‘When One Door Shuts, Another Opens’: Turning Disadvantages into Opportunities

For many years, the child and family welfare and the child protection systems in the Netherlands have been under heavy criticism. Numerous experts in these fields have been advocating more intensive co-operation and a better coherence between both systems. The relationship between both fields seems to be a never ending issue for political and public discussion that has filled many bookshelves during the last decades. In spite of this, until now, the criticized relationship between the two has not fundamentally changed. In this paper, the characteristic differences between child and family welfare systems and child protection systems will be considered. Subsequently, these characteristics will be explained in light of the historical argument on which the dichotomy in the care and protection systems is based. Thereafter, attention will be paid to the harmful effects of the existing structure, in particular for multi-problem families; effects that definitely make clear that fundamental amendments in the welfare system must be found and implemented. Finally, ideas for improvement will be discussed

Psychometrics in Practice at RCEC

A broad range of topics is dealt with in this volume: from combining the psychometric generalizability and item response theories to the ideas for an integrated formative use of data-driven decision making, assessment for learning and diagnostic testing. A number of chapters pay attention to computerized (adaptive) and classification testing. Other chapters treat the quality of testing in a general sense, but for topics like maintaining standards or the testing of writing ability, the quality of testing is dealt with more specifically.\ud All authors are connected to RCEC as researchers. They present one of their current research topics and provide some insight into the focus of RCEC. The selection of the topics and the editing intends that the book should be of special interest to educational researchers, psychometricians and practitioners in educational assessment

Surface relief structures for multiple beam LO generation

Linear and binary holograms for use in heterodyne detection with 10.6 micron imaging arrays are described. The devices match the amplitude and phase of the local oscillator to the received signal and thus maximize the system signal to noise ratio and resolution and minimize heat generation on the focal plane. In both the linear and binary approaches, the holographic surface-relief pattern is coded to generate a set of local oscillator beams when the relief pattern is illuminated by a single planewave. Each beam of this set has the same amplitude shape distribution as, and is collinear with, each single element wavefront illuminating array

Aggregate Shocks or Aggregate Information? Costly Information and Business Cycle Comovement

Synchronized expansions and contractions across sectors define business cycles. Yet synchronization is puzzling because productivity across sectors exhibits weak correlation. While previous work examined production complementarity, our analysis explores complementarity in information acquisition. Because information about future productivity has a high fixed cost of production and a low marginal cost of replication, sectors can share the cost to forecast their sector-specific productivity. Sectors with common, aggregate information make highly correlated productions choices. By filtering out sector-specific shocks and transmitting aggregate ones, information markets amplify business-cycle comovement.

Nature or nurture? learning and female labor force dynamics

In the last century, the evolution of female labor force participation has been S-shaped: It rose slowly at first, then quickly, and has leveled off recently. Central to this dramatic rise has been the entry of women with young children. We argue that this S-shaped dynamic came from generations of women learning about the relative importance of nature (endowed ability) and nurture (time spent child-rearing) in determining children's outcomes. Each generation updates the beliefs of their parents, by observing others' outcomes. When few women participate in the labor force, most outcomes are uninformative about the effect of labor force participation and participation rises slowly. As information accumulates and the effects of labor force participation become less uncertain, more women participate, learning accelerates and labor force participation rises faster. As beliefs converge to the truth, participation flattens out. Learning offers a rational explanation for the differences in employment preferences that have been the focus of a large empirical literature. Survey data, wage data and participation data support our story and distinguish it from alternative explanations.Women - Employment

Aggregate shocks or aggregate information? costly information and business cycle comovement

When similar patterns of expansion and contraction are observed across sectors, we call this a business cycle. Yet explaining the similarity and synchronization of these cycles across industries remains a puzzle. Whereas output growth across industries is highly correlated, identifiable shocks, like shocks to productivity, are far less correlated. While previous work has examined complementarities in production, we propose that sectors make similar input decisions because of complementarities in information acquisition. Because information about driving forces has a high fixed cost of production and a low marginal cost of replication, it can be more efficient for firms to share the cost of discovering common shocks than to invest in uncovering detailed sectoral information. Firms basing their decisions on this common information make highly correlated production choices. This mechanism amplifies the effects of common shocks, relative to sectoral shocks.Business cycles