Gender differences in willingness to compete: The role of public observability

A recent literature emphasizes that gender differences in the labor market may in part be driven by a gender gap in willingness to compete. However, whereas experiments in this literature typically investigate willingness to compete in private environments, real world competitions often have a more public nature, which introduces potential social image concerns. If such image concerns are important, and men and women differ in the degree to which they want to be seen as competitive, making tournament entry decisions publicly observable may further exacerbate the gender gap. We test this prediction using a laboratory experiment (N = 784) that varies the degree to which the decision to compete, and its outcome, is publicly observable. We find that public observability does not alter the magnitude of the gender gap in willingness to compete in an economically or statistically significant way.     

Cognitive abilities,self-efficacy,and financial behavior

This paper investigates the effect of cognitive abilities on financial behavior among older adults. Using the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, I find that cognitive abilities significantly affect financial behavior through two channels: ability and self-efficacy. People with higher cognition scores achieve better financial outcomes. This positive association is especially strong in tasks having high demand of cognitive abilities, which confirms the ability channel of the cognitive ability effect. In addition, there is evidence for the self-efficacy channel as a secondary source of cognitive influence. Lower cognitive abilities decrease people’s sense of self-efficacy, which, in turn, significantly decreases financial management efficiency. The findings have important policy implications, specifically that more effort is needed to assist the growing older population through the cognitive aging process and that noncognitive skills, as a secondary source of influence, also warrant attention.     

‘Public toilets for a diverse neighborhood’: Spatial purification practices in community development discourse

This paper explores the dialectic of place and community identity in Mount Pleasant, a multi–ethnic and multi–class U.S. neighborhood where definitions of place are hotly contested among its residents. In a grant proposal for public toilets, Mount Pleasant writers use linguistic strategies such as presupposition, deixis, and contrast, coupled with discursive themes of filth and geography, to construct a core of the Mount Pleasant community. The writers place themselves and people who share their values in that core, and immigrants at the margins. These strategies serve as a discursive type of spatial purification practice (cf. Sibley 1988) through which the grantwriters set up a moral and spatial order where they and other core community members are deemed to use space ‘appropriately’, and thus inhabit positive moral positions, while immigrant community members’ imputed ‘inappropriate’ use of space is used to construct negative moral positions for them.     

促性腺激素、V_(D_3)、V_E亚硒酸钠对母兔繁殖力的影响

选择成年、健康、未孕母兔 32只 ,随机分成 8组 ,分别给予促性腺激素 (Ⅰ组 )、VD3(Ⅱ组 )、VE 亚硒酸钠 (Ⅲ组 ) ,促性腺激素 +VD3(Ⅳ组 )、VD3+VE 亚硒酸钠 (Ⅴ组 )、促性腺激素 +VE 亚硒酸钠(Ⅵ组 )、促性腺激 +VD3+VE 亚硒酸钠 (Ⅶ组 ) ,空白对照 8种处理。试验结果表明 ,母兔经药物处理后 ,其繁殖性能 (发情状况、排卵数、正常受精卵数 )都比对照组显著地提高 ,但Ⅰ、Ⅳ、Ⅵ组有畸形卵子存在 ,以处理Ⅶ组效果最好 ,其排卵数达 4 7± 2 0 .3个 ,正常受精卵 35个 ,分别比对照组多 36 .5个、30个。     

Lower bounds on expectations of positive L-statistics from without-replacement models

We consider samples drawn without replacement from finite populations. We establish optimal lower non-negative and upper non-positive bounds on the expectations of linear combinations of order statistics centered about the population mean in units generated by the population central absolute moments of various orders. We also specify the general results for important examples of sample extremes, Gini mean differences and sample range. The paper completes the results of Papadatos and Rychlik [2004. Bounds on expectations of L-statistics from without replacement samples. J. Statist. Plann. Inference 124, 317–336], where sharp negative lower and positive upper bounds on the expectations of the combinations were presented for the without-replacement samples.     

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.     

同工异曲的悲歌--《菊花的幽香》与《薄奠》之比较

英国小说大师劳伦斯创作的<菊花的幽香>和中国著名小说家郁达夫创作的<薄奠>具有异曲同工之处,他们分别以象征和写实的笔法描写了一个以男主人公的死亡为结局的家庭悲剧,并对各自社会的罪恶进行了揭露,因而具有进步意义,成为中英文学史上不可多得的佳作.     

Generalized quasi-likelihood

The quasi-score function, as defined by Wedderburn (1974) and McCullagh (1983) and so on, is a linear function of observations. The generalized quasi-score function introduced in this paper is a linear function of some unbiased basis functions, where the unbiased basis functions may be some linear functions of the observations or not, and can be easily constructed by the meaning of the parameters such as mean and median and so on. The generalized quasi-likelihood estimate obtained by such a generalized quasi-score function is consistent and has an asymptotically normal distribution. As a result, the optimum generalized quasi-score is obtained and a method to construct the optimum unbiased basis function is introduced. In order to construct the potential function, a conservative generalized estimating function is defined. By conservative, a potential function for the projected score has many properties of a log-likelihood function. Finally, some examples are given to illustrate the theoretical results. This paper is supported by NNSF project (10371059) of China and Youth Teacher Foundation of Nankai University.     

Cognitive and interpersonal abilities related to the primary activities of R&D managers

This study attempted to identify the primary activities performed by R&D managers at different supervisory levels, and the cognitive and interpersonal ability requirements that underlie these activities. A task inventory containing 244 managerial tasks was completed by 117 R&D managers in nine organizations. The 48 tasks which managers rated as having spent the most time were factor analyzed, resulting in the identification of three primary activities: project management, personnel supervision, and strategic planning. Furthermore, these activities varied with supervisory level, with R&D managers performing a wider range of these activities with the progression from first-line to upper-level management.Thirty R&D managers later rated the degree to which 19 cognitive and interpersonal abilities were required for performing these primary activities. Strategic planning was rated as requiring significantly higher levels of oral expression, logical reasoning, originality, fluency of ideas, oral defense, and resistance to premature judgement than was required for the other two primary activities. Personnel supervision required a higher level of social sensitivity than was required for the other two activities. Project management required high levels of information ordering, oral fact- finding ability, problem sensitivity, and oral and written comprehension. Implications of the findings for understanding R&D managerial performance and personnel staffing functions are discussed.     

R＆D经费投入的国际比较与借鉴

R&D经费投入是评价国家科技实力和科技发展水平的首选指标 ,长期以来已为世界各国和重要国际组织所普遍采用。本文主要针对我国R&D经费投入与国际间的比较 ,分析我国R&D投入所处的阶段及R&D投入方面存在的差距与困难 ,最后提出对策与建议