Reference Dependent Financial Satisfaction over the Course of the Celtic Tiger: A Panel Analysis Utilising the Living in Ireland Survey 1994-2001

The link between income and subjective satisfaction with one’s financial situation is explored in this paper using a panel analysis of 4,000 individuals tracked through the course of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ boom period, 1994-2001. The impact of the level of individual and household income, the time-path of income and the impact of reference group income on financial satisfaction are all considered. To the extent that income influences financial satisfaction, there is strong evidence from this paper that household income has a greater effect on financial satisfaction than individual income. There is also evidence that changes in income have an independent effect on financial satisfaction with the time derivative of income entering positively in the financial satisfaction equation. Thus, our paper gives further evidence to support the hypothesis that individuals process changes as well as absolute levels of income. While reference group income has a negative effect at the start of the period it has no effect at the end.

Reference Dependent Financial Satification over the Course of the Celtic Tiger : A Panel Analysis Utilising the Living in Ireland Survey 1994-2001

well-being, financial satisfaction, reference-dependency.

Who Supports Syrians? The Relative Importance of Religion, Partisanship, and Partisan News

Who supports allowing Syrian refugees into the United States? As a candidate, Donald Trump clearly opposed doing so. In contrast, religious leaders across the broad spectrum of religious traditions in the United States have drawn on sacred texts to call their people to action in response to the Syrian refugee crisis. Many explicitly ask the government to resettle Syrian refugees in the United States. Thus, many Republicans may have experienced cross-cutting pressures. Analyses of three surveys from 2015 and 2016 found that party identification, ideology, support for Trump, partisan-news consumption, religious-service attendance, age, and education predicted support for bringing Syrian refugees to the United States. Overall, the partisan and ideological variables were far more predictive of attitudes than religious variables. These results raise important questions about refugee politics and contexts in which religious forces conflict with partisan and ideological forces

Case study to assess the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy and psychotropic medications as a treatment approach for an adult male with major depressive disorder and opioid dependence

The purpose of this case study was to assess the treatment effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) on a client with a dual diagnosis of major depressive disorder and opioid dependence. The client exhibited severe depressive symptoms along with symptoms of opioid dependence. The client\u27s depressive disorder was the primary diagnosis on Axis I due to onset of symptoms beginning before substance use began. A review of major studies evaluating Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with depressive disorders and substance dependence was conducted. Studies which evaluated the use of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as a treatment modality alone and coupled with psychotropic medications were reviewed along with studies comparing CBT with and without medications against other types of treatment modalities. The client received treatment at a community based program using CBT techniques. The Beck\u27s Depression Inventory (BDI) was administered before and after treatment. Results indicated that CBT was effective treatment for the client in the study with a diagnosis of depression and opioid dependence. Self report and follow-up contacts at three weeks, eight weeks and 14 weeks after discharge also supported the conclusion that the treatment was effective. The need for more research in the area of dual diagnosed individuals and CBT is discussed

Competing epidemics on complex networks

Human diseases spread over networks of contacts between individuals and a substantial body of recent research has focused on the dynamics of the spreading process. Here we examine a model of two competing diseases spreading over the same network at the same time, where infection with either disease gives an individual subsequent immunity to both. Using a combination of analytic and numerical methods, we derive the phase diagram of the system and estimates of the expected final numbers of individuals infected with each disease. The system shows an unusual dynamical transition between dominance of one disease and dominance of the other as a function of their relative rates of growth. Close to this transition the final outcomes show strong dependence on stochastic fluctuations in the early stages of growth, dependence that decreases with increasing network size, but does so sufficiently slowly as still to be easily visible in systems with millions or billions of individuals. In most regions of the phase diagram we find that one disease eventually dominates while the other reaches only a vanishing fraction of the network, but the system also displays a significant coexistence regime in which both diseases reach epidemic proportions and infect an extensive fraction of the network.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

