Individual irrationality and social welfare

Individual preferences inconsistent with personal welfare caused neither by ignorance nor by a positive consideration for the welfare of others are defined as (welfare) irrational. Sources of irrationality (rigid adherence to moral principles, excessive fear of danger, excessive tempetation of pleasure, revenge, inertia, faulty telescopic faculty, the fallacy of diminishing marginal utility of utility, etc.) are discussed. An evolutionary explanation of irrationality is suggested and some implications for individual decision and social policy indicated.I am grateful to two anonymous referees for comments.     

The utilitarian criterion,finite sensibility,and the weak majority preference principle

This study is a further analysis of the approach taken by Yew-Kwang Ng to derive the utilitarian criterion. Specific for the model is that individual preferences are finitely sensible. In this framweork an analysis of the consequences on social preferences when different kinds of value premises are imposed is made. It is found that the utilitarian criterion is the unique consequence only for very special choices of the value premise. In addition, uniqueness requires the underlying preferences be cardinal. It is also found that finite sensibility induces approximate cardinalization of preferences.I am grateful to Y.-K. Ng, two anonymous referees and an editor of this journal for helpful and constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper. The research was financially supported by the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences     

Constructing poverty in anti-welfare Singapore

In recent years, attention on the issue of poverty in Singapore has been increasingly placed in the spotlight. This study examines the various types of attitudes among Singaporeans and how they are formed, relating them to the broader institutional context of Singapore. A mixed method design is employed where clusters or groups of attitudes are derived through the use of cluster analysis. Subsequently, discourses of poverty and welfare attitudes are construed through qualitative interviews with the aid of Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. Quantitative findings point to three clusters of attitudes: ‘Conservatives’, ‘Liberals’, and ‘Sui Generis’. Qualitative findings, however, show that ‘Sui Generis’ ultimately align themselves closer to either ‘Conservatives’ or ‘Liberals’ in their discourses of welfare. In fact, respondents in all three clusters reproduce state discourses, albeit in varying ways. In essence, this study explicates poverty and welfare attitudes as a product of social identities premised on subjective notions that are shaped by state discourses of meritocracy, self-reliance and anti-welfarism. It is thus argued that current socio-political constructions of poverty ensue a paucity of major welfare reform in the near future of Singapore.     

Parent Psychological Distress: A Moderator of Behavioral Health Intervention Outcomes among Justice‐Involved Adolescents

We examined whether pre‐existing parent psychological distress moderated juvenile offenders’ substance use, sexual risk, and mental health outcomes in a randomized trial. Forty‐seven parent–adolescent dyads received either Family‐based Affect Management Intervention (FAMI) for adolescent substance use and HIV prevention or adolescent‐only Health Promotion Intervention (HPI). Parents’ self‐reported distress at baseline significantly moderated adolescents’ self‐reported marijuana use and alcohol use but not other outcomes at 3 months postintervention, producing crossover interactions. FAMI outperformed HPI when parents reported high‐level distress, whereas HPI outperformed FAMI when parents reported low‐level distress. This finding that the relative efficacy of interventions depends on the severity of parent psychological distress could inform efforts to match substance‐using, justice‐involved adolescents with the intervention most likely to benefit them.     

The Persistence of High Levels of Living Alone Among Adults with Disabilities in Sweden, 1993–2011

Population Research and Policy Review - This study investigates how the probability to live alone has developed among working age individuals with and without disabilities in Sweden during the...     

Estimation of the intensity function of an inhomogeneous Poisson process with a change‐point

Recent work on point processes includes studying posterior convergence rates of estimating a continuous intensity function. In this article, convergence rates for estimating the intensity function and change‐point are derived for the more general case of a piecewise continuous intensity function. We study the problem of estimating the intensity function of an inhomogeneous Poisson process with a change‐point using non‐parametric Bayesian methods. An Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm is proposed to obtain estimates of the intensity function and the change‐point which is illustrated using simulation studies and applications. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 47: 604–618; 2019 © 2019 Statistical Society of Canada     

查拉图斯特拉工程与道德的本质——论欧洲基因技术与克隆道德

基因技术增加了人类治愈由于身体和生物学原因所致疾病的可能性,但是并无助于社会心理问题或文化问题的解决,例如人类的道德教化问题.人类的道德行为与创造性是以自由为前提的.没有自由,人就不能进行创造并对自己的行为负责.朝向生物机器人的人的技术化是基因技术的幻象,这种生物机器人将人所处的环境和同伴相分离,因为除非将人杀死,否则人的意志不能被取消.人类求生之意志(生物系统之保存)是人类一切愿望的来源.倘若基因技术不能规定这一意志和人类独立的精神能力,那么通过基因技术实现人类的道德教化也无从设想."新人"在此只能表明生物学意义上的新特质,而不是道德或精神上的新特征.     

The Generalized Conditional Autoregressive Wishart Model for Multivariate Realized Volatility

It is well known that in finance variances and covariances of asset returns move together over time. Recently, much interest has been aroused by an approach involving the use of the realized covariance (RCOV) matrix constructed from high-frequency returns as the ex-post realization of the covariance matrix of low-frequency returns. For the analysis of dynamics of RCOV matrices, we propose the generalized conditional autoregressive Wishart (GCAW) model. Both the noncentrality matrix and scale matrix of the Wishart distribution are driven by the lagged values of RCOV matrices, and represent two different sources of dynamics, respectively. The GCAW is a generalization of the existing models, and accounts for symmetry and positive definiteness of RCOV matrices without imposing any parametric restriction. Some important properties such as conditional moments, unconditional moments, and stationarity are discussed. Empirical examples including sequences of daily RCOV matrices from the New York Stock Exchange illustrate that our model outperforms the existing models in terms of model fitting and forecasting.     

Family support policies and child outcomes: a realist-scoping review*

Family support policies (FSP) refer to government policies that promote the well-being of families with children (e.g. job-protected paid leave, cash transfers, childcare). We developed an initial conceptual and theoretical framework of FSP and conducted a realist-scoping review to document the state of evidence regarding the influence of FSP on three child outcomes: poverty, development, and health. Based on the contexts and mechanisms through which FSP are hypothesized to affect child outcomes, we constructed a framework to guide a search of five electronic databases (OVID, ProQuest, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Knowledge). We analysed articles meeting our inclusion criteria (i.e. conceptualized FSP as a function of the welfare state; conceptualized child poverty, development, and health as outcomes; and conducted empirical analyses) in relation to our mechanisms and thematic concerns (context, developmental periods, and differential impacts). A total of 22 studies met our inclusion criteria, which tested 25 independent child outcomes. Our findings identified initial mechanisms that explain the relationship between FSP and child outcomes through (1) increasing parents’ basic capabilities, (2) shaping parents’ childcare options, and (3) influencing parental leave-taking and shifting beliefs about gender relationships in the home and workplace. Future work will be to test these mechanisms and framework through a realist synthesis.