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.     

Banking crises in the US: the response of top income shares in a historical perspective

This paper examines the response of income concentration in the US to the occurrence of major systemic banking crises since the beginning of the twentieth century. In doing so, the paper analyzes the shape of the upper income tail as well as the national income shares accruing to different groups within the richest decile. The findings suggest that systemic banking crises reduce income concentration within the top decile of the US pre–tax and transfers income distribution, and more generally, that the effect is highly heterogeneous across different top income groups. While the richest income group loses ground, the lower half of the top decile appears to gain in relative terms. However, evidence suggests that the estimated short-term effect of market forces stemming from banking crises can be relatively small in magnitude and even temporary in nature, as it may be quickly reabsorbed. These findings lend indirect support to the idea that only substantial changes in government policies and institutional frameworks can bring about radical changes in income distribution.     

Semiautomatic robust regression clustering of international trade data

The purpose of this paper is to show in regression clustering how to choose the most relevant solutions, analyze their stability, and provide information about best combinations of optimal number of groups, restriction factor among the error variance across groups and level of trimming. The procedure is based on two steps. First we generalize the information criteria of constrained robust multivariate clustering to the case of clustering weighted models. Differently from the traditional approaches which are based on the choice of the best solution found minimizing an information criterion (i.e. BIC), we concentrate our attention on the so called optimal stable solutions. In the second step, using the monitoring approach, we select the best value of the trimming factor. Finally, we validate the solution using a confirmatory forward search approach. A motivating example based on a novel dataset concerning the European Union trade of face masks shows the limitations of the current existing procedures. The suggested approach is initially applied to a set of well known datasets in the literature of robust regression clustering. Then, we focus our attention on a set of international trade datasets and we provide a novel informative way of updating the subset in the random start approach. The Supplementary material, in the spirit of the Special Issue, deepens the analysis of trade data and compares the suggested approach with the existing ones available in the literature.

     

Why was the ECB’s reaction to Covid-19 crisis faster than after the 2008 financial crash?

At the time of the financial crises of 2008 and 2010–11 the ECB reacted with an extremely cautious gradualism. This behaviour is attributable to the slower learning process that characterizes a central bank of a monetary union composed of countries with fiscal sovereignty compared to other central banks. In sharp contrast to the previous crises, the ECB reacted promptly to the COVID-19 crisis. This change in behaviour is explained here by the learning process about the effects on monetary policy transmission of the increased financial fragmentation of the eurozone over the last decade.     

The Role of Ethnic Prejudice in the Modulation of Cradling Lateralization

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior - The left-cradling bias is the tendency to cradle an infant on the left side, regardless of the individuals’ handedness, culture or ethnicity. Many studies...     

On large enterprises: new findings from a European comparison

The recent evolution of Italian capitalism shows the increasing relevance of large enterprises at three levels: the economic and institutional environment, the ownership structure, and the financing policy. A comparison of the financial structure of Italian large enterprises with those of other European countries (France, Germany, and Spain), using Bank for the Accounts of Companies Harmonised data, shows their financial fragility, where the prevalence of debt over equity justifies the still strong and close relationship between ownership control and management in their strategies and the prevalence of obsolete bank–firm relationships based on short-term external finance and multiple business lendings. These factors slow down firms’ expansion and consequently the need for companies to grow so as to face the new global market. Finance is confirmed as a determinant of growth both in size and in organisation. We conclude that a pivotal role for the growth of Italian firms lies in a “revised” relationship between size, governance, and the firms’ financial structure.     

Drawing a Line: Comparing the Estimation of Top Incomes between Tax Data and Household Survey Data

The Journal of Economic Inequality - The paper uses the flexibility of household survey data to align their income categories and recipient units with the income categories and units found in data...     

Behavioral Identification in Coalitional Bargaining: An Experimental Analysis of Demand Bargaining and Alternating Offers

Alternating‐offer and demand bargaining models of legislative bargaining make very different predictions in terms of both ex ante and ex post distribution of payoffs, as well as in the role of the order of play. The experiment shows that actual bargaining behavior is not as sensitive to the different bargaining rules as the theoretical point predictions, whereas the comparative statics are in line with both models. We compare our results to studies that attempt to distinguish between these two approaches using field data, finding strong similarities between the laboratory and field data regardless of the underlying bargaining process.     

Rule of law and balance of power sustain US dollar preeminence

In the last few decades, and especially since the financial crisis of 2007–2008, uncertainty about the future of the US dollar has been mounting. A broad-based theoretical debate on the decline of the dollar and its consequences has begun. There is a large body of studies that sees the origin of an international money as a market-led process. In this view, because the United States will very soon lose its economic pre-eminence the US dollar will consequently share its international role with other currencies or even be replaced by the renminbi. In this paper we contest this argument, focusing on the conditions that make a fiat money acceptable in international transactions. Trust in a type of money like this needs an institutional framework that guarantees the property rights of currency holders. This framework implies a high level of rule of law domestically and a high level of state capability in the international balance of power. Since at present no other currency fulfils these two requirements at the same time, the dominance of the US dollar as an international money is going to last.