Family and parenting characteristics associated with marijuana use by Chilean adolescents

OBJECTIVE: Family involvement and several characteristics of parenting have been suggested to be protective factors for adolescent substance use. Some parenting behaviors may have stronger relationships with adolescent behavior while others may have associations with undesirable behavior among youth. Although it is generally acknowledged that families play an important role in the lives of Chilean adolescents, scant research exists on how different family and parenting factors may be associated with marijuana use and related problems in this population which has one of the highest rates of drug use in Latin America. METHODS: Using logistic regression and negative binomial regression, we examined whether a large number of family and parenting variables were associated with the possibility of Chilean adolescents ever using marijuana, and with marijuana-related problems. Analyses controlled for a number of demographic and peer-related variables. RESULTS: Controlling for other parenting and family variables, adolescent reports of parental marijuana use showed a significant and positive association with adolescent marijuana use. The multivariate models also revealed that harsh parenting by fathers was the only family variable associated with the number of marijuana-related problems youth experienced. CONCLUSION: Of all the family and parenting variables studied, perceptions of parental use of marijuana and harsh parenting by fathers were predictors for marijuana use, and the experience of marijuana-related problems. Prevention interventions need to continue emphasizing the critical socializing role that parental behavior plays in their children's development and potential use of marijuana.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109755/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109755/Accepted manuscrip

Econometrics meets sentiment : an overview of methodology and applications

The advent of massive amounts of textual, audio, and visual data has spurred the development of econometric methodology to transform qualitative sentiment data into quantitative sentiment variables, and to use those variables in an econometric analysis of the relationships between sentiment and other variables. We survey this emerging research field and refer to it as sentometrics, which is a portmanteau of sentiment and econometrics. We provide a synthesis of the relevant methodological approaches, illustrate with empirical results, and discuss useful software

Cocomo II as productivity measurement: a case study at KBC.

Software productivity is generally measured as the ratio of size over effort, whereby several techniques exist to measure the size. In this paper, we propose the innovative approach to use an estimation model as productivity measurement. This approach is applied in a case-study at the ICT-department of a bank and insurance company. The estimation model, in this case Cocomo II, is used as the norm to judge about productivity of application development projects. This research report describes on the one hand the set-up process of the measurement environment and on the other hand the measurement results. To gain insight in the measurement data, we developed a report which makes it possible to identify productivity improvement areas in the development process of the case-study company.

Mean-Covariance Structure Models in Economic Research: an Application to a Lending Program for Development in Burkina Faso

As applied development economic models become more sophisticated, they include increasingly complex conceptual variables. Due to data collection limitations, accurate proxies and continuous variables are often unavailable. A Mean and Covariance Structure model (MECOSA) is offered as a useful methodology for the incorporation of latent variables with metric, censored metric, dichotomous and ordinal indicators. As an example, conceptual variables (including borrower homogeneity and the domino effect) presented in the Besley and Coate (1995) group lending repayment game were specified as latent variables with non-metric indicators. Data from 140 groups from a group lending program in Burkina Faso were used to demonstrate the application and interpretation of MECOSA.mean and covariance structure models, latent variables, development finance, group lending

Acnowledging for spatial effects in the Portuguese housing markets

The aim of this paper is to revisit a former paper on the Portuguese housing market (1995), acknowledging for spatial effects in order to interpret housing market changes over 1995-2001. The paper will include a first section devoted to explain the differences between the OLS regression analysis and spatial econometrics, explaining the theoretical background used to develop a spatial lag model with the same database; the second section will show the misspecification problems we found when we ran the same model for after 1995-1998 databases; the third section is devoted to describe new housing literature findings relating housing market evolution with the macroeconomic cycles in Portugal; as a consequence the fourth section will include the method we developed with recent census data, to explain the evolution of the country macroeconomic cycles and the agents’ new behavioural attitudes concerning housing; finally and using spatial analysis we can understand the main changes occurred over the 1995-2001 period. The evaluation of the results contradicts some mainstream scholar and political knowledge to explain spatial inequalities between coast and interior municipalities. Complexity issues seem to be present when we consider the way different market agents make decisions on housing markets, looking this good either as a place to live or an alternative investment asset. In the concluding remarks we raise some new interesting questions for further research.

The Demand for Money in Cote d’Ivoire: Evidence from the Cointegration Test.

