Friday, March 23, 2018

Independent Fiscal Councils: Tentatively associated with more accurate and less optimistic fiscal forecasts, as well as greater compliance with fiscal rules

Independent Fiscal Councils: Recent Trends and Performance. Roel M. W. J. Beetsma; Xavier Debrun; Xiangming Fang; Young Kim; Victor Duarte Lledo; Samba Mbaye ; Xiaoxiao Zhang. IMF Working Paper No. 18/68, www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2018/03/23/Independent-Fiscal-Councils-Recent-Trends-and-Performance-45726

Abstract: Countries increasingly rely on independent fiscal councils to constrain policymakers’ discretion and curb the bias towards excessive deficits and pro-cyclical policies. Since fiscal councils are often recent and heterogeneous across countries, assessing their impact is challenging. Using the latest (2016) vintage of the IMF Fiscal Council Dataset, we focus on two tasks expected to strengthen fiscal performance: the preparation or assessment of forecasts, and the monitoring of compliance with fiscal rules. Tentative econometric evidence suggests that the presence of a fiscal council is associated with more accurate and less optimistic fiscal forecasts, as well as greater compliance with fiscal rules.

Personal Pornography Viewing and Sexual Satisfaction: Reductions in satisfaction tend to initiate once viewing reaches once a month, and that additional increases in the frequency of viewing lead to disproportionately larger decrements in satisfaction

Personal Pornography Viewing and Sexual Satisfaction: A Quadratic Analysis. Paul J. Wright, Ana J. Bridges, Chyng Sun, Matthew B. Ezzell & Jennifer A. Johnson. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, Volume 44, 2018 - Issue 3, Pages 308-315. https://doi.org/10.1080/0092623X.2017.1377131

ABSTRACT: Personal pornography viewing has been associated with lower sexual satisfaction in both experimental and observational research. The language used to hypothesize this relationship typically suggests that it is frequent viewing, rather than infrequent or only occasional viewing, that is responsible for any adverse effects. When the nature of the relationship between a predictor and a criterion depends on the levels of the predictor, a curvilinear relationship is indicated. Nevertheless, studies have assumed linearity in their analytical approach. Curvilinear relationships will go undetected unless they are specifically tested. This article presents results from a survey of approximately 1,500 U.S. adults. Quadratic analyses indicated a curvilinear relationship between personal pornography viewing and sexual satisfaction in the form of a predominately negative, concave downward curve. The nature of the curvilinearity did not differ as a function of participants' gender, relationship status, or religiosity. But the negative acceleration was slightly more pronounced for men than for women, for people not in a relationship than for people in a relationship, and for religious people than for nonreligious people. For all groups, negative simple slopes were present when viewing reached once a month or more. These results are correlational only. However, if an effects perspective were adopted, it would suggest that consuming pornography less than once a month has little or no impact on satisfaction, that reductions in satisfaction tend to initiate once viewing reaches once a month, and that additional increases in the frequency of viewing lead to disproportionately larger decrements in satisfaction.

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My comments: I disagree with these conclusions. And the guys I know that are avid porn consumers, all of them bisexual or gay, do not experience those effects.

Sex differences in facial emotion perception ability across the lifespan: emotion perception abilities peak between the ages of 15 and 30, with poorer performance by younger adults and declining performance after that

Sex differences in facial emotion perception ability across the lifespan. Sally Olderbak, Oliver Wilhelm, Andrea Hildebrandt & Jordi Quoidbach. Cognition and Emotion,  https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2018.1454403

ABSTRACT: Perception of emotion in the face is a key component of human social cognition and is considered vital for many domains of life; however, little is known about how this ability differs across the lifespan for men and women. We addressed this question with a large community sample (N = 100,257) of persons ranging from younger than 15 to older than 60 years of age. Participants were viewers of the television show “Tout le Monde Joue”, and the task was presented on television, with participants responding via their mobile devices. Applying latent variable modeling, and establishing measurement invariance between males and females and across age, we found that, for both males and females, emotion perception abilities peak between the ages of 15 and 30, with poorer performance by younger adults and declining performance after the age of 30. In addition, we show a consistent advantage by females across the lifespan, which decreases in magnitude with increasing age. This large scale study with a wide range of people and testing environments suggests these effects are largely robust. Implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS: Emotion perception, emotion recognition, sex differences, aging, latent variable modeling

Chimpanzees primarily eat plant source foods, but like vertebrate prey due to high fat content; 91pct of observed consumption of sub-adult prey was head-first due to soft skull. With adults, with robust skulls, chimps wanted viscera first, probably to harvest the liver.

