Recent minimum wage increases and the minimum wage labor force

Coclusion  Recently Whaples (1996) reported that most labor economists believe that minimum wage laws decrease employment. Despite this, policy makers have continued to periodically raise the minimum, with the most recent increases occurring in October 1996 and September 1997. The various analyses done by Card, Katz, and Krueger, that showed little to no employment effect of past minimum wage increases, have provided additional ammunition for those who would seek further increases. However, using the estimates of Williams and Mills (1998), we demonstrate that the latest minimum wage increases substantially decreased employment for both sexes. We believe that future increases will do likewise.     

The Failure of Calendar Reform (1992–1931): Religious Minorities, Businessmen, Scientists, and Bureaucrats

The standardization of measurements of length, mass, temperature, etc is a central part of the process of modernization and rationalization described by Weber. However, attempts by businessmen, scientists and bureaucrats to reform the calendar, as a rationalizing measure and to improve economic efficiency, have been thwarted by religious minorities. Curiously, the religious opposition is rooted in material interests, in contrast to the ideal interests of the calendar reformers. The argument that calendar reform is contrary to religious liberty is shown to be confused. Durkheim's concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity are then used to clarify the nature of the issues involved.     

Risk of physical assault against school educators with histories of occupational and other violence: a case-control study

A case-control study design was used to investigate risks of work-related physical assault (PA) associated with a history of violent victimization among educators. A total of 6,469 state-licensed educators (Kindergarten - Grade 12) worked in the previous 12~months and were eligible to participate. Exposure data were collected from cases (reporting a PA event in previous 12 months, n=290) for the month before PA, and from controls (no work-related PA in previous 12 months; n=867) for a randomly selected working month. Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals identified increased risks for educators with any prior history of work-related (17.3, 11.4-26.3) or non-work-related PA (2.0, 1.2-3.5). In addition, PA risk in the previous twelve months increased with the number of previous victimizations, and risk also increased for educators with histories of non-physical violence (work- and non work-related). The results present a compelling case for targeted interventions and further research.     

Angry citizens: civic anger and the politics of curative democracy in India

This article examines the emergence of the angry citizen as a legitimate political actor in post-colonial Indian democracy. Approaching such ‘civic anger’ as a historically constituted and socio-politically embedded formation rather than as a subjectively and individually experienced feeling, I show that the rise of the angry citizen was linked to the consolidation of a distinctive politics of curative democracy in the ‘long 1970s’. The lineages of the civic anger of twenty-first century India may be traced to this older formation of curative democracy. The point here is not to offer a chronological revision of the origins of ‘new India’, but to consider the generalisable political implications of the idea of curative democracy, and to identify the distinctive forms of political agency that are associated with the call to cure, reform or renew democracy.     

Parenting Style and Adolescent Externalizing Behaviors: The Moderating Role of Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia

This longitudinal study was conducted with 262 adolescents (M age = 15.3) and their parents to examine adolescent respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA; baseline and reactivity) as a moderator of the relationship between parenting style and adolescent externalizing behaviors. This was conceptualized within the differential susceptibility to the environment framework, which proposes that children with greater sensitivity to environmental influences benefit more from supportive environments but are at greater risk in averse environments. In this study, low RSA baseline was associated with greater susceptibility. In confirmation of hypotheses, males with low RSA baseline had the most externalizing behaviors when mother or father authoritative parenting was low or when mother authoritarian parenting was high. Contrary to hypotheses, females with greater RSA reactivity (high susceptibility) did more poorly when authoritarian parenting was low or authoritative parenting was high. Differential gender socialization and the task used to elicit RSA reactivity are suggested reasons for gender differences.     

A Conway Maxwell Poisson type generalization of the negative hypergeometric distribution

Abstract

Negative hypergeometric distribution arises as a waiting time distribution when we sample without replacement from a finite population. It has applications in many areas such as inspection sampling and estimation of wildlife populations. However, as is well known, the negative hypergeometric distribution is over-dispersed in the sense that its variance is greater than the mean. To make it more flexible and versatile, we propose a modified version of negative hypergeometric distribution called COM-Negative Hypergeometric distribution (COM-NH) by introducing a shape parameter as in the COM-Poisson and COMP-Binomial distributions. It is shown that under some limiting conditions, COM-NH approaches to a distribution that we call the COM-Negative binomial (COMP-NB), which in turn, approaches to the COM Poisson distribution. For the proposed model, we investigate the dispersion characteristics and shape of the probability mass function for different combinations of parameters. We also develop statistical inference for this model including parameter estimation and hypothesis tests. In particular, we investigate some properties such as bias, MSE, and coverage probabilities of the maximum likelihood estimators for its parameters by Monte Carlo simulation and likelihood ratio test to assess shape parameter of the underlying model. We present illustrative data to provide discussion.     

Parametric scalp mapping and inference via spatially smooth linear models for mismatch negativity studies

Mismatch negativity (MMN) is a neurophysiological tool that can be used to investigate various facets of comprehension. Subjects are presented with different stimuli to elicit the MMN response, which is derived from electroencephalography (EEG) signals recorded at electrodes across the brain. We propose a methodology to extend single electrode analyses of MMN data by generating smooth scalp maps of estimated experimental effects. It is shown that penalized least squares estimates of effect maps can be produced using a two step procedure involving (a) ANOVA at each electrode and (b) spatial smoothing across electrodes. A Fisher von-Mises kernel is used for smoothing scalp maps with cross-validated bandwidth selection. The methodology is applied to a case control study involving aphasics (language disordered individuals). Analysis of residuals shows possible heteroscedasticity and non-Gaussian tail behavior. For robust inference, a semiparametric multivariate approach is proposed to determine the significance of parametric maps. A variety of global and regional test statistics are developed to investigate the significance of spatial patterns in treatment effects. The methodology is seen to confirm previous findings from single electrode analysis and identifies some new significant spatial patterns of difference between controls and aphasics.     

A qualitative study of the practices and experiences of staff in multidisciplinary child sexual exploitation partnerships in three English coastal towns

This article presents findings from a qualitative study of the practices and experiences of people working in multidisciplinary child sexual exploitation (CSE) partnerships in three coastal towns in England. The study is based on focus groups conducted with 36 practitioners from a range of professional groups, including police, social work, substance misuse, education, specialist youth workers, sexual health, and statutory and non-statutory children's services. The article begins with an overview of the three towns and the structure of their responses to CSE. It goes on to explore a range of factors, which contribute to the local issues around CSE and which affect and direct multiagency working. These include practitioner perspectives on CSE vulnerability, the discrepancy between young peoples' and practitioners' views about “exploitation”, a discussion of how CSE perpetrators initiate and develop contact with young people and the role of incentives—including drugs and alcohol—as part of CSE exploitation. We finish by drawing out some general conclusions.     

A formula for Type III sums of squares

Abstract

Type III methods were introduced by SAS to address difficulties in dummy-variable models for effects of multiple factors and covariates. They are widely used in practice; they are the default method in several statistical computing packages. Type III sums of squares (SSs) are defined by a set of instructions; an explicit mathematical formulation does not seem to exist.

An explicit formulation is derived in this paper. It is used to illustrate Type III SSs and to establish their properties in the two-factor ANOVA model.