A theoretical analysis of the power of biased coin designs

Outlining some recently obtained results of Hu and Rosenberger [2003. Optimality, variability, power: evaluating response-adaptive randomization procedures for treatment comparisons. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 98, 671–678] and Chen [2006. The power of Efron's biased coin design. J. Statist. Plann. Inference 136, 1824–1835] on the relationship between sequential randomized designs and the power of the usual statistical procedures for testing the equivalence of two competing treatments, the aim of this paper is to provide theoretical proofs of the numerical results of Chen [2006. The power of Efron's biased coin design. J. Statist. Plann. Inference 136, 1824–1835]. Furthermore, we prove that the Adjustable Biased Coin Design [Baldi Antognini A., Giovagnoli, A., 2004. A new “biased coin design” for the sequential allocation of two treatments. J. Roy. Statist. Soc. Ser. C 53, 651–664] is uniformly more powerful than the other “coin” designs proposed in the literature for any sample size.     

Poverty in People with Disabilities: Indicators from the Capability Approach

People with disability are particularly exposed to poor living conditions: on one hand they have more difficulties in getting an income cause to their inabilities, on the other hand conditions of poverty increase the risk of disability. However, little rigorous quantitative research has been undertaken to measure the real impact of disability on poverty. Methods based on monetary set (income and consumption) may not reflect the real possibility to convert resources into the fulfilment of personal goals. The capability approach, developed by A. K. Sen, offers a useful framework for the evaluation and assessment of individual well-being considering both monetary and non-monetary resources. The study describes a methodology, derived from the capability approach, to estimate the additional income needed for various types of household with and without disabled members to ensure the same satisfaction with economic resources. The method has been applied to the Italian contest, where 2.6 million people with disability live, and then the results are compared with the findings from an analogous study conducted in UK. The study reveals that disabled people in Italy need an income level two times higher to enjoy the same level of economic satisfaction, while in UK 50% of extra resource are sufficient. The findings suggests that traditional evaluations based on consumption lead to an underestimation of the needs of household containing disabled members. It follows that the financial benefits envisaged by actions planned by government through current instruments may not be completely effective.     

The role of education in the reconciliation between female occupation and family responsibilities at mid-life: the Italian case

This study, based on the data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, deals with the labour market participation of mid-aged women and the reconciliation with family responsibilities. The analysis focuses on Italy, a fast ageing country with a very low female occupation rate. By performing a comparison with Sweden and France, we set three European models, different in terms of welfare system and gender roles, against each other. Women’s educational attainment is shown to be the most important factor associated with being in the labour market between 50 and 59 years old in all the countries analysed. Our findings suggest a couple-oriented approach to study women’s balancing of career and family: for married women, husbands’ education plays an ambivalent role concerning women's participation in the labour market, according to its combination with wives’ resources. The depressive effect on female employment of living close to a parent in poor health holds especially in Italy, suggesting the need to invest more on welfare policies in this country.     

Can Corruption Erode Confidence in Political Institutions Among European Countries? Comparing the Effects of Different Measures of Perceived Corruption

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of corruption on institutional confidence through testing alternative perceptions-based indexes of corruption. Scholars who have investigated this topic have often employed only indicators of corruption based on experts’ surveys. In this article we also consider a new index of corruption developed aggregating citizens’ perceptions. The first part of the paper explores the levels of corruption perceived by the citizens of EU member states, stressing the differences with the experts’ opinions. The second part tests, through a multivariate analysis, the impact of citizens’ and experts’ perceptions-based indexes of corruption on institutional confidence. The main results show that experts and citizens tend to express similar opinions on the extent of corruption in EU member states though, especially in some countries, these actors present some noticeable differences. Nevertheless, irrespective of the indexes used, more corrupt countries are characterized by lower levels of confidence in parliament and government. This relationship holds even controlling for the presence of reverse causality between corruption and confidence.     

Reduced Risk-Taking After Prior Losses in Pathological Gamblers Under Treatment and Healthy Control Group but not in Problem Gamblers

A group of pathological gamblers and a group of problem gamblers (i.e., gamblers at risk of becoming pathological) were compared to healthy controls on their risk-taking propensity after prior losses. Each participant played both the Balloon Analogue Risk Taking task (BART) and a modified version of the same task, where individuals face five repeated predetermined early losses at the onset of the game. No significant difference in risk-taking was found between groups on the standard BART task, while significant differences emerged when comparing behaviors in the two tasks: both pathological gamblers and controls reduced their risk-taking tendency after prior losses in the modified BART compared to the standard BART, whereas problem gamblers showed no reduction in risk-taking after prior losses. We interpret these results as a sign of a reduced sensitivity to negative feedback in problem gamblers which might contribute to explain their loss-chasing tendency.     

Local spatial log-Gaussian Cox processes for seismic data

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis - In this paper, we propose the use of advanced and flexible statistical models to describe the spatial displacement of earthquake data. The paper aims to...     

Contested Terrain of the Global Fisheries: “Dolphin-Safe” Tuna,The Panama Declaration,and the Marine Stewardship Council1

ABSTRACT The globalization of socio-economic relations is a central topic of discussion in both the general literature on economy and society and in the area of food and agriculture. Many maintain that we are in a transition from one era, termed Fordism, to another, called Global Post-Fordism. We use the case of two fisheries eco-labeling programs to inform discussions regarding the emergence of stabilizing socio-economic mechanisms in the Global Post-Fordist era. We argue that recent developments in the tuna-dolphin case, the first major experiment with eco-labeling in the fisheries industries, combined with the Marine Stewardship Council, an initiative designed to regulate and certify a system of global “sustainable fisheries” through an eco-labeling program, provide valuable insights into the ideological and organizational structure of salient global actors in the Post-Fordist era. The discussion addresses (1) the contested terrain within the “North” and between the “North” and the “South” regarding eco-legislation to regulate the global fisheries; (2) the fracturing of the environmental movement into “mainstream” and “grassroots” camps and the resulting inability to maintain a coordinated agenda to counter the globalization project; and (3) the emergence of new forms of supranational state-like regulatory mechanisms that combine science with free trade and environmental ideals and propose to resolve the global fisheries crises by providing sustainable socio-economic coordination. We conclude that the emergence of these supra-national state-like NGOs raises important implications for the sovereignty of nation-states and democratic action on the part of subordinate groups opposed to the globalization project.     

Human mobility in the context of environmental and climate change: Recent data collection tools from the International Organization for Migration to address key methodological and conceptual issues

This paper outlines recent data collection tools and methodologies that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has been using in order to gather information on human mobility as influenced by environmental factors and their impacts. It looks at alternative ways for collecting and analysing data in the face of methodological challenges related to the multicausality of movements, the voluntary/involuntary continuum in human (im)mobility decisions in the context of environmental and climate change, and the policy and epistemological imperative from viewing migration as an adaptation strategy. The paper finds that certain data collection approaches can be quickly deployed in rapid-onset disasters as well as applied in contexts of gradual, slow-onset environmental change to provide information useful for operational responses to immediate crises and/or for developing policies in response. Some of the tools can be useful in both contexts and may support both immediate and long-term operational, policy and research objectives.