Empirical Issues Research Articles

Elaboration of a model of Pavlovian learning and performance: HeiDI.

The model elaborated here adapts the influential pooled error term, first described by Wagner and Rescorla (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972; Wagner & Rescorla, 1972), to govern the formation of reciprocal associations between any pair of stimuli that are presented on a given trial. In the context of Pavlovian conditioning, these stimuli include various conditioned and unconditioned stimuli. This elaboration enables the model to deal with cue competition phenomena, including the relative validity effect, and evidence implicating separate error terms and attentional processes in association formation. The model also includes a performance rule, which provides a natural basis for (individual) variation in the strength and nature of conditioned behaviors that are observed in Pavlovian conditioning procedures. The new model thereby begins to address theoretical and empirical issues that were apparent when the Rescorla-Wagner model was first described, together with research inspired by the model over the ensuing 50 years. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Dynamics of Oil Receipts, Health Expenditure and Health Quality in Nigeria

The determinant of health status has received an extensive attention in the literature for a large number of studies across the world. Empirical studies have explored the relationship between health expenditure and health status; however, the dynamic relationship amongst oil receipts, health expenditure and health quality is an empirical issue that has received little attention particularly in Nigeria. This study investigated the tripartite relationship among oil receipts, health expenditure on health status in Nigeria using pairwise granger causality test and autoregressive distributive lag approach (ARDL). The study shows that unidirectional causality runs from oil receipts to health expenditure and health quality. There is also bidirectional causality between health expenditure and health quality. The cointegration result revealed there is long run relationship among these variables. This study also found that oil revenue and health expenditure have negative and significant impact on child mortality rate but positive and significant effect on life expectancy. This finding obviously would facilitate the policies that will improve health sector in Nigeria. Keywords: Oil Receipts, Health Expenditure, Health Quality, Granger Causality, ARDL, Nigeria DOI: 10.7176/JRDM/67-06 Publication date: July 31 st 2020

Военно-политическое сотрудничество Китая и Японии в 1904 г.

The research objectives are as follows: to reveal specificity of China’s policy in the period of the Russian-Japanese war, to identify the factors that influenced the country’s political course and to evaluate the level of the Chinese military involvement in Manchuria in 1904. The article considers the issue of the Celestial Empire’s political, military and economic assistance to Japan. The provided factual material shows clearly the influence of the Chinese military-economic policy on the course of the war in 1904. Scientific originality of the study involves analysing previously unpublished sources revealing China’s influence on the course of the Russian-Japanese war. The research findings are as follows: the author identifies implicit factors that determined the Russian military strategy and tactics and highlights additional factors that promoted the Japanese military expansion in Southeast Asia.

Middle and Later Stone Age Symbolism

Abstract The archaeological remains found in the Mumba rock-shelter in northern Tanzania – where continuous deposits span from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) to the historical period – provide a unique opportunity to study trends in technology and behavioural change of early humans. Developments in symbolic thought may be evident in the production and use of ochre pigments, beads and rock art. At this site, beads and other symbolic artefacts are represented in varying quantities through the late MSA, the Later Stone Age (LSA), Neolithic, and post Stone Age cultures. Such beaded ornaments were made from various raw materials including ostrich eggshells, stone pebbles, and arthropod shells. Ancient beading technologies, discovered at Mumba and other MSA sites across the East African region, contribute to clarifying the origin and development of representational cognition in the distant past. These artefacts also reveal components of personal identity and creative expression, whose recorded remains are patchy and infrequently discussed in Sub-Saharan Africa. From a Darwinian perspective, these archaeological finds demonstrate the empirical issue of environmentally selected human responses to local stimuli. They are remnants of the synergistic adaptation that led more generally to the broader technological innovations and behavioural changes occurring through the late Middle Stone Age and later flourishing universally during the Late Stone Age culture.

