The Timing of Labour Reallocation and the Business Cycle: Evidence for The Netherlands

In this paper we study the cyclical behaviour of job and worker flows in The Netherlands. We find that job flows move counter‐cyclically while worker flows move acyclically. The persistence of newly created jobs is strongly pro‐cyclical while the persistence of destroyed jobs is strongly counter‐cyclical. We also examine the relative importance of aggregate and sectoral versus idiosyncratic shocks. We find both shocks to be negatively correlated and idiosyncratic shocks to be somewhat more important in explaining the time variation of job reallocation. Finally, we find that gross job flows account for about one‐third of the worker flows. The remainder reflect churning.     

Sonic Transculturation,Epistemologies of Purification and the Aural Public Sphere in Latin America

This paper explores how practices of sonic recontextualization enacted by both folklorists and the music industry during the first half of the twentieth century have been crucial to the constitution of an aural modernity in Latin America. This is mediated simultaneously by the contradictory practices of epistemologies of purification—which seek to provincialize sounds in order to ascribe them a place in the modern ecumene and epistemologies of transculturation—which either enact or disrupt such practices of purification. Through this I wish to argue that the aural has been a sphere of crucial constitution of Latin America's highly unequal modernity, one that is significant not only in the contemporary sonic turn but that also played a role in defining the very idea of a Latin American lettered modernity. I also explore the relation of this to the construction of epistemologies of traditional and popular musics in Latin America and their role in the constitution of musical ‘knowledges otherwise’. I particularly explore the politics of knowledge of some of the early twentieth cenutry folklorists and their implications for thinking about the structure of knowledge in musical disciplinary fields in a globalized, postcolonial context at a moment in which the sonic is mediating crucial fields of experience and knowledge.     

HOW LARGE ARE SEARCH FRICTIONS?

This paper shows that we can normalize job and worker characteristics so that, without frictions, there exists a linear relationship between wages on the one hand and worker and job type indices on the other. However, for five European countries and the United States we find strong evidence for a systematic concave relationship. An assignment model with search frictions provides a parsimonious explanation for our findings. This model yields two restrictions on the coefficients that fit the data well. Allowing for unobserved heterogeneity and measurement error, we find that reservation wages are 25% lower than they would be in a frictionless world. Our results relate to the literature on industry wage differentials and on structural identification in hedonic models. (JEL: J210, J300, J600, J230)     

Applications of Bayesian analysis to proof‐of‐concept trial planning and decision making

Decision making is a critical component of a new drug development process. Based on results from an early clinical trial such as a proof of concept trial, the sponsor can decide whether to continue, stop, or defer the development of the drug. To simplify and harmonize the decision‐making process, decision criteria have been proposed in the literature. One of them is to exam the location of a confidence bar relative to the target value and lower reference value of the treatment effect. In this research, we modify an existing approach by moving some of the “stop” decision to “consider” decision so that the chance of directly terminating the development of a potentially valuable drug can be reduced. As Bayesian analysis has certain flexibilities and can borrow historical information through an inferential prior, we apply the Bayesian analysis to the trial planning and decision making. Via a design prior, we can also calculate the probabilities of various decision outcomes in relationship with the sample size and the other parameters to help the study design. An example and a series of computations are used to illustrate the applications, assess the operating characteristics, and compare the performances of different approaches.     

Historically contested concepts: A conceptual history of philanthropy in France, 1712-1914

Since W. B. Gallie introduced the notion of essentially contested concepts (ECCs) in 1956, social science scholars have increasingly used his framework to analyze key concepts drawing “endless disputes” from contestant users. Despite its merits, the ECC framework has been limited by a neglect of social, cultural, and political contexts, the invisibility of actors, and its ahistorical character. To understand how ECCs evolve and change over time, I use a conceptual history approach to study the concept of philanthropy, recently labeled as an ECC. Using France during classical modernity as a case study, I analyze key events and actors from the concept’s inception in 1712 as a virtue of the Enlightenment to its triumph after 1789 as a secular alternative to Catholic charity, until its decline at the end of the nineteenth century as a new consensus emerged around the concept of solidarity. By introducing the notion of historically contested concepts, I make several contributions to research on ECCs, conceptual contestation, and conceptual change.

