Mother’s autonomy and child’s secondary schooling enrollment in Mexico

We extend the literature on female autonomy along two dimensions. We first develop a new, direct female autonomy index using survey responses of spouses to a variety of household decision-making questions. We then examine the effects of a mother’s autonomy on her child’s secondary enrollment. We find that our measure is consistent with some of the existing autonomy measures, and that higher autonomy of mothers is correlated with higher secondary enrollment for boys, but not girls. Our results are robust to a range of sensitivity tests.     

A Superstructure of Process Capability Indices for Circular Specification Region

Circular specification regions can be seen in processes like hitting a target (in ballistics), drilling a hole (in manufacturing industries) and so on. However, only a few process capability indices are available in the literature to address the problem. Most of these indices, in turn, make some assumptions like equality of variance and independence of the two axes of the circular tolerance region. Since, in most of the cases, these assumptions are not practically viable, in the present article, we have proposed a few of the process capability indices which do not need the above assumptions to be valid. Also, we propose a superstructure which unifies all the proposed indices. Some properties of these indices have been studied including the threshold value and the relationship of the proportion of non-conformance with the member indices of the superstructure. These strengthen the practical utility of the superstructure. Distributional properties like expectations and variances of the member indices of the superstructure are also studied to have a better insight about the indices. A real life example has been discussed to carry out a comparative study of the performance of the existing as well as the newly developed indices.     

Resampling method to estimate intra-cluster correlation for clustered binary data

ABSTRACT

Various methods have been proposed to estimate intra-cluster correlation coefficients (ICCs) for correlated binary data, and many are very sensitive to the type of design and underlying distributional assumptions. We proposed a new method to estimate ICC and its 95% confidence intervals based on resampling principles and U-statistics, where we resampled with replacement pairs of individuals from within and between clusters. We concluded from our simulation study that the resampling-based estimates approximate the population ICC more precisely than the analysis of variance and method of moments techniques for different event rates, varying number of clusters, and cluster sizes.     

A new generalization of the gamma distribution with application to negatively skewed survival data

We propose a three-parameter distribution referred to as the reflected- shifted-truncated gamma (RSTG) distribution to model negatively skewed data. Various properties of the proposed distribution are derived. The estimation of the model parameters is approached by maximum likelihood methods and the observed information matrix is derived. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to compare the performances of the proposed methods of estimation for both small and large samples. Using information theoretic criteria, we compare the RSTG distribution to the exponential, generalized F, generalized gamma, Gompertz, log-logistic, lognormal, Rayleigh, and Weibull distributions in three negatively skewed real datasets.     

RESERVE PRICE VERSUS ENTRY FEE IN STANDARD AUCTIONS

Analysis of standard auction rules when bidders are risk averse is usually carried out under the assumption that the seller is able to set an optimal reserve. The role of entry fees has been generally overlooked in that analysis. We consider bidders with constant absolute risk aversion and show that reserve price is an essential tool in the second price auction while entry fee is essential in the first price auction. Furthermore, setting a reserve price and entry fee combination optimally may change some of the rankings of the standard auctions that hold under optimal reserves. (JEL D44)     

Kinship institutions and sex ratios in India

This article explores the relationship between kinship institutions and sex ratios in India at the turn of the twentieth century. Because kinship rules vary by caste, language, religion, and region, we construct sex ratios by these categories at the district level by using data from the 1901 Census of India for Punjab (North), Bengal (East), and Madras (South). We find that the male-to-female sex ratio varied positively with caste rank, fell as one moved from the North to the East and then to the South, was higher for Hindus than for Muslims, and was higher for northern Indo-Aryan speakers than for the southern Dravidian-speaking people. We argue that these systematic patterns in the data are consistent with variations in the institution of family, kinship, and inheritance.     

Joint modelling of longitudinal response and time-to-event data using conditional distributions: a Bayesian perspective

Over the last 20 or more years a lot of clinical applications and methodological development in the area of joint models of longitudinal and time-to-event outcomes have come up. In these studies, patients are followed until an event, such as death, occurs. In most of the work, using subject-specific random-effects as frailty, the dependency of these two processes has been established. In this article, we propose a new joint model that consists of a linear mixed-effects model for longitudinal data and an accelerated failure time model for the time-to-event data. These two sub-models are linked via a latent random process. This model will capture the dependency of the time-to-event on the longitudinal measurements more directly. Using standard priors, a Bayesian method has been developed for estimation. All computations are implemented using OpenBUGS. Our proposed method is evaluated by a simulation study, which compares the conditional model with a joint model with local independence by way of calibration. Data on Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) syndrome and a set of data in AIDS patients have been analysed.     

Exponentiated Geometric Distribution: Another Generalization of Geometric Distribution

Exponentiated geometric distribution with two parameters q(0 < q < 1) and α( > 0) is proposed as a new generalization of the geometric distribution by employing the techniques of Mudholkar and Srivastava (1993). A few realistics basis where the proposed distribution may arise naturally are discussed, its distributional and reliability properties are investigated. Parameter estimation is discussed. Application in discrete failure time data modeling is illustrated with real life data. The suitability of the proposed distribution in empirical modeling of other count data is investigated by conducting comparative data fitting experiments with over and under dispersed data sets.     

A new discrete probability distribution with integer support on (−∞, ∞)

ABSTRACT

A new discrete probability distribution with integer support on (?∞, ∞) is proposed as a discrete analog of the continuous logistic distribution. Some of its important distributional and reliability properties are established. Its relationship with some known distributions is discussed. Parameter estimation by maximum-likelihood method is presented. Simulation is done to investigate properties of maximum-likelihood estimators. Real life application of the proposed distribution as empirical model is considered by conducting a comparative data fitting with Skellam distribution, Kemp's discrete normal, Roy's discrete normal, and discrete Laplace distribution.