Meat Eating by Wild Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii): Effects of Prey Age on Carcass Consumption Sequence. Ian C. Gilby, Daniel Wawrzyniak. International Journal of Primatology, February 2018, Volume 39, Issue 1, pp 127–140. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10764-018-0019-9

Abstract: Despite the fact that many primates consume vertebrate prey, surprisingly little is known about the nutritional benefits of eating meat for members of this diverse order. Although chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) primarily eat plant source foods, especially fruit, they consume vertebrate prey with excitement, attesting to its nutritional value. Meat is a concentrated source of macro- and micronutrients; however, a carcass is not a uniform package. For example, the mammalian brain has considerably higher fat content than lean muscle tissue. The brain both has great caloric value and contains high concentrations of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are critical for normal brain function. It thus represents a large, nutrient-dense source of energy and essential nutrients that should be highly valued. We filmed consumption of 29 arboreal monkeys by chimpanzees at Gombe National Park, Tanzania, and recorded the order in which general regions of the body were consumed. Overall, the head was significantly more likely to be targeted first than either the torso (including viscera) or appendages. This result was driven by subadult prey, 91% of which were eaten head-first, probably because their skulls were relatively easy for chimpanzees to break with a single bite. Possessors of adult prey (with robust skulls) often first selected the viscera, probably to harvest the fat-rich liver, thus maximizing immediate return in the face of the threat of harassment or theft. This has important implications for our understanding of the nutritional benefits of meat eating among primates, and highlights the need for future studies that measure the nutritional content of specific tissues and examine which are preferentially consumed or shared.

Sex Differences on Big Five Traits: Phenotypic differences (women higher in neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness), but no genetic or environmental sex differences in any trait

Sex Differences in the Big Five Model Personality Traits: A Behavior Genetics Exploration. Susan C. South, 1, , Amber M. Jarnecke1, Colin E. Vize. Journal of Research in Personality, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2018.03.002

Highlights
•    Mean level sex differences were found for Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness (women higher on all)
•    No evidence of qualitative genetic differences between men and women on any of the Big Five traits.
•    No evidence of quantitative genetic or environmental differences between men and women on any of the Big Five traits.

Abstract: The importance of genetic influences for the Five Factor/Big Five Model (BFM) traits is well established. Relatively understudied, however, are the presence and magnitude of sex differences in genetic and environmental variance of these traits. The current study tested if men and women differ 1) qualitatively in the genetic mechanisms, or 2) quantitatively, on the genetic and environmental variance, contributing to BFM personality domains. Results from a nationally representative U.S. adult twin sample (N=973 pairs) supported phenotypic (i.e., mean level) sex differences in three of five personality traits (i.e., Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness) but did not support genetic or environmental sex differences in any trait.

Keywords: Personality; Sex differences; Behavior genetics; Twin

Why Do Very Unattractive Workers Earn So Much?

Why Do Very Unattractive Workers Earn So Much? Satoshi Kanazawa, Shihao Hu, Adrien Larere. Economics & Human Biology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2018.03.003

Highlights
•    Very unattractive women (not men) are more likely to be married than others.
•    Spouses of very attractive women (not men) earn more than those of others.
•    Our findings can explain why very unattractive workers earn more.

Abstract: Kanazawa and Still (2018) showed that very unattractive workers earned more than unattractive workers, sometimes more than average-looking or attractive workers, because they had higher levels of intelligence and education, but they did not explain why very unattractive workers had higher intelligence and education. There are both theoretical and empirical reasons to expect that some intelligent men may prefer to marry very unattractive women. The analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) shows that very unattractive women were significantly more likely to be married at Age 29 than unattractive or average-looking women, and their spouses or partners earned significantly more than those of unattractive or average-looking women. If intelligent men have historically preferred to marry very unattractive women generation after generation, then, because both general intelligence and physical attractiveness are highly heritable, this can explain why very unattractive workers are more intelligent and achieve higher education, thereby earning more. It can also explain why the positive correlation between intelligence and physical attractiveness is not larger despite assortative mating of intelligent men of higher status and physically attractive women over many generations.

Keywords: the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis; the intelligence paradox; mate preferences; evolutionary psychology