The Presidency and Political Equality

When black Americans and white Americans want the president to do different things, who wins? When low-income earners prefer different government action than do middle and high-income earners, whose preferences are reflected in presidential behavior? Recent studies show that congressional behavior often most closely follows the preferences of the white and the wealthy, but we know relatively little about presidential behavior. Since the president and Congress make policy together, it is important to understand the extent of political equality in presidential behavior. We examine the degree to which presidents have provided equal representation to these groups over the past four decades. We compare the preferences of these groups for federal spending in various budget domains to presidents’ subsequent budget proposals in those domains from 1974 to 2010. Over this period, presidents’ proposals aligned more with the preferences of whites and high-income earners. However, Republican presidents are driving this overall pattern. Democratic presidents represent racial and income groups equally, but Republicans’ proposals are much more consistent with the spending preferences of whites and high-income earners. This pattern of representation reflects the composition of the president\u27s party coalition and the spending preferences of groups within the party coalition. Who gets what they want from government? That is, whose preferences for government policy are best reflected in the policies government creates? Sidney Verba (2003, 663) argued “the equal consideration of the preferences and interests of all citizens” is “one of the bedrock principles in a democracy.” However, several recent studies of U.S. politics find that the wealthy and whites are more likely than the poor and racial/ethnic minorities to see their preferences reflected in government behavior and policy (e.g., Bartels 2008; Ellis 2012; Flavin 2012; Gilens 2012; Gilens and Page 2014; Griffin and Newman 2008; Jacobs and Page 2005;). Additional works qualify, critique, and complicate these studies (e.g., Bhatti and Erikson 2011; Soroka and Wlezien 2008;), finding that the degree of inequality in political outcomes varies across political contexts (e.g., Brunner, Ross, and Washington 2013; Ellis 2013;; Rigby and Wright 2011, 2013;), though few have argued that the American political system reflects the preferences of various income and racial groups equally. The majority of this literature examines the content of public policy or congressional behavior. We know much less about presidential representation of income and racial/ethnic groups. Although presidency scholars have made major strides in understanding when and how much presidential behavior mirrors public preferences (e.g., Canes-Wrone and Shotts 2004; Cohen 1997; Druckman and Jacobs 2011; Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson 2002, Rottinghaus 2006;), according to Druckman and Jacobs (2009), we have just begun to appreciate which groups’ preferences presidents represent best. In this study, we seek a more complete understanding of whose preferences are best represented in presidential behavior. In doing so, we build on and contribute to a growing literature that examines inequality in political representation more broadly (e.g., Enns and Wlezien 2011). It is not a foregone conclusion that the patterns of inequality seen elsewhere in the American political system would also characterize the presidency. The president serves as a national leader, rather a representative of a smaller, sometimes more homogeneous, constituency like members of Congress (Baker 2008), which can generate different incentives to represent specific groups. Moreover, presidential and congressional representation may differ given institutional differences in method of election, term length, term limits, and citizens’ different expectations of these elected officials. For example, legislators who are retiring, thus free from electoral pressures to represent their constituents’ preferences, behave differently than legislators running for reelection (e.g., Rothenberg and Sanders 2007). Since second-term presidents spend half their tenure in office without the possibility of reelection, unlike the majority of members of Congress, presidential behavior may differ from congressional behavior. If so, minority representation may vary significantly across the branches of government. In the particular policy arena we study here, presidents’ proposals for federal government spending, the president and members of Congress may often have different incentives for representation. Presumably, the public holds the president more accountable than members of Congress for the composition of the budget simply because the president proposes an entire budget. Members of Congress can request additional spending on areas of particular ideological or economic interest to their constituents, but members do not propose entire budgets, meaning they can often make requests without the hard choices the president must make: a dollar increase in one program means a dollar decrease in another or the president must bear the political cost of a bloated budget. Moreover, it is important to examine equality of representation in the context of the presidency because the president plays the strongest and most direct role in representing citizens’ preferences of any single actor in the American political system. A Member of Congress may represent her constituents well or poorly, but in the end, she is but one of 435 or 100 members in a single chamber of a bicameral institution that comprises one of three branches of government. A constituent may be especially well represented by her member of the House, but that member has limited influence on the outputs of the House, much less the ultimate output of the policymaking process involving the House, Senate, and president. Thus, a connection between public preferences and policy outputs is important (Gilens 2012), but does not tell us much about the behavior of any specific individuals. In contrast, the president is a single actor who can often take direct action (Howell 2003). Of course, the president often relies heavily on others in the administration, but within the executive branch, the president\u27s opinion is decisive, unlike individual lawmakers’. Thus, within the American system, the president has the most power to expand, shrink, or even reverse the patterns of unequal congressional representation. Consequently, the presidency should be of great significance to representation scholars. We examine the degree to which presidents have provided equal representation to racial groups (blacks and whites—unfortunately our data source did not identify Latinos for most of our period of study) and to income groups (low-, middle-, and high-income earners) over the past four decades. We observe whether these groups prefer government spending to increase, decrease, or remain about the same. We then compare group preferences to presidents’ subsequent budget proposals to see whether presidential behavior matches group preferences. Doing so enables us to see, for example, how often presidents propose a spending increase in a domain when a group prefers more spending in that policy area. Analyzing data from 1974 to 2010, we find that presidents’ proposals match whites’ and high-income earners’ preferences significantly more often than the preferences of African Americans and low-income earners. In particular, Republican presidents’ proposals are more often congruent with the spending preferences of whites and the wealthy. Democrats, on the other hand, tend to match the groups’ preferences equally. This pattern of presidential representation reflects the composition of current party coalitions. That is, presidents act most consistently with the preferences of the largest groups in their party coalitions, leading to different patterns of representation for Democrats and Republicans