Leaving the Nordic Path? The Changing Role of Danish Trade Unions in the Welfare Reform Process

For a long period, Denmark has been labeled a ‘model country’ with a comprehensive welfare state and a successful model of corporatist policy‐making. Danish unions are considered amongst the strongest in the world, and they have for a long time been a distinct part of the political system, and as social partners, they were strongly integrated into decision‐making processes. The analysis of the Danish welfare and labour market policy during the last two decades documents a profound change in the arrangement and in the status of the social partners (especially unions) in the Danish political system. The results show that two important pillars of the Danish model – the social partner basis and the collective trust in partnership – are eroding. Unions are no longer part of the law‐making process and, since 2007, they are formally excluded from the organization of the decision‐making process. Recent developments point at weaker unions that operate more as lobbyists instead of being strong corporatist institutions or part of the decision‐making process. The results of the study are thought‐provoking and the basis for a revised thinking of the Danish and the Nordic model.     

State-space models for multivariate longitudinal data of mixed types

We propose a class of state-space models for multivariate longitudinal data where the components of the response vector may have different distributions. The approach is based on the class of Tweedie exponential dispersion models, which accommodates a wide variety of discrete, continuous and mixed data. The latent process is assumed to be a Markov process, and the observations are conditionally independent given the latent process, over time as well as over the components of the response vector. This provides a fully parametric alternative to the quasilikelihood approach of Liang and Zeger. We estimate the regression parameters for time-varying covariates entering either via the observation model or via the latent process, based on an estimating equation derived from the Kalman smoother. We also consider analysis of residuals from both the observation model and the latent process.     

Out-of-home care in Denmark

Paradoxically, Denmark has a large number of children in out-of-home care because it has a comprehensive child welfare system. Danish families turn to it for help, and under present social conditions of unemployment and family disruptions, the system is strained. This paper describes a large-scale, government-funded effort to improve the system's policies, programs, and flexible use of placement-treatment resources.     

The rules of conditional inference: Is there a universal definition of nonformation?

Summary We consider the ideas of sufficiency and ancillarity for parametric models with nuisance parameters, and more generally Barndorff-Nielsen's notion of nonformation. The original four definitions of non-formation, namelyB-,S-,G- andM-nonformation, each cover different types of models. We stress the interpretation of nonformation in terms of the idea of perfect fit. This leads to a new definition of nonformation, calledI-nonformation, which is well suited for inference in exponential families. We also consider Rémon's concept ofL-sufficiency, and a recent extension toL-nonformation, due to Barndorff-Nielsen, which unifies and extendsB-,S- andG- nonformation. We study the relations between these six definitions, and show that they are all special cases ofM-nonformation. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. From ‘Animal Farm’, by G. Orwell (1945).     

Developer autonomy in the FreeBSD open source project

Delegation of authority is the basic approach to coordination of work in FreeBSD, an open source software (OSS) project that develops and maintains an operating system. This essay combines a software engineering perspective with a knowledge creation perspective to discuss three central mechanisms in FreeBSD: (1) motivation, (2) quality control by frequent building, and (3) bugfixing by parallel debugging. It is argued that frequent building is the project’s key coordinating mechanism, and that build breakdowns play a constructive role in the processes of knowledge creation in FreeBSD.