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2. Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means. By Pamela Herd and Donald P. Moynihan. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2018. Pp. xv+344. $37.50 (paper).
- Published
- 2021
3. Solidarity in Strategy: Making Business Meaningful in American Trade Associations. By Lyn Spillman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Pp. xiv+517. $90.00 (cloth); $30.00 (paper).
- Abstract
There are two ways to read this book about American trade associations (TAs). The first way—as an overview of a neglected but important part of the U.S. economy—may be summarized as follows. In chapters 2 and 3 of Solidarity in Strategy, Lyn Spillman provides a useful synthesis of existing historical and sociological research on American TAs as well as a “census” (i.e., a compilation of self-descriptions, organizational features, and key activities of all contemporary U.S. trade associations) conducted by Spillman and colleagues. These chapters make several good points: (a) that TAs have long been very important in the United States. even if they have no formal role in governing the economy, as they do in Western Europe; (b) that TAs are not merely about lobbying the government or (in Adam Smith’s famous words) “conspiracies against the public” by “members of the same trade”; (c) that TAs are “multifunctional,” offering educational services and peer-to-peer learning, networking opportunities, and coordination on club goods such as industry standards, certification programs, and marketing campaigns; and (d) that contra Berk and Schneiberg, the development of this broad array of functions likely was not an accommodation to antitrust enforcement but emerged as TAs did, with the industrial revolution.
- Published
- 2019
4. Caring for Our Own: Why There Is No Political Demand for New American Social Welfare Rights. By Sandra R. Levitsky. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xiv+210. $99.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper)
- Abstract
In my health policy course, the subtitle of the long-term care (LTC) unit is, “The Biggest Health Policy Problem You’ve Never Heard Of.” The aged population is growing (the high-need 85 years or older group most rapidly), yet families are smaller and geographically dispersed. The majority of women, the usual caregivers, are in the paid labor force. Yet public policy is wholly inadequate and unresponsive to growing need: Medicare doesn’t cover LTC; Medicaid covers it only for the truly impoverished; there is no paid leave for caregivers or tax credits to offset costs; and the availability of state-provided home care, respite care, and adult day care is widely variable and meager. Nor is the private sector much help: with its high cost and limited benefits, private LTC insurance is practically useless. Despite these glaring inadequacies, however, the political silence on care issues is near absolute.
- Published
- 2018
5. Motivating the History of the Philosophy of Thought Experiments
- Abstract
Introduction to a special issue of HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science on thought experiments. Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the paper: By any measure, the literature on thought experiments is thriving. Since 1988, we count at least thirteen monographs, seven collected editions, and eight journal issues dedicated to thought experiments. The thought experiments section of philpapers.org (moderated by Magdalena Balcerak Jackson) has 476 entries, which is more than the semantic view of theories (124), inference to the best explanation (198), scientific representation (203), structural realism (280), incommensurability in science (406) and is equal to the discussion of natural selection as a whole (476). Obviously, it is a lively and on-going discussion. And yet, there is still a lot of work to do. Concerning the class of scientific thought experiments, the majority of papers either focus on specific scientific cases (Schrodinger’s cat is a case in point with 55 entries on philpapers.org), the thought experiments of a specific scientist (Einstein4 and Galileo5 attracting most of the attention), or the epistemology of scientific thought experiments in general. Lacking, however, are historical accounts of the philosophical discussion of scientific thought experiments. There are notable exceptions, but more work seems necessary for at least two reasons. The first is that the current philosophical literature has much to gain by a reappraisal of its origins (or so we claim). The notion that there is a single “pure origin” of any debate is dubious (see Foucault 1977). Nevertheless, by identifying the historical contingencies that caused the on-going debate to take the shape it did, we are in a better position to entertain other directions the current debate could go, and also to (re)appropriate forgotten insights. A second reason why we think that it is worthwhile to look back at the history of the philosophy of
- Published
- 2021
6. On Embracing the Vague
- Abstract
At the same time as, in Paris, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl experimented with the concept of “participation,” in Harvard, William James undertook a parallel trajectory by taking recourse to the notion of “the vague.” For him, vagueness described the fact that reality is richer than any and all conceptualizations. In light of the ethnographic material provided by contemporary developments in ethnography, this paper mobilizes James’ concept of the vague by reference to Lévy-Bruhl’s participation in order to develop instruments for capturing ethnographically the complexities of entanglement and emergence in human sociality. The paper concludes that indeterminacy and underdetermination are doors of entanglement as they both limit and make possible the constitution of entities in sociality.
- Published
- 2020
7. The Impact of COVID-19 on E-book Reading Behavior: The Case of the Municipal Library of Prague
- Abstract
COVID-19 has changed the behavior of consumers of all services, including public library readers, related to the unavailability of services during lockdown periods and other restrictions precluding physical presence in the library. The aim of this case study was to learn what effects the COVID-19 pandemic had on e-book readers and their behavior. This article presents the results of the analysis of data from empirical surveys undertaken in August 2019 and August 2020 in the Municipal Library in Prague (Czech Republic). Findings revealed that readers do not prefer e-books due to the pandemic situation. Paper book preferences still prevail. The results show that the pandemic slightly adjusted the preference of book genres. The pandemic did not change readers' willingness to pay for library services but rather forced public libraries to adjust their service offerings and distribution channels., Cílem této případové studie bylo zjistit, jaké dopady měla pandemie COVID-19 na čtenáře e-knih a jejich chování. Tento článek prezentuje výsledky analýzy dat z empirických šetření provedených v srpnu 2019 a srpnu 2020 v Městské knihovně v COVID-19 změnil chování spotřebitelů všech služeb, včetně čtenářů veřejných knihoven, související s nedostupností služeb v době uzamčení a dalšími omezeními vylučujícími fyzickou přítomnost v knihovně. Cílem této případové studie bylo zjistit, jaké dopady měla pandemie COVID-19 na čtenáře e-knih a jejich chování. Tento článek prezentuje výsledky analýzy dat z empirických šetření provedených v srpnu 2019 a srpnu 2020 v Městské knihovně v Praze (Česká republika). Zjištění odhalila, že čtenáři kvůli pandemické situaci e-knihy nepreferují. Stále převažují preference papírových knih. Výsledky ukazují, že pandemie mírně upravila preferenci knižních žánrů. Pandemie nezměnila ochotu čtenářů platit za knihovnické služby, ale spíše donutila veřejné knihovny upravit nabídku služeb a distribuční kanály.Praze (Česká republika).