     

Asymptotic Inefficiency of Mean-Correction on Parameter Estimation for a Periodic First-Order Autoregressive Model

A common practice in time series analysis is to fit a centered model to the mean-corrected data set. For stationary autoregressive moving-average (ARMA) processes, as far as the parameter estimation is concerned, fitting an ARMA model without intercepts to the mean-corrected series is asymptotically equivalent to fitting an ARMA model with intercepts to the observed series. We show that, related to the parameter least squares estimation of periodic ARMA models, the second approach can be arbitrarily more efficient than the mean-corrected counterpart. This property is illustrated by means of a periodic first-order autoregressive model. The asymptotic variance of the estimators for both approaches is derived. Moreover, empirical experiments based on simulations investigate the finite sample properties of the estimators.     

SORTING AND THE OUTPUT LOSS DUE TO SEARCH FRICTIONS

We analyze a general search model with on‐the‐job search (OJS) and sorting of heterogeneous workers into heterogeneous jobs. For given values of nonmarket time, the relative efficiency of OJS, and the amount of search frictions, we derive a simple relationship between the unemployment rate, mismatch, and wage dispersion. We estimate the latter two from standard micro data. Our methodology accounts for measurement error, which is crucial to distinguish true from spurious mismatch and wage dispersion. We find that without frictions, output would be about 9.5% higher if firms can commit to pay wages as a function of match quality and 15.5% higher if they cannot. Noncommitment leads to a business‐stealing externality which causes a 5.5% drop in output.     

Propriétés dans L2 et estimation des processus purement bilinéaires et strictement superdiagonaux à coefficients périodiques

L₂‐properties and estimation of purely bilinear and strictly superdiagonal time series models with periodic coefficients The authors consider the subclass of purely bilinear and strictly superdiagonal time series models with periodic coefficients. Indeed, thanks to their possible application to a wide variety of fields including economics and finance, bilinear time series models with time‐dependent coefficients have recently been the object of attention in the statistical literature. The authors give conditions ensuring the existence of a causal solution in L², the invertibility and the existence of higher‐order moments. The problem of estimating the parameters is also investigated through an approach based on second and third empirical moments. The authors numerically illustrate their theoretical results via Monte Carlo simulations.     

Utilization of treatment effect on a surrogate endpoint for planning a study to evaluate treatment effect on a final endpoint

To design a phase III study with a final endpoint and calculate the required sample size for the desired probability of success, we need a good estimate of the treatment effect on the endpoint. It is prudent to fully utilize all available information including the historical and phase II information of the treatment as well as external data of the other treatments. It is not uncommon that a phase II study may use a surrogate endpoint as the primary endpoint and has no or limited data for the final endpoint. On the other hand, external information from the other studies for the other treatments on the surrogate and final endpoints may be available to establish a relationship between the treatment effects on the two endpoints. Through this relationship, making full use of the surrogate information may enhance the estimate of the treatment effect on the final endpoint. In this research, we propose a bivariate Bayesian analysis approach to comprehensively deal with the problem. A dynamic borrowing approach is considered to regulate the amount of historical data and surrogate information borrowing based on the level of consistency. A much simpler frequentist method is also discussed. Simulations are conducted to compare the performances of different approaches. An example is used to illustrate the applications of the methods.     

Nonparametric Estimation in Random Coefficients Binary Choice Models

This paper considers random coefficients binary choice models. The main goal is to estimate the density of the random coefficients nonparametrically. This is an ill‐posed inverse problem characterized by an integral transform. A new density estimator for the random coefficients is developed, utilizing Fourier–Laplace series on spheres. This approach offers a clear insight on the identification problem. More importantly, it leads to a closed form estimator formula that yields a simple plug‐in procedure requiring no numerical optimization. The new estimator, therefore, is easy to implement in empirical applications, while being flexible about the treatment of unobserved heterogeneity. Extensions including treatments of nonrandom coefficients and models with endogeneity are discussed.