Psychophysiological and Subjective Arousal during Gambling in Pathological and Non-pathological Video Lottery Gamblers

Two groups of video lottery gamblers (pathological N =30, and non-pathological N =34) were compared while they participated in gambling and gambling related tasks using subjective ratings of excitement, electromyographic activity (EMG), skin conductance level (SCL) and heart rate (HR). Although the groups experienced similar levels of increased physiological response the pathological gamblers reported greater levels of subjective excitement. It was concluded that the pathological and non-pathological gamblers might perceive their responses to gambling and gambling related situations differently.     

Empirical Likelihood-Based Inferences for Generalized Partially Linear Models

Abstract.  This paper considers generalized partially linear models. We propose empirical likelihood-based statistics to construct confidence regions for the parametric and non-parametric components. The resulting statistics are shown to be asymptotically chi-square distributed. Finite-sample performance of the proposed statistics is assessed by simulation experiments. The proposed methods are applied to a data set from an AIDS clinical trial.     

OPTIMAL BAIL AND THE VALUE OF FREEDOM: EVIDENCE FROM THE PHILADELPHIA BAIL EXPERIMENT

This article performs a cost‐benefit analysis to determine socially optimal bail levels for felony defendants. We consider jailing costs, the cost of lost freedom to incarcerated defendants, and the social costs of flight and new crimes committed by released defendants. We estimate the effects of changing bail using data from a randomized experiment. We find that the typical defendant in our sample would be willing to pay roughly $1,000 for 90 d of freedom. While imprecise, our optimal bail estimates are similar to the observed levels of bail prior to bail reform. (JEL J17, J19, K14, K42)     

THE IMPACT OF RESTAURANT CALORIE LABELS ON FOOD CHOICE: RESULTS FROM A FIELD EXPERIMENT

Using field experiment data, we compare the effectiveness of calorie labels to a “fat tax” at reducing calories ordered. Results from a structural model of consumer demand show that numeric labels did not influence food choice, but symbolic traffic light labels caused restaurant patrons to select lower‐calorie menu items; thus, adding a traffic light symbol could enhance the effectiveness of the numeric calorie label (as currently proposed by the Food and Drug Administration). Additionally, our model projects that labels can both reduce intake more than a 10% tax on high‐calorie items and a 10% subsidy on low‐calorie items. (JEL Q18, I18)     

The grobal in the sporting glocal

Abstract This article provides a counterpoint to analyses of contemporary sport culture that falsely polarize the global and the local, in a manner that tends to privilege, and indeed romanticize, expressions of the sporting local. Rather than treating them as mutually exclusive categories, this discussion seeks to further the understanding of the constitutive interdependence linking the (sporting) global and the (sporting) local. In looking to further the understanding of the contemporary sporting landscape, we offer an alternative approach that reinscribes the influence of the global in shaping structures, practices, and experiences of the sporting local. The processual and empirical continuum through which we conceptualize globalization is bounded by grobalization (the imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations, organizations, and the like and their desire, indeed need, to impose themselves on various geographic areas) and glocalization (the interpenetration of the global and the local, resulting in unique outcomes in different geographic areas): the grobal and the glocal. We discuss four sport scenarios, and illustrate the manner in which they exhibit – in varying inflections and to varying intensities – the necessary, but never guaranteed, interpenetrative relationship between the grobal and the glocal. This is achieved by both problematizing the very possibility of the sporting local within conditions of intensive and extensive globalization (leading to the concept of the glocal), and simultaneously explicating the importance of the global (through the concept of the grobal) to the structure and experience of everyday sport cultures.     

Intentional Exposure Studies of Environmental Agents on Human Subjects: Assessing Benefits and Risks∗

In this article, I assess the benefits and risks of studies that intentionally expose research subjects to environmental agents. I describe these types of studies, identify their benefits and risks, compare them to other research methods that can be used to investigate the relationship between environmental exposures and disease, and discuss some issues related to research design and risk minimization. I argue that the benefits of intentional environmental exposure studies outweigh the risks when 1) the knowledge gained is likely to improve our understanding of the relationship between environmental exposure and disease, 2) this knowledge cannot be obtained by other methods, 3) the experiments are well designed, 4) the subjects will receive some benefits, such as medical evaluations, 5) risks are minimized, and 6) the risks to human subjects are less than those encountered in a typical Phase I drug study. Only in rare circumstances (i.e., when an intentional environmental exposure study is needed to implement an important environmental or public health intervention or regulation) may such studies expose research subjects to risks as high as those encountered in a typical Phase I drug trail.     

International Standards for Research Integrity: An Idea Whose Time has Come?

A movement to promulgate international ethics standards covering areas of conduct other than research with human subjects has now begun to gain momentum. This commentary explains why it is important to develop international research integrity standards and some of the problems that must be overcome to bring them to fruition.     

AN OBJECTIVE MEASURE OF SEARCH VERSUS EXPERIENCE GOODS

This paper proposes the use of product price as an empirically pliable measure of the expected benefits to consumers of acquiring information about product and vendor performance prior to purchase. As the purchase price of an item increases, so does the cost of making a disappointing purchase and, accordingly, the expected benefit from acquiring prepurchase information, ceteris paribus. A continuous price variable (a proxy for the cost of making a disappointing purchase) generates results similar to those obtained by Nelson [1970; 1974] for search versus experience goods, but can be applied to a broader range of goods and services.     

Uncovering Rape: The Watchdog Press and the Limits of Agenda Setting

This article reports the findings of the second in a seriesof field experiments on the agenda-setting effects of news mediainvestigative reports. The authors used a pretest-posttest quasi-experimentaldesign to assess the impact of a newspaper investigative seriesabout rape on a randomly selected group of Chicagoans and apurposive sample of policy makers. Unlike the first study, theseries had a minimal impact on public opinion and policy making,but affected profoundly the subsequent newspaper coverage ofrape.