- Published
- 2023
8. Mandersian Relationism: Space, Modality and Equivalence
- Abstract
Modal relationism is the view that our best physical theories can dispense with substantival space or spacetime in favor of possible configurations of particles. Kenneth Manders argued that the substantivalist conception is equivalent to this Leibnizian conception of space. To do so, Manders provides a translation f from the Newtonian theory into the Leibnizian modal relationist account. In this paper, we show that the translation does not establish equivalence, since there is no reverse translation g that preserves theoremhood. This seems to show that the modal relationist theory is less parsimonious than its substantivalist rival.
- Published
- 2023
9. Carnegie supernova project-II: The near-infrared spectroscopy program
- Abstract
Shifting the focus of Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) cosmology to the near infrared (NIR) is a promising way to significantly reduce the systematic errors, as the strategy minimizes our reliance on the empirical width-luminosity relation and uncertain dust laws. Observations in the NIR are also crucial for our understanding of the origins and evolution of these events, further improving their cosmological utility. Any future experiments in the rest-frame NIR will require knowledge of the SN Ia NIR spectroscopic diversity, which is currently based on a small sample of observed spectra. Along with the accompanying paper, Phillips et al., we introduce the Carnegie Supernova Project-II (CSP-II), to follow-up nearby SNe Ia in both the optical and the NIR. In particular, this paper focuses on the CSP-II NIR spectroscopy program, describing the survey strategy, instrumental setups, data reduction, sample characteristics, and future analyses on the data set. In collaboration with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) Supernova Group, we obtained 661 NIR spectra of 157 SNe Ia. Within this sample, 451 NIR spectra of 90 SNe Ia have corresponding CSP-II follow-up light curves. Such a sample will allow detailed studies of the NIR spectroscopic properties of SNe Ia, providing a different perspective on the properties of the unburned material; the radioactive and stable nickel produced; progenitor magnetic fields; and searches for possible signatures of companion stars.
- Published
- 2019
10. Carnegie supernova project-II: Extending the near-infrared hubble diagram for type ia supernovae to z ~ 0.1
- Abstract
The Carnegie Supernova Project-II (CSP-II) was an NSF-funded, four-year program to obtain optical and near-infrared observations of a "Cosmology" sample of ~100 Type Ia supernovae located in the smooth Hubble flow (0.03 lesssim z lesssim 0.10). Light curves were also obtained of a "Physics" sample composed of 90 nearby Type Ia supernovae at z ≤ 0.04 selected for near-infrared spectroscopic timeseries observations. The primary emphasis of the CSP-II is to use the combination of optical and near-infrared photometry to achieve a distance precision of better than 5%. In this paper, details of the supernova sample, the observational strategy, and the characteristics of the photometric data are provided. In a companion paper, the near-infrared spectroscopy component of the project is presented.
- Published
- 2019
11. Unburials, Generals, and Phantom Militarism: Engaging with the Spanish Civil War Legacy
- Abstract
This paper is based on a 16-year-long ethnography of mass grave exhumations in contemporary Spain and deals with the tortuous, painful, much-disputed, and incomplete unmaking of a concrete and massive militaristic inscription of Spain: that related to its last internal war (1936–1939) and subsequent dictatorship (1939–1975). To understand this process and its historical roots, the paper first dissects the formation of a “funerary apartheid” in the country since the end of the war. Second, it analyzes the impact on the social fabric of the mass grave exhumations of Republican civilians that started in the year 2000. Third, it traces how these disinterments have intersected with Spain’s most prominent Francoist stronghold, the Valley of the Fallen, and threaten the dictator’s burial place. Finally, it discusses the parallel dismantling of the dictatorship’s official statuary that once presided over prominent public spaces in many cities and some military quarters. It argues that rolling back militarization by dismantling war-derived cartographies of death, challenging military burial arrangements, or degrading statues of generals necessarily involves a certain level of remilitarizing by other means. I call this mirroring and deeply embodied memorial backfiring “phantom militarism.”
