Involuntary job loss and changes in personality traits

Economists consider personality traits to be stable, particularly throughout adulthood. However, evidence from psychological studies suggests that the stability assumption may not always be valid, as personality traits can respond to certain life events. Our paper analyzes whether and to what extent personality traits are malleable over a time span of eight years for a sample of working individuals. Furthermore, we specifically look at changes in personality traits after a major adverse life event: involuntary job loss. We use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) from 2004 to 2014 – a period over which individuals’ Big Five personality inventory was measured three times. Our dataset allows us to exploit detailed employment information, particularly reasons for job termination and unemployment spells. We focus solely on plant closures as a reason for job termination. Job loss due to plant closure is widely used as a relatively exogenous event to identify causal effects. Our results suggest that personality traits are indeed malleable during adulthood. Although the Big Five measures are relatively stable within the overall population of workers, we find an increase in openness, that is, the willingness to seek new experiences, for the average displaced worker. This increase, however, is fully driven by individuals with high educational attainment and by those who find a new job immediately after dismissal. The other dimensions of the Big Five personality inventory remain nearly unchanged after an involuntary job loss. Our findings hold for a number of robustness checks and are supported by the results of a falsification test using a placebo treatment.     

Erectile dysfunction,loss of libido and low sexual frequency increase the risk of cardiovascular disease in men with low testosterone

Introduction: Testosterone deficiency increases the cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk.

Aim: To evaluate the effect of erectile dysfunction (ED), sexual frequency and hypogonadal symptoms on CVD risk.

Methods: A total of 395 hypogonadal men aged 45–74 years were surveyed using the Androgen Deficiency in the Aging Male and the International Index of Erectile Function.

Main outcome measures: The 10-year CVD risk was measured with the Framingham Risk Score. Logistic regression was performed to obtain the odds ratios of sexual function and hypogonadal symptoms for a 10-year CVD risk ≥20% (high risk).

Results: The mean age was 56.1?±?6.7 years. The mean 10-year CVD risk of the whole cohort was 18.1%?±?11.4%, while 131 subjects (33.2%) were classified as high risk. Logistic regression revealed that ED severity was associated with CVD risk [OR?=?2.37 (CI 1.24–4.51) for mild-to-moderate ED, OR?=?4.39 (1.78–8.43) for moderate ED and OR?=?12.81 (4.65–26.11) for severe ED]. Compared to sexual frequency <1 per month, sexual frequency?≥4 decreased the risk of high CVD risk [OR?=?0.35 (0.23–0.780)]. Loss of libido [OR?=?2.95 (1.91–4.12)] and less strong erection [OR?=?3.87 (CI 2.11–4.95)] increased the risk of high CVD risk. All remained significant after adjustment for age and testosterone.

Conclusions: ED, decreased sexual frequency and loss of libido predict a high 10-year CVD risk in hypogonadal men.     

Did the Military Interventions in the Mexican Drug War Increase Violence?

We analyze publicly available data to estimate the causal effects of military interventions on the homicide rates in certain problematic regions in Mexico. We use the Rubin causal model to compare the post-intervention homicide rate in each intervened region to the hypothetical homicide rate for that same year had the military intervention not taken place. Because the effect of a military intervention is not confined to the municipality subject to the intervention, a nonstandard definition of units is necessary to estimate the causal effect of the intervention under the standard no-interference assumption of stable-unit treatment value assumption (SUTVA). Donor pools are created for each missing potential outcome under no intervention, thereby allowing for the estimation of unit-level causal effects. A multiple imputation approach accounts for uncertainty about the missing potential outcomes.     

