The Effect of School Choice on Participants: Evidence from Randomized Lotteries

School choice has become an increasingly prominent strategy for enhancing academic achievement. To evaluate the impact on participants, we exploit randomized lotteries that determine high school admission in the Chicago Public Schools. Compared to those students who lose lotteries, students who win attend high schools that are better in a number of dimensions, including peer achievement and attainment levels. Nonetheless, we find little evidence that winning a lottery provides any systematic benefit across a wide variety of traditional academic measures. Lottery winners do, however, experience improvements on a subset of nontraditional outcome measures, such as self‐reported disciplinary incidents and arrest rates.     

Issues with using baseline in last observation carried forward analysis

The topic of this paper was prompted by a study for which one of us was the statistician. It was submitted to Annals of Internal Medicine. The paper had positive reviewer comment; however, the statistical reviewer stated that for the analysis to be acceptable for publication, the missing data had to be accounted for in the analysis through the use of baseline in a last observation carried forward imputation. We discuss the issues associated with this form of imputation and recommend that it should not be undertaken as a primary analysis.     

Influence Function Based Variance Estimation and Missing Data Issues in Case-Cohort Studies

Recognizing that the efficiency in relative risk estimation for the Cox proportional hazards model is largely constrained by the total number of cases, Prentice (1986) proposed the case-cohort design in which covariates are measured on all cases and on a random sample of the cohort. Subsequent to Prentice, other methods of estimation and sampling have been proposed for these designs. We formalize an approach to variance estimation suggested by Barlow (1994), and derive a robust variance estimator based on the influence function. We consider the applicability of the variance estimator to all the proposed case-cohort estimators, and derive the influence function when known sampling probabilities in the estimators are replaced by observed sampling fractions. We discuss the modifications required when cases are missing covariate information. The missingness may occur by chance, and be completely at random; or may occur as part of the sampling design, and depend upon other observed covariates. We provide an adaptation of S-plus code that allows estimating influence function variances in the presence of such missing covariates. Using examples from our current case-cohort studies on esophageal and gastric cancer, we illustrate how our results our useful in solving design and analytic issues that arise in practice.     

Bootstrap goodness-of-fit test for the beta-binomial model

A common question in the analysis of binary data is how to deal with overdispersion. One widely advocated sampling distribution for overdispersed binary data is the beta-binomial model. For example, this distribution is often used to model litter effects in toxicological experiments. Testing the null hypothesis of a beta-binomial distribution against all other distributions is difficult, however, when the litter sizes vary greatly. Herein, we propose a test statistic based on combining Pearson statistics from individual litter sizes, and estimate the p-value using bootstrap techniques. A Monte Carlo study confirms the accuracy and power of the test against a beta-binomial distribution contaminated with a few outliers. The method is applied to data from environmental toxicity studies.     

Policing Mechanisms in Agricultural Contracts*

Abstract In this paper we focus on mechanisms of coordination in agricultural contracts. Our approach is intended to advance understanding of social relations of production and distribution of power in agrofood systems. Through an analysis of contracts between farmers and intermediaries (e.g., processors, shippers, consignment agents) for California fruits and vegetables, we identify three functions of contracts: they help to coordinate production, they provide incentives (and penalties) to induce particular behaviors, and they allow farmers and intermediaries to share risk. These functions are implemented via four policing instruments: input control, monitoring, quality measurement, and revenue sharing. The instruments are employed by intermediaries to mitigate “blind spots” in contracts and to control farmers' actions and the quality of their output. This mechanism design approach is complemented by a sociologically oriented analysis emphasizing the embeddedness of economic institutions. We problematize the stylized fashion in which the concept of authority has been treated in the contract farming literature, and propose an alternative approach to studying new organizational forms and divisions of labor among farmers and intermediaries.     

Gender,class, and network: social structure and migration patterns among transnational Israelis

A growing body of research and theorising explores the experience of groups who maintain ties to multiple nations. However, this research often overemphasizes the fluidity and freedom available to migrants and neglects the differential access to networks available to co‐nationals who vary in their class, ethnic, gender and affiliational characteristics. Drawing on fieldwork and in‐depth interviews with Israeli migrants in the USA and Britain, and returnees in Israel, this study considers how social characteristics and settlement contexts shape access to the networks through which migrants acquire resources and information. Findings suggest that highly educated Israelis of European origins often maintain distinct social networks from their less educated and Middle Eastern or North African co‐nationals. Further, middle‐class Israelis have greater legal and economic access to migration and return than those with less human and financial capital. Israeli men and single women often prefer life abroad, while married women, especially those with children, wish to return. Finally, destinations influence migrants’ relations with the country of origin: Los Angeles fosters greater assimilation than London. In conclusion, because Israeli migrants are a diverse population, they maintain multiple networks and exhibit dissimilar patterns of connection to both the country of origin and places of destination.     

CREATIVITY NARRATIVES AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS: Sociability and Everyday Creativity

Despite foundations in early pragmatism, research on social patterning of creative action has been scarce in the multidisciplinary literature on creativity. We address this by exploring how students perceive their creative contributions to college life. By analyzing narratives, we find that the majority of creativity is associated with everyday experiences and social interactions, in contrast to a popular and scholarly focus on extraordinary individual achievement in domains like art and science. We also find strong trends in sociability as students negotiate both "where they stand" with regards to those around them as well as "how they stand out" as individuals.     

An Observational Investigation of Poker Style and the Five-Factor Personality Model

Little empirical investigation has been made of the relationship between personality and gambling play style. In an observation of on-table poker behavior, this study classified 44 players competing in an amateur league (43 male; mean age 32) according to two main dimensions of play style; tight or loose and aggressive or passive. Superstitious beliefs towards the game were additionally measured. The NEO-PI-R questionnaire (Costa and McCrae, Revised NEO personality inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO-five factor inventory (NEO-FFI) professional manual, 1992) was used to measure personality according to the five-factor model. Results showed players with superstitious beliefs to be significantly higher in neuroticism and lower in conscientiousness and than those with no superstitious beliefs. Results approaching significance showed players adopting an aggressive style to be higher in extraversion than passive players and superstitious players to be lower in extraversion than non-superstitious players. Analysis of play style according to age of player revealed a significantly higher mean age among loose compared to tight players. Implications of results concerning validity of these style classifications and potential development in future work are discussed.