This paper distinguishes news about short-lived events from news about changes in longer term prospects using surveys of expectations. Employing a multivariate GARCH-in-Mean model for the US, the paper illustrates how the different types of news influence business cycle dynamics. The influence of transitory output shocks can be relatively large on impact but gradually diminishes over two to three years. Permanent shocks drive the business cycle, generating immediate stock price reactions and gradually building output effects, although they have more immediate output effects during recessions through the uncertainties they create. Markedly different macroeconomic dynamics are found if these explicitly identified types of news or uncertainty feedbacks are omitted from the analysis.

This article introduces a model that harnesses praxis as a powerful tool for critique, knowledge, and action within the realm of public archaeology. The adopted framework focuses on persistence as a middle-range methodology that bridges the material past to activist and collaborative-based projects. Recent research at Mission La Purísima Concepción in Lompoc, California, shows the effectiveness of this model and its real-world application. Visitors to California missions encounter the pervasive “Mission Myth”—a narrative that systematically overlooks and marginalizes Indigenous presence while perpetuating ideas of White hegemony and Eurocentrism. Archaeological excavations in the Native rancheria and collaboration with members of the Chumash community help resist notions of Indigenous erasure. By activating notions of persistence through public archaeology, this study contributes to dismantling entrenched terminal narratives, paving the way for a more accurate representation of the past and fostering a more inclusive archaeological practice.

Research on mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) has revealed that high rates of attrition among users can undermine the potential benefits of this learning method. To explore this issue, we surveyed 3,670 adult MALL users based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and also conducted an in-depth analysis of their historical app usage data. The results of hierarchical k-means cluster analysis and recurrent event survival analysis revealed three major findings. First, three distinct profiles of learners were characterized by different MALL acceptance and engagement experiences. Second, those with greater MALL acceptance displayed more intense, frequent, and durable app usage (behavioral engagement). Lastly, high levels of MALL acceptance were associated with more frequent pauses in app usage but also (a) longer active usage, (b) shorter breaks before returning to the app, and, ultimately, (c) fewer dropouts. We argue that persistence is a multidimensional process involving cyclical phases of engagement, disengagement, dormancy, and reengagement, with each aspect, like intensity, frequency, and duration, building up cumulatively over time. Implications for promoting persistent MALL engagement are discussed.

Debate regarding the continuity of Cypriot political forms from the Late Bronze Age to the Cypro-Archaic is persistent, resulting in a scholarly divide with few signs of resolution. This article reviews the historiography of political forms proposed for Cyprus as the essential context for this debate. It considers several major themes that emerge from the debate: the use of anthropological models for state formation, regionalism, social networks, and the nature of spatial power. The author views the debate as centred on two equally valid motivations: using related social science theory to enhance archaeological explanation and emphasizing Cypriot autonomy. These motivations need not be set in opposition but, together, illustrate the island's unique history and provide the basis for vibrant scholarship.

This article explores the notion of immortality in Jaina philosophy by focusing on the problem of the persistence of the self. It considers the concept of persistence within the broader context of Jaina metaphysics and its specific application to living beings. The article analyses the relationship between the immaterial self and its material body to determine which aspects of living beings can be deemed immortal or persisting beyond death. It also investigates the state of liberation as an immortal condition. Drawing from the Tattvârtha-sūtra and four of its commentaries, the article demonstrates the complexity of the Jaina treatment of the issue of the self's persistence over time and its commitment to the doctrine of non-one-sidedness. It also shows that Jaina philosophers deal with this critical philosophical problem in a way that reflects their engagement with the intellectual debates of their time.

A history of local inclusive institutions is correlated with higher levels of democracy today. However, it is unclear whether this reflects the effect of historical institutions on democracy or a prior common cause. Using a geographic natural experiment, this letter demonstrates that historical experience with inclusive institutions is related to less support for autocratic parties in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany. This suggests that electoral support for political parties that seek to subvert democracy can be influenced by pre-modern institutions even when they were destroyed prior to the introduction of democracy.

We study the asymptotic growth rate of the labels of high-degree vertices in weighted recursive graphs (WRGs) when the weights are independent, identically distributed, almost surely bounded random variables, and as a result confirm a conjecture by Lodewijks and Ortgiese (‘The maximal degree in random recursive graphs with random weights’, preprint, 2020). WRGs are a generalisation of the random recursive tree and directed acyclic graph models, in which vertices are assigned vertex-weights and where new vertices attach to $m\in\mathbb{N}$ predecessors, each selected independently with a probability proportional to the vertex-weight of the predecessor. Prior work established the asymptotic growth rate of the maximum degree of the WRG model, and here we show that there exists a critical exponent $\mu_m$ such that the typical label size of the maximum-degree vertex equals $n^{\mu_m(1+o(1))}$ almost surely as n, the size of the graph, tends to infinity. These results extend results on the asymptotic behaviour of the location of the maximum degree, formerly only known for the random recursive tree model, to the more general weighted multigraph case of the WRG model. Moreover, for the weighted recursive tree model, that is, the WRG model with $m=1$, we prove the joint convergence of the rescaled degree and label of high-degree vertices under additional assumptions on the vertex-weight distribution, and also extend results on the growth rate of the maximum degree obtained by Eslava, Lodewijks, and Ortgiese (Stoch. Process. Appl. 158, 2023).

