Matching and sorting in online dating

Using data on user attributes and interactions from an online dating site, we estimate mate preferences, and use the Gale-Shapley algorithm to predict stable matches. The predicted matches are similar to the actual matches achieved by the dating site, and the actual matches are approximately efficient. Out-of-sample predictions of offline matches, i.e., marriages, exhibit assortative mating patterns similar to those observed in actual marriages. Thus, mate preferences, without resort to search frictions, can generate sorting in marriages. However, we underpredict some of the correlation patterns; search frictions may play a role in explaining the discrepancy.

Biological and ecological mechanisms supporting marine self-governance: The Seri Callo de Hacha Fishery in Mexico

My goal was to describe how biological and ecological factors give shape to fishing practices that can contribute to the successful self-governance of a small-scale fishing system in the Gulf of California, Mexico. The analysis was based on a comparison of the main ecological and biological indicators that fishers claim to use to govern their day-to-day decision making about fishing and data collected in situ. I found that certain indicators allow fishers to learn about differences and characteristics of the resource system and its units. Fishers use such information to guide their day-to-day fishing decisions. More importantly, these decisions appear unable to shape the reproductive viability of the fishery because no indicators were correlated to the reproductive cycle of the target species. As a result, the fishing practices constitute a number of mechanisms that might provide short-term buffering capacity against perturbations or stress factors that otherwise would threaten the overall sustainability and self-governance of the system. The particular biological circumstances that shape the harvesting practices might also act as a precursor of self-governance because they provide fishers with enough incentives to meet the costs of organizing the necessary rule structure that underlies a successful self-governance system.

Institutional and ecological interplay for successful self-governance of community-based fisheries

The goal of this paper is to improve our understanding of the role of institutional arrangements and ecological factors that facilitate the emergence and sustainability of successful collective action in small-scale fishing social-ecological systems. Using a modified logistic growth function, we simulate how ecological factors (i.e. carrying capacity) affect small-scale fishing communities with varying degrees of institutional development (i.e. timeliness to adopt new institutions and the degree to which harvesting effort is reduced), in their ability to avoid overexploitation. Our results show that strong and timely institutions are necessary but not sufficient to maintain sustainable harvests over time. The sooner communities adopt institutions, and the stronger the institutions they adopt, the more likely they are to sustain the resource stock. Exactly how timely the institutions must be adopted, and by what amount harvesting effort must be diminished, depends on the ecological carrying capacity of the species at the particular location. Small differences in the carrying capacity between fishing sites, even under scenarios of similar institutional development, greatly affects the likelihood of effective collective action. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Justice Gap in Global Forest Governance

Claims of injustice in global forest governance are prolific: assertions of colonization, marginalization and disenfranchisement of forest-dependent people, and privatization of common resources are some of the most severe allegations of injustice resulting from globally-driven forest conservation initiatives. At its core, the debate over the future of the world's forests is fraught with ethical concerns. Policy makers are not only deciding how forests should be governed, but also who will be winners, losers, and who should have a voice in the decision-making processes. For 30 years, policy makers have sought to redress the concerns of the world's 1.6 billion forest-dependent poor by introducing rights-based and participatory approaches to conservation. Despite these efforts, however, claims of injustice persist. This research examines possible explanations for continued claims of injustice by asking: What are the barriers to delivering justice to forest-dependent communities? Using data collected through surveys, interviews, and collaborative event ethnography in Laos and at the Tenth Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, this dissertation examines the pursuit of justice in global forest governance across multiple scales of governance. The findings reveal that particular conceptualizations of justice have become a central part of the metanormative fabric of global environmental governance, inhibiting institutional evolution and therewith perpetuating the justice gap in global forest governance.

Contracting Freedom: Governance and East Indian Indenture in the British Atlantic, 1838-1917

This is a dissertation about identity and governance, and how they are mutually constituted. Between 1838 and 1917, the British brought approximately half a million East Indian laborers to the Atlantic to work on sugar plantations. The dissertation argues that contrary to previous historiographical assumptions, indentured East Indians were an amorphous mass of people drawn from various regions of British India. They were brought together not by their innate "Indian-ness" upon their arrival in the Caribbean, but by the common experience of indenture recruitment, transportation and plantation life. Ideas of innate "Indian-ness" were products of an imperial discourse that emerged from and shaped official approaches to governing East Indians in the Atlantic. Government officials and planters promoted visions of East Indians as "primitive" subjects who engaged in child marriage and wife murder. Officials mobilized ideas about gender to sustain racialized stereotypes of East Indian subjects. East Indian women were thought to be promiscuous, and East Indian men were violent and depraved (especially in response to East Indian women's promiscuity). By pointing to these stereotypes about East Indians, government officials and planters could highlight the promise of indenture as a civilizing mechanism. This dissertation links the study of governance and subject formation to complicate ideas of colonial rule as static. It uncovers how colonial processes evolved to handle the challenges posed by migrant populations.

