Showing papers by "Paris West University Nanterre La Défense published in 2000"

Assessing adolescents' personality with the NEO PI-R.

Abstract: The suitability of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) to assess adolescents' personality traits was investigated in an unselected heterogeneous sample of 469 adolescents aged 12 to 17 years. They were further administered the Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children (HiPIC) to allow an examination of convergent and discriminant validity. The adult NEO PI-R factor structure proved to be highly replicable in the sample of adolescents, with all facet scales primarily loading on the expected factors, independent of the age group. Domain and facet internal consistency coefficients were comparable to those obtained in adult samples, with less than 12% of the items showing corrected item-facet correlations below absolute value .20. Although, in general, adolescents reported few difficulties with the comprehensibility of the items, they tend to report more problems with the Openness to Ideas (05) and Openness to Values (06) items. Correlations between NEO PI-R and HiPIC scales underscored the convergent and discriminant validity of the NEO facets and HiPIC scales. It was concluded that the NEO PI-R in its present form is useful for assessing adolescents' traits at the primary level, but additional research is necessary to infer the most appropriate facet level structure.

Adverse Selection in Insurance Markets

Abstract: In this survey we present some of the more significant results in the literature on adverse selection in insurance markets Sections 71 and 72 introduce the subject and section 73 discusses the monopoly model developed by Stiglitz (1977) for the case of single-period contracts and extended by many authors to the multi-period case The introduction of multi-period contracts raises many issues that are discussed in detail: time horizon, discounting, commitment of the parties, contract renegotiation and accidents underreporting Section 74 covers the literature on competitive contracts The analysis becomes more complicated since insurance companies must take into account competitive pressures when they set incentives contracts As pointed out by Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976), there is not necessarily a Cournot-Nash equilibrium in presence of adverse selection However, market equilibrium can be sustained when principals anticipate competitive reactions to their behaviour or when they adopt strategies that differ from the pure Nash strategy Multi-period contracting is discussed We show that different predictions on the evolution of insurer profits over time can be obtained from different assumptions concerning the sharing of information between insurers about individual’s choice of contracts and accidents experience The roles of commitment and renegotiation between the parties to the contract are important Section 75 introduces models that consider moral hazard and adverse selection simultane-ously and section 76 treats adverse selection when people can choose their risk status Section 77 discusses many extensions to the basic models such as risk categorization, different risk aversion, symmetric imperfect information, multiple risks, principals more informed than agents and uberrima fides

Thresholding algorithms, maxisets and well-concentrated bases

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to synthetically analyse the performances of thresholding and wavelet estimation methods. In this connection, it is useful to describe the maximal sets where these methods attain a special rate of convergence. We relate these “maxisets” to other problems naturally arising in the context of non parametric estimation, as approximation theory or information reduction. A second part of the paper is devoted to isolate two very special properties especially shared by wavelet bases, which allow them to behave almost as in an Hilbertian context even for Lp risks.

Experience Rating through Heterogeneous Models

Abstract: This paper presents statistical models which lead to experience rating in insurance. Serial correlation for risk variables can receive endogeneous or exogeneous explanations. The paper recalls that the main interpretation for automobile insurance is exogeneous, since positive contagion is always observed for the number of claims reported and since true contagion should be negative. This positive contagion can be explained by the revelation throughout time of a hidden features in the risk distributions. These features are represented by heterogeneity components in a heterogeneous model. Prediction on longitudinal data can be performed through the heterogeneous model, and the paper provides consistent estimators for models related to number and cost of claims. Examples are given for count data models with a constant or time-varying heterogeneity components, one or several equations, and for a cost-number model on events. Empirical results are presented, which are drawn from the analysis of a French data base of automobile insurance contracts.

Sexually stimulating signals of canary (Serinus canaria) songs: evidence for a female-specific auditory representation in the HVc nucleus during the breeding season.

Abstract: During the breeding season under long-day conditions, male canaries sing sexually attractive songs and females respond behaviorally to such songs. This study assessed whether auditory response properties of neurons in nucleus HVc of female and male canaries are tuned to sexually salient song features: special song phrases and canary song segmentation. In sexually receptive female canaries, neurons responded to special song phrases with a decreased spike rate and were sensitive to canary song segmentation. The nonreceptive females showed no clear response to special song phrases. In females on short days, neurons responded to song phrases with an increase in activity. In males on long days, they exhibited phasic responses after the phrase onset, whatever the song phrase and song segmentation. This study demonstrates both a plasticity in relation to females' sexual responsiveness and a sexual dimorphism in the auditory processing performed in the HVc.

Stop-and-Go Agricultural Policies

Abstract: The optimal design of farm policy and public investment in agriculture in the presence of asymmetric information between the government and farmers is studied. It is shown that a mix of capped deficiency payments and voluntary paid land diversion can implement the optimal policy outcome. Optimal program design requires large farmers to farm all their land, and small farmers may or may not divert acreage. Decoupled policies are never optimal.

Adverse Selection in Insurance Markets

Abstract: In this survey we present some of the more significant results in the literature on adverse selection in insurance markets. Sections 1 and 2 introduce the subject and section 3 discusses the monopoly model developed by Stiglitz (1977) for the case of single-period contracts and extended by many authors to the multi-period case.

Paths, Choices, Outcomes, and Uncertainty

Abstract: The purpose of this chapter is to examine some of the problems facing the social sciences in their endevour to understand and explain the processes which, rightly or wrongly, we have got into the habit of calling “democratic transitions”1. My objective however is much more modest than what can be inferred from my initial statement: I would like to re-examine the explanatory principles used by different groups of scholars who have tried to elaborate specific approaches more or less specially “adapted” to these processes, which I shall call “transitology”.

