Idiosyncratic Conditions Research Articles

On the Role of Sectoral and National Components in the Wage Bargaining Process

This paper provides an empirical analysis on the determination of wages at the sectoral level in main industrial economies. Nominal wages are bargained between labour unions and employers in imperfect competitive markets, where spillovers across sectors might occur. Using a principal component approach, sectoral wage growth rates are separated into common and idiosyncratic components. This defines the relative role of national and sector specific conditions in the wage determination process. The common component is highly relevant especially in continental Europe, and is more visible for manufacturing than for services sectors. It mainly reflects national inflation and productivity growth, while labour market tightness is almost negligible. The weight of the macroeconomic environment has declined in recent years. Wage growth tends to be more in line with idiosyncratic conditions like sectoral productivity and prices, probably due to advances in the globalization of markets.

Optimal Sticky Prices under Rational Inattention

This paper presents a model in which price setting firms decide what to pay attention to, subject to a constraint on information flow. When idiosyncratic conditions are more variable or more important than aggregate conditions, firms pay more attention to idiosyncratic conditions than to aggregate conditions. When we calibrate the model to match the large average absolute size of price changes observed in micro data, prices react fast and by large amounts to idiosyncratic shocks, but only slowly and by small amounts to nominal shocks. Nominal shocks have strong and persistent real effects. (JEL D21, D83, E31, E52)

Optimal Sticky Prices under Rational Inattention

This paper presents a model in which price setting firms optimally decide what to pay attention to, subject to a constraint on information flow. When idiosyncratic conditions are more variable or more important than aggregate conditions, firms pay more attention to idiosyncratic conditions than to aggregate conditions. When we calibrate the model to match the large average absolute size of price changes observed in micro data, prices react fast and by large amounts to idiosyncratic shocks, but prices react only slowly and by small amounts to nominal shocks. Nominal shocks have strong and persistent real effects. We use the model to investigate how the optimal allocation of attention and the dynamics of prices depend on the firms' environment.

Fair Treatment in a Divided Society: A Bottom‐up Assessment of Bureaucratic Encounters in Latvia

In real‐world bureaucratic encounters the Weberian goal of perfect impersonal administration is not completely attained and unfairness sometimes results. Theories of bias attribute unfairness to social characteristics such as income, education, ethnicity, and gender. A random theory characterizes unfairness as the result of idiosyncratic conditions that give everyone an equal probability of being treated unfairly regardless of their social characteristics. In Latvia, bias would be expected on grounds of ethnicity as well as social characteristics, since its population is divided politically by citizenship, language, and ethnicity as well as socioeconomic characteristics. Survey data from the New Baltic Barometer shows that a majority of both Latvians and Russians expect fair treatment in bureaucratic encounters and multivariate statistical analysis confirms the random hypothesis. Insofar as unfair treatment occurs it tends to be distributed according to idiosyncratic circumstances rather than being the systematic fate of members of a particular social group. The evidence indicates that the professional norms and training of service deliverers are more important in bureaucratic encounters than individual attributes of claimants, even in a clearly divided society.

Investigation into the Multidimensional Genetic Basis of Drug-Induced Stevens–Johnson Syndrome and Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis

Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS) and toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN) are rare severe blistering skin diseases, which are mainly caused by drugs. The two idiosyncratic conditions are distinguished on the basis of the degree of blistering, possibly representing diseases at different ends of the same spectrum. A genetic predisposition has been postulated. We have retrospectively identified a heterogeneous group of patients with SJS and TEN (n = 73 cases, 141 matched controls) induced by a number of marketed drugs and evaluated effector candidate genetic predisposition. We have used a multivariate genetic analysis method for the first time to handle the heterogeneity of clinical presentation, drug etiology, ethnicity and gender in these adverse events. Our results show that predisposition varied according to ethnicity. There was a correlation for SJS with HLA-B*44, DRB1*07 and with the MHC ancestral 57.1 haplotype (and its constituents) in subjects who self-reported as Caucasians, which did not differ with gender. The HLA-DRB and -DRQ genetic predisposition to SJS seemed to be distinct from that of TEN, but further work is needed for both conditions to identify the causal variants. No conclusion concerning correlations with different drugs could be made because of small numbers in each drug group. This study stresses the importance of accurate clinical phenotyping, exemplifies a novel analysis method to dissect complicated samples and calls for collaborative prospective studies.