Based on biochemical kinetics, a stochastic model to characterize wastewater treatment plants and dynamics of river water quality under the influence of random fluctuations is proposed in this paper. This model describes the interaction between dissolved oxygen (DO) and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and is in the form of stochastic differential equations driven by multiplicative Gaussian noises. The stochastic persistence problem for the model of the system is analysed. Further, a numerical simulation of the stationary probability distributions of BOD and OD by approximations of the stochastic process solution is presented. These results have implications for the prediction and control of pollutants.

We use an online experiment to study the relative effect on voter behavior of a candidate’s voice pitch and policy stance. We demonstrate a strong voice-pitch bias: between candidates who are identical in every other aspect, voters are more likely to choose the one with the lower voice-pitch, and more so in elections between men than women candidates. We then introduce a novel phenomenon: persistence of voice-pitch bias is the amount of policy difference needed to compensate for voice-pitch bias. While persistence is also gender-dependent, the effect is now reversed: voice-pitch bias is more persistent in elections between women than men candidates. As a possible mechanism, we show that voters perceive candidates with lower voice-pitch as more competent and trustworthy.

The canonical income process, including autoregressive, transitory, and fixed effect components, is routinely used in macro and labor economics. We provide a guide for its estimation using quasidifferences, cataloging biases in the estimated parameters for various $N$, $T$, initial conditions, and weighting schemes. Using Danish administrative data on male earnings, estimation in quasidifferences yields divergent estimates of the autoregressive parameter for different weighting schemes, which conforms to our simulation results when the variance of transitory shocks is higher than that of persistent shocks, true persistence is high, and the persistent component’s variance in the first sample year is nonzero. We further apply quasidifferences to the data from a calibrated lifecycle model and find significant biases in the persistence of shocks and their insurance. Estimation of the income process using quasidifferences is reliable only when the variance of persistent shocks is higher than that of transitory shocks and the moments are equally weighted.

In producing linguistic variation, language users display a tendency to reuse the same variant. This paper compares the empirical properties of different types of repetitiveness in a single case study: locative variation in Chengdu Mandarin. Using conversational data from sociolinguistic interviews, we ask whether within-speaker repetitiveness (persistence) and cross-speaker repetitiveness (convergence) behave similarly with respect to (1) their sensitivity to the linguistic similarity of the prime and target, and (2) their tendency to decline with greater temporal distance between the prime and target. Our results suggest that intraspeaker persistence and interspeaker convergence behave similarly in both respects. We therefore propose that repetitiveness has a common underlying mechanism within and across speakers and encourage future work aimed at testing this hypothesis across other variables and varieties.

Modelling loss reserve data in run-off triangles is challenging due to the complex but unknown dynamics in the claim/loss process. Popular loss reserve models describe the mean process through development year, accident year, and calendar year effects using the analysis of variance and covariance (ANCOVA) models. We propose to include in the mean function the persistence terms in the conditional autoregressive range model for modelling the persistence of claim across development years. In the ANCOVA model, we adopt linear trends for the accident and calendar year effects and a quadratic trend for the development year effect. We investigate linear or log-transformed mean functions and four distributions, namely generalised beta type 2, generalised gamma, Weibull, and exponential extension, with positive support to enhance the model flexibility. The proposed models are implemented using the Bayesian user-friendly package Stan running in the R environment. Results show that the models with log-transformed mean function and persistence terms provide better model fits. Lastly, the best model is applied to forecast partial loss reserve and calendar year reserve for three years.

The equilibrium size of a nation state is, in part, the result of a trade-off between the gains from scale economies in the provision of public services and the costs of applying uniform policy to heterogeneous cultural, institutional and geographical fundamentals. Changes in such fundamentals can thus place pressure on states to reform over time. We consider this dynamic state formation process in the context of Scotland within the United Kingdom. First, we review the recent research in economic history on the persistence and evolution of such fundamentals. Second, we consider the history of Scotland both before and after the 1707 Act of Union in the light of that broader economic history literature. We conclude with some implications of fundamental persistence for current debates on the place of Scotland within the United Kingdom.