Votes,Favors, Toys,and Ideas: The Effect of Resource Characteristics on Power in Exchange Networks

Abstract

The goal of this research is to understand how resource characteristics influence the development of power in exchange networks. Transferability and duplicability are identified as fundamental resource characteristics that have not been examined systematically in prior social exchange research. Varying resource transferability and duplicability alters the mechanisms that produce power and determine which positions in a network have a power advantage. To predict where power will develop, I rely on existing measures for previously studied resources and introduce relevant principles of network structure for resources that have not been studied before. This theoretical logic is supported by a series of simulated exchange networks that apply behavioral principles observed in prior experimental research to the exchange of a broader variety of resources than previously considered. Results indicate how the pattern of power use in a network is contingent upon the type of resource being exchanged.     

The use of a hand-held microcomputer in the collection of physiological,subjective and behavioral data in ecologically valid gambling settings

A small, hand-held micro-computer was linked with telemetry equipment to permit simultaneous collection of heart rate, subjective ratings, and behavioral/environmental events. The two objectives satisfied by the system were unobtrusiveness in real-life gambling settings and capacity to down-load data directly to a host computer.This project is supported by the Australian Research Scheme grant no. A 284157490 I. Receiver and transmitters loaned by the Department of Zoology, ANU, and technical advice from Jim Bishop and Lyle Carpenter.     

Assessing Intimacy: The Pair Inventory*

PAIR, acronym for Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationships, was developed as a tool for educators, researchers and therapists. PAIR provides systematic information on five types of intimacy: emotional, social, sexual, intellectual and recreational. Individuals, married or unmarried, describe their relationship in terms of how they currently perceive it (perceived) and how they would like it to be (expected). PAIR can be used with couples in marital therapy and enrichment groups.     

The Stuff of Life

The musings of Valentin Kurbatov, a literary critic from Pskov, on books he has read in the past year spill over into a tightly focused, self-contained piece on contemporary literature and contemporary readers, on life ("a greedy now and a vague tomorrow") and the yearning to feel the earth firm beneath one's feet.     

On Large Deviations of Sums of Independent Random Variables

Extensions of some limit theorems are proved for tail probabilities of sums of independent identically distributed random variables satisfying the one-sided or two-sided Cramér's condition. The large deviation x-region under consideration is broader than in the classical Cramér's theorem, and the estimate of the remainder is uniform with respect to x. The corresponding asymptotic expansion with arbitrarily many summands is also obtained.     

Bootstrap confidence intervals in mixtures of discrete distributions

The problem of building bootstrap confidence intervals for small probabilities with count data is addressed. The law of the independent observations is assumed to be a mixture of a given family of power series distributions. The mixing distribution is estimated by nonparametric maximum likelihood and the corresponding mixture is used for resampling. We build percentile-t and Efron percentile bootstrap confidence intervals for the probabilities and we prove their consistency in probability. The new theoretical results are supported by simulation experiments for Poisson and geometric mixtures. We compare percentile-t and Efron percentile bootstrap intervals with eight other bootstrap or asymptotic theory based intervals. It appears that Efron percentile bootstrap intervals outperform the competitors in terms of coverage probability and length.