Influencing behaviour: The mindspace way

The ability to influence behaviour is central to many of the key policy challenges in areas such as health, finance and climate change. The usual route to behaviour change in economics and psychology has been to attempt to ‘change minds’ by influencing the way people think through information and incentives. There is, however, increasing evidence to suggest that ‘changing contexts’ by influencing the environments within which people act (in largely automatic ways) can have important effects on behaviour. We present a mnemonic, MINDSPACE, which gathers up the nine most robust effects that influence our behaviour in mostly automatic (rather than deliberate) ways. This framework is being used by policymakers as an accessible summary of the academic literature. To motivate further research and academic scrutiny, we provide some evidence of the effects in action and highlight some of the significant gaps in our knowledge.     

Problems and Solution for Criminal and Attached Civil Procedure on Juvenile Delinquency Cases According to

2012年修改的我国《刑事诉讼法》实施后,未成年人犯罪案件刑事附带民事诉讼中可能存在“合适成年人”无法作为民事诉讼法定代理人以维护有关未成年人民事权益、适用“当事人和解的公诉案件诉讼程序”时将被告人赔偿与否作为量刑情节而造成对被告人不公、适用“简易程序”时法官施压调解而干预阻碍被告人行使民事诉讼权利、审判人员能否兼备审理刑事案件与民事案件的专业素养等问题。为了在发挥刑事附带民事诉讼制度优点的同时一定程度上控制其缺陷所造成的不利影响,司法解释应规定在未成年人犯罪案件中,刑事附带民事诉讼制度不适用于刑事附带民事诉讼的民事部分标的金额较大的情形、被告人可能被判处较重刑罚的情形、刑事附带民事诉讼的刑事部分与民事部分审级不一致的情形、案件审理时间较长的情形。     

Sex, self-interest and health care priorities

In this questionnaire study, individuals were asked to prioritise publicly provided preventive health care services, one of which would be unavailable to them by virtue of their sex. The aim was to establish whether men and women would exhibit different degrees of self-interest when making a constrained choice. Around 1800 subjects from east-central England prioritised three different types of cancer screening. Most also provided written explanations for their rankings and these were classified into explanatory themes. Logistic regressions using socio-demographic and attitude data predicted the type of screening chosen as first priority. The analysis revealed that many men and women did indeed assign similar priorities to the different types of screening and, even when the priorities differed, these were often justified by similar arguments relating to technical aspects of the interventions and to self-interest. However, women were far more likely than men to prioritise a type of screening from which they themselves would benefit directly and the variations in preferences and explanations between the sexes occurred primarily because of differences in other-regarding attitudes. The bias towards screening of females was driven by women's greater worries about the disease in question and by men's “benevolent sexism” with respect to women's wellbeing.     

Role of Leaders as Agents of Negotiation for Counterbalancing Cultural Dissonance in the Middle East and North Africa Region

This study provides a unique perspective in the field of cross-cultural management by exploring the relationship between “cultural dissonance”—the gap between cultural values and actual practice—and effective leadership attributes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Incorporating cultural dissonance into implicit leadership theory, the study uses measurements of dissonance on nine cultural dimensions to identify particular leadership preferences in seven MENA countries. The overall findings suggest that societies prefer leaders who counterbalance cultural dissonance by allowing space for negotiations by members of society to reduce disparities between cultural values—“the way things should be”—and actual practices—“the way things are.” The greater the disparity between cultural values and practices, the greater the citizens' desire that leaders act as agents of change by creating space for negotiation.     

A multicriteria sorting approach based on data envelopment analysis for R&D project selection problem

In this paper, multiple criteria sorting methods based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) are developed to evaluate research and development (R&D) projects. The weight intervals of the criteria are obtained from Interval Analytic Hierarchy Process and employed as the assurance region constraints of models. Based on data envelopment analysis, two threshold estimation models, and five assignment models are developed for sorting. In addition to sorting, these models also provide ranking of the projects. The developed approach and the well-known sorting method UTADIS are applied to a real case study to analyze the R&D projects proposed to a grant program executed by a government funding agency in 2009. A five level R&D project selection criteria hierarchy and an assisting point allocation guide are defined to measure and quantify the performance of the projects. In the case study, the developed methods are observed to be more stable than UTADIS.     

Characterizations based on order statistics under sampling without replacement

In this paper, we consider finite populations and investigate their characterizations by regressions of order statistics under sampling without replacement. We also investigate some asymptotic results when the size of the population goes to infinity.     

Estimation in capture–recapture models when covariates are subject to measurement errors and missing data

For capture–recapture models when covariates are subject to measurement errors and missing data, a set of estimating equations is constructed to estimate population size and relevant parameters. These estimating equations can be solved by an algorithm similar to the EM algorithm. The proposed method is also applicable to the situation when covariates with no measurement errors have missing data. Simulation studies are used to assess the performance of the proposed estimator. The estimator is also applied to a capture–recapture experiment on the bird species Prinia flaviventris in Hong Kong. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 37: 645–658; 2009 © 2009 Statistical Society of Canada     

中国制造业企业创新行为的观测和实证研究 ——基于浙江省制造业1454家企业问卷调查的分析

 本文在浙江省制造业1454家企业大样本调查问卷的基础上,在微观层面研究了企业创新行为以及影响因素。首先利用统计分析的方法考察了企业创新投入的特征、创新投入的行业分布以及创新投入的产出绩效,并且发现了企业规模与R&;D强度之间呈现倒U型关系,这与安同良等人发现的倾斜V型关系的结论不同。其次运用计量分析的方法在有效控制了企业所处行业的技术水平差异、企业产权结构、政府资金扶持、企业品牌和企业设备技术水平后,研究发现：企业规模与企业创新投入之间也呈现较明显的倒U型关系,并且存在规模“拐点”;企业知识产权战略对企业创新投入具有明显的促进作用;出口贸易对企业创新投入并不显著,但发达国家特别是针对发展中国家设置的技术性贸易壁垒的技术标准化要求对企业创新投入有比较明显的促进作用;而企业集聚对企业的创新投入的影响并不确定。     

Nonparametric control charts based on runs and Wilcoxon-type rank-sum statistics

In this article, we introduce three new distribution-free Shewhart-type control charts that exploit run and Wilcoxon-type rank-sum statistics to detect possible shifts of a monitored process. Exact formulae for the alarm rate, the run length distribution, and the average run length (ARL) are all derived. A key advantage of these charts is that, due to their nonparametric nature, the false alarm rate (FAR) and in-control run length distribution is the same for all continuous process distributions. Tables are provided for the implementation of the charts for some typical FAR values. Furthermore, a numerical study carried out reveals that the new charts are quite flexible and efficient in detecting shifts to Lehmann-type out-of-control situations.     

在山沟村民与神灵共娱的艺术世界里思考(一)——甘肃环县道情皮影表演仪式及其剧目举隅

国家级扶贫的一个革命老区县,其首批国家级"非遗"代表作"道情皮影"红火不衰,足显其"文化遗产"的不菲.物质极度贫困,又何以保存、传承了传统民间文化的丰富?本文据近年数次田野工作,对所观察到的这一"事象"的生态与文化植被、生存与生活态度、神灵与人的谋略和智慧等,思考、描述,期以引发今天的我们对民俗学与人类学某些问题的联想,以挖掘一种深远意义的表述.