Regression-based techniques for statistical decision making in single-case designs

The present study evaluates the performance of four methods for estimating regression coefficients used to make statistical decisions about intervention effectiveness in single-case designs. Ordinary least square estimation is compared to two correction techniques dealing with general trend and a procedure that eliminates autocorrelation whenever it is present. Type I error rates and statistical power are studied for experimental conditions defined by the presence or absence of treatment effect (change in level or in slope), general trend, and serial dependence. The results show that empirical Type I error rates do not approach the nominal ones in the presence of autocorrelation or general trend when ordinary and generalized least squares are applied. The techniques controlling trend show lower false alarm rates, but prove to be insufficiently sensitive to existing treatment effects. Consequently, the use of the statistical significance of the regression coefficients for detecting treatment effects is not recommended for short data series.     

The Evolution of Social Ethics: Using Economic History to Understand Economic Ethics

In the development of Roman Catholic social thought from the teachings of the scholastics to the modern social encyclicals, changes in normative economics reflect the transformation of an economic terrain from its feudal roots to the modern industrial economy. The preeminence accorded by the modern market to the allocative over the distributive function of price broke the convenient convergence of commutative and distributive justice in scholastic just price theory. Furthermore, the loss of custom, law, and usage in defining the boundaries of economic behavior led to a depersonalization of economic relationships that had previously provided effective informal means of protecting individual well-being. Hence, recent economic ethics has had to look for nonprice, nonmarket mechanisms for distributive justice. This is reflected, for example, in the shift in attitude from the medieval antipathy toward unions to the contemporary defense of organized labor on moral grounds.