ENTERTAINING MALTHUS: BREAD,CIRCUSES, AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

Motivated by the basic adage that man does not live by bread alone, we offer a theory of historical economic growth and population dynamics where human beings need food to survive, but enjoy other things, too. Our model imposes a Malthusian constraint on food, but introduces a second good to the analysis that affects living standards without affecting population growth. We show that technological change does a good job explaining historical consumption patterns and population dynamics, including the Neolithic Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the Great Divergence. Our theory stands in contrast to models that assume a single composite good and a Malthusian constraint. These models generate negligible growth prior to the Industrial Revolution. However, recent revisions to historical data show that historical living standards—though obviously much lower than today's—varied over time and space much more than previously thought. These revisions include updates to Maddison's dataset, which served as the basis for many papers taking long‐run stagnation as a point of departure. This new evidence suggests that the assumption of long‐run stagnation is problematic. Our model shows that when we give theoretical accounting of these new observations the Industrial Revolution is much less puzzling. (JEL B10, I31, J1, N1, O30)     

Object Relations Family Therapy: Articulating the Inchoate

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in psychodynamic ideas within the family therapy literature. While some authors have explored the usefulness of psychodynamic concepts in the systemic context (Byng-Hall, 1995; Flaskas, 1993, 1996; Luepnitz, 1988, 1997), others have argued that psychodynamic models of family therapy should be given more credence in systemic work with families (Guttman, 1991). This paper describes Object Relations Family Therapy (ORFT), a psychoanalytic model of family therapy, in plain English in order to minimise the obscurity of some of the existing terminology and to emphasise the utility of more contemporary formulations. ORFT addresses the interface between psychoanalytic and systemic theories. It offers a way of conceptualising complex family dynamics at both the interpersonal and intrapsychic levels. It also integrates an understanding of nonverbal, unstated and often implicit processes in its formulation of problem development. The unique contribution of ORFT is elaborated using a clinical example.     

Tractable Consideration Set Structures for Assortment Optimization and Network Revenue Management

Discrete‐choice models are widely used to model consumer purchase behavior in assortment optimization and revenue management. In many applications, each customer segment is associated with a consideration set that represents the set of products that customers in this segment consider for purchase. The firm has to make a decision on what assortment to offer at each point in time without the ability to identify the customer's segment. A linear program called the Choice‐based Deterministic Linear Program (CDLP) has been proposed to determine these offer sets. Unfortunately, its size grows exponentially in the number of products and it is NP‐hard to solve when the consideration sets of the segments overlap. The Segment‐based Deterministic Concave Program with some additional consistency equalities (SDCP+) is an approximation of CDLP that provides an upper bound on CDLP's optimal objective value. SDCP+ can be solved in a fraction of the time required to solve CDLP and often achieves the same optimal objective value. This raises the question under what conditions can one guarantee equivalence of CDLP and SDCP+. In this study, we obtain a structural result to this end, namely that if the segment consideration sets overlap with a certain tree structure or if they are fully nested, CDLP can be equivalently replaced with SDCP+. We give a number of examples from the literature where this tree structure arises naturally in modeling customer behavior.     

Child sexual abuse in Leeds before and after Cleveland

We report a retrospective cohort study in which clinical and outcome features of 237 cases of child sexual abuse diagnosed by Leeds paediatricians after Cleveland in 1989 were compared with previously published characteristics of 337 children diagnosed by the same paediatricians before Cleveland in 1985 and 1986. Clinical and diagnostic features also were analysed in two subgroups of the 1989 cohort, those for whom there was no case conference and those in whom further abuse was detected at follow-up examination. The number of cases diagnosed annually remained high, and source of referrals and age and sex distribution were similar. Most suspected perpetrators were from within the home in both cohorts. Some clinical features of the 1989 cohort suggested more physically severe abuse. In 1989 fewer children were registered as sexually abused, or were taken into care, and fewer suspected perpetrators were convicted. From the 1989 cohort those children for whom there was no case conference tended to be older, to disclose and were abused less severely by someone outside their home as compared to those for whom a case conference was held. The children in whom further abuse was detected tended to be younger, to not disclose. to be more severely abused by a perpetrator within the home and to be taken into care as compared to those in whom further abuse was not detected. One or more case conferences were held for nearly all of the children in whom further abuse was detected. For most of the 1989 children no evidence was found indicating receipt of mental health services from other than the key social worker. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of professional and public knowledge and attitudes regarding children's and parental rights and family preservation.     

On the construction of orthogonal factorial designs of resolution 11

A new method of construction of orthogonal resolution IV designs for symmetrical and asymmetrical factorials has been presented. Many new series of orthogonal factorial designs of resolution IV can be obtained by the above general method.     

Analysing exponential family based messy data

Recently exponential family based random effects models have received considerable attention. These models usually arise from an unobservable random process added to the independent exponential family models. An unobservable correlated process, however, would cause correlations among the exponential family based data. This paper, first, develops an asymptotically optimal test for testing the appropriateness of a fixed effects model for the exponential family based independent data versus a random effects model for the exponential family based independent or correlated data. The paper, then, provides a general framework on regression analysis for the exponential family based data generated under the random effects models.     

Robust inference for generalized partially linear mixed models that account for censored responses and missing covariates – an application to Arctic data analysis

In this article, we propose a family of bounded influence robust estimates for the parametric and non-parametric components of a generalized partially linear mixed model that are subject to censored responses and missing covariates. The asymptotic properties of the proposed estimates have been looked into. The estimates are obtained by using Monte Carlo expectation–maximization algorithm. An approximate method which reduces the computational time to a great extent is also proposed. A simulation study shows that performances of the two approaches are similar in terms of bias and mean square error. The analysis is illustrated through a study on the effect of environmental factors on the phytoplankton cell count.