Do Farmers Adapt to Climate Change? A Macro Perspective

Greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change, and agriculture is the most vulnerable sector. Farmers do have some capability to adapt to changing weather and climate, but this capability is contingent on many factors, including geographical and socioeconomic conditions. Assessing the actual adaptation potential in the agricultural sector is therefore an empirical issue, to which this paper contributes by presenting a study examining the impacts of climate change on cereal yields in 55 developing and developed countries, using data from 1991 to 2015. The results indicate that cereal yields are affected in all regions by changes in temperature and precipitation, with significant differences in certain macro-regions in the world. In Southern Asia and Central Africa, farmers fail to adapt to climate change. The findings suggest that the world should focus more on enhancing adaptive capacity to moderate potential damage and on coping with the consequences of climate change.

Concrete Ontology: Comments on Lauer, Little, and Lohse

I share with all the other authors the view that conceptual metaphysics without close ties to science is of minimal value, that this holds for much of current work on social ontology, and that if there is value in social ontology, it has to be in contributing to empirical social science. I do perhaps disagree with all three authors about making any blanket statements concerning either instrumentalism or realism about the social sciences and their ontologies. I argue and try to show instead that if there are fruitful questions of social ontology, they are probably mostly local empirical issues raised by specific pieces of social science. Certain kinds of pluralism and instrumentalism may well make sense in some situations. I illustrate with debates over the need for psychological realism and revealed preference theory in economics.

Estimating Bargaining Power in Real Estate Pricing Models: Conceptual and Empirical Issues

The relative bargaining power of the buyer and seller is a key feature of real estate pricing models. Classic real estate studies have sought to address bargaining effects in hedonic regression models. Prior research proposes a procedure to estimate bargaining effects in hedonic regression models that depends critically on a substitution to eliminate omitted variables bias. This study shows that the proposed solution that is often cited in the real estate economics literature does not solve the omitted variables problem given that both models are merely different parameterizations of the same model, and thus produces biased estimates of bargaining power when certain property characteristics are omitted. A classic hedonic regression model of real estate prices using Corsican apartment data supports our contention, even when the assumption of bargaining power symmetry is relaxed.

Estimation with Errors in Variables via the Characteristic Function

Errors in variables in linear regression continue to be a major empirical issue in financial econometrics. We propose a method using the characteristic function (CF) to obtain estimates for linear models with errors in the variables. By assuming that the explanatory variable follows a flexible double-gamma distribution, we obtain closed-form expressions for the analytic CF of the data generating process. Through simulations, we show that our method performs well relative to existing techniques that address EIVs, including the most sophisticated CF-based techniques, the continuum generalized method of moments and nonparametric methods based on empirical cumulants. We further extend our CF technique to a multivariate setting where it continues to produce accurate estimates. We also provide guidance on implementing CF methods and apply the technique to estimating betas based on the capital asset pricing model.

Individual differences in infancy research: Letting the baby stand out from the crowd.

Within the developmental literature, there is an often unspoken tension between studies that aim to capture broad scale, fairly universal nomothetic traits, and studies that focus on mechanisms and trajectories that are idiographic and bounded to some extent by systematic individual differences. The suitability of these approaches varies as a function of the specific research interests at hand. Although the approaches are interdependent, they have often proceeded as parallel research traditions. The current review notes some of the historical and empirical bases for this divide and suggests that each tradition would benefit from incorporating both methodological approaches to iteratively examine universal (nomothetic) phenomena and the individual differences (idiographic) factors that lead to variation in development. This work may help isolate underlying causal mechanisms, better understand current functioning, and predict long-term developmental consequences. In doing so, we also highlight empirical and structural issues that need to be addressed to support this integration.

