Generalized IRT Models for Extreme Response Style

Extreme response style (ERS) is a systematic tendency for a person to endorse extreme options (e.g., strongly disagree, strongly agree) on Likert-type or ratingscale items. In this study, we develop a new class of item response theory (IRT) models to account for ERS so that the target latent trait is free from the response style and the tendency of ERS is quantified. Parameters of these new mod…

Cross-Border Trades and Commerce between Thailand and Neighboring Countries: …

Regional economic integration leads to closer interdependence within the Greater Mekong sub-region (GMS) especially for trade and commerce. Contributing factors to cross-border trade expansion between Thailand and four neighboring countries, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Malaysia and Myanmar (CLMM) have been studied, as well as an analysis of its pattern and trend utilizing time series data from1996–…

Assessing Opportunity-to-Learn for Students With Disabilities in General and …

Current legislation encourages schools to educate students with disabilities (SWDs) in general education settings to the greatest extent appropriate. However, it is unclear whether inclusion in general education settings provides SWDs a sufficient opportunity to learn the academic content assessed by accountability measures. This initial study was designed to (a) describe the extent to which g…

Examining the Use of Classroom Observations in the Evaluation of Special Educ…

A primary focus of recent educational policymaking has been on improving measures of teaching effectiveness, attributable in part to recent federal policies such as the Race to the Top initiative and Investing in Innovation. To date, neither researchers nor practitioners have arrived at a consensus on the best methods for evaluating special educators. While value-added scores are likely not sui…

Special Education Teacher Evaluation:Why It Matters, What Makes It Challengin…

There is currently little consensus on how special education teachers should be evaluated. The lack of consensus may be due to several reasons. Special education teachers work under a variety of complex conditions, with a very heterogeneous population, and support student progress toward a very individualized set of goals. In addition, special education is marked by historical rates of attriti…

Evaluating and Advancing the Effective Teaching of Special Educators With a D…

Abstract We describe the concept of a dynamic instructional practices portfolio to evaluate special education teachers. This portfolio features the My Instructional Learning Opportunities Guidance System (MyiLOGS) as the core component. MyiLOGS is an online, daily self-report measure of opportunity to learn (OTL) that provides detailed information on teachers’ use of instructional time, curr…

Examining Teachers’ Use of Evidence-Based Practices During Core Mathematics…

The extent to which teachers implement evidence-based practices, such as explicit instruction, is critical for improving students’ mathematics achievement. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the kindergarten Early Learning in Mathematics (ELM) curriculum on teachers’ use of explicit mathematics instruction in core educational settings. Observation data for the study wer…

An Investigation of Position Effects in Large-Scale Writing Assessments

Position effect, the interaction between a test item’s position in an exam booklet and examinees’performance, is always of concern in developing test instruments. This study is intended to explore the factors that have interactive effects with prompt position in large-scale writing assessments and to differentiate the impact of each factor. This study analyzed the 2007 National Assessment o…

Direct Likelihood Analysis and Multiple Imputation for Missing Item Scores in…

Multiple imputation (MI) has become a highly useful technique for handling missing values in many settings. In this article, the authors compare the performance of a MI model based on empirical Bayes techniques to a direct maximum likelihood analysis approach that is known to be robust in the presence of missing observations. Specifically, they focus on handling of missing item scores in multil…

Correction of Rater Effects in Longitudinal Research With a Cross-Classified …

This study examines adverse consequences of using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) that ignores rater effects to analyze ratings collected by multiple raters in longitudinal research. The most severe consequence of using HLM ignoring rater effects is the biased estimation of Levels 1 and 2 fixed effects and potentially incorrect significance tests about them. A crossclassified random effects …

Combining Decision Trees and Stochastic Curtailment for Assessment Length Red…

For classification problems in psychology (e.g., clinical diagnosis), batteries of tests are often administered. However, not every test or item may be necessary for accurate classification. In the current article, a combination of classification and regression trees (CART) and stochastic curtailment (SC) is introduced to reduce assessment length of questionnaire batteries. First, the CARTalgor…

