Level‐k Auctions: Can a Nonequilibrium Model of Strategic Thinking Explain the Winner's Curse and Overbidding in Private‐Value Auctions?

This paper proposes a structural nonequilibrium model of initial responses to incomplete‐information games based on “level‐k” thinking, which describes behavior in many experiments with complete‐information games. We derive the model's implications in first‐ and second‐price auctions with general information structures, compare them to equilibrium and Eyster and Rabin's (2005) “cursed equilibrium,” and evaluate the model's potential to explain nonequilibrium bidding in auction experiments. The level‐k model generalizes many insights from equilibrium auction theory. It allows a unified explanation of the winner's curse in common‐value auctions and overbidding in those independent‐private‐value auctions without the uniform value distributions used in most experiments.     

Genetic diversity and relatedness of a recently established population of eastern coyotes (Canis latrans) in New York City

Little is known about the relatedness structure of carnivores living in urban areas, where green spaces may vary in size and resource availability. We examined the minimum population size, relatedness structure, and genetic diversity of a recently established population of eastern coyotes (Canis latrans) inhabiting New York City (NYC). The population has been established for approximately 25 years, and sample collection for genetic analysis has been ongoing since 2010. We genotyped 234 scat, eight tissue, and three blood samples at nine microsatellite loci. We identified 45 individual coyotes with a male-biased sex ratio of 2.2:1. We also found moderate to high levels of genetic diversity, with average observed heterozygosity of 0.779 and mean number of alleles per locus of 7.8. Most of the green spaces surveyed supported a single group of closely related coyotes in each. Relatedness comparisons between parks also indicated that coyotes compared across different parks were also closely related. We identified two unrelated mated pairs and found no support for polygamy. The high incidence of relatedness suggests that the coyote population is descended from a small number of founding individuals. Additionally, we genetically recaptured several coyotes, including one individual sampled in the Bronx and in Queens, with a median of 103 days between resampling. This result indicates that the coyotes are persisting in some of the isolated greenspaces of New York City and able to move successfully between them.

     

Mental health and the media: From illness to wellbeing

The media are a main source of information about mental health for many people, and an ever‐growing body of literature is evaluating their coverage of the topic. To help keep track of such research, several comprehensive but now dated literature reviews have been published. We assess more recent studies (2007–2017) and suggest future directions by integrating (a) the “circuit of mass communication” model from media and communication studies which posits that production, content, and reception need to be analysed for an in‐depth understanding of the media, (b) the holistic view of mental health as comprising both illness and wellbeing, and (3) the critical psychiatry literature questioning the assumptions underlying psychiatric knowledge and practice. We find that recent studies have focused on content and “the illness side” of mental health by examining the representation of particular mental disorders and events involving individuals with specific diagnoses. We identify as a promising development the growing interest in “the wellbeing side” of mental health whereby authors have started to analyse recovery messages. We invite more production and reception research and more critical content studies which use diagnostic labels cautiously and analyse the representation of people with mental health problems as the victims of violence.     

Do we measure leadership effectively? Articulating and evaluating scale development psychometrics for best practice

Leadership assessment has been a particular point of difficulty for contemporary scholarship, with many practitioners rejecting academically-driven leadership instruments and scales and preferring their own, less rigorous, scales. We believe that current conceptualizations and measurements of leadership are problematic, indicated by contemporary challenges that can be widely understood as failures of leadership (e.g. the Australian Banking Royal Commission and Volkswagen's ‘Dieselgate’). Also, how effective leadership is measured needs to change. This paper presents a systematic review of 17 leadership scales developed in the new millennium. The majority of scales lack some degree of rigor. Our response has been to conduct eighteen critical checks over four stages of scale development: theory generation, item development, content validity, and empirical evaluation. On the premise that understanding past practices, with their limitations, can be used to drive forward a suite of more effective organizational tools, we provide best practice recommendations using contemporary psychometric research.     