The Theory of Planned Behavior and Pro-Environmental Behavior among Students

This study aims to analyze pro-environmental behavior that is influenced by perceived behavioral control, subjective norms, environmental attitude, and intention. This research is based on the Theory of Planned Behavior. This study uses students as respondents because students are young people who are most responsible for environmental preservation both now and in the future. Higher education is also often the foundation for various student social movements when it comes to values and pro-environment associations. This research was conducted to address empirical issues related to the relationship between attitudes to pro-environmental behavior which is still being debated. This argument becomes an important basis for analyzing the level and relationship of pro-environmental behavior and students' attitudes towards environmental sustainability. The intention is the influencer's biggest for the behavior of pro-environmental students, but not all research yields the same answer depending on the behavior and case, as well as the pro-environment attitude. This study used 250 student respondents. The data analysis tool used is PLS-SEM 3.2.8. The results of this study explain that pro-environmental behavior can be influenced by perceived behavioral control and intention to behave pro-environment. Also, the results of this study showed that perceived behavioral control, subjective norms, and attitudes also affect intention.

An item‐level investigation of conceptual and empirical distinctiveness of proactivity constructs

AbstractBeyond the prior investigations that took scale‐level approaches to determining discriminant validity in proactivity constructs, the current study contributes a much‐needed interrogation of the items used to measure the behaviors in this domain. The substantive validity (SV) assessments (Study 1) showed that many of the items were judged to be inconsistent with the definition of the construct they assess or, alternatively, more consistent with the definition of a different construct in the domain. Further, exploratory factor analysis revealed the difficulty in empirically separating the four behaviors, while BiM results also advocated against the unique variance of them after accounting for a general factor (Study 2). Altogether, our results show that the items are partly to blame for the empirical redundancy issue.

Immediate and Long-Term Impacts of Africa – China Trade Intensity on Poverty Incidence in Africa

China remains a key international player in Africa, contributing much more than other countries to the trade and capital inflows to Africa. How these inflows have contributed to the prevailing poverty incidences and severity in Africa remain an empirical issue. The study investigated the short and long-run impact of Africa-China trade relations on poverty incidences using data from 1990 to 2017 for 20 African countries. To capture the linkage, the standard endogenous growth model was remodified to link poverty to trade between the selected African countries and China. The model was estimated using the dynamic and fully modified OLS techniques after establishing the time-series properties of the variables. The result of the analysis showed that the increased trade intensity between Africa and China has been beneficial to Africa and the evidence also confirmed that it is sustainable even in the long run. Export despite its meager size was a more significant contributor to poverty reduction than imports in the long run. It was also established that increased per capita income has greater significant impacts on poverty reduction in the long run. However, household final consumption expenditure was a major setback to poverty reduction in Africa both in the short and long run, Indeed, not only it aggravates poverty, it overwhelmed the alleviating potentials of both trade intensity and increase per capita income. The policy implication of the result is that better trade policy for increased exportation and increased domestic productivity in Africa are necessary for more improved efficiency of local production and increased per capita income over a long period

Shariah monitoring, agency cost and fund performance in Malaysian mutual funds

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the effect of Shariah Advisory Panel (SAP) on both the level of agency cost and fund performance against conventional corporate governance, within corporate and Shariah governance settings, between Shariah and conventional mutual fund (CMF), in an emerging economy of Malaysia during the period 2008-2015.Design/methodology/approachPanel data regression is appropriately used within corporate governance research because of empirical issues of unobserved heterogeneity effects to avoid spurious evidence. The secondary data of 172 CMFs and 80 Shariah mutual funds are gathered hand-collected from annual reports and master prospectuses for the purpose of analysis between the period 2008 and 2015, generating 2,016 fund-year observations.FindingsSAP is found to have a positive effect on agency costs. Consequently, it leads to empirical evidence that substantiates a negative and marginally significant association with fund performance when designated by accounting measure. Thus, the Shariah monitoring proxy is not a good mechanism for controlling agency costs inconsistent with performance maximizing (agency cost minimizing) outcomes.Research limitations/implicationsThe unique data set of mutual funds used in this research may restrict the generalization of the findings unless mentioned and explained specifically the data characteristics. The single proxy for Shariah monitoring could be better off by having a list of different measures.Practical implicationsThe paper highlights and suggests a consistent improvement in regulation that could be performed by policymakers pertaining to the non-trivial additional cost of implying Shariah governance.Originality/valueThis paper provides empirical evidence of the SAP effects from the view of a more complex monitoring structure in consequence of having an additional layer of governance, devoting on the trade-off between benefit and cost to shareholders.