Yersinia pestis survival and replication within human neutrophil phagosomes a…

Yersinia pestis, the bacterial agent of plague, is transmitted by fleas. The bite of an infected flea deposits Y. pestis into the dermis and triggers recruitment of innate immune cells, including phagocytic PMNs. Y. pestis can subvert this PMN response and survive at the flea-bite site, disseminate, and persist in the host. Although its genome encodes a number of antiphagocytic virulence fac…

The Yersinia pestis caf1M1A1 Fimbrial Capsule Operon Promotes Transmission by…

Plague is a zoonosis transmitted by fleas and caused by the gram-negative bacterium Yersinia pestis. During infection, the plasmidic caf1M1A1 operon that encodes the Y. pestis F1 protein capsule is highly expressed, and anti-F1 antibodies are protective. Surprisingly, the capsule is not required for virulence after injection of cultured bacteria, even though it is an antiphagocytic factor an…

Improving the Control of Type I Error Rate in Assessing Differential Item Fun…

Hierarchical generalized linear models (HGLMs) have been used to assess differential item functioning (DIF). For model identification, some literature assumed that the reference (majority) and focal (minority) groups have an equal mean ability so that all items in a test can be assessed for DIF. In reality, it is very unlikely that the two groups have an identical mean. If so, other model ident…

Does Agriculture Really Matter for Economic Growth in Developing Countries?

This paper revisits the debate on the role of agriculture in promoting economic growth in a selection of nine developing countries.We investigated the causal linkages between agriculture and gross domestic product growth with the aid of directed acyclic graphs, a recently developed algorithm of inductive causation. The results suggest that while agriculture could be an engine of economic gro…

Agricultural Policies and Structural Change in French Dairy Farms: A Nonstati…

The aim of this paper is to gain an understanding into how agricultural policies have affected structural change in the French dairy sector. A nonstationary Markov model is estimated using a Generalized Cross Entropy approach. Results show that while the price of cow’s milk encourages farm growth, direct payments and quota restriction favor small farms. The price signal is a key factor of …

Assessing the returns to R&D on perennial crops: the costs and benefits of Pi…

Several complicating issues arise in evaluating the returns to research into varietal improvements for perennial crops compared with annual crops. We elucidate and address these issues in the context of a case study of research aiming to develop varieties that are resistant to Pierce’s disease (PD) of grapevines. PD imposes costs of over $100 million per year on the California grape industry,…

Core Concepts of Marketing

Through good economic times and bad, marketing remains the pivotal function in any business. Determining and satisfying the needs of customers through products that have value and accessibility and whose features are clearly communicated is the general purpose of any business. It is also a fundamental definition of marketing. This text introduces students to the marketing strategies and too…

Business Mathematics

Among the Nobel Laureates in Economics more than 60% were Economists who have done pioneering work in Mathematical Economics.These Economists not only learnt Higher Mathematics with perfection but also applied it successfully in their higher pursuits of both Macroeconomics and Econometrics. A Mathematical formula (involving stochastic differential equations) was discovered in 1970 by St…

Business Fundamentals

The Business Fundamentals text is designed to introduce students, particularly those in developing economies, to the essential concepts of business and other organizations. It does this by focusing on small, entrepreneurial start-ups, and expanding the discussion in each chapter to include issues that are faced in larger organizations when it is appropriate to do so. Traditional business model…

Statistical Process Control

The book was never written for the professional statistician or mathematician. As before, attempts have been made to eliminate much of the mathematical jargon that often causes distress. Those interested in pursuing the theoretical aspects will now find, at the end of each chapter, references to books and papers for further study, together with discussion questions. Several of the chapters end…

Finance for Food : Towards New Agricultural and Rural Finance

Edisi

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ISBN/ISSN

9783642540349

Deskripsi Fisik

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Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

657.863 Fin

Plantdesign and economics for chemical engineers

Advances in the level of understanding of chemical engineering principles, combined with the availability of new tools and new techniques, have led to an increased degree of sophistication which can now be applied to the design of industrial chemical operations. This fourth edition takes advantage of the widened spectrum of chemical engineering knowledge by the inclusion of considerable ma…

Can we make global banks safer? A practitioner's view

Abstract: Since the banking crisis of 2008, big international banks have been considered a threat to financial stability. These banks are under a regulatory pressure that goes farther than the new Basel rules. Regulators are trying to reduce their international interconnectivity, they are trying to tackle the problem of 'too big to fail', and they are looking at ways to split the retail banking…

