WHY DO U.S. PARENTS PREFER PRIVATE TO FOSTER CARE ADOPTIONS? THE ROLE OF ADOPTION SUBSIDIES,GENDER, RACE,AND SPECIAL NEEDS

We analyze the demand behavior of adoptive parents in the U.S.A. For the theory, we apply vertical product differentiation to characterize the demand for domestic private, foster care and international adoptions. Then, we use the 2007 U.S. National Survey of Adoptive Parents and apply the control-function approach to a mixed logit model. We find interesting insights into the relationship between adoption choices and an adoptive parent's preferences over gender, race, and special needs. The government needs to pay an additional $735 ($506) a month to make a parent feel indifferent between international (domestic private) and foster care adoptions. (JEL O12, D10, L13)     

On robust empirical bayes analysis of means and variances from stratified samples

Ghosh and Lahiri (1987a,b) considered simultaneous estimation of several strata means and variances where each stratum contains a finite number of elements, under the assumption that the posterior expectation of any stratum mean is a linear function of the sample observations - the so called“posterior linearity” property. In this paper we extend their result by retaining the “posterior linearity“ property of each stratum mean but allowing the superpopulation model whose mean as well as the variance-covariance structure changes from stratum to stratum. The performance of the proposed empirical Bayes estimators are found to be satisfactory both in terms of “asymptotic optimality” (Robbins (1955)) and “relative savings loss” (Efron and Morris (1973)).     

Gandhian fictions: rereading Satyagraha in South Africa

From 1923–24, Mahatma Gandhi wrote his recollections of South Africa from a prison cell in India. This text, Satyagraha in South Africa, was intended to be ‘helpful in our present struggle’ to liberate India, as well as ‘a guide to any regular historian who may arise in the future.’ An emphatically transnational text, Satyagraha in South Africa relies upon the mode of allegory to place South Africa and India in relation to each other. As it encourages comparison, however, it discourages common cause. Gandhi places Africans as the anterior sign in a larger system of signification: South African politics prefigures Indian anti-colonial victory to come, but the African native also represents the innocent natives of India writ large.

Without the political didactics of Hind Swaraj, the journalistic interventions of Indian Opinion or even the philosophical aspirations of My Experiments with Truth, this fictionalised history has rarely been the centre of attention. Satyagraha in South Africa, however, reveals Gandhi’s understanding of imperial geography, as he places South Africa and India in a single frame but fails to imagine them as inhabiting the same historical present. This understanding is reflected in his political decisions, as he fails to connect Indian anti-colonial agitation with struggles elsewhere.     

On Mean Squared Prediction Error Estimation in Small Area Estimation Problems

For a general linear mixed normal model, a new linearized weighted jackknife method is proposed to estimate the mean squared prediction error (MSPE) of an empirical best linear unbiased predictor (EBLUP) of a general mixed effect. Different MSPE estimators are compared using a Monte Carlo simulation study.     

Nonparametrio bayes and empirical bayes estimation of the residual survival function at age t

Nonparametric Bayes and empirical Bayes estimations of the

survival function of a unit of age t (> 0) using Dirichlet

process prior are presented. The proposed empirical Bayes

estimators are found to be “asymptotically optimal” in the sense of Robbins (1955). The performances of the proposed

empirical Bayes estimators are compared with those of certain

rival estimators in terms of relative savings loss, The exact

expressions for Bayes risks are also provided in certain cases.     

Processes Underlying Interfirm Cooperation

This special issue intended to bring together scholarly insights on the processes that underlie the formation, growth, management and termination of interfirm cooperation (IFC). In this introductory paper, we highlight what we know about IFC and why fresh perspectives are warranted on this phenomenon from a conceptual and practical standpoint. We also highlight the contribution of each paper published in this special issue. The seven selected papers differ in their theoretical perspective, context, research methodology and findings, but collectively they enhance our understanding of various IFC processes. We end this paper by highlighting fertile avenues of future research.