On the phrasal vs. clausal syntactic status of French infinitives: causative constructions and subject inversion

Abstract: We examine the phrasal vs. clausal syntactic status of French infinitives. Whereas a number of current theories assume a VP-hypothesis (contra principles and parameters theories, including the Minimalist Program), data relative to causative constructions in French are often treated as clausal constructions (the so-called ‘proposition infinitive’). The aim of this paper is to demonstrate (i) that it is possible to account for causative constructions in French according to the VP-hypothesis (e.g. in the HPSG framework); (ii) that it is in fact impossible to maintain a clausal hypothesis for causative constructions with respect to subject inversion in French. We therefore argue in favour of the VP-hypothesis for all (French) infinitives.

Growth, Crisis, and Recovery in East Asia

Abstract: Both success and crisis in East Asia are interpreted, in the “Washington Consensus”, byreference to the laws of the market, and to the economic policies and institutional frameworks of “countries”. This approach rules out consideration of the connections between economics and politics, the context of imperfect competition, the role of goal-oriented policies, and regional interdependence. This article provides an introduction to the debate about the main factors used to explain growth in East Asia, and goes on to analyse the regionalisation process in a context of growth, crisis, and recovery by “regional contagion”.

Introduction: When Transitology Meets Simultaneous Transitions

Abstract: This book deals with the transformations or “transitions” that countries of Central and Eastern Europe have undergone since the political upheavals and breakdowns of 1989 To explore that abundant set of varied and complex processes it has adopted a particular point of view consisting in questioning also the way in which social sciences have approached these transformations, have interpreted them and how, in return, they have felt their impact and had to modify their questions and their modes of explanation

Deconstructive and/or “plastic” readings of Hegel

Abstract: L'Avenir de Hegel [Hegel's Future] is the title of the book I published in 1996 and which bears the subtitle: “Plasticite, Temporalite, Dialectique” [Plasticity, Temporality, Dialectics]. I intend to examine here the kind of reading of Hegel put to work in that book. I must add that l'Avenir de Hegel, before becoming a book, was the title of my doctoral thesis undertaken under the supervision of Jacques Derrida with whom I have been working for many years now. A question emerged recently which I had never considered until now, at least not so directly, so simply: can the interpretation of Hegel that I attempt to elaborate be qualified, immediately and without reservation, as a “deconstructive reading”? This presupposes, of course, that one can define what a deconstructive reading is. Although Derrida, as we know, refuses to consider deconstruction as a constituted theory from which one could extract axioms and formalize the method, it is nonetheless possible, as I shall attempt to do here, to describe the process of a deconstructive reading. In writing l'Avenir de Hegel, I had present in my mind the exegetical imperative set out in Of Grammatology under the heading of a “task of reading”: Derrida asserts, “The reading must always aim at a certain relationship, unperceived by the writer, between what he commands and what he does not command of the patterns of the language that he uses. This relationship is not a certain quantitative distribution of shadow and light, of weakness or of force, but a signifying structure that critical reading should produce” (De la Grammatologie, p. 227; tr. Spivak, p. 158). I will ask precisely: what does it mean to produce or open a reading, a reading which protects the text in order better to expose or endanger it? In making “plasticity” (Plastizitat) play a major role in Hegel's thought, I undertook to respond to the demands of this “task of reading”. In doing so, I nonetheless discovered, under the very title of plasticity itself, a resistance of the Hegelian text to its own deconstruction. I shall thus have to specify this resistance at the same time as I develop the program of the task of reading.

Stéphanie Pryen, Stigmate et métier. Une approche sociologique de la prostitution de rue, Presses universitaires de Rennes, coll. « Le sens social », Rennes, 1999, 240 p.

Abstract: La prostitution suscite plus souvent des debats normatifs que des analyses rigoureuses. C’est en consequence un des merites de l’ouvrage de S. Pryen que de presenter les resultats d’une etude depassionnee et solidement etayee sur le plan empirique de la pratique et des conditions d’existence des femmes et hommes qui exercent cette activite. Issu d’une these de doctorat consacree a la prostitution de rue lilloise, le livre s’attaque frontalement a l’ambiguite – que resume son titre – qui se tr...

Sexualité et sexuation: le transsexualisme et ses adresses

Abstract: Ces deux imposants recueils publies par l'Association freudienne internationale sont solidaires. L'un annonce un projet dont l'autre temoigne: un colloque qui s'est tenu a la fin de l'annee 1996 sur la question du transsexualisme. En France, la premiere operation chirurgicale officielle remonte a avril 1979, date a partir de laquelle se met en place un circuit organise de prise en charge, avec l'autorisation du Conseil national de l'ordre des medecins, afin d'etablir officiellement le cadre de cette procedure et limiter les risques (y compris penaux) lies aux pratiques clandestines. Le meme Conseil national recommandait dans une note de 1983:

Labor Hoarding in Russia: Where Does it Come From?

Abstract: The paper focuses on the labor "hoarding" problem in Russia. We studied two forms of "hoarding": unpaid leaves and short-time work. Our research is based on the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) database. The paper exploits individual panel data between 1994 and 1996. We show that unpaid leaves and short-time work do not represent a form of hidden unemployment. Both types of labor "hoarding" reflect the nature of employees' professional competencies. First, unpaid leaves concern primarily the employees with firm-specific knowledge, while short-time work affects strongly unskilled workers. Second, external mobility is mostly related to young people and unskilled blue-collar workers while employees with specific competencies do not change jobs so much. The paper insists on significant internal adjustments which are taking place through unpaid leaves and short-time work. This explains why there has been no massive unemployment in Russia until now. In conclusion, Russian labor market is characterized rather by internal flexibility than by labor "hoarding".