- Published
- 2019
12. Frontiers of Health Policy: Digital Data and Personalized Medicine
- Abstract
This paper argues that due to two unstoppable mechanisms, some of the most pressing future questions in health policy will relate to the use of digital technologies to analyze data concerning patient health. The first mechanism is the shift away from a system where patient data was essentially temporary and not intended to be reused or easily accessed again, to a new digital world where patient data is easily transferred and accessed repeatedly. The second mechanism is a fundamental deepening of the nature of patient data that enables increased personalization of health care for each individual patient, based on not only their detailed medical history, but also their likely future medical history that can be projected for their genetic makeup. We summarize our research investigating the potential consequences of policies in this new world where patient data is virtually costless to store, share, and individualize. We emphasize that issues of data management and privacy are now at the forefront of health policy considerations. Digital data and digital technologies have the potential to transform medicine through two mechanisms. First, digital patient data is far easier to share and access than traditional paper records. This has many potential upsides, but also raises the question of how the potential benefits of sharing patient data are moderated by privacy concerns. Second, the advent of digital storage has now made it possible to store, virtually costlessly, vast swathes of data about any one individual patient. Such individualized data also enables a patient-centric approach to medicine, often referred to as “personalized” or “precision” medicine, based on that individual patient’s genetic makeup. This article discusses the potential benefits and possible policy consequences of this digital shift. It emphasizes that the benefits of digital technologies are found when data is actually transferred and repeatedly accessed. This emphasizes that policies that wish to, National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Career Award 6923256)
- Published
- 2019
13. Toward a Genealogy of a Discourse on Women’s Erotic Autonomy: Feminist and Queer-Feminist Critiques of Monogamy
- Abstract
References to the values of self-ownership and erotic autonomy figure prominently in women's accounts on why they are practicing consensual non-monogamy. Feminist critiques of monogamy demonstrate a long-standing endorsement of the value of erotic autonomy within feminist politics. In this paper, I sketch a genealogy of feminist and queer feminist work that explicitly or implicitly critics compulsory monogamy and/or defends women's non-monogamous ways of life to explore how the nexus of non/monogamy and erotic autonomy has been theorised across different periods and within different strands of feminist politics. I argue that the common concern within this work with systemic oppression, collective struggle and solidarity sustains politicised views of women's erotic autonomy as a relational phenomenon within a multiscalar framework that captures not only intersubjective, but also socio-political dimensions of relationality. Feminist critiques of monogamy thus provide a rich repertoire of political theorising that advocates for the conceptualisation of both autonomy and sexual politics in ways that avoid the shortfalls of individualistic or (liberal) humanistic/intersubjective models. The paper argues that a reappraisal these previous modes of feminist critiques of monogamy would highlight the significance to explore the multiplicity of structural power relations. While much of the early feminist critique of compulsory monogamy has focused on hetero-patriarchal practices of marriage and romantic love, contemporary queer feminist have used intersectional perspectives to highlight the implication of monogamy (or mononormativity) within structural power relations around gender, race, class, and sexuality. This paper aims to underscore the prominence of feminist and queer-feminist voices within the debates on nonmonogamy, contribute to restoring a focus on autonomy within feminist theorising and highlight the relevance of distinctly feminist and queer-feminist notions of r
- Published
- 2018
14. Comparative Cost-Effectiveness Analysis to Inform Policy in Developing Countries: A General Framework with Applications for Education
- Abstract
In this paper we discuss how comparative cost-effectiveness analyses can help inform policy in developing countries and the underlying methodological assumptions necessary for performing this kind of analysis. This paper does not suggest a single set of “correct” assumptions, because the assumptions adopted in a costeffectiveness analysis should reflect the perspective of the intended user. Rather, we discuss the issues surrounding many of these assumptions, such as what discount rate to use or whether to include cash transfers as program costs, and make recommendations on which assumptions might be reasonable given the perspective of a policymaker allocating resources between different projects. Examples are drawn from the education field to illustrate key issues and focus on specific applications to education. We hope this paper will contribute to the development of a more standard methodology for cost-effectiveness analyses and a better understanding of how these analyses can be created and used.
- Published
- 2018
15. Toward a Genealogy of a Discourse on Women’s Erotic Autonomy: Feminist and Queer-Feminist Critiques of Monogamy
- Abstract
References to the values of self-ownership and erotic autonomy figure prominently in women's accounts on why they are practicing consensual non-monogamy. Feminist critiques of monogamy demonstrate a long-standing endorsement of the value of erotic autonomy within feminist politics. In this paper, I sketch a genealogy of feminist and queer feminist work that explicitly or implicitly critics compulsory monogamy and/or defends women's non-monogamous ways of life to explore how the nexus of non/monogamy and erotic autonomy has been theorised across different periods and within different strands of feminist politics. I argue that the common concern within this work with systemic oppression, collective struggle and solidarity sustains politicised views of women's erotic autonomy as a relational phenomenon within a multiscalar framework that captures not only intersubjective, but also socio-political dimensions of relationality. Feminist critiques of monogamy thus provide a rich repertoire of political theorising that advocates for the conceptualisation of both autonomy and sexual politics in ways that avoid the shortfalls of individualistic or (liberal) humanistic/intersubjective models. The paper argues that a reappraisal these previous modes of feminist critiques of monogamy would highlight the significance to explore the multiplicity of structural power relations. While much of the early feminist critique of compulsory monogamy has focused on hetero-patriarchal practices of marriage and romantic love, contemporary queer feminist have used intersectional perspectives to highlight the implication of monogamy (or mononormativity) within structural power relations around gender, race, class, and sexuality. This paper aims to underscore the prominence of feminist and queer-feminist voices within the debates on nonmonogamy, contribute to restoring a focus on autonomy within feminist theorising and highlight the relevance of distinctly feminist and queer-feminist notions of r
- Published
- 2018
16. Describing and Conceptualizing Minimal Tools in an Ethnographic Setting: Implications for Understanding Technological Systems Holistically
- Abstract
How should we describe and conceptualize the simplest tools imaginable, especially in relation to distinctions between found, minimal, and repurposed objects? Most ethnographic accounts pay little attention to them, and neither does the organization of museums and the anthropological curriculum. Addressing the literature on the theory of tool use, this paper argues why rudimentary objects observed ethnographically, such as used as containers, scrapers, whetstones and strike-a-lights, should not be neglected. The argument is illustrated with reference to data on the Nuaulu people of Seram, eastern Indonesia. The main exception to this neglect has been archaeological, in the context of understanding the earliest possible human tools, and in animal behavior studies where the very idea of tool use is being interrogated. Holistic claims about tools require that we understand the scale and significance of minimal tools both for modern nonindustrial peoples and for ordinary people living and working in industrial societies.
- Published
- 2022
17. Non-Bayesian Persuasion
- Abstract
Following Kamenica and Gentzkow, this paper studies persuasion as an information design problem. We investigate how mistakes in probabilistic inference impact optimal persuasion. The concavification method is shown to extend naturally to a large class of belief updating rules, which we identify and characterize. This class comprises many non-Bayesian models discussed in the literature. We apply this new technique to gain insight into the revelation principle, the ranking of updating rules, when persuasion is beneficial to the sender, and when it is detrimental to the receiver. Our key result also extends to shed light on the question of robust persuasion.
- Published
- 2022
18. Tax Reform Made Me Do It!
- Abstract
© 2019 by the National Bureau of Economic Research. All rights reserved. This paper examines corporations’ actions, and statements about actions, following the tax law change known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA). Specifically, we examine four different outcomes: bonuses (or other actions that benefit workers), announcements of new investments, share repurchases, and dividend announcements. We find that 4% of public firms in our sample announced in the first quarter of 2018 they would pay some portion of their tax savings toward workers. In terms of investment, we find that 22% of the S&P 500 firms in our sample mentioned in earnings conference calls that they would increase investment because of the TCJA. We find a general increase in share repurchases following the passage of the TCJA, but the increase is extremely concentrated in a small number of firms. We find only nine firms that announced a new share repurchase plan explicitly attributed the new plan to the TCJA. In regression analysis, we find that both political and economic variables explain TCJA-linked announcements. The analysis suggests that firms with greater expected tax savings from the TCJA are those most likely to announce payments to workers and plans to increase investment. Firms with a political action committee that donates more to Republican candidates are also more likely to announce benefits to employees.