The Idiosyncratic Fit Heuristic: Effort Advantage as a Determinant of Consumer Response to Loyalty Programs

Over the past few years, customer relationship management and loyalty programs (LPs) have been widely adopted by companies and have received a great deal of attention from marketers, consultants, and, to a lesser degree, academics. In this research, the authors examine the effect of the level of effort required to obtain an LP reward on consumers' perception of the LP's attractiveness. The authors propose that in certain conditions, increasing program requirements can enhance consumers' likelihood of joining the program, thus leading consumers to prefer a dominated option. Specifically, the authors hypothesize that consumers often evaluate LPs on the basis of their individual effort to obtain the reward relative to the relevant reference effort (e.g., the effort of typical other consumers). When consumers believe they have an effort advantage over typical others (i.e., an idiosyncratic fit with the LP), higher program requirements magnify this perception of advantage and can therefore increase the overall perceived value of the program. The authors support this proposition in a series of studies in which the perceived idiosyncratic fit was manipulated either by reducing the individual effort or by raising the reference effort. The authors' findings also indicate that (1) idiosyncratic fit considerations are elicited spontaneously, (2) idiosyncratic fit mediates the effect of effort on consumer response to LPs, and (3) an alternative account for the results based on signaling is not supported. The authors conclude that the findings are part of a broader phenomenon, which they term the “idiosyncratic fit heuristic,” whereby a key factor that affects consumers' response to marketing programs and promotional offers is the perceived relative advantage or fit with consumers' idiosyncratic conditions and preferences.

A cognitive dissonance interpretation of consistencies and inconsistencies in environmentally responsible behavior

The issue of consistency and inconsistency in environmentally responsible behavior (ERB), as reflected in the correlations between different ERBs, is discussed in the light of social-psychological theories suggesting that most people desire to behave consistently. It is argued that except in cases where different ERBs are substitutes or at least one of them is totally determined by idiosyncratic conditions the desire to behave consistently should lead to ERBs being positively correlated. However, the correlation may be attenuated by the influence of idiosyncratic conditions (considered “noise” in this context) and measurement error and it is moderated by perceived dissimilarity between the behaviors and by the (moral) importance of behaving in a responsible way towards the environment. These propositions are tested (and confirmed) by means of a mall-intercept survey of ordinary Danish shoppers. Implications for the promotion of a generalized ERB pattern are discussed.

"My Body, This Paper, This Fire"

In a lecture from 1978, Foucault suggested that modern reflection on the art of government arose out of a spirit of resistance to practices of early state formation in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: not that critics refused government altogether, but that they were confronted with "a perpetual question . . .'how not to be governed like that, by that, in the name of those principles, with such and such an objective in mind and by means of such procedures, not like that, not for that, not by them'" (1997, 28). The primacy of resistance, epistemological and political, is what links Foucault and Kant in their best moments as in their worst. It strikes me as ironic, therefore, that Foucault is criticized for making inappropriate rhetorical appeals to emotion rather than seeking a dispassionate rational justification for his political perspective-at the same time as he is accused of denying the moral and emotional significance of subjectivity. What brings his critics together is an assumption that emotion, whether morally troubling or morally motivating, is a property of more or less identical subjects, rather than a product of individualizing power relations that cultivate the authority to act or the obligation to accept others' direction. Fraser (1989, 42-43), Habermas (1990, 282-84), Dews (1987), and Hartsock (1989), among others, have criticized Foucault for refusing to ground his histories of the human sciences and his political analyses in the sort of epistemologically and/or normatively universalist frameworks we find in Kant. On the one hand, they contend, Foucault makes normative suggestions about the injustice of certain social practices (past and present) through rhetorical presentation rather than argument, while denying reason's ability to establish the truth behind rhetoric. On the other hand, Foucault's attempt to historicize the subject of knowledge and ethics seems to deny the normative significance of individual emotion and judgment, including his own, thereby "aestheticising" morality.1 For example, Dews (1987) and Levin (1989) have protested that Foucault's account of the human body is too abstract to explain moral evaluation. Megill (1985) and Wolin (1986) tend to interpret "aesthetics" as a state of desensitization rather than a sensibility that reveals worthy situations of moral concern. Far from liberating modern individuals to discover their own forms of agency, they suggest that Foucault imposes the idiosyncratic conditions of his own agency on others to whom it is poorly suited, disempowering and denying them self-defense through mutually valid reasons. For these reasons, he falls victim to the same "fanaticism" (Schwarmerei) or claims of privileged insight into the nature of socio-political "things in themselves" that plagued Kant's rationalist predecessors and Romantic heirs. Despite differences, the abovementioned writers are united by alarm at Foucault's desire to "dispense with the constituent subject" of phenomenological experience and political action, as expressed in The Order of Things 'proclamation of the "death of man," his critique of social contract theory during the 1970s and his 1982 suggestion that "maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are, but to refuse what we are" (1983, 216). Their reasons for defending the subject are twofold. Without a subject, on the one hand, they believe that individuals would be unable to respond to situations with "judgment," not to mention good judgment: to criticize and resist their own emotional impulses and to require others to give reasons for their own actions. On the other hand, the subject is a metaphysical support for emotion, in whose absence actions would lose their existential, if not their moral value. Without a subject, there would be no way to identify emotions as phenomena deserving of moral consideration and protection by others-even if the subject is supposed to ignore its emotions when judging and acting. …

Hippocampal LTP and memory in mouse strains: is there evidence for a causal relationship?

