Poverty statics and dynamics: does the accounting period matter?

Any public policy aimed at reducing the effects of deprivation should be aware of the consequences of the use of different income accounting periods on eligibility and subsequent policy evaluation. This study aims to throw some light on the relev-ance of choosing a specific accounting period for public policy evaluation in a European country, in contrast to the existing evidence for the United States. Our analysis indicates that there are some significant differences in the results on poverty when using different income accounting periods. Researchers and decision-makers using an annual income measure, whatever the economic and social welfare context, should be aware that the use of quarterly data instead of yearly data will lead to a significantly larger number of poor households and a lower level of inequality and mobility in the distribution.     

An interactional model of questions as therapeutic interventions

We dedicate this article to the memory of Steve de Shazer, who was the University's External Examiner for the doctoral dissertation on which this article is based. His comments were both generous and influential, as they were on many other occasions. We would also like to thank Ron Chenail (as Editor of JMFT ) and Dora Fried Schnitman (as Editor of Sistemas Familiares) for coordinating the simultaneous review and publication of this article in English and Spanish.     

Statistical Properties of Threshold Models

This article focuses the attention on the Self Exciting Threshold Autoregressive Moving Average model (SETARMA) proposed in Tong (1983 Tong , H. ( 1983 ). Threshold Models in Nonlinear Time Series Analysis . London : Springer-Verlag .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). The stochastic structure of the model is discussed and different specifications are presented. Starting from one of them, we give sufficient conditions for the weak stationarity of the model that are discussed and critically compared to other results given in literature. In particular, after showing that the SETARMA model belongs to the class of the Random Coefficients Autoregressive models, widely discussed in Nicholls and Quinn (1982 Nicholls , D. F. , Quinn , B. G. (1982). Random Coefficients Autoregressive Models. An Introduction . New York : Springer-Verlag.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), we give some issues on the weak stationarity of its stochastic structure that are more general than those given in the existing literature and appear not affected by the moving average component.     

Emotions into Disorder: Anxiety Disorders and the Social Meaning of Fear

This article explores what we refer to as norm-stimuli-state discrepancies, which are disparities between people's physical-emotional responses to emotional cues and the normative meanings of those cues. Drawing on forty qualitative interviews and participant observation research at support groups, we show that people with anxiety disorders describe two forms of norm-stimuli-state discrepancies. The first form involves discrepancies of type, in which people label fearful emotional states as deviant for being caused by the “wrong” stimuli. The second involves discrepancies of intensity, in which people label fearful states as deviant for involving feelings or displays of “too much” anxiety in response to an “appropriate” stimuli. The article further addresses the role of stimuli in prompting treatment seeking. Unexpected and intense emotional distress in combination with the falling away of external cues—which we refer to as “stimuli-less fear”—serve as a critical juncture on the path to an anxiety disorder diagnosis.     

Getting your supervisors and managers on the right team

They do a great job. So we promote them. Now they supervise people who don't do the job as well as they did. We give them a big raise. But because they're exempt they make less than their leads. They have the toughest job in the company—managing people. So we grant them an entire day of training to prepare. We ask them to mentor, coach, and have close relationships with their direct reports—all 132 of them. Then when the stock dips, we blame “middle management” and lay a bunch of them off.     

The perception of the values of urban space by senior citizens of Valparaiso

This paper is framed within the context of the Fondecyt Research Project (No. 1061179) entitled “Senior Citizens' quality of life in an Urban Habitat: Valparaiso, a Case Study.” It investigates how certain topographical conditions in the urban habitat impact on the quality of life of the population's most senior age group. Following a theoretical approach, we discuss some of the initial results obtained in our field research, integrating a quantitative technique of territorial analysis, GIS maps, and the qualitative techniques of Focus Groups and ethnographic interviews. The study of senior citizens' perceptions of their quality of life in Valparaiso indicates that the city's irregular topography and character as a heritage city mediate how the elderly perceive the urban space, creating social networks and a sense of community uniquely their own.     

Low-pass filter design using locally weighted polynomial regression and discrete prolate spheroidal sequences

The paper concerns the design of nonparametric low-pass filters that have the property of reproducing a polynomial of a given degree. Two approaches are considered. The first is locally weighted polynomial regression (LWPR), which leads to linear filters depending on three parameters: the bandwidth, the order of the fitting polynomial, and the kernel. We find a remarkable linear (hyperbolic) relationship between the cut-off period (frequency) and the bandwidth, conditional on the choices of the order and the kernel, upon which we build the design of a low-pass filter.The second hinges on a generalization of the maximum concentration approach, leading to filters related to discrete prolate spheroidal sequences (DPSS). In particular, we propose a new class of low-pass filters that maximize the concentration over a specified frequency range, subject to polynomial reproducing constraints. The design of generalized DPSS filters depends on three parameters: the bandwidth, the polynomial order, and the concentration frequency. We discuss the properties of the corresponding filters in relation to the LWPR filters, and illustrate their use for the design of low-pass filters by investigating how the three parameters are related to the cut-off frequency.