经济增加值、平衡计分卡及其整合研究

以经济增加值(EVA)进行绩效评估显得过于简化,结果有效却没有寻求根源;平衡计分卡又过于繁复,过于细化导致操作性差。单独使用任意一个,结果都不能令人满意。依据整合理论,将两者整合却可能产生1+1≥2的效果。EVA整合平衡计分卡理论上具有可行性,它以EVA作为核心指标,以内部生产运营过程和销售服务过程作为直接动因指标,以员工的学习和成长作为内部间接动因指标,以外部环境作为外部动因指标。它以实现企业价值创造最大化为目标,同时使各层级指标明确,并互为依托。     

环境匹配模式下的高校青年教师心理压力研究简

随着当今社会的快速发展,竞争的日趋激烈,人力资源的管理效益问题日显重要,许多行业开始将环境匹配这一模式应用到了人力资源的管理调配中,以达到进一步优化人力资源配置的目的。这一模式在许多高校的教育中也逐步得以应用,有效提升了高校教育师资的调配效率,但这在一定程度上也加大了高校教师尤其是高校青年教师的心理压力。高校青年教师中,有75％患中度心理压力,4．6％患深度心理压力。环境匹配模式引入教育教学管理,有缓解青年教师心理压力一面,也有增强青年教师心理压力一面,对此,一方面,青年教师应努力改进教学方式,调适教学与管理维度;另一方面就是充分有效理解利用环境匹配模式有利一面,从而缓解青年教师心理压力。     

Estimating the effects of Head Start on parenting and child maltreatment

We examine the effects of Head Start participation on parenting and child maltreatment in a large and diverse sample of low-income families in large U.S. cities (N = 2807), using rich data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS). To address the issue of selection bias, we employ several analytic approaches, including logistic regressions with a rich set of pretreatment controls as well as propensity score matching models, comparing the effects of Head Start to any other arrangements as well as specific types of other arrangements. We find that compared to children who did not attend Head Start, children who did attend Head Start are less likely to have low access to learning materials and less likely to experience spanking by their parents at age five. Moreover, we find that the effects of Head Start vary depending on the specific types of other child care arrangements to which they are compared, with the most consistently beneficial protective effects seen when Head Start is compared to being home in exclusively parental care.     

Child welfare and the challenge of causal inference

Causal inference refers to the assessment of cause and effect relationships in observational data—i.e., in situations where random assignment is impossible or impractical. Choices involving children in the child welfare system evoke core elements of causal inference—manipulation and the counterfactual. How would a child's circumstances differ if we changed her environment? This article begins with one mathematical approach to framing causal inference, the potential outcomes framework. This methodology is a cornerstone of newer approaches to causal inference. This framework makes clear the identification problem inherent in causal inference and highlights a key assumption often used to identify the model (ignorability or no unobserved confounding). The article then outlines the various approaches to causal inference and organizes them around whether they assume ignorability as well as other key features of each approach. The article then provides guidelines for producing good causal inference. These guidelines emerge from a review of methodological literature as broad ranging as epidemiology, statistics, economics, and policy analysis. These steps will be illustrated using an example from child welfare. The article concludes with suggestions for how the field could apply these newer methods.     

Unemployed couples: the labour market effects of making both partners search for work

Summary.  The paper evaluates the effect of a recent change to unemployment benefit in the UK which requires both partners in a couple (rather than just one) to search for work. The difference-in-differences estimator is extended in two ways. First, variations in when the change was implemented are exploited to test and adjust for bias resulting from differential trends among the control group. Second, the approach is combined with matching to relax functional form restrictions. After several months, positive effects on exiting from benefits were detected but effects on entry to jobs were less apparent.     

The matching, birthday and the strong birthday problem: a contemporary review

This article provides a contemporary exposition at a moderately quantitative level of the distribution theory associated with the matching and the birthday problems. A large number of examples, many not well known, are provided to help a reader have a feeling for these questions at an intuitive level.     

The effect of careers guidance for employed adults on continuing education: assessing the importance of attitudinal information

Summary. The validity of the matching estimator in programme evaluation depends on the completeness of the set of variables that are used for matching. When an attitudinal variable is relevant for the decision about participation, but is either unmeasured or measured only after entry to the programme, estimates of effects may be biased or difficult to interpret. This issue was investigated with data from an evaluation study of careers guidance for employed adults which utilized the method of propensity score matching. Job satisfaction, measured shortly after entry to the programme, was found to be strongly associated with participation but might itself have been influenced by the early experience of careers guidance. Estimates of the effects of guidance were considered both including and excluding the job satisfaction measure from the participation model. Data experiments with adjusted values of job satisfaction were also performed. The results illustrate that omitted attitudinal information poses a particular difficulty for the matching estimator.