On the Preference to Avoid Ex Post Inventory Errors

The value of demand information underlies many supply chain strategies that aim at better matching supply and demand. This study reports on the results of a laboratory experiment designed to estimate the behavioral value of demand information. Relative to the commonly assumed benchmark of a rational risk‐neutral decision maker, we find that decision makers are consistently willing to pay too much for the option to eliminate the risk of supply not matching demand. Contrary to intuition, we show that risk aversion does not explain this result. We posit that demand information provides behavioral value because it mitigates regret from ex post inventory errors.     

Fat tail distributions and local thin tail alternatives

The behaviour of the Hill estimator for the tail index of fat tailed distributions in the presence of local alternatives which have a thin tail is investigated. The converse problem is also briefly addressed. A local thin tail alternative can severely bias the Hill statistic. The relevance of this issue for the class of stable distributions is discussed. We conduct a small simulation study to support the analysis. In the conclusion it is argued that for moderate out of sample quantile analysis the problem of local alternatives may be less pressing.     

The justice of earnings in dual-earner households

Over recent decades, the rise in female labor market participation and the increase in “atypical” employment arrangements have brought about a steady decline in traditional “male breadwinner” households and an increasing number of dual-earner households. Against this backdrop, the present paper investigates how different household contexts—ranging from traditional “male breadwinner” households to those challenging this model through joint contributions to household income—affect household members’ subjective evaluations of the justice of their personal income. In the first step, we derive three criteria used by individuals to evaluate the justice of personal earnings: compensation for services rendered, coverage of basic needs, and the opportunity to earn social approval. In the second step, we apply considerations from household economics and new approaches from gender research to explain why men's and women's evaluations of justice are determined to a considerable degree by the specific situation within their household. The assumptions derived regarding gender-specific patterns in justice attitudes are then tested on longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). The results support our central thesis that dual-earner households both reinforce and undermine gender-specific patterns in the evaluation of personal earnings. These patterns are undermined because women in dual-income households tend to have higher income expectations that challenge the existing gender wage gap. At the same time, gender-specific patterns are reinforced because men evaluate the justice of their personal income in relation to their ability to fulfill traditional gender norms.     

Labour Markets and Organisational Change: Future Working Structures for an Ageing Work Force

Flexible manufacturing systems, team work with decentralisation of decision-making, integration of tasks and multiple allocation across functional barriers demand a skilled work force prepared for continuous learning and adaptation. It is common to see a younger, well-educated and trained work force as being required for such a production environment. A closer empirical look at most of the internal labour markets in this study shows that existing labour market structures do not match this image. Existing labour markets consist very often of an older (and ageing) labour force with relatively low skills and with resistance to continuous training. These structural features have, over the last ten years — despite the existence of costly early retirement measures and new entries into internal labour markets — not much improved, and in many cases have even deteriorated. While age-related exit measures have contributed to maintaining sound corporate cultures in offering socially cushioned exit options and have also prevented internal labour markets from growing older too rapidly, they have — in the “lean employment environment” of mature industrial sectors — not led to a sustained restructuring of internal labour markets. The ending of many of the age-related exit measures owing to their impact on public and company budgets could lead to a growing mismatch between the structure of demand and the structure of supply in internal labour markets. This could have negative effects on company performance and increase the probability of unemployment for workers if no proactive policies for managing the age problem are introduced. Such proactive policies might consist of appropriate age-related training, age-related flexible working time and work organisation patterns. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Output-sensitive algorithms for Tukey depth and related problems

The Tukey depth (Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, vol. 2, pp. 523–531, 1975) of a point p with respect to a finite set S of points is the minimum number of elements of S contained in any closed halfspace that contains p. Algorithms for computing the Tukey depth of a point in various dimensions are considered. The running times of these algorithms depend on the value of the output, making them suited to situations, such as outlier removal, where the value of the output is typically small. This research was partly funded by the NSERC Canada.     

Using civil representation to reduce delinquency among troubled youth

Team Child is designed to provide civil legal representation for very troubled delinquent youth to improve their access to needed education programs, mental health services, and family services. Better provision of these services is intended to reduce delinquency and potentially avoid the long-term incarceration of these youth. This article uses an incidental truncation model to evaluate two Team Child programs in Florida. The authors find the programs not to be effective in reducing recidivism among the youth but to be effective in reducing the arrest rate of the recidivating juveniles. The results indicate a reduction of 11% to 23% of arrests after treatment for the Team Child group.     

Child maltreatment, revictimization, and violent behavior

The study investigates the cumulative impact of child maltreatment and victimization in adolescence on violent behavior in young adulthood in a nonclinical high-risk sample. The sample consists of 1,526 incarcerated young men (14 to 24 years) who were interviewed with standardized instruments during their prison term. Violent and nonviolent offenders with and without repeated victimization experiences throughout the life cycle were compared. Results show that child maltreatment doubles the risk for violent victimization in adolescence. Repeated victimization experiences in adolescence heighten the risk for later violent offending. This is the case for officially registered violence and self-reported violent behavior. In addition, child maltreatment increased the probability of self-reported violence as well. However, the interaction effect of victimization in childhood and victimization in early adolescence counteracted the main effects. Being repeatedly victimized throughout the early life cycle slightly reduced the probability of being a frequent offender.     

Robust estimation in the multivariate normal model with variance components

Fisher consistent and Fréchet differentiable statistical functionals have been already used by Bednarski and Zontek [Robust estimation of parameters in a mixed unbalanced model. Ann Statist. 1996;24(4):1493–1510] to get a robust estimator of parameters in a two-way crossed classification mixed model. This way of robust estimation appears also in the variance components model with a commutative covariance matrix [Zmy?lony, Zontek. Robust M-estimator of parameters in variance components model. Discuss Math Probab Stat. 2002;22:61–71]. In this paper it is shown that a modification of this method does not involve any assumptions about commutation of covariance matrix. The theoretical results have been completed with computer simulation studies. Robustness of considered estimator and possibility of approximation of the estimator's distribution with some multivariate normal distribution for both model and contaminated data have been confirmed there.     

An Empirical Analysis of the Decision to Train Apprentices

Abstract. It is a widely held belief that apprenticeship training represents a net investment for training firms, the cost of which needs to be recouped after the training period. A new firm‐level data set for Switzerland reveals large variation in net costs across firms and, remarkably, negative net costs for 60 per cent of all firms. We use these data to estimate the effect of net costs on the number of apprentices hired by a firm. The results show that the costs have a significant impact on the training decision but no significant influence on the number of apprentices, once the firm has decided to train. For policy purposes, these results indicate that subsidies for firms that already train apprentices would not boost the number of available training places.