‘In the wreck of a master's fortune’: slave provisioning and planter debt in the British Caribbean

This article traces how debates over the ability of indebted West Indian planters to adequately provision their slaves influenced the politics of slavery in the British Empire in an era of abolitionism and amelioration projects. Specifically, the article examines the promulgation of colonial laws establishing priorities for debts incurred for the purchase of slave provisions over mortgage debts in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Debt-priority laws and contemporary responses to them suggest the ways in which both proslavery and antislavery interests defined and contested the moral as well as material dimensions of West Indian commerce and finance. A detailed quantitative case study provides information on provisioning and other expenses on two Tobago sugar estates (1807–1815).     

Exploring Minority Youths’ Police Encounters: A Qualitative Interpretive Meta-synthesis

Recent deaths by police of unarmed minority youth have raised important questions about the nature and outcomes of involuntary minority youth-police encounters. Youth are the most surveilled group of Americans and minority youth frequently live in neighborhoods disproportionately targeted for proactive policing (i.e., using broad police discretion to “target” those most likely to be engaged in criminal activity before criminal acts become apparent). Understanding the experiences of minority youth who encounter police officers is of critical concern for social workers in many practice and research areas. Social workers must examine how a minority person’s perceptions are formed through repeated, frequent, involuntary encounters with the police. The purpose of this qualitative interpretive meta-synthesis was to capture these experiences through the voices of minority youth in recounting their contacts with the police. Four themes were identified: dangerous, controlling, prejudiced, and ineffective. Further reduction of these themes resulted in an overarching theme that captures the essences of these youth’s experiences: dehumanization. These results enhance understanding of minority youth experience with police officers and, thus, inform social work advocacy efforts around this issue in both practice and research arenas.     

Modeling and simulation of a nonhomogeneous poisson process having cyclic behavior

In this paper we develop a unified approach to modeling and simulation of a nonhomogeneous Poisson process whose rate function exhibits cyclic behavior as well as a long-term evolutionary trend. The approach can be applied whether the oscillation frequency of the cyclic behavior is known or unknown. To model such a process, we use an exponential rate function whose exponent includes both a polynomial and a trigonometric component.Maximum likelihood estimates of the unknown continuous parameters of this function are obtained numerically, and the degree of the polynomial component is determined by a likelihood ratio test. If the oscillation frequency is unknown, then an initial estimate of this parameter is obtained via spectral analysis of the observed series of events; initial estimates of the remaining trigonometric (respectively, polynomial) parameters are computed from a standard maximum likelihood (respectively, moment-matching) procedure for an exponential-trigonometric (respectively, exponential-polynomial) rate function. To simulate the fitted process by the method of thinning, we present (a) a procedure for constructing an optimal piecewise linear majorizing rate function; and(b)a "piecewise thinning" simulation procedure based on the inverse transform method for generating events from a piecewise linear rate function. These procedures are applied to the storm-arrival process observed at an off-shore drilling site.     

Modeling population density guided by land use-cover change model: a case study of Bogotá

Population and Environment - Population densities provide valuable spatial information to identify populations at risk, quantify mobility, and improve our understanding of future urban settlements....     

The Transnational Project and its Implications for Migrant Civil Society in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, overseas labor migration plays a vital role in the development strategy promoted by government agencies, international donor organizations and civil society organizations. Civil society organizations facilitate the migration process, respond to exploitation facing migrants while overseas and assist migrants upon their return to Bangladesh. Organizations in Bangladesh are pursuing a ‘transnational project,’ whereby their activities, missions, and objectives are now focused around transnational work in order to assist migrants. The transnational project is driven by foreign development agencies and the legitimating actions of local migrant organizations. This paper demonstrates the different ways transnationalism has moved from a radical concept to a banal development practice, by critically analyzing contemporary development practices of migrant civil society organizations in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Also addressed are the implications of the transnational project on migrant organizations, development, and migrant political inclusion, arguing that the transnational project creates new power structures and paradoxes within organizations.