Reasoning With Partial Knowledge

We investigate how sociological argumentation differs from classical first–order logic. We focus on theories about age dependence of organizational mortality. The overall pattern of argument does not comply with the classical monotonicity principle: Adding premises overturns conclusions in an argument. The cause of nonmonotonicity is the need to derive conclusions from partial knowledge. We identify metaprinciples that appear to guide the observed sociological argumentation patterns, and we formalize a semantics to represent them. This semantics yields a new kind of logical consequence relation. We demonstrate that this new logic can reproduce the results of informal sociological theorizing and lead to new insights. It allows us to unify existing theory fragments, and it paves the way toward a complete classical theory.     

A Monte Carlo study of alternative responses to intraclass correlation in community trials. Is it ever possible to avoid Cornfield's penalties?

Strategies to avoid the penalties of extra variation and reduced degrees of freedom in community trials were compared in Monte Carlo simulations. Three conditions were found necessary to ensure nominal Type I and II error rates: (a) Condition variation must be assessed against assignment unit variation, (b) the critical value for the test statistic must be based on the assignment unit degrees of freedom, and (c) estimation of negative intraclass correlations must be allowed in the analysis. Using other test statistics and other degrees of freedom, and fixing negative intraclass correlations at zero often gave Type I and II error rates far from their nominal levels.     

We have not arrived from the sea: a Mizrahi literary geography

This article examines how writers of Middle Eastern background, such as Iraqi‐born Yitzhak Bar‐Moshe, who writes in Arabic and has been translated into Hebrew, Iraqi‐born Sammy Michael, Egyptian‐born Yitzhak Gormezano and Iraqi‐born Shimon Balas, challenge the processes of adverse essentialisation and racialisation of Mizrahi Jews by the European Jewish hegemony in Israel. These writers identify themselves as portrayers of a Mizrahi self‐representation and their works were published during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The paper examines how writers who represent themselves as Mizrahi — a self‐representation which has been engendered in the course of their interpositions in the domain of Israeli literature — point to possible courses of intervention in the field of Israeli literature dominated by the Ashkenazi or Eurocentric hegemony. These courses of literary intervention become possible not just because Mizrahi Jews are depicted as a third‐world group; but also because they occupy another position — a ‘third space’ or ‘in‐between’ position. While they belong to the ‘Jewish nation’, Mizrahi Jews were part of the Arab/Third world. Thus, it is their ‘in‐between’ position that locates them at a privileged site to challenge European Jewish hegemony in Israel by attempting to entrench within it an antagonistic and defiant Mizrahi presence.     

薪酬外部公平性与高管过度在职消费行为后果分析——基于内部薪酬差距的调节作用

基于行为经济学视角分析了高管过度在职消费成因,并以中国沪深A股上市公司2012-2017年数据为样本,实证检验了薪酬外部公平性对高管过度在职消费行为后果的影响以及内部薪酬差距的调节作用.研究发现:薪酬外部劣势不公平会诱发高管过度在职消费,并削弱在职消费"效率观"表现,而内部薪酬差距可以抑制上述影响.在薪酬外部优势不公平状态下,优势不公平程度对高管过度在职消费和在职消费经济效应无显著影响,内部薪酬差距反会诱发高管过度在职消费,削弱在职消费"效率观"表现.     

A SIMULATION OF THE EFFECTS OF ALTERNATIVE RULE SYSTEMS FOR JAI ALAI*

The inequities of the present system of rules in jai alai are documented on the basis of empirical information and theoretical results from a Monte Carlo simulation model. Some suggestions are made for changing the rules in order to make the game more equitable for both players and bettors. The simulation model is used to compare the effectiveness of the suggested rules with that of the present rules.     

Increasing the degrees of freedom in existing group randomized trials: the df* approach

This study describes a method for incorporating external estimates of intraclass correlation to improve the precision for the analysis of an existing group-randomized trial. The authors use a random-effects meta-analytic approach to pool the information across studies, which takes into account any interstudy heterogeneity that may exist. This approach can be used in several different situations to estimate the degrees of freedom available for an adjusted test of the intervention effect in a study where the challenges of group-randomized trials were not fully considered when the study was planned. The authors discuss the limitations of this approach and the circumstances in which it is likely to be helpful.