- Published
- 2022
19. Identification of Hedonic Equilibrium and Nonseparable Simultaneous Equations
- Abstract
© 2021 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. This paper derives conditions under which preferences and technology are nonparametrically identified in hedonic equilibrium models. With products differentiated along a quality index and agents characterized by scalar unobserved heterogeneity, single-crossing conditions on preferences and technology provide identifying restrictions in previous work. We develop similar shape restrictions in the multiattribute case. These shape restrictions, based on optimal transport theory and generalized convexity, allow us to identify preferences for goods differentiated along multiple dimensions from the observation of a single market. We thereby derive identification results for nonseparable simultaneous equations and multiattribute hedonic equilibrium models with (possibly) multiple dimensions of unobserved heterogeneity. One of our results is a proof of absolute continuity of the distribution of endogenously traded qualities, which is of independent interest.
- Published
- 2022
20. Back to 'Mother' and 'Father' Overcoming the Eurocentrism of Kinship Studies through Eight Lexical Universals
- Abstract
This paper addresses one of the most controversial issues in cultural anthropology: the conceptual foundations of kinship and the apparent inevitability of ethnocentrism in kinship studies. The field of kinship studies has been in turmoil over the past few decades, repeatedly pronounced dead and then again rising from the ashes and being declared central to human affairs. As this paper argues, the conceptual confusion surrounding ‘kinship’ is to a large extent due to the lack of a clear and rigorous methodology for discovering how speakers of the world’s different languages actually navigate their kinship systems. Building on the author’s earlier work on kinship but taking the analysis much further, this paper seeks to demonstrate that such a methodology can be found in natural semantic metalanguage theory (developed by the author and colleagues), which relies on 65 universal semantic primes and on a small number of universal “semantic molecules,” including ‘mother’ and ‘father’. The paper offers a new model for the interpretation of kinship terminologies and opens new perspectives for the investigation of kinship systems across languages and cultures.
- Published
- 2016
21. Brazilian Serialities. Personhood and Radical Embodied Cognition
- Abstract
This paper investigates the relationship between personhood and family in light of the impact that radical embodied cognition has had in anthropological theory over the past years. The paper is based on a study of onomastic seriality among siblings and cohabiting cousins in Brazil, where it became clear that interruption of the series is more common than full compliance. Since name attribution is a central aspect of launching early personal ontogeny, the paper argues that this kind of interrupted seriality amounts to a narrative strategy of triangulation that fosters the creative imagining of familial persons. The paper attempts to deepen our understanding of the modes of operation of personhood by diverging from the established representationist theories of cognition that remain dominant in anthropological circles.
- Published
- 2016
22. Model Organisms for Studying Decision-Making: a Phylogenetically Expanded Perspective.
- Abstract
This paper explores the use of model organisms in studying the cognitive phenomenon of decision-making. Drawing on the framework of biological control to develop a skeletal conception of decision-making, we show that two core features of decision-making mechanisms can be identified by studying model organisms, such as E. coli, jellyfish, C. elegans, lamprey, etc. First, decision mechanisms are distributed and heterarchically-structured. Second, they depend heavily on chemical information processing, such as those involving neuromodulators. We end by discussing the implications for studying distinctively human decision-making.
- Published
- 2021
23. Funding Breakthrough Research: Promises and Challenges of the “ARPA Model”
- Abstract
From its 1958 origin in defense, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) model for research funding has, in the last two decades, spread to other parts of the US federal government with the goal of developing radically new technologies. In this paper, we propose that the key elements of the ARPA model for research funding are organizational flexibility on an administrative level and significant authority given to program directors to design programs, select projects, and actively manage projects. We identify the ARPA model’s domain as mission-oriented research on nascent S-curves within an inefficient innovation system. Finally, we describe some of the challenges to implementing the ARPA model, and we comment on the role of ARPA in the landscape of research- funding approaches.
- Published
- 2021
24. The role of information in agricultural technology adoption: Experimental evidence from rice farmers in Uganda
- Abstract
PR, IFPRI3; ISI; 1 Fostering Climate-Resilient and Sustainable Food Supply; 5 Strengthening Institutions and Governance; CRP2; 4 Transforming Agricultural and Rural Economies; IFPRIOA, DSGD; PIM, CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM), Optimal decision making among the poor is often hampered by insufficient knowledge, false beliefs or wrong perceptions. This paper investigates the role of information in the decision to use modern inputs and adopt recommended agronomic practices among rice farmers in Uganda. Using field experiments, I tested whether the provision of technical information about the correct use of modern inputs and practices affects adoption of these technologies, and subsequent rice production. In addition, I assessed whether providing information aimed at changing the perception of the expected returns on such intensification investments led to different outcomes.
- Published
- 2021
25. Identification of Hedonic Equilibrium and Nonseparable Simultaneous Equations
- Abstract
© 2021 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. This paper derives conditions under which preferences and technology are nonparametrically identified in hedonic equilibrium models. With products differentiated along a quality index and agents characterized by scalar unobserved heterogeneity, single-crossing conditions on preferences and technology provide identifying restrictions in previous work. We develop similar shape restrictions in the multiattribute case. These shape restrictions, based on optimal transport theory and generalized convexity, allow us to identify preferences for goods differentiated along multiple dimensions from the observation of a single market. We thereby derive identification results for nonseparable simultaneous equations and multiattribute hedonic equilibrium models with (possibly) multiple dimensions of unobserved heterogeneity. One of our results is a proof of absolute continuity of the distribution of endogenously traded qualities, which is of independent interest.
