Institutional Constraints and Deforestation: An Application to Mexico

Following North (1990), this article hypothesizes that effective rural institutions may impose additional costs on tropical deforestation through agricultural conversion. This allows a formal agricultural household analysis of institutional constraints on deforestation and therefore a method of empirically testing whether there is any significant difference in the actual level of forest land conversion under institutional constraints compared to the level of conversion under pure open access. A dynamic panel analysis for agricultural planted area in Mexico at state level and over the 1960–85 period confirms that institutional constraints on land clearing affected deforestation during the pre-NAFTA era.     

Characterizations of two power indices for voting games with r alternatives

In the first three sections of this paper we present a set of axioms which provide a characterization of an extension of the Banzhaf index to voting games with r alternatives, such as the United Nations Security Council where a nation can vote “yes”, “no”, or “abstain”. The fourth section presents a set of axioms which characterizes a power index based on winning sets instead of pivot sets. Received: 4 April 2000/Accepted: 30 April 2001     

城市森林效益与可持续性研究展望

正确认识城市森林的功能和效益 ,探索不同管理措施对城市森林效益的影响 ,对实现城市森林的可持续性具有十分重要的意义。本文综述了城市森林对生态环境和生态过程产生的影响及生态和社会效益 ;分析了城市森林可持续性的内涵及特征 ;对城市森林可持续性模式及评价标准、城市森林生态学等领域的研究成果和发展方向进行了归纳分析。在分析目前我国城市生态环境面临的问题的基础上 ,进一步提出城市森林是构建城市绿色空间的主体。建设可持续城市森林是实现城市经济和环境可持续发展的重要途径。     

Telecommuting: The future of work, corporate culture, and American society

Conclusion Throughout American history, first on the family farm and now in modern day business institutions, the workplace has been a stabilizing institution in American society that has anchored the ongoing, informal interactions occurring outside the workplace. In 1900, few Americans had a private mode of transportation. Barely 4,000 passenger automobiles were sold in 1900, and while horses were common, they were used primarily for farming, public transportation, and commercial activity in cities. By 1930, nearly 40 million cars had been added to America’s streets. The automobile recast life and work in central cities and eventually the suburbs.     

试论常州大学城的品牌定位

城市品牌蕴含着巨大的经济价值和竞争优势。打造城市品牌,是每一座现代化城市谋求发展的必由之 路。常州在构建特大城市的进程中,应立足于经营城市的视角,探讨与解读“常州大学城”的品牌定位。     

Efe fathers: one among many? A comparison of forager children's involvement with fathers and other males

The study reported describes Efe (pygmy) forager one-, two-, and three-year-olds' involvement with males. The Efe of northeastern Zaïre were chosen because their social organization allows us to examine hypotheses based on studies in Western, technologically complex societies about the distinctive role fathers play in the lives of their young children. Behavioral observations of Efe children's day-to-day activities with fathers, men and boys were recorded using a focal subject sampling technique (Altmann, 1974). Two behavioral measures were created to capture the extent to which males were involved with children: Social engagement describes males' involvement with children and social attention describes eavesdropping by children on males' everyday activities. Eight one-year-olds, 7 two-year-olds and 8 three-year-olds were each observed for six, one-hour observation sessions that were distributed evenly over the daylight hours. Data were analyzed using the traditional measure of involvement (e.g., adult males) and using a newly developed measure of the involvement of the average individual (e.g., average adult mate). Comparisons at each of the ages showed that fathers were consistently like other men in the extent to which children participated in social activities with them and watched their activities. Only fathers' level of social engagement declined significantly as children grew older. Boys' role relative to other males became increasingly distinctive as children aged. The findings suggest that Efe fathers may not be unique in the same sense assumed by Western study ideals, and raise questions about the special status given to fathers in Western theory and data. The patterning of mate involvement with children is discussed in terms of Efe community life, and in terms of Efe children's developing understanding of their relationship with fathers and other males.     

构建独具高职特色的俄语专业课程结构

随着我国经济多元化趋势的日益增强,社会对人才的需求也逐步呈现出多类型的特点。作为直接为社会培养和输送人才的高等教育也发生了很大变化,产生了新的教育类型—高等职业教育。高等职业教育在教学目的、人才培养模式、教学过程等方面均有自己的特点。对于高职院校的俄语专业来说,它是职业教育领域的人文科学,不能套用普通高等院校的固有模式,而现有高职院校俄语专业尚未形成科学实用的教学和人才培养模式。因此,为了提高其教学水平和人才培养质量,必须进行教学改革,构建独具高职特色的课程结构。     

BAYESIAN SUBSET SELECTION AND MODEL AVERAGING USING A CENTRED AND DISPERSED PRIOR FOR THE ERROR VARIANCE

This article proposes a new data‐based prior distribution for the error variance in a Gaussian linear regression model, when the model is used for Bayesian variable selection and model averaging. For a given subset of variables in the model, this prior has a mode that is an unbiased estimator of the error variance but is suitably dispersed to make it uninformative relative to the marginal likelihood. The advantage of this empirical Bayes prior for the error variance is that it is centred and dispersed sensibly and avoids the arbitrary specification of hyperparameters. The performance of the new prior is compared to that of a prior proposed previously in the literature using several simulated examples and two loss functions. For each example our paper also reports results for the model that orthogonalizes the predictor variables before performing subset selection. A real example is also investigated. The empirical results suggest that for both the simulated and real data, the performance of the estimators based on the prior proposed in our article compares favourably with that of a prior used previously in the literature.     

与时俱进--创新高校学生党建工作

面对新形势,高校学生党建工作必须与时俱进.要通过理论创新、组织载体创新、教育与管理创新、阵地创新、队伍创新来开创高校学生党建工作的新局面.     

Sociological computing: An opportunity missed?

Rapid advances in sociological computing are changing virtually every aspect of scholarly sociological work. These changes offer an opportunity for sociologists to improve the quality of their work and bring new insights and approaches to bear on important sociological problems. Nevertheless, sociologists display a profound ambivalence toward computer work by other sociologists. Left unchecked, this ambivalence threatens to turn sociological computing into an opportunity missed. Inadequate rewards, lack of training, and a general failure to understand the importance of computing in sociology threaten to stifle the development of quality soft-ware, push sociologists competent in computing into other fields, and jeopardize the quality of sociological scholarship. This article documents these ambivalent tendencies and proposes reasonable steps the discipline should take to assure that sociological computing does not become an opportunity missed.