Misestimating Betting Behavior: The Role of Negative Asymmetries in Emotional Self Prediction

This paper addresses the role of negative asymmetries in emotional self-prediction by looking at the extent to which individuals misestimate their own betting behavior in sequential gambles. In a series of three experimental studies, we demonstrate that losses lead to higher than planned bets whereas bets are on average carried over after gains. Such asymmetric deviations from the plan emerge (1) when monetary and non-monetary incentives are used, and (2) when participants face fair and unfair gambles. The asymmetry is based on people’s inability to predict how much the negative emotions generated by a bad experience (e.g. the loss) will influence them to put more effort (e.g. bet more) than planned in an attempt to re-establish a homeostatic state in the prospect of a good experience (e.g. winning).     

美韩同盟强化与中国的战略应对

美韩同盟缘起于朝鲜战争,维系在冷战环境中,是朝鲜半岛局势紧张、东北亚安全困境的症结之一。21世纪初美国出于护持其东北亚地区主导地位和应对中国崛起的战略需要,采取了同步强化美日、美韩同盟的政策。近年中国东南海疆困局与美国重返亚太的重合性令人疑虑美国正在推行新的遏制中国崛起政策。2010年3月以来朝鲜半岛事态的发展具有超越韩朝争端剑指中国的特点,令中国周边外交与安全开始步入困局。美韩同盟强化是美国在东亚为遏制中国崛起谋篇布局的组成部分,韩美日同盟发展的东北亚小北约走向对中国东亚地缘安全利益产生巨大影响。如何应对美韩同盟强化所带来的东亚地缘安全挑战,护持中国在东亚地区的安全利益,值得我们高度关注和认真研究。     

Animating leadership: Crisis and renewal of governance in 4 mythic narratives

This paper analyzes four animated films in order to explore themes of leadership crises and leadership emergence. Drawing on psychoanalysis and structuralist film studies, this paper explores leadership emergence as a mythic structure within the four films, arguing that these myths are structured around a struggle of a young novice against an evil power figure, and the overcoming of this figure through a process of self-discovery and maturation. Central themes include the relations between self-realization of leaders and the social harmony, the battle with evil leaders as an ego-struggle, and exile and journey as a precursor to mature leadership competence. The paper attempts to show how, following Miendl et al. [Meindl, J. R., Erlich, S. B. & Dukerich, J. M. (1985). The romance of leadership. Administrative Science Quarterly, 30, 78–102] leadership myths often conflate individual psychological well-being with social well-being, and add to this perspective that such a conflation may be key to understanding leadership myths as projections of internal psychological dynamics. More generally, it is argued that treating popular culture such as animated allegories as contemporary myth offers scholars a view into popular conceptions of leadership, possible illuminating the relationships between leadership and social organization.     

How Do Workers’ Remittances Respond to Lending Rates?

The literature on migrants’ motivation to remit ranges from self‐interest to altruism where studies analyse the impact from home country interest rates or interest differentials between home and host countries. We reinterpret the interest rate elasticity of remittances as a form of debt‐repayment responsiveness rather than based on opportunistic motivation. Modelling altruistic transfer and debt‐repayment, we find that, for a panel of countries, the long‐run responsiveness of remittances to changes in real lending rates is negative. This suggests that an expansionary (contractionary) monetary policy is most likely to lead to an increase (reduction) in remittances in the long‐run. In contrast to this, the short‐run impact of interest rate changes on remittances is positive.     

Growth Effects of Remittances in Bangladesh: Is there a U‐shaped Relationship?

This article shows that the effect of remittances on economic growth involves a U‐shaped pattern, which is negative initially but later becomes positive. The analysis differs significantly from earlier studies in that it examines important methodological issues on the specification and estimation of the long‐run growth effects of remittances by estimating their impact on total factor productivity (TFP) rather than on the growth rate of GDP, using time series data from Bangladesh. The use of single‐equation cointegration methods shows that remittances’ effect on long‐run growth in Bangladesh is negative and falling until the remittances‐to‐GDP ratio is roughly eight per cent. The benefits of remittances receipts outweigh their costs and their net effects start to become positive when the ratio exceeds 14 per cent.     

Fingerprinting and Biopolitical Police Surveillance in Turkey

This paper problematises the 2007 amendments to Article 5 of the Police Powers and Duties Law (PPDL) in Turkey that categorises all citizens as ‘potential suspects’ through fingerprinting technology. The amended article requires everyone to submit fingerprint samples when applying for certain official documents such as driver's licences, passports, and ID cards. Consequently, the result has been dramatic: the police have so far proactively recorded more than 60 million people's fingerprints in the process of issuing these documents. Yet, there has been no research into this phenomenon. This paper suggests that this sort of biometric police surveillance is not a recent development, rather part of a long tradition within policing ‘Turkish’ national interests. Following Foucault's genealogical methodology, the paper argues that the governability of a large heterogeneous population across a vast territory has always demanded biometric policing technologies, addressing biopolitical proximity between the capacity building of modern security apparatus and identifying the unknown masses. Studying the historical data comparatively reveals that fingerprinting first started with recording exceptional groups such as criminals and convicts in Europe, while from the late Ottoman Empire to modern Turkey, large sections of the population have always persistently been targeted by police regulations.     

Household empowerment as the key to eradicate poverty incidence

The current study aimed to investigate how the household empowerment can potentially reduce the rural poverty incidence. The data were collected through multistage random sampling from the rural households of 24 villages in Southern Punjab, Pakistan. A total of 600 households were selected as sample pool. Face‐to‐face interviews with the household heads were conducted. The household empowerment was measured through an index that was adopted from Abrar‐ul‐haq (“An assessment of the role of household empowerment in alleviating poverty in Southern Punjab, Pakistan” (Ph.D. Dissertation), School of Economics, Finance and Banking, Universiti Utara Malaysia, 2017). The binary logit model was used to analyze the impact of household empowerment with other control variables on poverty incidence. The results of the current study confirm the negative nexus between household empowerment and poverty incidence of rural households as the study reported that the probabilities (odds ratio: 0.877) of being poor are reduced by increasing the empowerment (in every aspect, economically, politically, and socially) of the households, and the results are statistically significant at the 1% level of significance. Based on empirical results, this study suggests that household empowerment has significant potential to reduce poverty incidence in the rural areas of Southern Punjab, Pakistan.