- Published
- 2021
26. Trust in State and Nonstate Actors: Evidence from Dispute Resolution in Pakistan
- Abstract
This paper investigates whether information about improved public services can help build trust in state institutions and move people away from nonstate actors. We find that (truthful) information about reduced delays in state courts in rural Pakistan leads to citizens reporting higher likelihood of using them and to greater allocations to the state in high-stakes lab games. We also find negative indirect effects on nonstate actors and show that these changes are a response to improved beliefs about state actors, which make individuals interact less with nonstate actors and, we argue, induce them to downgrade their beliefs about these actors.
- Published
- 2021
27. The HST See Change Program. I. Survey Design, Pipeline, and Supernova Discoveries
- Abstract
The See Change survey was designed to make z > 1 cosmological measurements by efficiently discovering high-redshift Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) and improving cluster mass measurements through weak lensing. This survey observed twelve galaxy clusters with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) spanning the redshift range z = 1.13-1.75, discovering 57 likely transients and 27 likely SNe Ia at z ~ 0.8-2.3. As in similar previous surveys, this proved to be a highly efficient use of HST for supernova observations; the See Change survey additionally tested the feasibility of maintaining, or further increasing, the efficiency at yet higher redshifts, where we have less detailed information on the expected cluster masses and star formation rates. We find that the resulting number of SNe Ia per orbit is a factor of ~8 higher than for a field search, and 45% of our orbits contained an active SN Ia within 22 rest-frame days of peak, with one of the clusters by itself yielding 6 of the SNe Ia. We present the survey design, pipeline, and supernova discoveries. Novel features include fully blinded supernova searches, the first random forest candidate classifier for undersampled IR data (with a 50% detection threshold within 0.05 mag of human searchers), real-time forward-modeling photometry of candidates, and semi-automated photometric classifications and follow-up forecasts. We also describe the spectroscopic follow-up, instrumental in measuring host galaxy redshifts. The cosmology analysis of our sample will be presented in a companion paper. * Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by AURA, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555, under programs 13677, 14327.
- Published
- 2021
28. The Hubble Space Telescope UV legacy survey of galactic globular clusters. - I. overview of the project and detection of multiple stellar populations
- Abstract
In this paper we describe a new UV-initiative Hubble Space Telescope project (GO-13297) that will complement the existing F606W and F814W database of the Advanced Camera for Surveys Globular Cluster (GC) Treasury by imaging most of its clusters through UV/blue WFC3/UVIS filters F275W, F336W, and F438W. This "magic trio" of filters has shown an uncanny ability to disentangle and characterize multiple population (MP) patterns in GCs in a way that is exquisitely sensitive to C, N, and O abundance variations. Combination of these passbands with those in the optical also gives the best leverage for measuring helium enrichment. The dozen clusters that had previously been observed in these bands exhibit a bewildering variety of MP patterns, and the new survey will map the full variance of the phenomenon. The ubiquity of multiple stellar generations in GCs has made the formation of these cornerstone objects more intriguing than ever; GC formation and the origin of their MPs have now become one and the same problem. In this paper we will describe the database and our data reduction strategy, as well as the uses we intend to make of the final photometry, astrometry, and PMs. We will also present preliminary color-magnitude diagrams from the data so far collected. These diagrams also draw on data from GO-12605 and GO-12311, which served as a pilot project for the present GO-13297.
- Published
- 2015
29. Measuring the Accuracy of Survey Responses using Administrative Register Data:Evidence from Denmark
- Abstract
This paper shows how Danish administrative register data can be combined with survey data at the person level and be used to validate information collected in the survey. Register data are collected by automatic third party reporting and the potential errors associated with the two data sources are therefore plausibly orthogonal. Two examples are given to illustrate the potential of combining survey and register data. In the first example expenditure survey records with information about total expenditure are merged with income tax records holding information about income and wealth. Income and wealth data are used to impute total expenditure which is then compared to the survey measure. Results suggest that the two measures match each other well on average. In the second example we compare responses to a one-shot recall question about total gross personal income ¿collected in another survey¿ with tax records. Tax records hold detailed information about different types of income and this makes it possible to test if errors in the survey responseare related to the reporting of particular types of income. Results show bias in the mean and that the survey error has substantial variance. Results also show that the errors are correlated with conventional covariates suggesting that the errors are not of the classical type. The latter example illustrates how Denmark can be used as a “laboratory” for future validation studies. Tax records with detailed information about different types of income are available for the entire Danish population and can be readily merged to survey data. This makes it possible to test the ability of respondents to accurately report different types of income using different interviewing techniques and questions. The examples presented in this paper are based on cross section data. However, the possibility to issue surveys repeatedly to the same persons and linking up to longitudinal tax records provides an opportunity to learn more about
- Published
- 2015
30. Distribution of Water Vapor in Molecular Clouds. II
- Abstract
The depth-dependent abundance of both gas-phase and solid-state water within dense, quiescent, molecular clouds is important to both the cloud chemistry and gas cooling. Where water is in the gas phase, it is free to participate in the network of ion-neutral reactions that lead to a host of oxygen-bearing molecules, and its many ortho- A nd para-energy levels make it an effective coolant for gas temperatures greater than 20 K. Where water is abundant as ice on grain surfaces, and unavailable to cool the gas, significant amounts of oxygen are removed from the gas phase, suppressing the gas-phase chemical reactions that lead to a number of oxygen-bearing species, including O. Models of far-UV (FUV)-illuminated clouds predict that the gas-phase water abundance peaks in the range 3 and 8 mag of the cloud surface, depending on the gas density and FUV field strength. Deeper within such clouds, water is predicted to exist mainly as ice on grain surfaces. More broadly, these models are used to analyze a variety of other regions, including outflow cavities associated with young stellar objects and the surface layers of protoplanetary disks. In this paper, we report the results of observational tests of FUV-illuminated cloud models toward the Orion Molecular Ridge and Cepheus B using data obtained from the Herschel Space Observatory and the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory. Toward Orion, 2220 spatial positions were observed along the face-on Orion Ridge in the HO 1-1 557 GHz and NH J, K = 1,0-0,0 572 GHz lines. Toward Cepheus B, two strip scans were made in the same lines across the edge-on ionization front. These new observations demonstrate that gas-phase water exists primarily within a few magnitudes of dense cloud surfaces, strengthening the conclusions of an earlier study based on a much smaller data set, and indirectly supports the prediction that water ice is quite abundant in dense clouds.