The primary architects of indenture, Caribbean governments, the British Colonial Office, and planters hoped that East Indian indentured laborers would form a stable and easily-governed labor force. They anticipated that the presence of these laborers would undermine the demands of Afro-Creole workers for higher wages and shorter working hours. Indenture, however, was controversial among British liberals who saw it as potentially hindering the creation of a free labor market, and abolitionists who also feared that indenture was a new form of slavery. Using court records, newspapers, legislative documents, bureaucratic correspondence, memoirs, novels, and travel accounts from archives and libraries in Britain, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago, this dissertation explores how indenture was envisioned and constantly re-envisioned in response to its critics. It chronicles how the struggles between the planter class and the colonial state for authority over indentured laborers affected the way that indenture functioned in the British Atlantic. In addition to focusing on indenture's official origins, this dissertation examines the actions of East Indian indentured subjects as they are recorded in the imperial archive to explore how these people experienced indenture.

Indenture contracts were central to the justification of indenture and to the creation of a pliable labor force in the Atlantic. According to English common law, only free parties could enter into contracts. Indenture contracts limited the period of indenture and affirmed that laborers would be remunerated for their labor. While the architects of indenture pointed to contracts as evidence that indenture was not slavery, contracts in reality prevented laborers from participating in the free labor market and kept the wages of indentured laborers low. Further, in late nineteenth-century Britain, contracts were civil matters. In the British Atlantic, indentured laborers who violated the terms of their contracts faced criminal trials and their associated punishments such as imprisonment and hard labor. Officials used indenture contracts to exploit the labor and limit the mobility of indentured laborers in a manner that was reminiscent of slavery but that instead established indentured laborers as subjects with limited rights. The dissertation chronicles how indenture contracts spawned a complex inter-imperial bureaucracy in British India, Britain, and the Caribbean that was responsible for the transportation and governance of East Indian indentured laborers overseas.

Regulation and Economic Globalization: Prospects and Limits of Private Governance

http://www.bepress.com/bap/vol12/iss3/art11/

Beyond LibGuides: The Past, Present, and Future of Online Research Guides

© 2015, Jon C. Giullian and Ernest A. Zitser.The proliferation of research guides created using the LibGuides platform has triggered extensive discussion touting their benefits for everything from assessment, engagement, and marketing, to outreach and pedagogy. However, there is at present a relative paucity of critical reflection about the product’s place in the broader informational landscape. This article is an attempt to redress this lacuna. Relying primarily on examples from the field of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies, the authors briefly describe the evolution of online research guides; identify reasons for the proliferation of Springshare’s product in academic libraries; question whether LibGuides improve learning or reinforce information inequality in higher education; and propose a way to move beyond LibGuides.

Economic and Social Upgrading in Global Value Chains and Industrial Clusters: Why Governance Matters

© 2014, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.The burgeoning literature on global value chains (GVCs) has recast our understanding of how industrial clusters are shaped by their ties to the international economy, but within this context, the role played by corporate social responsibility (CSR) continues to evolve. New research in the past decade allows us to better understand how CSR is linked to industrial clusters and GVCs. With geographic production and trade patterns in many industries becoming concentrated in the global South, lead firms in GVCs have been under growing pressure to link economic and social upgrading in more integrated forms of CSR. This is leading to a confluence of “private governance” (corporate codes of conduct and monitoring), “social governance” (civil society pressure on business from labor organizations and non-governmental organizations), and “public governance” (government policies to support gains by labor groups and environmental activists). This new form of “synergistic governance” is illustrated with evidence from recent studies of GVCs and industrial clusters, as well as advances in theorizing about new patterns of governance in GVCs and clusters.

An online daily diary study of alcohol use using Amazon's mechanical turk

Introduction and Aims: In recent years, unprecedented levels of Internet access and the widespread growth of emergent communication technologies have resulted in significantly greater population access for substance use researchers. Despite the research potential of such technologies, the use of the Internet to recruit individuals for participation in event-level research has been limited. The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief account of the methods and results from an online daily diary study of alcohol use. Design and Methods: Participants were recruited using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Eligible participants completed a brief screener assessing demographics and health behaviours, with a subset of individuals subsequently recruited to participate in a 2 week daily diary study of alcohol use. Results: Multilevel models of the daily alcohol data derived from the Mechanical Turk sample (n=369) replicated several findings commonly reported in daily diary studies of alcohol use. Discussion and Conclusions: Results demonstrate that online participant recruitment and survey administration can be a fruitful method for conducting daily diary alcohol research. © 2014 Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs.