A “brer rabbit” case for reverse mandated benefits

Reverse mandated benefits is a government-mandated policy that requires employees to provide their employers with benefits that workers would not provide otherwise. Of course, only those benefits would be mandated that are worth more to employers than they cost, as determined by political authorities. My case for such a policy argues that it is at least as sensible as policies mandating that employers provide benefits to their employees that would not be provided otherwise.     

Intertemporal choice under timing risk: An experimental approach

This paper investigates how individuals evaluate delayed outcomes with risky realization times. Under the discounted expected utility (DEU) model, such evaluations depend only on intertemporal preferences. We obtain several testable hypotheses using the DEU model as a benchmark and test these hypotheses in three experiments. In general, our results show that the DEU model is a poor predictor of intertemporal choice behavior under timing risk. We found that individuals are averse to timing risk and that they evaluate timing lotteries in a rank-dependent fashion. The main driver of timing risk aversion is nothing but probabilistic risk aversion that stems from the nonlinear treatment of probabilities.     

Beheimatungsprozesse begleiten — ein Werkstattbericht

Supporting processes of belonging in supervision and coachingThe contemporary employee has to cope with frequent changes. Not only does he lose his familiar environment, he also has to find ways to familiarize himself with new places and to develop a fresh sense of belonging. This process can be understood and facilitated by interpreting the German concept of “Heimat“ as something we have to create ourselves. First experiences demonstrate the usefulness of this approach in coaching processes.     

Expected sample moments of concomitants of selected order statistics

In this paper, the task of determining expected values of sample moments, where the sample members have been selected based on noisy information, is considered. This task is a recurring problem in the theory of evolution strategies. Exact expressions for expected values of sums of products of concomitants of selected order statistics are derived. Then, using Edgeworth and Cornish-Fisher approximations, explicit results that depend on coefficients that can be determined numerically are obtained. While the results are exact only for normal populations, it is shown experimentally that including skewness and kurtosis in the calculations can yield greatly improved results for other distributions.     

Patient assertiveness in ethnically diverse older women with breast cancer: Challenging stereotypes of the elderly

Patients' views of patient-physician interactions—particularly the perspectives of older, ethnically diverse women—are poorly understood. The older patient's attitude toward and understanding of the medical encounter, however, are essential to the design of strategies to improve patient-physician communication. To date, investigations have primarily emphasised the ways in which the therapeutic relationship is influenced by immutable patient characteristics. This qualitative study extends previous research findings by looking beyond the effect of ascribed categories (such as age, race, and gender) and focusing on aspects of patient behavior, specifically assertiveness. Focus groups were conducted with older African-, Chinese-, European-, and Hispanic American breast cancer patients from sites in the eastern and western United States. The study explores the potential of a form of patient activation for challenging stereotypes of the elderly and changing health care practitioners' behavior.     

Severely Traumatized Siblings: A Treatment Strategy

Siblings who have suffered severe trauma and disrupted attachment relate to one another in ways that interfere with individual development, the chance to benefit from connections with adults, the establishment of healthy sibling relationships, and the working through of traumatic experiences. The authors use case examples to illustrate four distinct sibling patterns: absent, adult lockout, half and half, and trauma shield. The authors highlight the importance of recognizing these types and then varying the therapist's treatment stance to pursue five goals. These include suspending problematic sibling relationships to create room for bonding with caring adults, transferring attachment behaviors and impulses to a receptive adult, resuming healthy individual development, forming more adaptive sibling connections, and expressing shared traumatic content.     

Going to Pieces: Paul Monette and the Fragments of the Tribe

Author of the highly acclaimed Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir (1988) and winner of the 1992 National Book Award for his autobiography Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, Paul Monette died of complications from AIDS in Los Angeles on February 12, 1995. His most recent work, Last Watch of the Night: Essays Too Personal and Otherwise (1994), is his third volume in a trilogy of autobiographical writing on growing up gay, coming-out, and living with AIDS. A graduate of Phillips Academy and Yale University, Monette received a number of awards for his writing and his work as an outspoken voice in the battle against AIDS, including the National Book Award, three Lambda Literary awards, the PEN Center West Freedom to Write Award, and three honorary doctorate degrees, from Wesleyan University, the City University of New York, and the State University of New York at Oswego. A memorial service was held for Monette on Sunday, February 19, 1995, at the Directors Guild of America on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Paul Monette was 49.     

The NTEE classification system: tests of reliability/validity in the field of higher education

An analysis of the field of higher education reveals a surprisingly large number of classification errors within the (US) National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities database. Of the nearly 4,000 non-profit entities coded within the universe of institutions of higher education, we estimate that approximately 60 per cent were incorrectly included (Type II errors). Institutions incorrectly excluded from the higher education universe (Type I errors) represent roughly 10 per cent of the institutions coded correctly. These errors result primarily from assigning codes on the basis of the names of organisations (for example, College Park Towers is classified as a college, when it is in fact a housing complex for senior citizens) and from trying too hard to assign codes in ambiguous situations. The consequences can be significant for the users of these data, and we recommend raising bright warning flags while simultaneously enlisting the help of the entire non-profit sector in improving the classification coding process.The authors are with The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In addition to our colleagues on the staff of the Foundation, we wish to thank Helmut Anheier, Ted Bozovich, Harvey Dale, Virginia Hodgkinson, Stephen Noga and Christopher Toppe for helpful suggestions.     

The control of bank exposure to risk

This article describes the major risks inherent in operating a bank. By analyzing the individual component elements of that risk it shows how the major risks may be reported and controlled. The analysis also portrays some of the major considerations that require attention if the risks are to be minimized.