Achievement and Behavior Among Children of Welfare Recipients, Welfare Leavers, and Low-Income Single Mothers

This article examines the behavior and achievement of children infemale-headed families that were on welfare, that left welfare, and that were not on welfare in the3 years preceding the study. Data come from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement, a nationally representative sample of children under age 13 collected in 1997. The results suggest that there are both positive and negative outcomes of welfare transitions. Based upon our results, children whose mothers are able to leave and remain off welfare score consistently better on cognitive tests of their development. The transition period, however, is a difficult one. Children's emotional well-being may suffer during the parental transition from cash assistance to self-sufficiency.     

Multivariate analysis and anthropological applications

A brief history of the use of statistical concepts in the field of anthropology is reviewed as is the history of the development of multivariate analysis. Those multivariate statistical techniques which are particularly of interest to anthropologists, that is, factor analysis, cluster analysis, and discriminant analysis, are explained. They are related to multivariate analysis theory in general, are compared among themselves, and are further treated in light of their individual characteristics. Anthropological applications of multivariate analysis are cited, and it is concluded that joint cooperation between anthropologists and statisticians in multivariate research would be beneficial to both.     

THE IMPACT OF MANAGERIAL CHANGE ON PERFORMANCE: THE ROLE OF TEAM HETEROGENEITY

When a key responsibility of a manager is to allocate more or less attractive tasks, subordinates have an incentive to work hard and demonstrate their talents. As a new manager is less well informed, management dismissals reinvigorate this tournament competition—but only in sufficiently homogeneous teams. We investigate this hypothesis using a large dataset on dismissals of soccer coaches, whose main task is indeed the selection of players. We find that dismissals enhance performance (only) in homogeneous teams. Moreover, we show that there is typically a negative selection bias when evaluating succession effects, which reconciles previous contradictory findings. (JEL D22, J44, J63)     

Concentration functions and Bayesian robustness

The concentration function, extending the classical notion of Lorenz curve, is well suited for comparing probability measures. Such a feature can be useful in different issues in Bayesian robustness, when a probability measure is deemed a baseline to be compared with other measures by means of their functional forms. Neighbourhood classes Γ of probability measures, including well-known ones, can be defined through the concentration function and both prior and posterior expectations of given functions of the unknown parameter are studied. The ranges of such expectations over Γ can be found, restricting the search among the extremal measures in Γ. The concentration function can be also used as a criterion to assess posterior robustness, when considering sensitivity to changes in the likelihood and the prior.