Family Violence and Football: The Effect of Unexpected Emotional Cues on Violent Behavior

Family violence is a pervasive and costly problem, yet there is no consensus on how to interpret the phenomenon of violence by one family member against another. Some analysts assume that violence has an instrumental role in intra-family incentives. Others argue that violent episodes represent a loss of control that the offender immediately regrets. In this paper we specify and test a behavioral model of the latter form in which the strength of an emotional cue depends on outcomes relative to expectations and individuals exhibit loss aversion. Our key hypothesis is that negative emotional cues -- benchmarked relative to a rationally expected reference point -- make a breakdown of control more likely. We test this hypothesis using data on police reports of family violence on Sundays during the professional football season. Controlling for location and time fixed effects, weather factors, the pre-game point spread, and the size of the local viewing audience, we find that upset losses by the home team (losses in games that the home team was predicted to win by more than 3 points) lead to an 8 percent increase in police reports of at-home male-on-female intimate partner violence. There is no corresponding effect on female-on-male violence. Consistent with the behavioral prediction that losses matter more than gains, upset victories by the home team have (at most) a small dampening effect on family violence. We also find that unexpected losses in highly salient or frustrating games have a 50% to 100% larger impact on rates of family violence. The evidence that payoff-irrelevant events affect the rate of family violence leads us to conclude that at least some fraction of family violence is better characterized as a breakdown of control than as an intra-family incentive system. More generally, the empirical findings suggest that gain-loss utility with a rational reference point could be a useful approach to modeling other cues and visceral influences.

RinRuby: Accessing the R Interpreter from Pure Ruby

RinRuby is a Ruby library that integrates the R interpreter in Ruby, making R's statistical routines and graphics available within Ruby. The library consists of a single Ruby script that is simple to install and does not require any special compilation or installation of R. Since the library is 100% pure Ruby, it works on a variety of operating systems, Ruby implementations, and versions of R. RinRuby's methods are simple, making for readable code. This paper describes RinRuby usage, provides comprehensive documentation, gives several examples, and discusses RinRuby's implementation. The latest version of RinRuby can be found at the project website: http://rinruby.ddahl.org/.

Family Violence and Football: The Effect of Unexpected Emotional Cues on Violent Behavior

We study the link between family violence and the emotional cues associated with wins and losses by local professional football teams. We hypothesize that the risk of violence is affected by the 'gain-loss' utility of game outcomes around a rationally expected reference point. Our empirical analysis uses police reports of violent incidents on Sundays during the professional football season. Controlling for the pre-game point spread and the size of the local viewing audience, we find that upset losses (defeats when the home team was predicted to win by 4 or more points) lead to a 10 percent increase in the rate of at-home violence by men against their wives and girlfriends. In contrast, losses when the game was expected to be close have small and insignificant effects. Upset wins (when the home team was predicted to lose) also have little impact on violence, consistent with asymmetry in the gain-loss utility function. The rise in violence after an upset loss is concentrated in a narrow time window near the end of the game, and is larger for more important games. We find no evidence for reference point updating based on the halftime score.reference dependence, gain-loss utility, intimate partner violence

Education in Pediatrics in US Colleges and Schools of Pharmacy

Objective. To determine the extent to which pediatrics is taught at US doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) programs and to characterize what is being taught and how. Methods. A 40-question online survey instrument was sent to accredited and candidate-status US PharmD programs. Results. Of 86 participating programs (67.2% response rate), 81 (94.2%) indicated that pediatric topics were included in their required classroom curricula (mean, 21.9 contact hours). A pediatric elective course was offered by 61.0% of programs (mean, 25.9 contact hours). Advanced pharmacy practice experiences (APPEs) in pediatrics were offered by 97.4% of programs, with an average of 27 students per program completing this practice experience annually. Conclusions. Almost all responding programs incorporated pediatrics in their required curricula. Pediatric elective courses provided an adequate mean number of contact hours, but 39.0% of programs did not offer an elective course. One-fifth of students completed a pediatric APPE prior to graduation. Continued expansion of pediatric-focused classroom and experiential curricula across US PharmD programs is recommended

Integration of R and Scala Using rscala

The rscala software is a simple, two-way bridge between R and Scala that allows users to leverage the unique strengths of both languages in a single project. Scala classes can be instantiated from R and Scala methods can be called. Arbitrary Scala code can be executed on-the-fly from within R and callbacks to R are supported. R packages can be developed based on Scala. Conversely, rscala also enables R code to be embedded within a Scala application. The rscala package is available from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) and has no dependencies beyond base R and the Scala standard library

Bulk Fuel Distribution Costs For Cooperatives in North Dakota

Economic-engineering cost data and a simulation model were used to analyze the impact of sales density, size of sales area, sales volume, and equipment configuration on costs of bulk fuel delivery by cooperatives. Fixed costs accounted for the majority of delivery costs regardless of sales density or size of sales area, at least for the relevant range of these variables for North Dakota. Increasing the radius of a sales area from 5 to 50 miles increased average costs only $.02 to$.09/gal. Doubling sales by either doubling the size of the sales area or the sales density reduced average total costs by nearly 50%. Thus, cooperatives with excess delivery capacity could achieve significant savings if they consolidate to operate closer to the capacity of delivery equipment. Small storage facilities (say 50,000 gal.) place little or no restriction on operations because deliveries from bulk fuel terminals are reliable and on a timely basis. Therefore, the economic rationale for building larger storage facilities would include speculation on price changes and as a response to future expectations rather than current operating requirements. The impact of the size of load-out pipes (2" or 3") and delivery trucks (2,000 or 4,000 gal.) is significant in some instances. The larger load-out pipes are most economical for high sales densities. Larger trucks have a comparative advantage in large sales areas with lower sales densities.cooperatives, fuel distribution, delivery costs, market area size, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Agribusiness,

Looking for evidence of noncompetitive behavior in Minnesota's banking industry

Banks and banking - Minnesota