area of research. In this paper the Lomax distribution is considered as a model for ratings data and the corresponding ROC curve is derived. The maximum likelihood estimation procedure for the related parameters is discussed. This procedure is then illustrated in the analysis of a neurological data example.