- Published
- 2020
31. Citizen meets social science: predicting volunteer involvement in a global freshwater monitoring experiment
- Abstract
FreshWater Watch is a global citizen science project that seeks to advance the understanding and stewardship of freshwater ecosystems across the globe through analysis of their physical and chemical properties by volunteers. To date, literature concerning citizen science has mainly focused on its potential to generate unprecedented volumes of data. In this paper, we focus instead on the data relating to the volunteer experience and ask key questions about volunteer engagement with the project. For example, we ask what factors influence: a) volunteer data submission following a training event and b) the number of water quality samples volunteers subsequently submit. We used a binomial model to identify the factors that influence the retention of volunteers after training. In addition, we used a generalized linear model (GLM) to examine the factors that affected the number of samples each citizen scientist submitted. In line with other citizen science projects, most people trained did not submit any data, and 1% of participants contributed 47% of the data. We found that the statistically significant factors associated with submission of data after training were: whether training was given on how to upload data, the number of volunteers that attended the training, whether the volunteer was assigned to a research team, the outside temperature, and the average engagement of others in the training group. The statistically significant factors associated with the quantity of data submitted were: the length of time volunteers were active in the project, whether training took place as part of a paid work day, the difficulty of the sampling procedure, how socially involved volunteers were in the project, average sampling group size, and engagement with online learning modules. Based on our results, we suggest that intrinsic motivation may be important for predicting volunteer retention after training and the number of samples collected subsequently. We suggest that, to maximiz
- Published
- 2019
32. Towards the Emergence of Non-trivial Compositionality
- Abstract
All natural languages exhibit a distinction between content words (nouns, verbs,etc.) and function words (determiners, auxiliaries, tenses, etc.). Yet surprisingly little has been said about the emergence of this universal architectural feature of human language. This paper argues that the existence of this distinction requires the presence of non-trivial compositionality and identifies assumptions that have previously been made in the literature that provably guarantee only trivial composition. It then presents a signaling game with variable contexts and shows how the distinction can emerge via reinforcement learning.
- Published
- 2019
33. The Representational Semantic Conception
- Abstract
This paper argues for a representational semantic conception (RSC) of scientific theories, which respects the bare claim of any semantic view, namely that theories can be characterised as sets of models. RSC must be sharply distinguished from structural versions that assume a further identity of ‘models’ and ‘structures’, which we reject. The practice-turn in the recent philosophical literature suggests instead that modelling must be understood in a deflationary spirit, in terms of the diverse representational practices in the sciences. These insights are applied to some mathematical models, thus showing that the mathematical sciences are not in principle counterexamples to RSC.
- Published
- 2019
34. The Effect of Nonpersonnel Resources on Educational Outcomes: Evidence from South Africa
- Abstract
Little credible evidence exists on the effect of material resources on school quality in developing countries. This paper studies the impact of non-personnel funding on educational outcomes exploiting the peculiar way in which these resources are allocated in South Africa. Government funding follows quintiles constructed on the basis of school poverty scores. This creates discrete jumps in the allocation of funding and we use a regression discontinuity approach to analyze its effects on school outcomes at the end of high school. Our results show a small but positive effect of resources on student throughput during the last years of high school, and on the number of students writing the matriculation exam. However, additional resources do not translate into a higher number of successful exams, leading to an overall negative effect on pass rates. We suggest that these findings may have to do with schools reacting to the per-pupil nature of funding
- Published
- 2019
35. Dynamics of Housing Debt in the Recent Boom and Great Recession
- Abstract
This paper documents a number of key facts about the evolution of mortgage debt, homeownership, debt burden, and subsequent delinquency during the recent housing boom and Great Recession. We show that the mortgage expansion was shared across the entire income distribution; that is, the flow and stock of debt rose across all income groups (except for the top 5%). The mortgage expansion was especially pronounced in areas with increased house prices, and the speed at which houses turned over (churn) in these areas went up significantly. However, the average loan-to-value ratios (LTV) at origination did not increase over the boom period. While homeownership rates increased for the middle- and upper-income households, there was no increase in homeownership for the lowest income groups. Finally, default rates postcrisis went up predominantly in areas with large house price drops, especially for high-income and high-FICO borrowers. These results are consistent with a view that the run-up in mortgage debt over the precrisis period was driven by rising home values and expectations of increasing prices.
- Published
- 2019
36. The Divide between Subsistence and Transformational Entrepreneurship
- Abstract
This paper argues that it is crucially important to differentiate between two very distinct sets of entrepreneurs: subsistence and transformational entrepreneurs. Recent evidence suggests that people engaging in these two types of entrepreneurship are not only very distinct in nature but that only a negligible fraction of them transition from subsistence to transformational entrepreneurship. These individuals vary in their economic objectives, their skills, and their role in the economy. Most important, they seem to respond very differently to policy changes and economic cycles. Yet most development policies aimed at fostering entrepreneurship focus on subsistence entrepreneurship in the hope of creating transformational entrepreneurs. I argue that unless we understand the differences between those two types of entrepreneurs more clearly, many policy interventions may have unintended consequences and may even have an adverse impact on the economy.