The economics of risk

This sign is posted at the horse stables where my two younger daughters ride horses on Saturday mornings. The sign communicates at least two distinct messages to its reader. First, riding horses is a risky activity. Even though it is a small percentage of riders overall, a number do get injured in horse-riding incidents with the possibility of even sustaining a serious or life-threatening injur…

Political connection and firm value: an Indian perspective

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to verify existence of political connection of firms in India. For this purpose the paper first presents a theoretical model and then tests empirically the movement of stock prices during two state elections in India. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is theoretical modelling where the paper applies the standard Cournot model of oligopo…

Economics of ageing: research area and perspectives

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the latest findings on the economic potential of ageing and compare them primarily from a consumables perspective. The relevant question relating to this research was: What are the economic consequences of the demographic development in relation to consumer demand for products and services in old age? Design/methodology/approach – Narrat…

Metaphors as research tools in economics

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to show that metaphors play an important role in the making of economics. Design/methodology/approach – The paper’s discussion is situated within the framework of methodology of economics. It refers to recent studies on the role of metaphors in economics, as well as to the rhetoric – realism controversy (e.g. D. McCloskey versus U. Mäki). Finding…

Is there a case for a ‘‘liberal education’’?

Purpose – Since the creation of the trivium and quadrivium as the core for a post- secondary education, education itself has undergone substantive change, particularly since the end of the eighteenth century. Unspoken is the change in the population seeking such advanced knowledge, as well as the idea that the original elements might be recast as liberal studies and STEM (science/technolog…

Inverting priorities

Purpose – The purpose of this editorial is to argue that investments in early childhood intervention will bring greater than market returns to society and that there should be a resource reallocation in education from post-secondary. It also aims to argue that these returns need to reconsider education as an investment to be weighed against conventional investments, particularly by the pub…

Learning from interacting: language,economics and the entrepreneur

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to provide a method of gaining transdisciplinary insight by focusing on keywords in the language we use. The language of economics dominates discourse about the economy. Analyzing this discourse from a great variety of perspectives has blossomed but promises much more. The study of the keyword “entrepreneur” illustrates the strengths and weaknes…

Effects of election results on stock price performance:evidence from 1980 to …

Purpose – The authors aim to analyze whether the results of the 1980 to 2008 US presidential elections influence the stock market performance of eight industries and they seek to examine factors that are expected to affect firms’ stock returns around these elections. Their empirical analysis reflects firms’ exposure to government policies in two ways. Design/methodology/approach – F…

The root and responsibility model: a framework for ethical consumption

Purpose – Much information is hidden from consumers including social and environmental violations, poor labour practices and unethical economic activities. This paper aims to present a model for both consumers and corporations that can assist in empowering consumers when making purchasing decisions by bringing the behind the scenes information to the buyer. A responsibility rating is prov…

The influence of personal and environmental factors on entrepreneurs’ perfo…

Purpose – This paper aims to analyse the determinants of business start-ups and their impact on entrepreneurial performance. The theoretical part indicates that the importance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) considers the role of entrepreneur in the business process and provides an overview of theoretical and empirical findings in the main determinants of business start-ups. …

Innovation: a systemic perspective – developing a systemic innovation theory

Purpose – The primary aim of the article is to create a systemic innovation theory. Design/methodology/approach – In discussing the above, the article will draw on institutional theory, Miller’s theory of living systems and systemic thinking. North’s “action theory” and Asplund’s “motivation theory” are also used to explain aspects of institutional innovations. Findings �…

Mixed modified fruit fly optimization algorithm with general regression neura…

Purpose –When facing a clouded global economy, many countries would increase their gold reserves. On the other hand, oil supply and demand depends on the political and economic situations of oil producing countries and their production technologies. Both oil and gold reserve play important roles in the economic development of a country. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodo…

Knowledge and the political economy of TARP

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to establish the consensus about the tremendous economic success of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and explore theories of popular disapproval of TARP. Design/methodology/approach – The analytical approach in this paper is a multivariate survey logit based on two Pew Research Center surveys that include questions on knowledge of and views…

Perspectives on “marginal crisis risk” and “leaning against the wind”…

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to relate the marginal crisis risk of Woodford to a number of financial fragility indicators. The paper expands the interest rate gap approach by considering the capital structure of investments and systemic risk, dating back to Modigliani-Miller. The model allows for distinct impacts from asset inflation, leverage as well as incentives for speculativ…

Determinants of foreign direct investment in OECD member countries

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to get an insight into the potential determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) for a panel of ten OECD member countries over the period of 1985-2009. Design/methodology/approach – Granger causality tests have been implemented in the study to identify causalities, both in the short- and long-run, between FDI and the variables that emerge as signif…

Tax evasion and compliance;from the neo classical paradigm to behavioural eco…

Purpose – Tax evasion and tax compliance have been popular research subjects for several decades. This paper aims to present a comprehensive review of the literature explaining individual taxpayer’s behaviour. Design/methodology/approach – Recognizing Allingham and Sandmo’s model as the starting point, important modern behavioural approaches in conjunction with the social discipline…

The desocialising of economic theory

Purpose – The paper aims to show that economic theory has become “desocialised” and separated from social theory through the adoption of individualistic methods and neglect of social relations and structures. It also seeks to assess the upshot of these trends, as well as the prospects for reversing them. Design/methodology/approach – A historical overview traces how the social conten…

Once upon a time:the neo-Thomist natural law approach to social economics

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand why the neo-Thomist natural law approach to social economics does not represent a trustworthy epistemological reference for the current social economists but, rather, definitively belongs to the past history of economics. Design/methodology/approach – The approach ventures beyond an epistemological, methodological, and historical anal…

Does activism matter? The case of environmental policy in the US states

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of activism in determining the identity of the “green” median voter and the influence of the green voter on environmental regulatory stringency in the US states. Design/methodology/approach – Regulatory stringency is measured using output weighted abatement spending and an industry concentration adjusted index of state envir…

Assessing the distributional impact of community forest income

Purpose – Emerging evidence revealed a high rate of dependence of marginal people on forest resources in developing countries for both subsistence use and cash income. The purpose of this paper is to examine the rural livelihoods welfare dimensions of community forest income in south-western Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach – Forest activities and income pattern data were collected f…

Attitudes of Turkish students against markets: does studying economics matter?

Purpose – The literature shows economics students to be more market oriented than students from other disciplines. A major shortcoming of this work, however, is that it is based on research carried out in the west. The purpose of this paper is to examine the attitudes of Turkish economics students’ towards markets. Design/methodology/approach – The study reported here uses a survey de…

The composition of public expenditures and economic growth: evidence from Pak…

Purpose – This study is an attempt to examine the role of sub categories of government expenditures under democratic and military regimes in Pakistan for the period of 1972-2009. Design/methodology/approach – This study exercised autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL)model. Findings – The results show that contractionary fiscal expansion occurs in Pakistan. Moreover, the coefficient of…

Response to the papers

Purpose – This article aims to provide a response to the papers in this issue. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology employed is philosophical. Findings – In her response, Nussbaum thanks the authors for their contributions and addresses their most salient arguments. Originality/value – Nussbaum in this article responds to the papers in this issue of IJSE and addresses the …

Moon phase effect on investor psychology and stock ttrading performance

Purpose – This article aims to examine how investor moods and aggressiveness differ in their state and influence investor stock market performance associated with the moon phase. The mechanisms and impact of full moon gravity on investor stock trading performance are explored through an experimental approach and econometrics model. Design/methodology/approach – A time-series quasi-exper…

The tragedy of the private:transaction cost considerations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to weigh the benefits and costs of public property, as opposed to private, from the transaction cost perspective. In the absence of transaction costs, private property has clear advantages over public. However, when the true costs of running an economic system are taken into account, the advantages of private property are not so evident and public pro…

Market spectacle:immigration policy along the US/Mexico border

Purpose – The central contribution of the paper aims to provide a new way of thinking and reflecting about using a more critical public policy approach as opposed to the heretofore dysfunctional dichotomist approach common to the immigration policy debate. Design/methodology/approach – Using critical theoretical approaches primarily based on Debord and Agamben, the author compares and c…