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AbstractMaternal depression has consistently been found to be associated with child problem behaviours. In the current study, we examine the possibility of whether the association between maternal depression and child antisocial behaviour may be due to confounding. Data from waves 2, 5 and 7 of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study‐Kindergarten Cohort were analysed. Our analysis revealed a significant association between maternal depression and child antisocial behaviour prior to matching. After successfully matching the mothers on 29 key covariates, one of the cross‐sectional associations and the longitudinal association between maternal depression and child antisocial behaviour was no longer statistically significant. However, two cross‐sectional associations between maternal depression and child antisocial behaviour remained statistically significant. The results of the study are discussed in relation to the importance of the timing of maternal depression within different developmental time periods.

From the last decade, the Internet has become a new way of communication. Business firms use the internet for communicating with their stakeholder and expanding their business. Nowadays, in the complex environment of competition, companies just don't want to communicate the information rather they require feedback and response for the particular information. This kind of problem is resolved by the use of social media. Disclosing business information through social media companies get to know about the behavior of investors towards their particular information. Thus, the present paper aims to examine the extent of corporate reporting on Facebook. The results show that 64% companies have Facebook profile. Further, it was found that most of the companies cultivate relationship by presenting information on disclosure and involvement. It was revealed that, mostly companies presented the information on marketing and ignored the financial, social and governance components.

This study reveals incentives for process innovations and their effects related to different conditions of creation process and the provision of an access to the results of intellectual activity for companies in the absence of antitrust restrictions and unfair competition. The model of the process innovation is designed for competition à la Cournot for N firms. Conclusions on the effect of process innovations on changes in prices, volumes, consumer surplus and industry profit are presented. A numerical example is employed to identify cost thresholds for innovations and conditions for voluntary licensing. It is shown that the total effects of innovations are higher than the effects related to the returns of technological leader. This indicates not only the problem of probable underinvestment but also demonstrates transaction cost arising form the process innovation. Technology competition and cooperation cases for three initially symmetric firms are discussed.

A brief course of lectures (introduction and three lectures) is dedicated to the social and economic history of France, as the main country of the medieval era. The course addresses issues of the genesis of the classic French feudalism. Special attention is paid to the problem of formation of the feudal land ownership from allodium and benefice to the hereditary feud (fief). The course interprets the feudal division causes and ways to overcome it, as well as the evolution of the socio-economic characteristics of the main classes of French feudal society, most of all the nobility and dependent peasants. Particular attention is paid to the economic policy of absolutism in France, which was reflected in the work of famous historical figures: King Henry IV, his first minister Maximilien Sully, the Cardinal de Richelieu, the Controller-General of Finances Jean-Baptiste Colbert.

Decisions about instructional methods are becoming more complex, with options ranging from problem sets to experiential service-learning projects. However, instructors not trained in instructional design may make these important decisions based on convenience, comfort, or trends. Instead, this article draws on the knowledge management literature and specifically the knowledge-in-practice framework to develop a theoretical process for choosing instructional methods. This process classifies the underlying knowledge structure of learning objectives along the dimensions of tacitness and learnability, then matches the knowledge structure with instructional methods that will be the most appropriate fit for students working toward that learning objective. We propose that the integration of knowledge management with instructional design offers valuable insights into the process of choosing appropriate instructional methods, and our framework can help instructors determine which instructional methods are the best match for their learning objectives.

This article provides a skeptical look at the role of "efficiency" in antitrust analysis. It begins by discussing how various types of efficiency may be in conflict, such that the concept is actually less scientific or useful than often thought. The article asks, What economic considerations are excluded from today's antitrust analysis? This leads to a discussion of political, social, and non-efficiency economic values; externalities; and three types of inefficiencies that may be caused by the single-minded hunt for efficiencies: X-inefficiency; diseconomies of scale, scope, and coordination; and the "too-big-to-fail" problem. Finally, the article describes some challenges facing reform proposals, including problems of prediction and quantification. The conclusion argues that the efficiency goal is fraught with problems and that a broader concept needs to take into account inefficiencies as well as efficiencies.

In conducting fieldwork among perpetrators of state violence, it is a major methodological problem to gain access to competing factions within the research population. Ethnographers often succeed in finding access to at least one faction but this successful rapport might then immediately close off other factions that mistrust the ethnographer's politics, intentions, or alleged sympathies. The ethnographic challenge is to find intermediaries or switchboard operators, as they are called in this article, who have established informal channels of communication between hostile factions. Switchboard operators have the following characteristics: discretion, neutrality, lack of formal power, disinterestedness, trustworthiness, and they act as a conduit of communication. This article describes how switchboard operators were located in Argentina, and how they played a crucial role in my fieldwork among a broad spectrum of military perpetrators who had terrorized the Argentine people between 1976 and 1983 with enforced disappearances and state repression.

The challenge of governing multi-municipal areas is a long-standing policy problem for those who study local government. While changes to government structures are often suggested as a solution to the coordination and servicing dilemmas inherent within metropolitan areas, more recent research has demonstrated that decentralized, voluntary means of interlocal cooperation show promise in providing for service and policy continuity within these regions. Very little research has been conducted on the state of voluntary cooperation in Canadian metropolitan areas. This article seeks to correct this by studying interlocal agreements within six Canadian metropolitan areas, while introducing new measures for examining the intensity of these relationships. Overall, this article finds that municipalities within these areas are using interlocal agreements sparingly, and those with arrangements are mostly signing low-value, low-risk agreements that do not integrate governance mechanisms or service responsibility.