- Published
- 2019
37. Citizen meets social science: predicting volunteer involvement in a global freshwater monitoring experiment
- Abstract
FreshWater Watch is a global citizen science project that seeks to advance the understanding and stewardship of freshwater ecosystems across the globe through analysis of their physical and chemical properties by volunteers. To date, literature concerning citizen science has mainly focused on its potential to generate unprecedented volumes of data. In this paper, we focus instead on the data relating to the volunteer experience and ask key questions about volunteer engagement with the project. For example, we ask what factors influence: a) volunteer data submission following a training event and b) the number of water quality samples volunteers subsequently submit. We used a binomial model to identify the factors that influence the retention of volunteers after training. In addition, we used a generalized linear model (GLM) to examine the factors that affected the number of samples each citizen scientist submitted. In line with other citizen science projects, most people trained did not submit any data, and 1% of participants contributed 47% of the data. We found that the statistically significant factors associated with submission of data after training were: whether training was given on how to upload data, the number of volunteers that attended the training, whether the volunteer was assigned to a research team, the outside temperature, and the average engagement of others in the training group. The statistically significant factors associated with the quantity of data submitted were: the length of time volunteers were active in the project, whether training took place as part of a paid work day, the difficulty of the sampling procedure, how socially involved volunteers were in the project, average sampling group size, and engagement with online learning modules. Based on our results, we suggest that intrinsic motivation may be important for predicting volunteer retention after training and the number of samples collected subsequently. We suggest that, to maximiz
- Published
- 2019
38. ANTARES Neutrino Search for Time and Space Correlations with IceCube High-energy Neutrino Events
- Abstract
In past years the IceCube Collaboration has reported the observation of astrophysical high-energy neutrino events in several analyses. Despite compelling evidence for the first identification of a neutrino source, TXS 0506+056, the origin of the majority of these events is still unknown. In this paper, we search for a possible transient origin of the IceCube astrophysical events using neutrino events detected by the ANTARES telescope. The arrival time and direction of 6894 track-like and 160 shower-like events detected over 2346 days of livetime are examined to search for coincidences with 54 IceCube high-energy track-like neutrino events, by means of a maximum likelihood method. No significant correlation is observed and upper limits on the one-flavor neutrino fluence from the direction of the IceCube candidates are derived. The nonobservation of time and space correlation within the time window of 0.1 days with the two most energetic IceCube events constrains the spectral index of a possible point-like transient neutrino source to be harder than -2.3 and -2.4 for each event, respectively.
- Published
- 2019
39. The Effect of Nonpersonnel Resources on Educational Outcomes: Evidence from South Africa
- Abstract
Little credible evidence exists on the effect of material resources on school quality in developing countries. This paper studies the impact of non-personnel funding on educational outcomes exploiting the peculiar way in which these resources are allocated in South Africa. Government funding follows quintiles constructed on the basis of school poverty scores. This creates discrete jumps in the allocation of funding and we use a regression discontinuity approach to analyze its effects on school outcomes at the end of high school. Our results show a small but positive effect of resources on student throughput during the last years of high school, and on the number of students writing the matriculation exam. However, additional resources do not translate into a higher number of successful exams, leading to an overall negative effect on pass rates. We suggest that these findings may have to do with schools reacting to the per-pupil nature of funding
- Published
- 2019
40. Is it ritual? Or is it children?: Distinguishing consequences of play from ritual actions in the prehistoric archaeological record
- Abstract
This paper identifies a significant interpretive issue for prehistoric archaeology: distinguishing adult ritual actions from the activities of children in the archaeological record. Through examining ethnographic accounts of recent hunter-gatherer children and reconsidering archaeological patterns and assemblages in light of these data, we explore how the results of children’s play can be—and likely have been—misinterpreted by archaeologists as evidence for adult ritual behavior in prehistoric contexts. Given that children were a significant component of past hunter-gatherer (and other) societies, the fact that the material components of their activities overlap tremendously with items used in adult rituals must be routinely considered by archaeologists if we are to reconstruct robust understandings of past peoples all over the globe.
- Published
- 2018
41. Sedentary optics: Static anti-trafficking and mobile victims
- Abstract
Postpanopticism and the “mobility turn” within the social sciences provide important challenges to territorial constructs, such as Foucauldian panopticism and James Scott’s notion of the synoptic. According to these critiques, migration and mobility exemplify social practice that cannot easily be grasped through grid-like technologies of governing. In this paper, I take issue with these arguments by illuminating notable static and territorial ways in which migration governance is enacted. By examining anti-trafficking programs along the Lao-Thai border, I highlight how such programs make trafficking legible through static means. I argue that such grid-making practices are central to the reproduction of these programs. Furthermore, empirical specificity is central in theorizing migration governance, because it shows us how sedentary attempts at making migration legible for policy interventions must be understood in their specific context.
- Published
- 2018
42. Labor immigration policies in high-income countries : variations across political regimes and varieties of capitalism
- Abstract
This paper analyzes how and why labor immigration policies in high-income countries vary across political regimes (democracies versus autocracies) and types of capitalism (liberal versus coordinated market economies). I investigate these policy variations using a unique data set of the characteristics of 77 labor immigration policies in 33 high-income countries. Compared with policies in democracies, labor immigration programs in autocracies are characterized by greater openness to labor immigration, more restrictions of migrants’ rights, and stronger trade-offs between openness and rights. With regard to variations across types of capitalism, I find that immigration programs in liberal market economies (LMEs) impose fewer limits on the employment conditions of migrants, but they place more restrictions on migrants’ social rights than policies in coordinated market economies. Policy trade-offs between openness and social rights are more likely to occur in LMEs with liberal welfare states than in countries with other types of welfare states.
- Published
- 2018
43. Labor immigration policies in high-income countries : variations across political regimes and varieties of capitalism
- Abstract
This paper analyzes how and why labor immigration policies in high-income countries vary across political regimes (democracies versus autocracies) and types of capitalism (liberal versus coordinated market economies). I investigate these policy variations using a unique data set of the characteristics of 77 labor immigration policies in 33 high-income countries. Compared with policies in democracies, labor immigration programs in autocracies are characterized by greater openness to labor immigration, more restrictions of migrants’ rights, and stronger trade-offs between openness and rights. With regard to variations across types of capitalism, I find that immigration programs in liberal market economies (LMEs) impose fewer limits on the employment conditions of migrants, but they place more restrictions on migrants’ social rights than policies in coordinated market economies. Policy trade-offs between openness and social rights are more likely to occur in LMEs with liberal welfare states than in countries with other types of welfare states.
