Writing Distinction – Eine illegitime Kultur als subkulturelles Feld

Graffiti is an illegitimate culture, yet with high potential for distinction and abstract aesthetic principles. The article considers these characteristics as result of the process of the autonomization of graffiti as subcultural field and aims to reconstruct its field logic.     

Simulating space-time random fields with nonseparable Gneiting-type covariance functions

Statistics and Computing - Two algorithms are proposed to simulate space-time Gaussian random fields with a covariance function belonging to an extended Gneiting class, the definition of which...     

Time,Space, Confucianism and Careers: A Contextualized Review of Careers Research in China – Current Knowledge and Future Research Agenda

Career studies attract significant attention, but most of the theories and concepts were developed and tested in Western contexts. Based on a systematic review and analysis of 95 articles published in the field of careers that focus on China in the period between 1991 and 2017, this paper identifies emerging trends and outlines a profile of the current development of careers research in the Chinese context. Using a time and space analytical framework, the review evaluates the theoretical and empirical career lenses embedded in the unique Chinese cultural, institutional and organizational contexts and confirms that research on Chinese careers is significantly underdeveloped. Through a theoretical lens of Confucianism, we propose a need to consider context‐specific factors, in particular time and space, when conducting Chinese careers research, and present implications for future research on careers in China.     

Ordering competition: the interactional accomplishment of the sale of art and antiques at auction

Auctions provide an institutional solution to a social problem; they enable the legitimate pricing and exchange of goods where those goods are of uncertain value. In turn, auctions raise a number of social and organizational issues that are resolved within the interaction that arise in sales by auction. In this paper, we examine sales of fine art, antiques and objets d'art and explore the ways in which auctioneers mediate competition between buyers and establish a value for goods. In particular, we explore how bids are elicited, co-ordinated and revealed so as to rapidly escalate the price of goods in a transparent manner that enables the legitimate valuation and exchange of goods. In directing attention towards the significance of the social interaction, including talk, visual and material conduct, the paper contributes to the growing corpus of ethnographic studies of markets. It suggests that to understand the operation of markets and their outcomes, and to unpack issues of agency, trust and practice, we need to place the 'interaction order' at the heart of analytic agenda.     

PURE: a proposal for more retirement income security

Despite large public policy efforts over the past 30 years, a large minority of households remains consistently inadequately prepared for retirement. If policymakers want to address this shortcoming, public policy has to change from its current path. This paper suggests a system of mandatory private pensions funded by a minimum mandatory contribution of 3% of payroll. In addition, a number of institutional changes are suggested to reduce the costs and risks of individual accounts.     

Bootstrapping regression models with BLUS residuals

To bootstrap a regression problem, pairs of response and explanatory variables or residuals can be resam‐pled, according to whether we believe that the explanatory variables are random or fixed. In the latter case, different residuals have been proposed in the literature, including the ordinary residuals (Efron 1979), standardized residuals (Bickel & Freedman 1983) and Studentized residuals (Weber 1984). Freedman (1981) has shown that the bootstrap from ordinary residuals is asymptotically valid when the number of cases increases and the number of variables is fixed. Bickel & Freedman (1983) have shown the asymptotic validity for ordinary residuals when the number of variables and the number of cases both increase, provided that the ratio of the two converges to zero at an appropriate rate. In this paper, the authors introduce the use of BLUS (Best Linear Unbiased with Scalar covariance matrix) residuals in bootstrapping regression models. The main advantage of the BLUS residuals, introduced in Theil (1965), is that they are uncorrelated. The main disadvantage is that only n —p residuals can be computed for a regression problem with n cases and p variables. The asymptotic results of Freedman (1981) and Bickel & Freedman (1983) for the ordinary (and standardized) residuals are generalized to the BLUS residuals. A small simulation study shows that even though only n — p residuals are available, in small samples bootstrapping BLUS residuals can be as good as, and sometimes better than, bootstrapping from standardized or Studentized residuals.     

Correlation in a Bayesian framework

The authors consider the correlation between two arbitrary functions of the data and a parameter when the parameter is regarded as a random variable with given prior distribution. They show how to compute such a correlation and use closed form expressions to assess the dependence between parameters and various classical or robust estimators thereof, as well as between p‐values and posterior probabilities of the null hypothesis in the one‐sided testing problem. Other applications involve the Dirichlet process and stationary Gaussian processes. Using this approach, the authors also derive a general nonparametric upper bound on Bayes risks.     

Estimation of geodesic tortuosity and constrictivity in stationary random closed sets

We investigate the problem of estimating geodesic tortuosity and constrictivity as two structural characteristics of stationary random closed sets. They are of central importance for the analysis of effective transport properties in porous or composite materials. Loosely speaking, geodesic tortuosity measures the windedness of paths, whereas the notion of constrictivity captures the appearance of bottlenecks resulting from narrow passages within a given materials phase. We first provide mathematically precise definitions of these quantities and introduce appropriate estimators. Then, we show strong consistency of these estimators for unboundedly growing sampling windows. In order to apply our estimators to real data sets, the extent of edge effects needs to be controlled. This is illustrated using a model for a multiphase material that is incorporated in solid oxide fuel cells.