There are three paths to constitutionalism in the modern world. Under the first, revolutionary outsiders use the constitution to commit their new regime to the principles proclaimed during their previous struggle. India, South Africa, Italy and France have followed this path. Under the second, establishment insiders use the constitution to make strategic concessions to disrupt revolutionary movements before they can gain power. Britain provides paradigmatic examples. Under the third, ordinary citizens remain passive while political and social elites construct a new constitution. Spain, Japan and Germany provide variations on this theme. Different paths generate different legitimation problems, but the EU confronts a special difficulty. Since its members emerge out of three divergent pathways, they disagree about the nature of the union's constitutional problem, not merely its solution. Thus the EU confronts a cultural, not merely an economic, crisis.

Our aim was to extend the understanding of self-framing. Our focus was on the impact of self-framing on immediate and delayed decision making. Using cluster sampling, we recruited 350 university undergraduates who completed a self-framing measure adapted from the classic Asia disease
problem scenario. The participants were randomly assigned to 2 groups: immediate decision making and delayed decision making. The results indicated that self-framing could influence participants' decisions. In the immediate decision-making group, when the sure option was described (hedonic
tone) more positively than the risk involved, the participants preferred the sure option. However, in the delayed decision-making group, self-framing had no significant impact on the decision made. The results showed that both timing (immediate decision or delayed decision) and self-framing
had an impact on decision making, implying that immediate decision and delayed decision may have different cognitive mechanisms.

Is the US Congress dysfunctional? The American public thinks so: In the summer of 2014, just 7% approved strongly of Congress ( Riffkin 2014 ). Still, legislative scholars disagree about the severity of Congress's legislative challenges. Is legislative deadlock a sign that Congress can no longer identify and resolve major public problems? Or are Congress's difficulties temporary and correctable? In this article, I review theoretical and empirical literatures on the dynamics of lawmaking and evaluate alternative methods for testing lawmaking theories. Finally, I draw on recent research to put contemporary stalemate into historical perspective. I argue that even when Congress and the president have reached agreement on the big issues of the day, Congress's problem-solving capacity appears to have fallen to new lows in recent years. Whether and how well our political system can or will self-correct in the coming years remains an open question.

The paper seeks to make a contribution towards a better understanding of the current global political unrest. It argues that this unrest reflects ongoing tensions between hierarchical and non‐hierarchical interactions. It also argues that the opposition between hierarchical and non‐hierarchical interactions is not ontological but rather is rooted in the way we approach reality and is, therefore, subject to our control. The tendency to exclude the process of construction from our frame of vision is characteristic for the view of reality that is dominant in our civilization. Contemporary theoretical perspectives that include, but are not limited to, systems theory, complexity theory, theory of self‐organization, emergence theory and autopoiesis have much to offer in addressing and resolving this problem. The paper outlines some general organizing principles that should be part of this solution. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Heightened concerns regarding the financial sustainability of local councils have resulted in an increasing reliance by municipal regulators on financial ratio performance benchmarking. However, these benchmarks are often assigned without explicit justification and despite a paucity of empirical evidence. Furthermore, regulators typically allocate a single performance benchmark across an entire local government system despite the fact that individual councils may face entirely different operating environments. Failure to take account of the environmental challenges facing councils can result in inappropriate or unattainable performance benchmarks that may give rise to unintended consequences, such as the well‐documented threshold effects. To address this problem, we develop an empirical method for allocating performance benchmarks with respect to the current level of performance and environmental constraints facing individual local authorities. We demonstrate this technique in a case study using data drawn from New South Wales local authority operating ratios.

The color line is still a central problem in the United States, as Du Bois declared more than a century ago. But economic, demographic, and social trends have subdivided it in ways that Du Bois could not have foreseen, creating tremendous intra-ethnoracial group diversity. A challenge for twenty-first-century scholarship is to make sense of the implications of growing intra-group diversity for the boundaries and meaning of group identity. Meeting this challenge requires treating intra-group diversity not merely as an outcome of various social processes. Intra-group diversity must also be seen as the origin of processes shaping the boundaries and meanings of group identities, as well as intergroup attitudes and relations. Meeting the challenge also necessitates adopting ethnographic and survey research practices that better capture the dynamism of the multiple color lines defining the American ethnoracial landscape and the implication of this dynamism for identity.

Although credit rating agencies exist and are important to the capital markets, there remains a question of why they should exist. Two standard theories are that rating agencies correct a problem of information asymmetry and that theyde factoregulate investments. These theories do not fully answer the question. This paper suggests an alternative explanation. While rating agencies produce little new information, they sort information available in the credit market. This sorting function is needed due to the large volume of information in the credit market. Sorting facilitates better credit analysis and investment selection, but bond investors or a cooperative of them cannot easily replicate this function. Outside of their information intermediary and regulatory roles, rating agencies serve a useful market purpose even if credit ratings inherently provide little new information. This alternative explanation has policy implications for the regulation of the industry.