Pensions and the uses of ignorance by unions and firms

Pensions are contingent claims contracts that are often fashioned by collective bargaining under conditions of asymmetric information and market power. Pensions are not an employer’s or a union’s optimal contract; they represent compromise. Employers use pensions to minimize labor costs and to adjust to market changes. Pensions help unions improve and protect their members’ work lives and help unions to survive as institutions. When workers’ estimations of their pensions differ from their employers’ estimations a moral hazard can exist. Less mobile workers and those with less influence subsidize the pension benefits of other workers or reduce an employer’s costs. Econometric results based on data from the President’s Commission on Pension Policy show that certain workers, namely women, overvalue their plans, which provides an opportunity to lower labor costs and redistribute benefits. Unions have a contradictory effect on information. The author thanks participants in the Cornell University Collective Bargaining workshop and the Harvard Labor Economics workshop. I especially thank James Medoff for his comments.     

Shake,Rattle, and … One or Two Objects? Young Infants' Use of Auditory Information to Individuate Objects

Most research on object individuation in infants has focused on the visual domain. Yet the problem of object individuation is not unique to the visual system, but shared by other sensory modalities. This research examined 4.5‐month‐old infants' capacity to use auditory information to individuate objects. Infants were presented with events in which they heard 2 distinct sounds, separated by a temporal gap, emanate from behind a wide screen; the screen was then lowered to reveal 1 or 2 objects. Longer looking to the 1‐ than 2‐object display was taken as evidence that the infants (a) interpreted the auditory event as involving 2 objects and (b) found the presence of only 1 object when the screen was lowered unexpected. The results indicated that the infants used sounds produced by rattles, but not sounds produced by an electronic keyboard, as the basis for object individuation (Experiments 1 and 2). Data collected with adult participants revealed that adults are also more sensitive to rattle sounds than electronic tones. A final experiment assessed conditions under which young infants attend to rattle sounds (Experiment 3). Collectively, the outcomes of these experiments suggest that infants and adults are more likely to use some sounds than others as the basis for individuating objects. We propose that these results reflect a processing bias to attend to sounds that reveal something about the physical properties of an object—sounds that are obviously linked to object structure—when determining object identity.     

A qualitative data analysis: family victim advocates in child advocacy centers

ABSTRACT

Family victim advocates in child advocacy centers provide a valuable resource to children and parents involved in child abuse investigations. This work requires that family victim advocates be knowledgeable in such areas as child development, crisis intervention, community resources, family relationships, child welfare and criminal justice systems. Because family victim advocates provide essential services to parents and caregivers, the role requires ongoing training and education to remain current on the ever-changing complexities of working with not only the children and families but also the criminal and child protection systems responsible for investigating these cases. The current study reports the findings from a nationwide survey of family victim advocates employed in child advocacy centers related to their motivation for doing the work as well as their perceptions of their training and potential training needs. A group of doctoral students comprised the research team and worked collaboratively under the supervision of university faculty to conduct the qualitative data analysis. The findings describe the characteristics and motivations of family victim advocates working in child advocacy centers and emphasize the need for more advanced trainings that focus on skill-building and strengths-based practices utilized to support children and parents in child abuse cases.     

Love and Alcohol: Performance in the Fiction and Life of Writer-Singer Nataliia Medvedeva

Abstract

The multifaceted Russian author, singer, and actress Nataliia Medvedeva’s (1958–2003) creative output was synonymous with performance. Her image became iconic in worldwide popular culture as the carefree, smiling young woman on the cover of the New Wave rock group “The Cars”’s eponymous 1978 album. Then Medvedeva was twenty years old and had been living in the United States for about three years; she returned to Russia in 1994 after nineteen years abroad, mainly in the US and France, and died at the age of forty-four, possibly of a fatal mixture of alcohol and tranquilizers. By the time of her death, Medvedeva—author, poet, journalist, singer, musician, model, and designer—was, and remains, an enigmatic yet colourful figure of the Russian émigré and post-Soviet literary, music, and cultural scenes.

From an early age in Leningrad, she showed an aptitude for constructing performance and (re)presenting herself. This article suggests that Medvedeva used her early autobiographical writing as a method of thinking through her ideas and beliefs about the nature of performance, especially as it related to perceptions of the sexual, sexuality, and shocking-ness, as well as to the relationship between the audience and herself, indeed, between society and the self. To support my thesis, I focus, in particular, on her autobiographical novel Liubov’ s alkogolem [Drunk Love, 1987?, 1995, 2001], as well as foundational ideas from the field of performance studies.     

The role of social relationships in the association between adolescents' depressive symptoms and academic achievement

While research has established that depression interferes with academic achievement, less is understood about the processes by which social relationships may buffer the relationship between depression and academic outcomes. In this study we examined the role of positive relationships in the school, family and peer contexts in the association between depressive symptoms and academic achievement among 894 adolescents aged 12–17 years living in Santiago, Chile. Depressive symptoms were associated with lower levels of academic achievement; parental monitoring, school belonging, positive mother relationships, and having academically inclined peers moderated this relationship, though some interactions differed by sex and age. Implications for promoting the academic success of adolescents experiencing depressive symptoms are discussed.     

Family Members' Reports of Abuse in Michigan Nursing Homes

The objective of this article is to describe abuse and neglect of adults age 65 and older in Michigan nursing homes, as reported by members of their families. Using list-assisted random-digit dialing, data on abuse and neglect for a 12-month period were collected from individuals who had a relative age 65 or older in a Michigan nursing home. Of the nursing home residents represented in this analysis, the majority were female, Caucasian, and widowed. Neglect and caretaking mistreatment were the most frequent types of abuse reported. Comparison of these data with data from the National Ombudsman Reporting System suggests that family members constitute a sensitive source of data on abuse in nursing homes.     

“No End or Return”: Thematics of Impasse

This article explores therapeutic impasse through the dual lens of relational theory and infant research. Particular attention is paid to the role that enactment, rupture and repair, and nonverbal communication play in impasse dynamics. Defined broadly—as any time a therapist and patient feel stuck—impasse is conceptualized as an expectable, even inevitable, component of the treatment relationship. The implications for navigating impasses are considered through a clinical vignette developed as a case composite to ensure confidentiality.