Modeling External Risks in Project Management

To ascertain the viability of a project, undertake resource allocation, take part in bidding processes, and other related decisions, modern project management requires forecasting techniques for cost, duration, and performance of a project, not only under normal circumstances, but also under external events that might abruptly change the status quo. We provide a Bayesian framework that provides a global forecast of a project's performance. We aim at predicting the probabilities and impacts of a set of potential scenarios caused by combinations of disruptive events, and using this information to deal with project management issues. To introduce the methodology, we focus on a project's cost, but the ideas equally apply to project duration or performance forecasting. We illustrate our approach with an example based on a real case study involving estimation of the uncertainty in project cost while bidding for a contract.     

Society without the social: the Spanish labour movement and the rise of the social, 1840–1880

Focusing on the Spanish case, this article addresses two fundamental questions: why were many unionized workers sceptical about state intervention in labour issues throughout the nineteenth century, and why did this attitude begin to change from the 1860s onwards? Its main thesis is that workers’ attitudes derived ultimately from different historical notions of ‘society’ that shaped their perceptions and experiences of labour relations and their attitude toward the role of the state. Thus, a notion of society as an aggregation of individuals shaped unionized Spanish workers’ hostility toward state intervention since the creation of the first unions in the 1840s. From the 1860s onward, a new conception of collective relations, namely ‘the social’, began to transform some workers’ expectations of the role of the state in labour conflicts. The main factor that explains this change, it is argued, lies in the relationship between the workers’ imaginary, their actions, and their expectations about these actions.     

Towards expenditure rules and fiscal sanity in the euro area

The study demonstrates the key role of expenditure policies in explaining fiscal developments during EMU in the euro area, its three largest members and four “macro-imbalances” countries. It compares actual primary expenditure trends with those that would have prevailed if countries had followed neutral policies based on expenditure rules since the start of EMU. Moreover, the implications for debt trends are calculated. Results show that all sample countries except Germany applied expansionary expenditure policies already before the crisis. Consequently, expenditure and debt paths were much higher compared to a counterfactual neutral expenditure stance. Rule-based expenditure policies could have led to much safer fiscal positions much more in line with the EU's Stability and Growth Pact. An empirical analysis of the determinants of countries’ expenditure stance confirms the need for stronger fiscal rules and institutions in the euro area.     

The Impact of Public Services Expenditure on the Spanish Income Distribution

This paper performs an assessment and imputation of the benefits produced to the individuals and households well-being by the public services provision. This analysis is very relevant in the current framework of economic crisis of the European economies. Although most of the papers in the literature compare countries, decentralization processes are included in this paper by accounting the effect of public expenditure on regional health care and education upon the levels of inequality and rates of poverty in each Spanish region. This case is relevant because of the high decentralization degree of the Spanish political structure and the persistent regional disparities. The results show a clear downward tendency in both phenomena following imputation, although education shows a greater impact. Furthermore, a decomposition, used in this context for the first time, of the effects shows the very relevant redistributive effect of this public expenditure.     

Hypothesis test for paired samples in the presence of missing data

Missing data are present in almost all statistical analysis. In simple paired design tests, when some subject has one of the involved variables missing in the so-called partially overlapping samples scheme, it is usually discarded for the analysis. The lack of consistency between the information reported in the univariate and multivariate analysis is, perhaps, the main consequence. Although the randomness on the missing mechanism (missingness completely at random) is an usual and needed assumption for this particular situation, missing data presence could lead to serious inconsistencies on the reported conclusions. In this paper, the authors develop a simple and direct procedure which allows using the whole available information in order to perform paired tests. In particular, the proposed methodology is applied to check the equality among the means from two paired samples. In addition, the use of two different resampling techniques is also explored. Finally, real-world data are analysed.     

Street Fighters with Insurance Coverage: The Insurance System of the Nazi Storm Section (Sturmabteilung)

The Storm Section (Sturmabteilung, or SA) was organized throughout the Weimar Republic as a paramilitary force entrusted with the ‘fight for the streets’ during the so-called ‘time of struggle’ (Kampfzeit). To offset the potentially paralyzing effects of activism entailing risks of injury or death, the leaders of the movement devised and implemented an insurance system, which was retained throughout the following years. This insurance system smoothed the way for the most radical uncivility to hold sway without restriction during the final years of the Republic. Starting from late 1926, the National Socialist mechanism for overcoming the barriers to participation in violent activities that could potentially involve a high cost was to introduce an insurance system to facilitate their activists' willingness to ‘sacrifice’ themselves. The visceral anti-Semitism of the Nazis was central to the negotiations and agreements reached with different insurers. The Nazis introduced an insurance policy for their activists that would cover them while carrying out their obligations as militants in the ‘fight’ against Social Democrats and, more often, Communists. By lowering the potential costs of participation in a high-risk instance of activism, the insurance system contributed to stoking a ‘latent civil war’ in the German streets during the final years of the Republic. Relaying on archival and other primary sources and looking at them from a collective action perspective, this paper delves into the history of the SA insurance system, as well as on its functions.     

EVALUATING A BILINGUAL EDUCATION PROGRAM IN SPAIN: THE IMPACT BEYOND FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING

Bilingual education programs, which consist of doing a substantial part of the instruction in a language different from the native language of the students, exist in several countries like the United States, India, and Spain. While the economic benefits of knowing a second language are well established, the potential effects over the learning of other subjects have received much less attention. We evaluate a program that introduced bilingual education (in English and Spanish) in primary education in a group of public schools of the Madrid region in 2004. Under this program, students not only study English as a foreign language but also some other subjects (at least Science, History, and Geography) are taught in English. In order to evaluate the program, a standardized test for all sixth grade students in Madrid on the skills considered “indispensable” at that age is our measure of the outcome of primary education. Our results indicate that there is a clearly negative effect on the exam results for the subject taught in English, for children whose parents have less than upper secondary education. This negative effect is a composite of two phenomena: the effect of the program on the student's knowledge of the subject and a reflection of the student ability to do the test in their native language when English is the medium of instruction. Although we are not able to separate quantitatively these two effects, the composite effect has a relevant interest, because the results for exams taken in Spanish are the measures that determine academic progression in the Spanish system. In contrast with the previous result, there is no significant effect for anyone on mathematical and reading skills, which were taught in Spanish. (JEL H40, I21, I28)     

Why is not design of experiments widely used by engineers in Europe?

An extensive literature review was carried out to detect why design of experiments (DoE) is not widely used among engineers in Europe. Once 16 main barriers were identified, a survey was carried out to obtain first-hand information about the significance of each. We obtained 101 responses from academics, consultants and practitioners interested in DoE. A statistical analysis of the survey is introduced, including: (a) a ranking of the barriers, (b) grouping of barriers using factorial analysis, (c) differences between characteristics of respondents. This exploratory analysis showed that the main barriers that hinder the widespread use of DoE are low managerial commitment and engineers’ general weakness in statistics. Once the barriers were classified, the most important resultant group was that related to business barriers.