Migration and the “Second Wife” in South China: Toward Cross‐Border Polygyny1

Rapid industrialization in southern China has brought together two types of migrants: young women from towns and villages seeking work and upward mobility and affluent men from Hong Kong sojourning in the coastal provinces to supervise or service export‐oriented industries. The result is that many married Hong Kong men who cross the border regularly on business have taken “second wives” or mistresses in China. We analyze this phenomenon using government statistics, selected court cases, and personal interviews. We show that the emergence of the “second wife” phenomenon among migrants in southern China is consistent with recent studies on the causes of polygyny, and we make some predictions about the likelihood of this type of polygyny among migrants.     

Entrenchment in publicly traded family firms: Evidence from the S&P 500

Family involvement in corporate governance through ownership, management, and board membership presents a unique dilemma for understanding the strategic impetus and costs of entrenchment decisions. The presence of shared family ties and the family-centered goals of firm principals call to question the applicability of extant agency arguments regarding the nature and antecedents of managerial entrenchment. Exploring this, we develop and test a model of family firm-specific determinants (i.e., family ownership and family's involvement in management and governance) of entrenchment in publicly traded firms by drawing upon principal-principal agency theory. Findings of the empirical analysis of family owned S&P 500 firms suggest family firms are motivated to entrench managers when doing so supports the pursuit of family-centric goals. However, the extent to which entrenchment supports such goals varies at different levels of family ownership.     

Psychometric properties of the “parent-child relationship inventory” (PCRI) in a portuguese forensic sample

In Portugal, there is a gap regarding psychological tests validated for forensic contexts, particularly those related to child custody issues. The Parent–Child Relationship Inventory (PCRI) is one of the most used instruments in child custody contexts. This study aimed to analyze the psychometric properties of PCRI in a Portuguese forensic sample. PCRI factorial structure and psychometric properties were analyzed in a sample of 144 parents involved in child custody assessments. The questionnaire showed good internal consistency, except for the parental support, autonomy, and role orientation scales. It also showed good discriminant capacity. The confirmatory factor analysis did not replicate the 7-factor model proposed by Gerard. The results were discussed based on the use of PCRI in the context of child custody assessment.     

Flexible Tweedie regression models for continuous data

Tweedie regression models (TRMs) provide a flexible family of distributions to deal with non-negative right-skewed data and can handle continuous data with probability mass at zero. Estimation and inference of TRMs based on the maximum likelihood (ML) method are challenged by the presence of an infinity sum in the probability function and non-trivial restrictions on the power parameter space. In this paper, we propose two approaches for fitting TRMs, namely quasi-likelihood (QML) and pseudo-likelihood (PML). We discuss their asymptotic properties and perform simulation studies to compare our methods with the ML method. We show that the QML method provides asymptotically efficient estimation for regression parameters. Simulation studies showed that the QML and PML approaches present estimates, standard errors and coverage rates similar to the ML method. Furthermore, the second-moment assumptions required by the QML and PML methods enable us to extend the TRMs to the class of quasi-TRMs in Wedderburn's style. It allows to eliminate the non-trivial restriction on the power parameter space, and thus provides a flexible regression model to deal with continuous data. We provide an R implementation and illustrate the application of TRMs using three data sets.     

A Multi Sited Approach to Analysis of Destination Immigration Data: An Asian Example

There has been a bias in standard international migration data collection and research toward immigration and destinations while emigration origins have been neglected. This has hampered our ability to provide a substantial empirical base for migration and development policy decision making in origin areas. While improvement of migration data collection in origin countries remains an important priority, this paper argues that much can be learned about emigration from low income countries from immigration data in high income destinations. Migration stock and flow data from Australia are used to provide information on the scale and nature of movement between Asia and Australia. It establishes that there are important but different flows in both directions which belie traditional conceptualisations of south‐north migration and this has significant implications for the effects of migration on economic development.     