The mechanisms underlying memory are under intense investigation. One of the most promising candidates at the cellular level is long-term potentiation (LTP). Numerous pharmacological and molecular genetic manipulations have led to alteration in both LTP and memory. However, the causal relationship between these phenotypical changes is debated. The problem of causality can be addressed in numerous ways. One suggestion is to investigate natural variation in both LTP and memory performance in mouse strains. If variation in synaptic and behavioral phenomena is found, correlation between these traits may be investigated. The advantages and disadvantages of this approach are discussed. An empirical example using four mouse strains is also presented to highlight some general problems. The following arguments are made. First, multiple electrophysiological and behavioral paradigms with idiosyncratic condition characteristics should be conducted to avoid false-positive findings due to alterations unrelated to memory and its mechanisms. Multiple stimulation and memory protocols may also allow one to study the complexity and multiplicity of processes. Second, analysis of a large number of mouse strains may be needed to avoid false interpretation of results due to spurious gene associations and/or linkage disequilibrium. Third, quantitative genetic analysis using, for example, diallele crosses, may be employed to properly investigate biologically meaningful, i.e., genetic, effects. It is concluded that with the use of additional methods (e.g., QTL analysis, gene expression arrays, and biochemical analysis) providing converging evidence, analysis of mouse strains will be instrumental in addressing the question regarding the role LTP may play in memory.

Statistical methods for the objective design of screening procedures for macromolecular crystallization.

The crystallization of a new macromolecule is still very much a trial-and-error process. As is well known, it requires the search of a large parameter space of experimental settings to find the relatively few idiosyncratic conditions that lead to diffraction-quality crystals. Crystallographers have developed a variety of screens to help identify initial crystallization conditions, including those based on systematic grids, incomplete factorial and sparse-matrix approaches. These are somewhat subjectively formulated based on accumulated data from past crystallization experiments. Ideally, one would prefer as objective a procedure as possible; however, that requires objective methods that incorporate a broad source of crystallization data. The Biological Macromolecular Crystallization Database (BMCD), a repository of all published crystallization conditions, is an obvious source of this data. This database has been augmented with a hierarchical classification of the macromolecules contained in the BMCD as well as extensive data on the additives used with them. A statistical analysis of the augmented BMCD shows the existence of significant correlations between families of macromolecules and the experimental conditions under which they crystallize. This in turn leads to a Bayesian technique for determining the probability of success of a set of experimental conditions based on the data in the BMCD as well as facts about a macromolecule known prior to crystallization. This has been incorporated into software that enables users to rank experimental conditions for new macromolecules generated by a dense partial factorial design. Finally, an additional advantage of the software described here is that it also facilitates the accumulation of the data required for improving the accuracy of estimation of the probabilities of success - knowledge of the conditions which lead to failure of crystallization.

Personal Ideology: The Intersection of Personality and Religious Beliefs

Individual religious beliefs are conceptualized as a component of personal ideology,which is one’s value‐laden philosophy of how life should be lived and of what forces impact human living. Extending Silvan Tomkins’ (1911–1991) writings concerning ideology polarity and his script theory of personality, I suggest that personal ideology theory may be employed to elucidate the content, structure, and development of religious beliefs. This theory examines religiousness as a biologically motivated interpretive structure that is situated within the sociohistorical, age‐relevant, and idiosyncratic conditions of the ontogenetic matrix.

Meeting the Creative Mood Half Way

This paper discusses the creative process and the conditions which are necessary for the liberation of creative ideas. Professor Willings' research, which is summarised here, suggests that each creative individual needs an essentially personal environment, stimulus and conditions of working in order to be able to function creatively. Each creative person, however, needs to be helped, through counselling, to identify for himself/herself the idiosyncratic optimum conditions he/she needs so that these can be deliberately fostered to facilitate creative functioning.

Extending generalizability theory to single-subject designs

Generalizability theory offers versatile techniques for assessing the accuracy of any measurement strategy. To date, generalizability theory has been applied exclusively to group designs. This paper extends generalizability theory to single subject designs and considers potential problems in such applications. Unique subjects, idiosyncratic experimental conditions, autocorrelation, and drift are discussed as potential problems. Techniques are presented for handling these potential problems and an example illustrates some benefits of a generalizability study.