DePaul University

About: DePaul University is a education organization based out in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 5658 authors who have published 11562 publications receiving 295257 citations.

Shirking on the Court: Testing for the Incentive Effects of Guaranteed Pay

Abstract: Prior work on long-term contracts and the incentive to shirk has focused almost exclusively on Major League Baseball. The current inquiry is the first to examine shirking in the National Basketball Association. We employed two different measures of player productivity. When the NBA’s measure is used, we find evidence consistent with allegations of shirking behavior. But when productivity is measured in a fashion more consistent with economists’ definition of marginal product, the evidence of shirking evaporates. (JEL J41, J44, L83) I. INTRODUCTION

Mothers' and fathers' behaviors toward their 3- to 4-month-old infants in lower, middle, and upper socioeconomic African American families.

Abstract: African American mothers' and fathers' availability, caregiving, and social behaviors toward their infants in and around their homes were examined. Twenty lower, 21 middle, and 21 upper socioeconomic families and their 3- to 4-month-old infants were observed for 4 3-hr blocks between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. on 4 different weekdays. With increasing economic resources, children's exposure to multiple caregivers and nonresident fathers declined. Mothers were more available to infants than fathers were, regardless of socioeconomic status. Mothers fed infants more than fathers did, whereas fathers vocalized more and displayed more affection to infants than mothers did when they were examined in proportion to caregiver presence. Mothers and fathers interacted with male and female infants quite similarly, although, in the upper socioeconomic families, fathers of daughters were more available than fathers of sons. Fathers and mothers in the different socioeconomic groups held, displayed affection to, and soothed their infants differently.

Relative Importance and Value

Abstract: Three axioms provide a formal definition of relative importance in a statistical or econometric model by identifying the likelihood that any ordering of independent variables is correctly ordered with respect to their relative importance. The expected contribution to model performance of independent variables with respect to this distribution is the proportional marginal decomposition of model performance with respect to the performance measure. Decomposition components are shown to be equal to the proportional value (Ortmann (2000), Feldman (1999, 2002)) of an appropriately constructed cooperative game. Also addressed are admissibility criteria for measures of relative importance, other measures of relative importance, the entropy of cooperative games and extensions and limitations.