A Critical Review of the Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis: Theoretical, Conceptual and Empirical Issues

The Unaccusative Hypothesis (Perlmutter 1978; Burzio 1986) posits that intransitive verbs are not homogenous, but can be further divided into unaccusative verbs and unergative verbs. This distinction has ever since become a topic of heated discussion not only in the field of theoretical linguistics, but also in applied linguistics. Oshita (1997, 2001) proposes the Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis to delineate the mental representation and developmental path of L2 acquisition of unaccusatives. This hypothesis suggests that unaccusatives are first misanalysed by L2 learners as unergatives and L2 learners have to undergo a three-stage process before they can truly acquire the distinction between unaccusatives and unergatives. This hypothesis also predicts a U-shaped pattern in the non-target passivization and avoidance of unaccusatives by L2 learners of different levels. This study is focused on the Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis with L2 English as its main example. It first of all gives a lengthy account of this hypothesis by introducing its framework, foundations, content and predictions. Then it points out that the Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis is theoretically innovative, but conceptually inadequate and empirically controversial. Finally, this study calls for more studies to test and improve the Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis.

Opening Space for Theoretical, Methodological, and Empirical Issues in Human-Machine Communication

This journal offers a space dedicated to theorizing, researching empirically, and discussing human-machine communication (HMC), a new form of communication with digital interlocutors that has recently developed and has imposed the urgency to be analyzed and understood. There is the need to properly address the model of this specific communication as well as the roles, objectives, functions, experiences, practices, and identities of the interlocutors involved, both human and digital. Reading these seven articles is an advantageous intellectual exercise for entering this new field of research on Human-Machine Communication. The present volume contributes substantially both at theoretical and empirical levels by outlining this new field of research, giving new perspectives and models, and inspiring new paths of research.

Production planning and project scheduling for engineer-to-order systems- case study for engineered wood production

Small companies that prefabricate parts for the construction industry in the context of engineer-to-order (ETO) systems, often encounter production issues as they usually do not systematically optimise their planning. In this paper, a production planning method for a multi-project ETO system is proposed. Four optimisation models testing combinations of three objectives are proposed. The main objective present in all models is cost reduction. The other objectives considered are minimising project finish time and minimising set-up time of a bottleneck station. The models are applied in a case study with an engineered wood production firm considering fifteen construction projects over a period of forty weeks. Two scenarios for adding long and complex projects and projects with medium length and complexity are also tested to provide a decision support tool in the project acceptance phase. This article contributes to the scientific literature by providing four production scheduling models which integrate a multi-objective production scheduling approach in a multi-project context for the prefabrication of ETO parts in construction. Furthermore, the research applies the models to a real case which highlights empirical issues that had not been entirely explored in current literature.

