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Disparities in Disaster Aid Research: An Applicant-Level Analysis of FEMA Aid Equity after Hurricane Sandy
No full textThe Robert T. Stafford Act (1988) mandates that FEMA distribute disaster aid equitably, implying that sociodemographic variables — such as race, citizenship, education, or income — should have no effect on aid distribution. However, FEMA does not release applicant demographic data, making equity assessments challenging. Most studies (Garrett & Sobel (2003); Emrich et al. (2022); Grube et al. (2018)) analyze aid distribution at aggregated levels (state, county, or zip code) and often find inequities. These approaches assume the average resident represents the average applicant, a limitation addressed by Lamba-Nieves & Santiago-Bartolomei (2022) through applicant-level analysis. I apply this approach to Hurricane Sandy to compare with Grube et al. (2018), who found that zip codes with more foreign-born residents and fewer high-school graduates received less total aid, while median household income had no effect on total aid. At the individual level, I find no inequities based on poverty status — low-income households received more aid, suggesting FEMA distributed assistance equitably. My results emphasize the need for multi-level analyses, as aggregate studies may overlook equity patterns at the individual level
Power in Forms: Politics of Devotion and Display in Late Heian Japanese Decorated Sūtras
No full textIn studies of Buddhist Manuscript Cultures, the decorated sūtras have been one of the main subjects for religious and artistic inquiries. Focusing on the Heike Nōkyō and the Hiraizumi Pagoda Sūtra, two elaborately produced sūtras from late Heian Japan (794–1185), this essay argues that these manuscripts are dual vehicles of both religious devotion and political ambition. Through these decorated manuscripts, the Ise Taira and Ōshū Fujiwara families constructed their warrior-aristocratic identities. While previous scholarship on Buddhist manuscripts has largely emphasized their textual contents and semantic meanings, my study adopts a material approach, reading two texts as assemblages composed of both human and non-human agents. By incorporating historical, art historical, and religious approaches, this study takes an interdisciplinary approach to examine the textual contents, the visual semiotics within the texts, and ritual performances involved during the production and dedication of two sūtras. Through examining these heterogeneous elements in two texts, this essay challenges the long-standing State Buddhism mode in the study of premodern Japanese Buddhism. Rather than adhering to models dictated by central authority, I argue that non-aristocratic figures such as the Taira and Fujiwara transcended fixed social hierarchies, dynamically constructing their identities through both imitation of and deviation from imperial authority
Measuring the Effect of Digital Transformation on the Contemporary United States Labor Force
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“Tear out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord!” Reading the Imprecatory Psalms through the Canonical Approach
No full textThe imprecatory psalms are difficult for many modern readers, because of their violent content. Some imprecatory verses and entire psalms have been removed from the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours over concerns of difficulty of understanding and praying these psalms. Some prominent ways of dealing with the violence of the imprecatory psalms include using them for catharsis, allegorizing the violence, and ignoring them. However, taken in light of the rest of the biblical canon, the imprecatory psalms are a call for God to hear the cry of the suffering and to help them. Brevard Childs’ canonical approach, while controversial, uses scripture to read other scripture, and helps illuminate the meaning and place of the imprecatory psalms. Using Walter Brueggemann’s model of the “counter-world” in his reading of the historical psalms, Jon Levenson’s idea of God’s incomplete mastery, and the demand for justice in the prophet Amos, the imprecatory psalms motivate the reader to act for justice. In context of the rest of the Bible, using Childs’ canonical approach, the imprecatory psalms expose modern readers to the deep pains and injustices of the world, motivating them to seek justice on behalf of the oppressed
The Hunter or The Hunted?: The Ambiguity of Power in Vase Paintings of Pederastic Relationships
No full textWill the Sun Rise in the East Tomorrow? Exploring the Role of Implicit Prior Knowledge in Causal Inductive Reasoning
No full textCausal inductive reasoning is the process by which individuals infer causal relationships from observed correlations and then use that knowledge to generate predictions and draw inferences, especially when evidence is sparse or ambiguous. For example, people might infer that regular exercise improves health by observing a consistent association between these variables. However, the process is not purely data-driven: it is also shaped by prior beliefs—whether acquired explicitly from external sources or implicitly through experience. Understanding how these priors guide causal induction is critical for explaining why systematic biases, such as stereotypes or perceptual distortions, may emerge. Bayesian inference offers a powerful tool to reverse-engineer the mental process underlying causal induction. By formalizing the integration of prior beliefs (priors) with incoming evidence via likelihoods, Bayesian models yield updated beliefs (posteriors) according to Bayes’ rule \parencite{Bayes1958}. This generative process formalizes how prior knowledge—whether explicit or implicit—is continuously refined as new evidence is acquired. In this paper, I investigate the role of implicit prior knowledge in causal inductive reasoning and examine how surprising evidence prompts belief revision. Specifically, I address two central questions: (1) How does an unconscious reliance on prior knowledge introduce systematic biases in causal reasoning? and (2) How does unexpected evidence drive the revision of causal inferences derived from those priors? This discussion sets the stage for offering a potential way of investigating empirically how people update their beliefs in a causal bandits task between reward structures and the nature of prior knowledge. It is important to note, however, that while Bayesian models serve as a normative tool for dissecting the mechanisms behind belief updating in causal tasks, they do not capture every nuance of human reasoning. In other words, these models provide a valuable idealized account of how causal induction might occur, yet they have limitations in fully replicating the complexity of human cognition
US Monetary Policy Shocks and Welfare Dynamics in Emerging Market Economies
No full textThis paper investigates whether US monetary policy shocks have significant effects on the welfare of representative consumers in emerging market economies. I construct a dataset covering 17 emerging markets from 1981 to 2019 and employ country-specific local projections, and their impulse response functions, to analyze the dynamic impact of estimated US monetary policy shocks on welfare. I find a moderately significant effect for six of the 17 countries, though welfare responses are notably heterogenous across countries. For example, a contractionary US monetary policy shock leads to a sustained decline in welfare over 10 years in Thailand, whereas it results in a prolonged increase in Hong Kong. These differences may be influenced by country-specific exchange rate regimes and trade balances. Additionally, a forecast error variance decomposition of the local projections reveals that for most of the countries, on average, US monetary policy shocks explain only 3–5% of welfare fluctuations at any given horizon, with a maximum contribution around 10–20%. This suggests that other domestic or global economic factors play a larger role in shaping welfare dynamics in emerging markets
