The Economic Consequences of the Decline of Marriage

The institution of marriage has served to funnel economic resources from fathers to children. Its continued decline in the countries of the developed world threatens the adequacy of the economic support of human reproduction, now increasingly provided by women. Its decline is also probably implicated in the low birth rates now being registered. The rise of cohabitation has not prevented a rise in the proportion of lone parents, and their numbers are growing rapidly. The children of lone parents are relatively deprived, both in terms of income and adults’ time for child care and housekeeping. Government-supported programs in the United States aimed at rescuing marriage have not been proven effective. Ways need to be explored to get a return of men’s economic support for reproduction. But the most likely way of repairing at least some of the damage to children is a big increase in government provision to the entire population of goods and services that children need: health care, high-quality education, child care, decent housing, university education. This will require in most countries a big rise in taxes and government expenditure.

Book Review: Cut Loose: (Mostly) Older Women Talk About the End of (Mostly) Long-Term Relationships

Review of Cut Loose: (Mostly) Older Women Talk About the End of (Mostly) Long-Term Relationships, edited by Nan Bauer-Magli

Correcting for the bias due to expression specificity improves the estimation of constrained evolution of expression between mouse and human

Motivation: Comparative analyses of gene expression data from different species have become an important component of the study of molecular evolution. Thus methods are needed to estimate evolutionary distances between expression profiles, as well as a neutral reference to estimate selective pressure. Divergence between expression profiles of homologous genes is often calculated with Pearson's or Euclidean distance. Neutral divergence is usually inferred from randomized data. Despite being widely used, neither of these two steps has been well studied. Here, we analyze these methods formally and on real data, highlight their limitations and propose improvements. Results: It has been demonstrated that Pearson's distance, in contrast to Euclidean distance, leads to underestimation of the expression similarity between homologous genes with a conserved uniform pattern of expression. Here, we first extend this study to genes with conserved, but specific pattern of expression. Surprisingly, we find that both Pearson's and Euclidean distances used as a measure of expression similarity between genes depend on the expression specificity of those genes. We also show that the Euclidean distance depends strongly on data normalization. Next, we show that the randomization procedure that is widely used to estimate the rate of neutral evolution is biased when broadly expressed genes are abundant in the data. To overcome this problem, we propose a novel randomization procedure that is unbiased with respect to expression profiles present in the datasets. Applying our method to the mouse and human gene expression data suggests significant gene expression conservation between these species. Contact: [email protected]; [email protected] Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics onlin

Correcting for the bias due to expression specificity improves the estimation of constrained evolution of expression between mouse and human

Motivation: Comparative analyses of gene expression data from different species have become an important component of the study of molecular evolution. Thus methods are needed to estimate evolutionary distances between expression profiles, as well as a neutral reference to estimate selective pressure. Divergence between expression profiles of homologous genes is often calculated with Pearson's or Euclidean distance. Neutral divergence is usually inferred from randomized data. Despite being widely used, neither of these two steps has been well studied. Here, we analyze these methods formally and on real data, highlight their limitations and propose improvements

Entrepreneurs’ Actions and Venture Success: A Structured Literature Review and Suggestions for Future Research

It is the actions of entrepreneurs that give rise to new organizations. However, a comprehensive understanding of what entrepreneurs do and what actually leads to venture success is currently lacking. To summarize existing research, we conduct a structured literature review including 59 empirical articles linking entrepreneurs’ behavior to venture success. We define "actions" as discrete units of "doing" that can—potentially be observed by others and "success" as firm-level success measured by firm status (e.g., firm survival) or performance (e.g., sales). More than half of the included articles are based on data from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED), but there are also important "stand-alone" studies. We analyze the "what," the "how," the "how much," and the "when" of entrepreneurs' actions that lead to venture success. In addition, we integrate the view of entrepreneurship as an evolutionary process. The analysis reveals that studies typically analyze "what" entrepreneurs but less often "when" and "how much" and rarely "why," "how," and "what else" they do. Based on our findings, we develop a six-point research agenda. Specifically, we argue that future research should strive to understand the motives behind entrepreneurs’ actions, consider how entrepreneurs conduct activities, and what kind of business ideas they are working on. Also, applying alternative measurements and capturing a more complete picture of what entrepreneurs do when starting a business but also aside from their venturing efforts might contribute to a better understanding of the relationship to venture success

Expertise in der Prognose von Kriminalität: Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel der polizeilichen Einschätzung zukünftigen Verhaltens junger Straftäter

In der vorgelegten Arbeit wird die Frage untersucht, inwiefern Jugendsachbearbeiter/-innen bei der Polizei als Experten der Kriminalprognose gelten können. Im Rahmen von Mehrfach- und Intensivtäterkonzepten obliegt ihnen u.a. die Aufgabe einzuschätzen, wer sich für ein solches Konzept eignet und ob eine sogenannte Negativprognose vorliegt. Es wird vermutet, dass sich mit zunehmender Diensterfahrung die Fähigkeit eine solche Einschätzung zu treffen, zu einer Expertise wandelt. Die theoretische Grundlage, um diese vermutete Expertise zu untersuchen, bieten kognitionspsychologische Modelle. Auf Basis dieser Modelle können mehrere Merkmale des Informationsverarbeitungsprozesses identifiziert werden, welcher der Einschätzung des Kriminalitätsrisikos zugrunde liegt. Diese Merkmale betreffen die Gewichtung von Fallinformationen im Abwägungsprozess, die Anfälligkeit für kognitive Urteilstendenzen sowie Strategien bei der Informationssuche und -integration. Die Befunde lassen vermuten, dass sich mit zunehmender Erfahrung als Jugendsachbearbeiter/-in eine Expertise entwickelt. Diese Expertise ließ sich in dieser Arbeit zwar noch nicht anhand einer gesteigerten Validität der Risikoeinschätzung festmachen, jedoch an bestimmten Merkmalen der kognitiven Prozesse und Strukturen, welche im Allgemeinen als Indikatoren für Expertise gewertet werden. Hieraus können wiederum Implikationen für die Praxis der polizeilichen Kriminalprognose abgeleitet werden, um die Expertiseentwicklung der Jugendsachbearbeiter/-innen bestmöglich zu fördern

Svéd típusú jóléti állam, vagy alapjövedelem – melyik élvezzen prioritást?

Az államilag biztosított meritokratikus javak és szűken célzott pénzbeli ellátások elsőbbséget élveznek a nagy univerzális pénzbeli juttatásokkal szemben. A svéd költségvetés vizsgálata megmutatja, hogy a fejlett országoknak nincs mindkettőre elegendő adóztatási kapacitásuk. A pénzbeli ellátásokkal együtt járó, egyéb problémák közé tartoznak a fizetett munka végzésének ellenösztönzése, az adófizető kapacitás csökkenése és a nemi egyenlőségre gyakorolt kedvezőtlen hatások. A jóléti állam felépítése után a termelékenység növekedése a nemzeti költségvetésben fokozatosan teret nyithat az univerzális pénzbeli ellátások számára