Women Warriors in Southeast Asia ed. by Vina A. Lanzona and Frederik Rettig

Reviewed by: Women Warriors in Southeast Asia ed. by Vina A. Lanzona and Frederik Rettig Lysa Hong Women Warriors in Southeast Asia, edited by Vina A. Lanzona and Frederik Rettig. Routledge, 2020, 332 pp, ISBN 9781138829350 With women warriors in Southeast Asia as its subject, this edited volume would immediately interest those keen to welcome new dimensions to the histories of the region and the societies and polities within it, a defining feature of which is now recognised as being the relatively egalitarian male-female relations before the colonial era. The 13 essays take the reader on an ‘almost 1,500-year-long journey’ with chronological demarcations: the ancient and early modern, the modern period, and the Security Sector Reform of the United Nations in Cambodia and East Timor. The gallery of women warriors start in the 6th century with a historical Nan Yue woman warrior who pacified her people into accepting Chinese rule (Geoff Wade), and ends in East Timor, where Jacqueline A Siapno has documented former combatant women denied funded medical care living with bullet wounds still lodged in their bodies. The chapters on the whole impress with their meticulous research. Some have debuted as conference panels organised by the editors in 2006. Others have already been published or are drawn from lengthier works. The intervening years could have led the editors to develop ideas and concepts on how women warriors could be studied, be it the reading of source materials or [End Page 241] exploring the conditions of the everyday life as warrior women, a critical term used in Barbara W Andaya’s concluding chapter. However, they have chosen to “engage with empirical issues first in order to build a solid base before moving on the more theoretical/discursive conceptual approaches”. The primacy given to the ‘empirical’ may account for some chapters reading like ‘factual’ accounts. According to her, Ann Kumar’s two 1980 articles on the prajurit estri covering the religious, social and economic life of the Javanese court, and the political dealings with the Dutch in the late 18th century remains her most popular work. Her chapter is an account based on the diary entries of a high-born warrior on the “extremely protracted chess game” played by three rulers of Javanese royal houses and the Dutch. We thus learn that the prajurit estri was also an accomplished political commentator. Readers should delve into the 1980 articles to understand the enduring popularity of her earlier articles. The emphasis on the ‘facts’ but not their production, circulation and contestation with other narratives leaves us with a handy introductory history book with room for students to critique the chapters and also to read them intertextually in terms of methodology, framework and analysis. In the Introduction, the editors paired chapters to highlight cross-country comparative possibilities. Pairing the Rani of Jhansi regiment (Tobias Rettig) with the women in the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) (Agnes Khoo) as ethnic minorities however is problematic. The Indian National Army was purely out to liberate India from British rule while the MCP joined the British to fight the Japanese. It was outlawed again after the war and fought to liberate Malaya from colonialism, laying down arms only in 1989. Agnes Khoo’s 2007 collection of oral histories with MCP women could be read alongside Vina A Lanzona’s on women in the Huk rebellion (1942–1956) on love and sex as life-stories. Teofista Valerio married her commander when she joined the Communist Party of the Philippines in World War II, without expectations that they would live as a ‘normal couple’. They were separated for decades, mainly serving long prison sentences. She heard that he had remarried and had four children but was relieved and proud to learn that she was the only woman he ever married, though he was “really married to the revolution.” Women Warriors in Southeast Asia alerts us to how much more work needs to be done on the subject. Lysa Hong Independent Scholar Copyright © 2020 Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society

Notes on the Accumulation and Utilization of Capital: Some Empirical Issues

Notes on the Accumulation and Utilization of Capital: Some Empirical Issues

Kafka und Buber: Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer und seine Satellitenwerke by Hideo Nakazawa

