A Closer Look at Relational Aggression

This research examines relational aggression and its increasing prominence in our culture today, specifically with school-aged children. Relational aggression, behaviors that inflict harm through manipulating, damaging, or controlling of relationships, has been proven to be an issue, but it is not easily recognized. Research has found a majority of schools do not mention relational aggression in their bullying contracts. Rather, schools focus on physical aggression, which leads to uneducated students and adults on the issue examined. This research discusses the definition, affects, causes, and needed preventions of relational aggression. Studies found that many aspects of an individual’s life work together to create relationally aggressive tendencies. This research looks at those aspects closely in attempts to educate and implement prevention plans for school-aged children

Output Fluctuations in the G-7: An Unobserved Components Approach

This paper proposes a multivariate unobserved components model to simultaneously decompose the real GDP for each of the G-7 countries into their respective trend and cycle components. In contrast to previous literature, our model allows for explicit correlation between all the contemporaneous trend and cycle shocks. This approach thus allows us to distinguish cross-country correlation driven by shared trend shocks from correlation between the cycle shocks. We find that fluctuations in output are primarily due to permanent shocks for all of the G-7 countries. We also find that common restrictions on the correlations between trend and cycle shocks are rejected by the data. With regards to cross-country relationships, we find some countries share more transitory shocks, such as Canada and the US, whereas others, such as Germany and France, share more permanent shocks.

Examining the Quality of Early GDP Component Estimates

In this paper we examine the quality of the initial estimates of headline GDP and 10 major components of both real and nominal U.S. GDP. We ask a number of questions about various characteristics of the differences between the initial estimates available one month after the end of the quarter to the estimates available three months after the end of the quarter. Do the first estimates have the same directional signs as the later numbers? Are the original numbers unbiased estimates of the later figures? Are any observed biases related to the state of the economy? Finally, we determine whether there is a significant difference between the vector of the 30 day estimates of the 10 major components and the vector of the 90 day estimates of the same components. We conclude that, despite the existence of some bias, under most circumstances, an analyst could use the early data to obtain a realistic picture of what had happened in the economy in the previous quarter.Flash Estimates, Data Revisions, GDP Components, Statistical Tests, Business Cycles

Differences in Early GDP Component Estimates Between Recession and Expansion

In this paper we examine the quality of the initial estimates of the components of both real and nominal U.S. GDP. We introduce a number of new statistics for measuring the magnitude of changes in the components from the initial estimates available one month after the end of the quarter to the estimates available 3 months after the end of the quarter. We further specifically investigate the potential role of changes in the state of the economy for these changes. Our analysis shows that the early data generally reflected the composition of the changes in GDP that was observed in the later data. Thus, under most circumstances, an analyst could use the early data to obtain a realistic picture of what had happened in the economy in the previous quarter. However, the differences in the composition of the vectors of the two vintages were larger during recessions than in expansions. Unfortunately, it is in those periods when accurate information is most vital for forecasting.Flash Estimates, Data Revisions, GDP Components, Statistical Tests, Business Cycles

New Distributional Record for \u3ci\u3eBalcha Indica\u3c/i\u3e (Hymenoptera: Eupelmidae) in Eastern West Virginia Discovered During Emerald Ash Borer Parasitoid Recovery Surveys

Between 2010 and 2012, approximately 6,300 Spathius agrili Yang (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) and 9,500 Tetrastichus planipennisi Yang (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae) parasitoids were released for biological control of the invasive emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire, at Cacapon State Park and the Cool Front Development in Morgan County, West Virginia. The invasive beetle was first detected there in 2009, and extensive ash mortality is currently occurring. We conducted parasitoid recovery surveys in 2013 but did not recover either of the released parasitoid species. However, we did rear Balcha indica Mani and Kaul (Hymenoptera: Eupelmidae), which is native to Asia and is a documented parasitoid of A. planipennis, from bolts infested with A. planipennis. This is the first documented record of B. indica for West Virginia

A Likelihood Ratio Test of Stationarity Based on a Correlated Unobserved Components Model

We propose a likelihood ratio (LR) test of stationarity based on a widely-used correlated unobserved components model. We verify the asymptotic distribution and consistency of the LR test, while a bootstrap version of the test is at least first-order accurate. Given empirically-relevant processes estimated from macroeconomic data, Monte Carlo analysis reveals that the bootstrap version of the LR test has better small-sample size control and higher power than commonly used bootstrap Lagrange multiplier (LM) tests, even when the correct parametric structure is specified for the LM test. A key feature of our proposed LR test is its allowance for correlation between permanent and transitory movements in the time series under consideration, which increases the power of the test given the apparent presence of non-zero correlations for many macroeconomic variables. Based on the bootstrap LR test, and in some cases contrary to the bootstrap LM tests, we can reject trend stationarity for U.S. real GDP, the unemployment rate, consumer prices, and payroll employment in favor of nonstationary processes with volatile stochastic trends.Stationarity Test, Likelihood Ratio, Unobserved Components, Parametric Bootstrap, Monte Carlo Simulation, Small-Sample Inference

Dynamic Cloud Network Control under Reconfiguration Delay and Cost

Network virtualization and programmability allow operators to deploy a wide range of services over a common physical infrastructure and elastically allocate cloud and network resources according to changing requirements. While the elastic reconfiguration of virtual resources enables dynamically scaling capacity in order to support service demands with minimal operational cost, reconfiguration operations make resources unavailable during a given time period and may incur additional cost. In this paper, we address the dynamic cloud network control problem under non-negligible reconfiguration delay and cost. We show that while the capacity region remains unchanged regardless of the reconfiguration delay/cost values, a reconfiguration-agnostic policy may fail to guarantee throughput-optimality and minimum cost under nonzero reconfiguration delay/cost. We then present an adaptive dynamic cloud network control policy that allows network nodes to make local flow scheduling and resource allocation decisions while controlling the frequency of reconfiguration in order to support any input rate in the capacity region and achieve arbitrarily close to minimum cost for any finite reconfiguration delay/cost values.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure

Searching for better prospects: endogenizing falling job tenure and private pension coverage

Recent declines in job tenure have coincided with a shift away from traditional defined benefit (DB) pensions, which reward long tenure. New evidence also points to an increase in job-to-job movements by workers, and we document gains in relative wages of job-to-job movers over a similar period. We develop a search model in which firms may offer tenure-based contracts like DB pensions to reduce the incidence of costly on-the-job search by workers. Either reduced search costs or an increase in the probability of job matches can, under fairly general conditions, lower the value of deterring search and the use of DB pensions.Pensions ; Unemployment