Estimating German overqualification with stochastic earnings frontiers

We estimate individual potential income with stochastic earnings frontiers to measure overqualification as the ratio between actual income and potential income. To do this, we remove a drawback of the IAB employment sample, the censoring of the income data, by multiple imputation. The measurement of overqualification by the income ratio is also a valuable addition to the overeducation literature because the well-established objective or subjective overeducation measures focus on some ordinal matching aspects and ignore the metric income and efficiency aspects of overqualification.     

Authors’ response: on the role of data,statistics and decisions in a pandemic

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis -     

The impact of privatization and change of social security systems upon living conditions of east German households

After the collapse of the communist regime East Germany became the prime example of a ‘Big Bang’ strategy of transformation. Rapid marketization and privatization brought about a disastrous economic downturn. But immense transfer payments from West Germany and the import of a well‐developed system of social security institutions accompanied the transformation, minimizing social costs. This article summarizes the main developments and analyzes their impact on the living conditions of East German households. The indicators presented cover labour force participation, business activities and economic inactivity in the household context; relative income position, poverty, income inequality and the self‐assessment of income changes; consumption and livelihood. The article reveals both the different experiences of gains and losses within East German society and the (in some respects) advantageous position of East German households compared with households in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech and Slovak Republics.     

Das Karriereplateau

The career-plateau as challenge to enterprises, employees and consultantsThe authors intend to link life-span-psychology to career-research in order to make understand the phenomenon of career-plateau and how individuals and organisations can deal with it. People take stock in the middle of their lives and assess their personal or professional targets. This process often relates to a personal crisis, especially when the success rate of a job is an important part of the self-concept and hierarchical development has stopped simultaneously. Nevertheless, the desire for a career continues to exist. On top of that what makes it even harder is that the individual has to work at least 20 more years because of demographic reasons. We assume that the way how to manage this crisis has a big influence on performance motivation and that life-span-orientated management development can help the individual to overcome the crisis or even prevent it.     

On Statistics Independent of a Sufficient Statistic: Basu's Lemma

The determination of optimal sample sizes for estimating the difference between population means to a desired degree of confidence and precision is a question of economic significance. This question, however, is generally not discussed in statistics texts. Sample sizes to minimize linear sampling costs are proportional to the population standard deviations and inversely proportional to the square roots of the unit sampling costs. Sensitivity analysis shows that the impact of the use of equal rather than optimal sample sizes on the amount of sampling and its cost is not great as long as the unit costs and population variances are comparable.     

Teaching Perspectives on Cross-Cultural Psychology and Japanese Society

This article discusses educational aspects of cross-cultural psychology in relationship to Japanese society. After exploring the present status of cross-cultural psychology in Japan, the paper delineates the factual, theoretical, and methodological implications of cross-cultural psychology for the teaching of psychology in Japanese universities. It is argued that an area approach incorporating comparative research on Japanese society can add context, detail, historical perspective, new methodology, and interdisciplinary richness to classes otherwise relying on traditional journal articles and textbooks of cross-cultural psychology. Such an approach is deemed useful for cross-cultural psychology classes taking place both inside and outside Japan. The article concludes with an annotated bibliography of research on Japanese society.     

Asymptotic normal tests for integration in panels with cross-dependent units

The asymptotically normal, regression-based LM integration test is adapted for panels with correlated units. The N different units may be integrated of different (fractional) orders under the null hypothesis. The paper first reviews conditions under which the test statistic is asymptotically (as T→∞) normal in a single unit. Then we adopt the framework of seemingly unrelated regression [SUR] for cross-correlated panels, and discuss a panel test statistic based on the feasible generalized least squares [GLS] estimator, which follows a χ ²(N) distribution. Third, a more powerful statistic is obtained by working under the assumption of equal deviations from the respective null in all units. Fourth, feasible GLS requires inversion of sample covariance matrices typically imposing T>N; in addition we discuss alternative covariance matrix estimators for T<N. The usefulness of our results is assessed in Monte Carlo experimentation.     

Megakirchen als religiöse Organisationen: Ein dritter Gemeindetyp jenseits von Sekte und Kirche?

Due to the rapid growth and expansion of so-called Megachurches, the religious landscape of the United States has been changing greatly over the past decades. The term Megachurch usually refers to evangelical congregations which draw at least 2,000 attenders to their regular weekly services and often significantly more. Megachurches can be thought of as representing a novel form of congregation. This study explores their specific organizational features. It addresses the following questions: (1) How do Megachurches cope with the structural strains caused by their rapid growth? (2) What are the organizational factors which are contributing to their success? The investigation consists of two parts: First, we examine the growth doctrine of the Megachurches, which draws its legitimation from religious sources and has to be viewed in a larger context of churches and religious audiences in the United States. Second, we focus on the internal organization structures that reproduce the patterns of dynamic stability underlying this growth doctrine.