This paper demonstrates that there is a long run equilibrium relationship between money supply 〖(M〗_1) and its main determinants, real income (GDP) and interest rate in Cote d’Ivoire. In order to investigate long-term relationship among these variables, we use Juselius and Johansen cointegration test with time series data covering the period of 1980-2007. The results show that there is long-term relationship among these variables as well as the linkage between them. Base from this result we found that only real money balances 〖(M〗_1) has significant long -run economic impact of variations in monetary policy in Cote d’Ivoire. However, the study also revealed that the effect of aggregate 〖(M〗_2) is not so stable linking with it determinants.Cointegration test, Money demand

LANDSAT data for state planning

The results of an effort to generate and apply automated classification of LANDSAT digital data to state of Georgia problems are presented. This phase centers on an analysis of the usefulness of LANDSAT digital data to provide land-use data for transportation planning. Hall County, Georgia was chosen as a test site because it is part of a seventeen county area for which the Georgia Department of Transportation is currently designing a Transportation Planning Land-Use Simulation Model. The land-cover information derived from this study was compared to several other existing sources of land-use data for Hall County and input into this simulation. The results indicate that there is difficulty comparing LANDSAT derived land-cover information with previous land-use information since the LANDSAT data are acquired on an acre by acre grid basis while all previous land-use surveys for Hall County used land-use data on a parcel basis

UK QE reconsidered: the real economy effects of monetary policy in the UK, 1990-2012 – an empirical analysis

Empirical studies of so called ‘unconventional’ monetary policy – ‘Quantitative Easing’ or ‘Large Scale Asset Purchases’ - since the North Atlantic Financial Crisis of 2007-2009 in the United Kingdom and elsewhere have mainly focussed on the effect of policy on intermediate variables rather than the stated ultimate goal of such policies, boosting nominal demand and GDP growth. Secondly and relatedly they tend to focus on the crisis and post-crisis period, a time of extraordinary economic and financial dislocation, which creates counterfactual and attribution problems and fails to capture typical macroeconomic lag dynamics. Adopting the approach of Voutsinas and Werner (2010), and building on Lyonnet and Werner’s (2012) study of UK QE, this paper addresses these weaknesses by 1) examining the impact of various different monetary policy instruments (including Quantitative Easing) directly on UK nominal GDP growth; and 2) using a quarterly time series beginning in the first quarter of 1990 and up to the last quarter of 2012 (92 observations in total). We use the Hendry ‘general-to-specific’ econometric methodology to estimate a parsimonious model. The results show that disaggregated bank credit to the real economy (households and firms) has the most significant impact on nominal GDP growth. Changes to the central bank’s interest rate, central bank reserves, and total central bank asset ratios drop out of the model as insignificant. The policy implication it that, as private banks continue to shrink their balance sheets in the UK and Europe following the North Atlantic Crisis of 2008, central banks might wish to consider ‘unconventional’ monetary policies that more directly boost credit to the real economy and thus nominal GDP growt

Accounting students' IT applicaton skills over a 10-year period

This paper reports on the changing nature of a range of information technology (IT) application skills that students declare on entering an accounting degree over the period from 1996 to 2006. Accounting educators need to be aware of the IT skills students bring with them to university because of the implications this has for learning and teaching within the discipline and the importance of both general and specific IT skills within the practice and craft of accounting. Additionally, IT skills constitute a significant element within the portfolio of employability skills that are increasingly demanded by employers and emphasized within the overall Higher Education (HE) agenda. The analysis of students' reported IT application skills on entry to university, across a range of the most relevant areas of IT use in accounting, suggest that their skills have continued to improve over time. However, there are significant differential patterns of change through the years and within cohorts. The paper addresses the generalizability of these findings and discusses the implications of these factors for accounting educators, including the importance of recognising the differences that are potentially masked by the general increase in skills; the need for further research into the changing nature, and implications, of the gender gap in entrants' IT application skills; and the low levels of entrants' spreadsheet and database skills that are a cause for concern

Erasing Red Lines: Part 3 - Building Community Wealth

Erasing Red Lines of discrimination and inequality from our map is a monumental task that will require transformational systems-change. As community-based organizations are demonstrating the possibilities of alternative systems in specific geographic places, the questions of (1) how to bring those efforts to scale, and (2) how public policies might change in response to the lessons learned from those efforts, require greater attention. Building on the previous installment of this series, this report engages with aspects of these two questions by: (a) further unpacking some of the beliefs, values, and goals that define the current economic system; (b) summarizing and synthesizing selected ideas from the literature to describe mental models that might underwrite a “next system”; and (c) relating a public policy case study from Buffalo, NY, in which a City-run program was redesigned to be a vehicle for bottom-up community empowerment as opposed to a tool for top-down command-and-control. The case study shows how the program redesign implicitly reflects, and explicitly embraces, some of the “next system” mental models that are outlined in the report. For these and other reasons, the program has received (inter)national recognition, and researchers have argued that it might offer budding insights for how local governments can begin reorienting their existing policies away from goals of growth that support the status quo, and toward goals of equity and community wealth-building. The report concludes with a summary of the case study’s practical lessons for policy development moving forward