Reviewed by: Kafka und Buber: Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer und seine Satellitenwerke by Hideo Nakazawa Adam J. Toth Hideo Nakazawa, Kafka und Buber: Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer und seine Satellitenwerke. Munich: Iudicium Verlag, 2018. 211 pp. Following up on recent scholarship discussing Franz Kafka's literary relationship to China, Hideo Nakazawa's recent monograph Kafka und Buber: Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer und seine Satellitenwerke makes new waves by bringing Martin Buber into dialogue with the celebrated Austro-Hungarian author on this topic. The objective of this work, according to Nakazawa, is "in eigenen Werken von Kafka die Figuren zu ermitteln, die auf Buber hinzudeuten scheinen […] wie Kafka dort einige Lieblingswörter Bubers verwertete: Verantwortung, Einheit, Blut, entzweien, usw" (5). Nakazawa chooses these words in particular and employs a textual analysis that compares the usages of these words within several of Buber's works, namely Mein Weg zum Chassidismus, Der Jude und sein Judentum, and various articles published by himself and others under his editorship with Der Jude, among other works, and Kafka's "Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer" along with its "satellite-works." These texts include "Eine kaiserliche Botschaft," "Ein altes Blatt" (grouped together with "Beim Bau" in this book as Die Chinesische Mauer), "Die Gruftwächter," "Kastengeist," "Der Nachbar," "Schakale und Araber," "Ein Bericht für eine Akademie," "Die Abweisung," "Zur Frage der Gesetze," and "Die Stadwappen." Without otherwise explicitly stating this, Nakazawa argues broadly that reading Kafka alongside the Viennese cultural Zionist reveals how Kafka's writings on China show us his nuanced understanding and opinion of Jewish nationalism. The first chapter of the book explains the intellectual origins of Buber's cultural Zionism to set up how Buber's positions on Jewish identity inform Kafka's works in the subsequent chapters. Nakazawa illustrates here how Buber's cultural Zionism differs from Theodor Herzl's political Zionism and how Buber's understanding of Zionism is steeped in religious Hasidism. In the second and third chapters, Nakazawa examines "den Mauerbau und die geheimnisvolle Führerschaftim Kontext von Kafkas Auseinandersetzung mit dem Buberschen Zionismus" (70) present in Die Chinesische Mauer. Although the comparative similarities between the presence of terms like Verantwortung, Einheit, und Blut in the works of both Buber and Kafka make a compelling case for revealing Kafka's position on Zionism vis-à-vis Buber, [End Page 97] Nakazawa also keenly shows how Kafka differs from and even criticizes Buber. As Nakazawa notes, Kafka "glaubt, dass auch der Kulturzionismus unter der Führung Buber [die] Kernfrage [of Zionism] noch nicht genügend beantworte" (26), adding that "Kafkas Sicht auf den Zionismus […] ziemlich kritisch und skeptisch ist" (35). One tremendous reason for Kafka's skepticism of Zionism in any form emerges from the political and cultural uncertainties of the Great War and the crumbling of the Habsburg Empire as well as the ushering in of unknown nationalisms to replace the Empire. The issue of metaphor and Empire in Die Chinesische Mauer follows through into his fourth chapter, where he attempts to distill the symbolic relationship between China and Jewishness. Keen to argue against any claim that Kafka's writings on China could actually be about China, Nakazawa claims, "Meines Erachtens ist das Kaisertum eine ausgezeichnete Metapher, die Kafka einfiel, um das Problem des Judentums zu untersuchen und zu beschreiben" (85). Rather than giving the reader a firm, conclusive reading, however (and perhaps in truer fashion to Kafka's style of writing), the author spends much of this chapter giving us possible readings that range from textually fitting Duden's definitions of Kaisertum and Judentum, inasmuch as those definitions line up with one another in Kafka's writings on China, to interpreting those writings through an article written in Der Jude. These readings, following through in the subsequent chapters that treat the remaining works by Kafka, demonstrate the degree to which Kafka ultimately sides (or does not side) with Buber's view of Zionism mediated through religious Hasidism. These readings are especially significant to "Ein Bericht für eine Akademie" and "Schakale und Araber," as both were initially published in Der Jude under Buber's editorship. The reader learns from this book that these two stories were selected...

IMPACT OF SENSORY MARKETING STRATEGIES ON BRAND LOVE: A STUDY OF FRANCHISED FAST FOOD CHAINS IN SRI LANKA

Brands competing in food industry require a clear emphasis on sensory stimuli when developing their marketing strategies to cater different segments in the market. Sensory marketing plays a vital role in creating long standing relationship with consumers. The impact s sensory marketing on consumer behaviour is a widely examined research scope but still empirical gaps are claimed within different product scopes and market contexts. Having said, this paper investigated the research problem of how sensory marketing strategies result brand love in line with the empirical gaps and practice issues posited within the franchised fast food chains in Sri Lanka. Study was based on the international franchised fast food channels operate in Sri Lanka. Multi stage cluster sampling method was used and 200 questionnaires were distributed to the consumers of fast food chains. Quantitative method was employed with a questionnaire to execute the study in order to investigate how five sub divisions of sensory marketing strategies influence brand love. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) supported by a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) produced with AMOS-23 software version was occupied to test five hypotheses formulated in this study. Results revealed that four dimensions namely visual, olfactory, auditory & gustative factors impact brand love whilst tactile factors were not proven. Based on key findings this paper highlights the managerial implications and areas for future research directions