Outlier Robust Small‐Area Estimation Under Spatial Correlation

Modern systems of official statistics require the estimation and publication of business statistics for disaggregated domains, for example, industry domains and geographical regions. Outlier robust methods have proven to be useful for small‐area estimation. Recently proposed outlier robust model‐based small‐area methods assume, however, uncorrelated random effects. Spatial dependencies, resulting from similar industry domains or geographic regions, often occur. In this paper, we propose an outlier robust small‐area methodology that allows for the presence of spatial correlation in the data. In particular, we present a robust predictive methodology that incorporates the potential spatial impact from other areas (domains) on the small area (domain) of interest. We further propose two parametric bootstrap methods for estimating the mean‐squared error. Simulations indicate that the proposed methodology may lead to efficiency gains. The paper concludes with an illustrative application by using business data for estimating average labour costs in Italian provinces.     

Beta estimation in the market model: skewness and leptokurtosis

Leptokurtosis and skewness characterize the distributions of the returns for many financial instruments traded in security markets. These departures from normality can adversely affect the efficiency of least squares estimates of the β's in the single index or market model. The proposed new partially adaptive estimation techniques accommodate skewed and fat tailed distributions. The empirical investigation, which is the first application of this procedure in regression models, reveals that both skewness and kurtosis can affect β estimates.     

Labor-use efficiency in Indian banking: A branch-level analysis

This paper uses data envelopment analysis to measure labor-use efficiency of individual branches of a large public sector bank with a sizable network of branches across India. We find considerable variation in the average levels of efficiency of bank branches across the four metropolitan regions considered in this study. In this context, we introduce the concept of area or spatial efficiency for each region relative to the nation as a whole. Our findings suggest that the policies, procedures, and incentives handed down from the corporate level cannot fully neutralize the detrimental influence of the local work culture across different regions. Most of the potential reduction in labor cost appears to be coming from possible downsizing in the clerical and subordinate staff. Our analysis identifies branches that operate at very low levels of labor-use efficiency and possible candidates for increased supervision and control.     

Test of a model of organizational contributors to product development team effectiveness

This study tests a model of product development team effectiveness which was developed by Susman and Dean [Susman, G.I., Dean, J.W., 1992. Development of a model for predicting design for manufacturability effectiveness. In: Susman, G.I. (Ed.), Integrating Design and Manufacturing for Competitive Advantage. Oxford Univ. Press, New York, pp. 207–227.]. The model addresses two interrelated managerial issues. One concerns the use of integrative mechanisms to counterbalance the potentially negative effects of function-based differentiation, directly or indirectly through group process. The other concerns group process vs. codification/computerization as alternative means to process information as risk increases. This study addresses the first issue by testing the effect of a subset of integrative mechanisms on project outcomes, i.e., project focus, and the role of group process as partial mediator of this relationship. The second issue is addressed by testing for risk as positive moderator of the relationship between group process and project outcomes and as negative moderator of the relationship between codification/computerization and project outcomes. The results suggest that project focus is directly related to project outcomes, but group process does not mediate this relationship. Codification/computerization is not related to project outcomes. Risk does not positively moderate the group process–project outcomes relationship, but does negatively moderate the codification/computerization–project outcomes relationship.     

Study and analysis of occupational risk factors for ergonomic design of construction worksystems

Manual material handling (MMH) is unavoidable because of the nature of jobs or tasks as and man-machine interfaces in a construction worksystem. Data were collected from six strata of workers viz., masons, mason helpers, carpenters, welders, gas cutters and ground-level helpers (259 out of 700 workers) from a construction site of a steel plant located in India to analyze different types of occupational risk factors, such as awkward posture, repetitive movements and others associated with MMH activities to assess their impact on musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). It is essential that these risk factors are required to be under control through application of ergonomics-based design approaches for construction worksystem. In this context, multinomial logistic regression analyses were used to identify the significant risk factors among the workers. The results shows that masons, mason helpers, carpenters, welders/gas cutters and ground-level helpers are greatly affected by static body posture, type of tools used, excessive stress due to repetition, awkward postures and extreme climate, respectively. Appropriate preventive and corrective measures are suggested for minimization of risks associated with such jobs/tasks to improve health and performance of the workers.     

Scale,Governance, Urban Form and Landscape: Exploring the Scope for an Integrated Approach to Metropolitan Spatial Planning

Based on the example of Metropolitan Cork, this paper looks at strands of planning thinking as they apply to the city-region: economic and political arguments about the scale of a city; landscape arguments about identity and place; spatial arguments about urban form and environmentally grounded arguments about nature, ecology and the city. Bringing together the different theoretical contexts and disciplinary frameworks of these interrelated approaches and relating them both to the often contradictory principles of sustainable development and to the challenge of achieving appropriate systems of governance at this scale, it explores an initial argument for how holistic and mutually reinforcing approaches to the spatial resilience of a city region might re-emerge.     

Exact Confidence Intervals for Proportions Estimated by Group Testing with Different Group Sizes

Group testing is the process of combining individual samples and testing them as a group for the presence of an attribute. The use of such testing to estimate proportions is an important statistical tool in many applications. When samples are collected and tested in groups of different size, complications arise in the construction of exact confidence intervals. In this case, the numbers of positive groups has a multivariate distribution, and the difficulty stems from a lack of a natural ordering of the sample points. Exact two‐sided intervals such as the equal‐tail method based on maximum likelihood estimation, and those based on joint probability or likelihood ratio statistics, have been previously considered. In this paper several new estimators are developed and assessed. We show that the combined tails (or Blaker) method based on a suitable ordering statistic, is the best choice in this setting. The methods are illustrated using a study involving the infection prevalence of Myxobolus cerebralis among free‐ranging fish.     

Empathy and Emotional Responsiveness in Delinquent and Non-delinquent Adolescents

Two groups of male adolescents, incarcerated young offenders (N = 64, mean age = 16.3 years) and a comparison group of community youth (N = 60; mean age = 16.6 years), were administered the Empathy Continuum (measuring cognitive‐affective responses to persons in emotionally evocative videotaped vignettes) and questionnaire measures of empathy, emotional responsiveness, guilt, shame, and antisocial attitudes and behaviors. Although both groups endorsed general statements of empathy, young offenders responded with empathy less often to particular persons in particular situations, and reasoned regarding their empathic responses in more self‐referencing ways. They also described their emotional responses to stimulus persons as less intense. In addition to the expected group differences, responsive empathy was a stronger predictor of delinquency than self‐reported antisocial behavior, and correctly classified 69 percent of young offenders and comparison youths. Although guilt was consistently related to lower self‐reported antisocial attitudes and behaviors, guilt (and shame) only weakly differentiated the two groups, limiting the usefulness of the TOSCA‐A as a predictor of delinquency.     

Robust automatic methods for outlier and error detection

Summary.  Editing in surveys of economic populations is often complicated by the fact that outliers due to errors in the data are mixed in with correct, but extreme, data values. We describe and evaluate two automatic techniques for the identification of errors in such long-tailed data distributions. The first is a forward search procedure based on finding a sequence of error-free subsets of the error-contaminated data and then using regression modelling within these subsets to identify errors. The second uses a robust regression tree modelling procedure to identify errors. Both approaches can be implemented on a univariate basis or on a multivariate basis. An application to a business survey data set that contains a mix of extreme errors and true outliers is described.