- Published
- 2018
44. The breakthrough listen search for intelligent life: a wideband data recorder system for the Robert C. Byrd green bank telescope
- Abstract
The Breakthrough Listen Initiative is undertaking a comprehensive search for radio and optical signatures from extraterrestrial civilizations. An integral component of the project is the design and implementation of wide-bandwidth data recorder and signal processing systems. The capabilities of these systems, particularly at radio frequencies, directly determine survey speed; further, given a fixed observing time and spectral coverage, they determine sensitivity as well. Here, we detail the Breakthrough Listen wide-bandwidth data recording system deployed at the 100-m aperture Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope. The system digitizes up to 6 GHz of bandwidth at 8 bits for both polarizations, storing the resultant 24 GB/s of data to disk. This system is among the highest data rate baseband recording systems in use in radio astronomy. A future system expansion will double recording capacity, to achieve a total Nyquist bandwidth of 12 GHz in two polarizations. In this paper, we present details of the system architecture, along with salient configuration and disk-write optimizations used to achieve high-throughput data capture on commodity compute servers and consumer-class hard disk drives.
- Published
- 2018
45. Environmental regulation and green skills: An empirical exploration
- Abstract
This paper provides new evidence on the workplace skills most relevant in the transition toward environmentally sustainable economies. Using a novel datadriven methodology, we identify two main sets of green skills, namely, engineering skills for the design and production of technology, and managerial skills for implementing and monitoring environmental organizational practices. Exploiting exogenous geographical variation in regulatory stringency, we also evaluate the effect of environmental regulation on the demand of green skills for a panel of US metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas over the period 2006–14. The main finding is that while these changes in environmental regulation have no impact on overall employment, they create significant, if modest, gaps in the demand for some green skills, especially those related to technical and engineering work tasks
- Published
- 2018
46. On the Pleistocene Population History in the Japanese Archipelago
- Abstract
This paper provides a current understanding of human population history in the Pleistocene Japanese Archipelago, particularly with respect to the routes and timing of hunter-gatherer migrations, by incorporating multiple lines of evidence from the records of archaeology, human paleontology, and genetic studies. The human fossil remains are concentrated on the Ryukyu Islands in southwestern Japan, suggesting that there may have been a northward migration via the Ryukyu Islands. In contrast, studies of ancient mitochondrial DNA demonstrate genetic continuity among Holocene hunter-gatherer populations in the Paleo-Sakhalin-Hokkaido-Kurile Peninsula, whereas the Pleistocene genetic history is little explored. Although it is largely supported, the assumed population continuity from the Pleistocene to the Holocene inside the Japanese Archipelago is also challenged by an examination of the Paleolithic record and a comparison of the short-and long-term chronologies of the Japanese Paleolithic, implying that the Japanese Paleolithic record was created by hunter-gatherer population migrations from the north and south with substantial time lag and endemic technological invention and transformation during the Late Pleistocene.
- Published
- 2017
47. Intimate Connections: Symmetries and Conservation Laws in Quantum versus Classical Mechanics
- Abstract
In this paper, I use a number of remarks made by Eugene Wigner to defend the claim that the nature of the connection between symmetries and conservation laws is different in quantum and in classical mechanics. In particular, I provide a list of three differences that obtain between the Hilbert space formulation of quantum mechanics and the Lagrangian formulation of classical mechanics. I also show that these differences are due to the fact that conservation laws are not the only consequence that symmetries have in quantum mechanics and to the fact that, in classical mechanics, the connection between symmetries and conservation laws does not always obtain.
- Published
- 2017
48. On the Pleistocene Population History in the Japanese Archipelago
- Abstract
This paper provides a current understanding of human population history in the Pleistocene Japanese Archipelago, particularly with respect to the routes and timing of hunter-gatherer migrations, by incorporating multiple lines of evidence from the records of archaeology, human paleontology, and genetic studies. The human fossil remains are concentrated on the Ryukyu Islands in southwestern Japan, suggesting that there may have been a northward migration via the Ryukyu Islands. In contrast, studies of ancient mitochondrial DNA demonstrate genetic continuity among Holocene hunter-gatherer populations in the Paleo-Sakhalin-Hokkaido-Kurile Peninsula, whereas the Pleistocene genetic history is little explored. Although it is largely supported, the assumed population continuity from the Pleistocene to the Holocene inside the Japanese Archipelago is also challenged by an examination of the Paleolithic record and a comparison of the short-and long-term chronologies of the Japanese Paleolithic, implying that the Japanese Paleolithic record was created by hunter-gatherer population migrations from the north and south with substantial time lag and endemic technological invention and transformation during the Late Pleistocene.
- Published
- 2017
49. Optical Sky Brightness and Transparency during the Winter Season at Dome A Antarctica from the Gattini-All-Sky Camera
- Abstract
The summit of the Antarctic plateau, Dome A, is proving to be an excellent site for optical, near-infrared, and terahertz astronomical observations. Gattini is a wide-field camera installed on the PLATO instrument module as part of the Chinese-led traverse to Dome A in 2009 January. We present here the measurements of sky brightness with the Gattini ultra-large field of view ($90^\circ \times 90^\circ $) in the photometric B-, V-, and R-bands; cloud cover statistics measured during the 2009 winter season; and an estimate of the sky transparency. A cumulative probability distribution indicates that the darkest 10% of the nights at Dome A have sky brightness of S B = 22.98, S V = 21.86, and S R = 21.68 mag arcsec−2. These values were obtained during the year 2009 with minimum aurora, and they are comparable to the faintest sky brightness at Maunakea and the best sites of northern Chile. Since every filter includes strong auroral lines that effectively contaminate the sky brightness measurements, for instruments working around the auroral lines, either with custom filters or with high spectral resolution instruments, these values could be easily obtained on a more routine basis. In addition, we present example light curves for bright targets to emphasize the unprecedented observational window function available from this ground-based site. These light curves will be published in a future paper.
- Published
- 2017
50. Self-Targeting: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia
- Abstract
This paper shows that adding a small application cost to a transfer program can substantially improve targeting through self-selection. Our village-level experiment in Indonesia finds that requiring beneficiaries to apply for benefits results in substantially poorer beneficiaries than automatic enrollment using the same asset test. Marginally increasing application costs on an experimental basis does not further improve targeting. Estimating a model of the application decision implies that the results are largely driven by the nonpoor, who make up the bulk of the population, forecasting that they are unlikely to pass the asset test and therefore not bothering to apply., World Bank, Australian Agency for International Development, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation
- Published
- 2017
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