Best Practice in Temporary Labour Migration for Development: A Perspective from Asia and the Pacific

The dominant mode of international migration in Asia and the Pacific is temporary contract migration of low‐skilled workers. The potential for such migration to deliver significant development dividends to origin communities is substantial because of its large scale and the fact that most migrant workers return to their home community. However, there are a number of barriers that are intervening to dampen these potential positive effects, such as high transaction costs, high costs of sending remittances, and the fact that some areas of origin lack the infrastructure and potential for productive investment. Moreover, destination countries have been very welcoming of high skill temporary migrants but highly restrictive in their attitudes toward their low skill counterparts. This paper discusses the lessons of best practice in temporary labour migration programmes in the region, which can help to overcome these obstacles reducing the positive development impacts of migration. It assesses, in turn, best practice separately for each stage of the labour migration process ‐‐ recruitment and selection, and pre‐departure preparation ‐‐ at the destination and on return. In conclusion, a number of the barriers which impinge on Asian Pacific countries’ ability to introduce and sustain best practice are discussed. These include the need for capacity building, lack of cooperation between origin and destination countries, lack of data, poor governance of labour migration a failure among governments to recognise the significance of migration and the need for more “development friendly” migration policies in destinations.     

Evidence that Two‐Year‐Old Children are Sensitive to Information Presented in Arguments

Preschoolers are more likely to endorse testimony supported by strong arguments than by weak, circular ones. Two‐year‐olds exchange arguments with others, but no experiment has demonstrated that they are sensitive to information presented as argument. In the first phase of this study, 2‐year‐olds were shown ambiguous pictures—for instance a bird–fish hybrid—and asked what they thought the picture represented. An informant then contradicted them, providing either a strong argument, a circular argument, or no argument, and the children were asked what they now thought the hybrid was. The second phase was identical to the first, with new hybrids, except that the informant never provided any argument for her position. Finally, in the third phase, the informant left the room and the children were asked again to tell what the hybrids from the first two phases were. On the whole, there was an effect of the amount of information provided in the argument so that children were more likely to endorse labels provided by the informant who had supported her answer with a strong argument in the first phase. Moreover, they generalized the trust granted to informants who provided strong arguments. These results constitute the first experimental demonstration that 2‐year‐olds possess some argument evaluation skills.     

Temporary Skilled Migration to Australia: Employers' Perspectives1

With the 1996 introduction of a new visa making it easier for employers to sponsor skilled foreign workers, temporary skilled migration has become a significant component of international migration flows to Australia. This paper examines employers' reasons for sponsoring skilled workers from abroad, their modes of recruitment, the occupational skills they require, and their industry profile. We also discuss issues relating to the perception of a shortage of skilled workers, the extent that sponsoring foreign workers substitutes for investing in local training, and the role of networks in recruiting overseas workers. Many employers' now have a global view of labour recruitment. While this is understandable for multinational companies with global operations, many small businesses and public sector institutions are adopting the same strategy to obtain skilled labour which they say is in short supply in Australia. With the internationalization of the Australian economy, there is also an increasing demand for people with specialized skills and knowledge that is not available in Australia's relatively small labour market. An understanding of the demand factors motivating temporary skilled migration is crucial to effectively managing Australia's migration and labour trends.     

Bimodality based on the generalized skew-normal distribution

This paper focuses on the development of a new extension of the generalized skew-normal distribution introduced in Gómez et al. [Generalized skew-normal models: properties and inference. Statistics. 2006;40(6):495–505]. To produce the generalization a new parameter is introduced, the signal of which has the flexibility of yielding unimodal as well as bimodal distributions. We study its properties, derive a stochastic representation and state some expressions that facilitate moments derivation. Maximum likelihood is implemented via the EM algorithm which is based on the stochastic representation derived. We show that the Fisher information matrix is singular and discuss ways of getting round this problem. An illustration using real data reveals that the model can capture well special data features such as bimodality and asymmetry.