Relativity, rank and the utility of income

This is the accepted version of the following article: Rablen, M. D. (2008), Relativity, Rank and the Utility of Income. The Economic Journal, 118: 801–821, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0297.2008.02143.x/abstract.Relative utility has become an important concept in several disjoint areas of economics. I present a cardinal model of income utility based on the supposition that agents care about their rank in the income distribution and that utility is subject to adaptation over time. Utility levels correspond to the Leyden Individual Welfare Function while utility differences yield a version of the prospect theory value function, thereby providing a new and shared derivation of each. I offer an explanation of some long-standing paradoxes in the wellbeing literature and an insight into the links between relative comparisons and loss aversion.ESR

Sleep and the heart: interoceptive differences linked to poor experiential sleep quality in anxiety and depression

Interoception is the sense through which internal bodily changes are signalled and perceived. Individual differences in interoception are linked to emotional style and vulnerability to affective disorders. Here we test how experiential sleep quality relates to dimensions of interoceptive ability. 180 adults (42 ‘non-clinical’ individuals, 138 patients accessing mental health services) rated their quality of sleep before performing tests of cardiac interoception. Poor sleep quality was associated with lower measures of interoceptive performance accuracy, and higher self-report measures of interoceptive sensibility in individuals with diagnoses of depression and/or anxiety. Additionally, poor sleep quality was associated with impaired metacognitive interoceptive awareness in patients with diagnoses of depression (alone or with anxiety). Thus, poor sleep quality, a common early expression of psychological disorder, impacts cardiac interoceptive ability and experience across diagnoses. Sleep disruption can contribute to the expression of affective psychopathology through effects on perceptual and interpretative dimensions of bodily awareness

Running-Induced Systemic Cathepsin B Secretion Is Associated with Memory Function

Peripheral processes that mediate beneficial effects of exercise on the brain remain sparsely explored. Here, we show that a muscle secretory factor, cathepsin B (CTSB) protein, is important for the cognitive and neurogenic benefits of running. Proteomic analysis revealed elevated levels of CTSB in conditioned medium derived from skeletal muscle cell cultures treated with AMP-kinase agonist AICAR. Consistently, running increased CTSB levels in mouse gastrocnemius muscle and plasma. Furthermore, recombinant CTSB application enhanced expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and doublecortin (DCX) in adult hippocampal progenitor cells through a mechanism dependent on the multifunctional protein P11. In vivo, in CTSB knockout (KO) mice, running did not enhance adult hippocampal neurogenesis and spatial memory function. Interestingly, in Rhesus monkeys and humans, treadmill exercise elevated CTSB in plasma. In humans, changes in CTSB levels correlated with fitness and hippocampus-dependent memory function. Our findings suggest CTSB as a mediator of effects of exercise on cognition

Income distribution: Second thoughts

As a follow-up of his book on income distribution the author reformulates his version on the scarcity theory of income from productive contributions. The need to introduce into an earnings theory several job characteristics, non-cognitive as well as cognitive, and the corresponding personality traits is stressed, the latter subdivided into innate and learnable capabilities. The theory is presented in two alternative mathematical versions: one where job and person characteristics are continuous and one where they have discrete values and their frequencies assume continuous values. Although, mainly in the United States, numerous empirical inquiries have been made, job characteristics and the corresponding personal characteristics have not been included in sufficient number. I want to express my profound gratitude to Professor Robert H. Haveman, who not only published a deep-delving review article on my book Income Distribution: Analysis and Policies but also commented on an earlier text of the present article. I also owe a great debt to Professor Jan Pen who in a long series of discussions challenged a number of my concepts and figures. Finally I want to thank Dr. S. K. Kuipers for helpful comments on an earlier draft

The use of happiness research for public policy

Research on happiness tends to follow a "benevolent dictator" approach where politicians pursue people's happiness. This paper takes an antithetic approach based on the insights of public choice theory. First, we inquire how the results of happiness research may be used to improve the choice of institutions. Second, we show that the policy approach matters for the choice of research questions and the kind of knowledge happiness research aims to provide. Third, we emphasize that there is no shortcut to an optimal policy maximizing some happiness indicator or social welfare function since governments have an incentive to manipulate this indicator

Did Accelerated Filing Requirements and SOX Section 404 Affect the Timeliness of 10-K Filings?

This paper examines the effect of Sarbanes-Oxley provisions on 10-K filing delays. We find that tightened filing deadlines for accelerated and large accelerated filers are not associated with changes in the incidence of late filing. While Section 404 compliance does not affect filing timeliness for firms with effective internal controls, we find that about half the firms disclosing internal control weaknesses are late filers. As a consequence, many Section 404 material weakness firms experience negative abnormal returns around late filing notifications before filing the 10-K. Lastly, we find that market reactions to late filing notifications are more negative when management provides no meaningful explanation for the delay, consistent with managers¿ incentives to withhold bad news

Secret seducers - True tales of pimps in the red light district of Amsterdam

At the end of the 1990s, a moral panic erupted in the Netherlands about the phenomenon of what came to be known as 'loverboys'. The suspicion was that a growing number of Dutch girls were being groomed by handsome young men who employed all sorts of devious methods to prepare their girlfriends for life as a prostitute. Stories about a new generation of pimps, often of Moroccan origin, regularly appeared in the Dutch media. In this article, based on ethnographic fieldwork on pimps operating in the red-light district of Amsterdam, we describe the ways in which these young men operate and how they justify their behaviour. On the basis of empirical research we intend to present a more realistic picture of what goes on in the prostitution industry and highlight the discrepancy between what is reported in the media and what is actually happening in the prostitution sector. We also examine the background to the moral panic about loverboys and the ways in which these young men were supposedly able to induce many young girls into becoming prostitutes