The effect of domain prestige and interlocutors' bilingualism on loanword adaptations

There is great variability in whether foreign sounds in loanwords are adapted, such that segments show cross‐word and cross‐situational variation in adaptation. Previous research proposed that word frequency, speakers' level of bilingualism and neighborhoods' level of bilingualism can explain such variability. We test for the effect of these factors and propose two additional factors: interlocutors' level of bilingualism and the prestige of the donor language in the loanword's domain. Analyzing elicited productions of loanwords from Spanish into Mexicano in a village where Spanish and Mexicano enjoy prestige in complementary domains, we show that interlocutors' bilingualism and prestige influence the rate of sound adaptation. Additionally, we find that speakers accommodate to their interlocutors, regardless of the interlocutors' level of bilingualism. As retention of foreign sounds can lead to sound change, these results show that social factors can influence changes in a language's sound system.     

Can good news lead to a more pessimistic choice of action?

Adapting a definition introduced by Milgrom (1981) we say that a signal about the environment is good news relative to some initial beliefs if the posterior beliefs dominate the initial beliefs in the sense of first-order stochastic dominance (the assumption being that higher values of the parameter representing the environment mean better environments). We give an example where good news leads to the adoption of a more pessimistic course of action (we say that action a ₁, reveals greater pessimism than action a ₂, if it gives higher payoff in bad environments and lower payoff in good environments). We then give sufficient conditions for a signal not to induce a more pessimistic choice of action.A first version of this paper was written when the author was Heyworth Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and presented at the Second Annual Congress of the European Economic Association (Copenhagen, August 1987). The author is grateful to an anonymous referee for helpful comments.     

Rational beliefs in extensive games

Given an extensive game, with every node x and every player i a subset k _i (x) of the set of terminal nodes is associated, and is given the interpretation of player i's knowledge (or information) at node x. A belief of player i is a function that associates with every node x an element of the set K _i (x). A belief system is an n-tuple of beliefs, one for each player. A belief system is rational if it satisfies some natural consistency properties. The main result of the paper is that the notion of rational belief system gives rise to a refinement of the notion of subgame-perfect equilibrium.     

The emergence of social enterprises through the initiative of self-organized citizens: an analysis starting from Olson's approach to the logic of collective action

This article provides indirect empirical evidence with which to verify whether the logic of collective action maintained by Olson represents a sound theoretical approach to social enterprises. Our hypothesis is that, if a positive effect of participation in social enterprises on pro-social attitudes of members exists, when considering these organizations we should move from the approach proposed by Olson to the one proposed by Putnam, in the Tocqueville tradition. Overall, the existing empirical and experimental evidence seems to suggest that Putnam's approach to voluntary organizations is better able than Olson's to capture the organizational behavior of social enterprises, confirming that initiatives by self-organized citizens should be considered a possible convincing explanation for their emergence.     

Does satisfaction matter? A microeconomic empirical analysis of the effect of social relations on economic welfare

The paper studies the effect of social relations on individual economic welfare by explicitly considering the qualitative aspect of relations that characterize the social structure of personal contacts. It argues that important information is lost if only the density of the social network is considered. This proposition is tested using microdata representative of the entire Italian population. Two proxies for interpersonal relations at an individual level are considered: the number of voluntary associations joined and the satisfaction gained from relationships with friends. Both seem to have a positive effect on two indices of household economic welfare: a subjective index and an objective one. The subjective index is based on both the subjects’ personal assessment of their household general economic situation and financial difficulties in meeting certain expenditures. The objective index is calculated from objective data on the household's economic situation. The empirical results prove robust on considering a variety of control variables and using different econometric methods.     

Regulation of migrant entrepreneurship: The strained conjunction of laws,policies and practices

We are struck by a curious paradox: the flourishing discourse on migrant entrepreneurship is replete with references to the regulatory environment; yet the precise ways in which regulations exert influence is rarely spelt out. This task is all the more urgent because policymakers are alighting on the fact that migrants often turn to self-employment to make their way in destination societies. Yet, the extent to which regulations – comprising laws and governmental and non-governmental policy measures and practices – is poorly understood. This special section aims at filling this gap by adopting a theoretically informed analytical perspective to understand the role of regulation in migrant entrepreneurship. Articles in this special section analyse the nature of laws, policies and practices, the factors of success/failure of these, the role of governmental and non-governmental actors, and the effect of different welfare regimes and governance conditions.     

The Integration of Interstate Migrants in India: A 7 State Policy Evaluation

Interstate migration in developing countries is a key income generating strategy for low-income households. In India, despite the importance of migration between states, interstate migrants continue to face significant integration barriers in their destination states. The impact of state borders on migration within India is significant and large. This study presents one of the first attempts at creating a set of indicators to understand the role of state-level policies for the integration of interstate migrants in a developing country. After illustrating the process behind the creation of this tool and the tool in itself, we compare seven of the major migrant destination states of India, based on their policy frameworks relevant to the integration of interstate migrants. Out of these states, we found that Kerala state is the most inclusive of interstate migrants but that overall, policymakers in the considered Indian states have a long way to go to improve the integration of interstate migrants.     

Home care for the elderly: the role of relatives,friends and neighbors

We use data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe to examine the hours of home care received by the elderly. The existing empirical literature has mostly examined informal home care from children and formal home care. We identify two additional informal home care providers, namely, relatives (other than children) and friends (including neighbors) who provide about 30 % of the hours of informal home care. Our main new empirical finding is that single elderly persons who can rely less on children—and in particular daughters—for their home care receive not only more formal care but also more care from friends and neighbors. These findings suggest that policymakers need to take into account not only home care provision from children but also home care provision from friends and neighbors to obtain accurate projections concerning the increasing costs of formal care programs due to an aging population.     

Random time step probabilistic methods for uncertainty quantification in chaotic and geometric numerical integration

A novel probabilistic numerical method for quantifying the uncertainty induced by the time integration of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) is introduced. Departing from the classical strategy to randomise ODE solvers by adding a random forcing term, we show that a probability measure over the numerical solution of ODEs can be obtained by introducing suitable random time steps in a classical time integrator. This intrinsic randomisation allows for the conservation of geometric properties of the underlying deterministic integrator such as mass conservation, symplecticity or conservation of first integrals. Weak and mean square convergence analysis is derived. We also analyse the convergence of the Monte Carlo estimator for the proposed random time step method and show that the measure obtained with repeated sampling converges in the mean square sense independently of the number of samples. Numerical examples including chaotic Hamiltonian systems, chemical reactions and Bayesian inferential problems illustrate the accuracy, robustness and versatility of our probabilistic numerical method.     

A Stochastic Volatility Model With Realized Measures for Option Pricing

Abstract

Based on the fact that realized measures of volatility are affected by measurement errors, we introduce a new family of discrete-time stochastic volatility models having two measurement equations relating both observed returns and realized measures to the latent conditional variance. A semi-analytical option pricing framework is developed for this class of models. In addition, we provide analytical filtering and smoothing recursions for the basic specification of the model, and an effective MCMC algorithm for its richer variants. The empirical analysis shows the effectiveness of filtering and smoothing realized measures in inflating the latent volatility persistence—the crucial parameter in pricing Standard and Poor’s 500 Index options.