Chernoff distance for truncated distributions

In the present paper we extend the definition of Chernoff distance considered in Akahira (Ann Inst Stat Math 48:349–364, 1996) for truncated distributions and examine its properties. The relationship of this measure with other discrimination measures is examined. We study Chernoff distance between the original and weighted distributions. We also provide a characterization result for the proportional hazards model using the functional form of Chernoff distance.     

Factors influencing perceptions of teenage motherhood among girls in residential care

The aim of this research is to analyze the cognitive, affective and cultural factors involved in adolescent motherhood among girls in residential care. Using this specific country example, the study also seeks to analyze if the influence of these factors is the same for girls in residential care and girls from disadvantaged backgrounds. A semi-structured interview was conducted with 54 girls distributed across three groups: 18 girls from two residential care homes, 18 girls from a secondary school (normative group) and 18 girls from disadvantaged families. A content qualitative analysis was used. The main results show that girls in care have a positive perception on teenage motherhood, they become sexually active before other girls not in care and they are less likely to use contraceptive methods. Also their life priorities are based on motherhood and having a partner rather than career expectations. Some implications in order to prevent teenage and unplanned pregnancies are highlighted.     

Some have to,and some want to: Why firms adopt a post-industrial form

A number of organizational scholars have suggested that to compete in a “post-industrial” world firms must adopt specific structures and approaches to managing. In this article, we explore the why of post-industrial forms, as opposed to the what. Often work in this literature speaks as though in the future only a post-industrial form will allow firms to compete successfully. We argue instead that adoption of a post-industrial form is a contingency: some firms have to operate in this fashion, some firms may want to, and some firms never will adopt a post-industrial form. Based on Thompson’s (Organizations in action, Transaction, New Brunswick, 1967) conception of production processes, we suggest factors that, if present, require firms to be post-industrial as well as strategies that make them want to adopt this relatively new form.     

Delayed creative destruction and the coexistence of technologies

Disruptive innovations often engage in a fierce battle with incumbent technologies for hegemony. Past studies on technological innovations are silent about factors that extend the duration of the ‘era of ferment’—that is, the period during which competing technologies fight for dominance. We argue that complexity of the underlying technology, ecological and institutional dynamics may permit coexistence of competing technology regimes. The paper illustrates such coexistence by discussing the persistence of disparate technologies in steel making and kidney disease treatment. We conclude that the process of ‘creative destruction’ can be delayed in certain settings.     

A vector valued bivariate gini index for truncated distributions

Gini index is widely used in the study of inequality of income distribution. In the present paper we give a definition of the Gini index in the Bivariate set-up and look into the problem of characterizing probability distributions based on some relationship between this index and various other commonly used measures. We also generalized the Gini index to a situation where several attributes of the population are considered.     

Policy Disciplining Effect of Capital Account Openness in India

In this paper, the policy disciplining effect of capital account openness in India is examined by examining the impact of capital account openness on inflation and fiscal deficit. Multivariate modeling, which includes other relevant variables identified in the literature, is used for the analysis. Our results show capital account openness has a strong disciplining effect on inflation whereas it has no significant effect on fiscal deficit. In the case of fiscal deficit, trade openness and number of government changes only are the significant determinants. The moves of the RBI tend to reaffirm the disciplinary effect of capital account openness. In the meantime, since the mid 1990s, RBI kept a strict vigil over inflation and inflation expectations in the context of a more open capital account. One major reason for the problem concerning inflation expectation by RBI is the threat of capital outflow in the face of loose monetary policy and high inflation.     

Some extensions of anova techniques to location-scale models

In the usual analysis of variance (ANOVA) framework, the different distributions being compared are assumed to differ only in location so that the various measures of comparison are based on these location parameters only. The shift functions, introduced by Doksum (1974, provide a natural basis for extending some of the ANOVA techniques to nonlinear model so We consider a location-scale model and discuss several measures for comparing the various populations. These measures have intuitive interpretations in "control-treatments" situations. We develop various estimation procedures and discuss their large sample properties. Asymptotically efficient multiple comparison procedures are also considered.     

Operations in Financial Services—An Overview

We provide an overview of the state of the art in research on operations in financial services. We start by highlighting a number of specific operational features that differentiate financial services from other service industries, and discuss how these features affect the modeling of financial services. We then consider in more detail the various different research areas in financial services, namely systems design, performance analysis and productivity, forecasting, inventory and cash management, waiting line analysis for capacity planning, personnel scheduling, operational risk management, and pricing and revenue management. In the last section, we describe the most promising research directions for the near future.     

Conditional mean residual life functions

In this paper a conditional mean residual life in the context of reliability theory is introduced. The properties of the conditional mean residual life are studied. Various characterizations by the conditional mean residual life are proposed.