The Welfare State as Safety Net in Migration Preferences: Empirical Evidence from an Experiment Among Dutch Master Students

Population Research and Policy Review - The welfare state can be perceived as a safety net which helps individuals adjust to situations of risk or transition. Starting from this idea of the welfare...     

Hill estimator of projections of functional data on principal components

Functional principal component scores are commonly used to reduce mathematically infinitely dimensional functional data to finite dimensional vectors. In certain applications, most notably in finance, these scores exhibit tail behaviour consistent with the assumption of regular variation. Knowledge of the index of the regular variation, α, is needed to apply methods of extreme value theory. The most commonly used method of the estimation of α is the Hill estimator. We derive conditions under which the Hill estimator computed from the sample scores is consistent for the tail index of the unobservable population scores.     

Linguists and other animals

Book reviewed in this article:
Joan Dunayer, Animal Equality: Language and Liberation     

Two-stage Huber estimation

In this paper we propose a new robust estimator in the context of two-stage estimation methods directed towards the correction of endogeneity problems in linear models. Our estimator is a combination of Huber estimators for each of the two stages, with scale corrections implemented using preliminary median absolute deviation estimators. In this way we obtain a two-stage estimation procedure that is an interesting compromise between concerns of simplicity of calculation, robustness and efficiency. This method compares well with other possible estimators such as two-stage least-squares (2SLS) and two-stage least-absolute-deviations (2SLAD), asymptotically and in finite samples. It is notably interesting to deal with contamination affecting more heavily the distribution tails than a few outliers and not losing as much efficiency as other popular estimators in that case, e.g. under normality. An additional originality resides in the fact that we deal with random regressors and asymmetric errors, which is not often the case in the literature on robust estimators.     

The conflict over the use of information technology in South Korean schools

This article examines the heated debate over the National Educational Information System (NEIS) in South Korea. The NEIS has been introduced by the Ministry of Education. It collects information on every South Korean primary and secondary school in regional databases, including information regarding health records, religious backgrounds, military service, grades, attendance and other sensitive information relating to individual pupils and teachers. Using the cultural theory developed by Mary Douglas, Michael Thompson and Aaron Wildavsky, it is shown in which particular ways the rivals in this debate have been talking past, and misunderstood each other. On the basis of this cultural theory, a possible way out of this impasse is sketched.     

Naivety and Family Therapy An Interview with John Carpenter

Family therapists have been naive about families, the pressures on them and the contexts of therapy. Therapists should be clear about their roles, sensitive to families' experience of therapy, and resist the temptation to mystify therapy. John Carpenter is Senior Lecturer in Mental Health, University of Kent, Canterbury, England and Co-Editor of Journal of Family Therapy. He was a guest keynote speaker at the 1991 Australian Family Therapy Conference in Brisbane, and this interview took place shortly afterwards in Melbourne.     

DIFFERENT AND SAME: FAMILY THERAPY WITH ASIAN-AMERICAN FAILIES

This paper is written for non-Asian family therapists who must deal with an increasing number of Asian-American client families. Unlike some writers in fthe field who advocate that client and therapist have the same ethnic background, the authors belive that cultural sensitivity can be learned. Several culturally important values are described, and suggestions on how to orient treatment to fit this client population are offered. A Detailed case example illustrates the treatment issues involued.     

Patterns of Family Support and the Quality of Life of the Elderly

Social Indicators Research - This study addresses the issue of the quality of life of the Korean elderly in the present day by looking at the relationship between the patterns of support exchange...     

Adolescent Violence towards Parents: Maintaining Family Connections When The Going Gets Tough

This paper explores some of the dilemmas, difficulties and decisions faced by mothers whose adolescent sons or daughters act in violent and abusive ways and refuse any counselling. A group intervention program, designed to assist these mothers in more fully understanding and addressing their adolescent's behaviour, was evaluated using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Self‐report questionnaire data indicated that following the group intervention the mothers reported less violence in their homes, and significantly less personal anxiety and fatigue. However, these women continued to experience high levels of depression, and the reasons for this are discussed. These findings are integrated with information from post‐intervention, in‐depth interviews which indicated that participants valued the group experience because they realised that they were not alone, their problems were understood, and they developed a wider range of strategies to deal with their children's violent behaviour.