Oral Abstracts

Hypogonadism is associated with a range of disease states that have significant effects on morbidity and mortality, and also affect quality of life. The ESPRIT study (Energy, Sexual desire and body PropoRtions wIth AndroGel®, Testosterone 1% gel therapy) is a 6-month, multinational, open label, observational study in hypogonadal men being treated with transdermal AndroGel® in usual daily clinical practice; 1,700–2,400 patients will be enrolled in Canada, Germany, Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and the Middle East. The main objective will be to evaluate the effect of AndroGel® on symptoms of hypogonadism and quality of life as assessed by the Aging Males' Symptoms scale. Further objectives include evaluating the effect and time to onset of improvement in erectile dysfunction and libido/sexual desire (International Index of Erectile Function), fatigue (Multi-dimensional Fatigue Index) and body composition (waist circumference, body mass index). Subgroup analyses will be performed: <50 years versus ≥ 50 years; absence versus presence of metabolic syndrome. The safety of AndroGel® will also be assessed. The study population will consist of newly diagnosed hypogonadal men (age ≥ 18 years), in whom testosterone deficiency has been confirmed by clinical features and biochemical tests according to international guidelines, who are currently being prescribed AndroGel® (testosterone 1% gel, starting dose 50 mg testosterone per day).     

Another ‘Lost Decade’? Crisis and Structural Adjustment in Europe and Latin America

With the recent economic crisis, conditional lending and mandatory structural reforms arrived in the European Union. Greece and a number of other crisis countries were subjected to a rigorous process of economic adjustment in exchange for emergency credits from the troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund). Conditionality and structural adjustment were first tested in Latin America. This article compares the European adjustment programmes with the structural reforms introduced in Latin American countries several decades earlier. By doing so, the article reveals strong parallels in spite of the fact that the initial adjustment programmes are rarely considered a success story and that the neoliberal ideology which inspired the related reforms is widely made responsible for the recent crisis. The fact that there are differences in the adjustment programmes is not the result of a re-think of the neoliberal agenda, but of the specific dynamics of European integration and of pragmatic responses to financial threats. However, the article also shows parallels in the outcome of structural adjustment. Some European crisis countries face a ‘lost decade’ quite similar to the one experienced in Latin America in the 1980s.     

Continuous-discrete state-space modeling of panel data with nonlinear filter algorithms

Continuous time models with sampled data possess several advantages over conventional discrete time series and panel models (cf., e.g. special issue Stat. Neerl. 62(1), 2008). For example, data with unequal time intervals between the waves can be treated efficiently, since the model parameters of the dynamical system model are not affected by the measurement process. The continuous-discrete state space model is a combination of continuous time dynamics (stochastic differential equations, SDE) and discrete time noisy measurements.     

Marital relationships and purchasing decisions — to buy or not to buy,that is the question

Wives and husbands from 47 households rated their wellbeing in situations, where they imagined either to buy or not to buy a desired product, with their spouse either agreeing or disagreeing with the purchase. The product was female-specific for wives and male-specific for husbands. For 23 households the product was relatively cheap, for 24 households the subjects imagined to desire an expensive commodity. The approach was similar to Kelley and Thibaut's (1978) analysis of interdependence matrices. The data, in general, support the following hypotheses: (a) When the partner objects the purchase, the utility of the product will outweigh the perceived social costs more for husbands than for wives, especially in male-dominated families; (b) the wife's wellbeing with purchase decisions will depend more than her husband's wellbeing upon the partner's agreement, especially in male-dominated families, (c) the husband's wellbeing in conflict (buying a product despite the partner's objection) will be positively related with his dominance and vice versa; (d) mutual appraisal of situations will correspond higher in happy than in unhappy couples.The results are discussed with respect to differences in male and female strategies to cope with authority and social emotions in buying decisions. Shortcomings of economic theories on determinants of family consumer decisions are pointed out.     

Charakterisierungen der exponential-und der geometrischen verteilung

A charecterization of the exponential distribution and of the geometrical distribution by means of independence of min (X, Y), max (0, X - Y) is given.     

Aus Fehlern Iernen

Learning from blunders. Experiences of an executive coach with problems and solutionsNot too often, even rarely, we are in a situation to talk about blunders or shortcomings within our coaching community. That really is a pity, because a discussion like this combined with reflection and feed back is the best and only way for a coach to avoid professional mistakes in his future. So this article is “somehow another kind” of contribution. The author reports his own 18 years of “blunder-experience” as well as professional mistakes of other coaches which he observed in mentor coachings and supervisions, he suggests outcomes, consequences and solutions. Topics are: Anger, aggression and “struggles of power” within the coaching process; dependence versus (internal) independence of a coach; transference and counter-transference within the coaching process; peanut politics within a coaching process. Result: the coach himself, his core values, his boldness directed to social risks and to natural consequences — combined with appreciative conversation and respecting clients — makes out the core dissolving capacity. Without mentor coaching and professional supervision every coach would be trapped into his personal “trap of mistakes” — and even worse: without recognizing this dilemma.     

Coordinating Service‐Sensitive Demand and Capacity by Adaptive Decision Making: An Application of Case‐Based Decision Theory*

The subject of this article is the simultaneous choice of product price and manufacturing capacity if demand is stochastic and service‐level sensitive. In this setting, capacity as well as price have an impact on demand because several aspects of service level depend on capacity. For example, delivery time will be reduced if capacity is increased given a constant demand rate. We illustrate the relationship between service level, capacity, and demand reaction by a stylized application problem from the after‐sales services industry. The reaction of customers to variations in service level and price is represented by a kinked price‐demand‐rate function. We first derive the optimal price‐capacity combination for the resulting decision problem under full information. Subsequently, we focus on a decision maker (DM) who lacks complete knowledge of the demand function. Hence the DM is unable to anticipate the service level and consequently cannot identify the optimal solution. However, the DM will acquire additional information during the sales process and use it in subsequent revisions of the price‐capacity decision. Thus, this decision making is adaptive and based on experience. In contrast to the literature, which assumes certain repetitive procedures somewhat ad hoc, we develop an adaptive decision process based on case‐based decision theory (CBDT) for the price‐capacity problem. Finally, we show that a CBDT DM in our setting eventually finds the optimal solution, if the DM sets the price based on absorption costs and adequately adjusts the capacity with respect to the observed demand.