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This manuscript presents the Human Trafficking Indicators (HTI), a new dataset on human trafficking patterns and government anti-trafficking efforts in 179 countries from 2000 to 2011. This is the first dataset to broadly capture different trafficking types and disaggregated measures of government responses. These data enable the cross-national study of seven types of trafficking including forced prostitution, labor, domestic servitude, and debt bondage. The HTI also includes measures of a government's law enforcement efforts, protective services, and prevention efforts. This paper presents an overview of the dataset, some initial trends, and implications for trafficking research.

How does specific information about contamination in a household's drinking water affect water handling behavior? We randomly split a sample of households in rural Andhra Pradesh, India. The treatment group observed a contamination test of the drinking water in their own household storage vessel; while they were waiting for their results, they were also provided with a list of actions that they could take to remedy contamination if they tested positive. The control group received no test or guidance. The drinking water of nearly 90% of tested households showed evidence of contamination by fecal bacteria. They reacted by purchasing more of their water from commercial sources but not by making more time-intensive adjustments. Providing salient evidence of risk increases demand for commercial clean water.

Many manufacturing processes involved in the fabrication and assembly of “high-tech” components have highly variable yields that complicate the planning and control of production. We develop a procedure to determine optimal input quantities at each stage of a serial production system in which process yields at each stage of production may be stochastic. The procedure is applied to an example in the manufacture of a light-emitting diode (LED) display using actual yield data. We also provide a brief analysis of the quantifiable savings obtained by reducing the variability of the yield at one production stage.

Different local projection (LP) estimators for structural impulse responses of proxy vector autoregressions are reviewed and compared algebraically and with respect to their small sample suitability for inference. Conditions for numerical equivalence and similarities of some estimators are provided. A new LP type estimator is also proposed which is very easy to compute. Two generalized least squares (GLS) projection estimators are found to be more accurate than the other LP estimators in small samples. In particular, a lag-augmented GLS estimator tends to be superior to its competitors and to perform as well as a standard VAR estimator for sufficiently large samples.

In contrast with major theories of attitudes and behavior, the authors propose that individuals are not equally motivated to pursue their self-interests. The authors show that differences in other orientation affect the extent to which actions and attitudes reflect self-interested calculation (instrumental rationality) and the extent to which beliefs represent their external environment (epistemic rationality). These differences have consequences for processes underlying a wide range of attitudes and behavior typically assumed to be rationally self-interested. Thus, the authors' model exposes a common explanation for diverse organizational phenomena. It also clarifies inconsistencies surrounding the validity of certain attitudinal and motivational models, the relationship between job attitudes and actions, cross-cultural differences in attitudes and behavior, escalation of commitment, and the relationship between chief executive officer characteristics and organizational performance.