Using Inverse Probability Weighting Estimators to Evaluate Various Propensity Scores When Treatment Switching Exists

In this paper, we conduct a Monte Carlo simulation study to evaluate three propensity score (PS) scenarios for estimating an average treatment effect (ATE) in observational studies when treatment switching exists: (a) ignoring treatment switching in subjects (UPS), (b) removing subjects with treatment switching (RPS), and (c) adjusting for treatment switching effect (APS) with two inverse probability weighting estimators, IPW1 and IPW2. We evaluate these six estimators in terms of bias, mean squared error (MSE), empirical standard error (ESE), and coverage probability (CP) under various simulation scenarios. Simulation results show that the IPW2 estimator with RPS has relatively good performance.     

Adaptive estimation in partially linear autoregressive models

The authors consider a partially linear autoregressive model and construct kernel‐based estimates for both the parametric and nonparametric components. They propose an estimation procedure for the model and illustrate it through simulated and real data. Their work shows that the proposed estimation procedure not only has good asymptotic properties but also works well numerically. It also suggests that a partially linear autoregression is more appropriate than a completely nonparametric autoregression for some sets of data.     

Chinese Singaporean attitudes towards poverty and inequality: A comparative analysis

Ng IYH, Koh G. Chinese Singaporean attitudes towards poverty and inequality: a comparative analysis Based on a survey of 191 Chinese respondents, this article discusses the attitudes of Singaporean Chinese towards poverty, inequality and government intervention. Using the Z‐test for two proportions and cluster analysis, findings were compared with similar studies in the USA and the UK. Chinese Singaporeans were found to be very aware of the growing inequality, but they adopted a narrower definition of poverty than British respondents. This might be the reason why they were more sympathetic towards the poor and supportive of more government anti‐poverty efforts than were American respondents. From the cluster analysis, the Singaporean sample produced a third group who were ‘satisfied but concerned’, on top of the two polar groups, ‘sceptics’ and ‘liberals’, present in the British study. A majority of respondents also supported the view that more should be done to help the poor and were willing to pay more taxes for that purpose.     

Producing and reconstructing knowledge on China in Singapore: perspectives from the academics and mass media

In Singapore, intellectuals, especially those in media and education, are considered as the driving force of formatting public opinion over the social imagination of China and Chineseness. This article, largely based on oral histories of some Singaporean scholars and media professionals and memoirs of related figures, analyzes the choice and acquisition of their knowledge on China. Through the analysis and comparison of their construction of knowledge on China, this article also discusses the accuracy of their understanding of China and how such understandings were formed along with their personal experiences from domestic socialization, education, and professional accumulation. The authors consequently map out the process of how public intellectuals from mass media and academia transform their knowledge imagination of China into the professional opinions that help to reconstruct and shift Singaporean’s impression and understandings of China.     

Enabling,structuring and creating elite transnational lifestyles: intermediaries of the super-rich and the elite mobilities industry

ABSTRACT

This article considers how the migration industries lens can be usefully employed in understanding how professional intermediaries enable, structure, and create transnational migration lifestyles of the super-rich. In particular, we examine how intermediaries and their services (1) enable the continued sustenance of transnational migration lifestyles for this group of elites; and (2) structure and create elite transnational lifestyles. This article primarily draws on interviews with professional intermediaries who service the super-rich, and content analysis of their websites and brochures. Inspired by insights from the new mobilities paradigm (and in particular the politics of mobility), we argue for an expanded conceptualisation of the migration industries beyond the literature’s current focus on labour recruitment and migration management. Specifically, we suggest thinking of the migration industries as a collection of actors and services that enable, structure, and create different types of ‘migrants’, their spaces and their highly uneven transnational mobilities – including that of the super-rich and their elite transnational lifestyles. We conclude with suggestions for a research agenda that may help to better understand the role of intermediaries in the creation of differentiated mobilities.     

Fusion Product Planning: A Market Offering Perspective*

Devices that integrate multiple functions together are popular in consumer electronic markets. We describe these multifunction devices as fusion products as they fuse together products that traditionally stand alone in the marketplace. In this article, we investigate the manufacturer's fusion product planning decision, adopting a market offering perspective that allows us to address the design and product portfolio decisions simultaneously. The general approach adopted is to develop and analyze a profit‐maximizing model for a single firm that integrates product substitution effects in identifying an optimal market offering. In the general model, we demonstrate that the product design and portfolio decisions are analytically difficult to characterize because the number of possible portfolios can be extremely large. The managerial insight from a stylized all‐in‐one model and numerical analysis is that the manufacturer should, in most cases, select only a subset of fusion and single‐function products to satisfy the market's multidimension needs. This may explain why the function compositions available in certain product markets are limited. In particular, one of the key factors driving the product portfolio decision is the margin associated with the fusion products. If a single all‐in‐one fusion product has relatively high margins, then this product likely dominates the product portfolio. Also, the congruency of the constituent single‐function products is an important factor. When substitution effects are relatively high (i.e., the product set is more congruent), a portfolio containing a smaller number of products is more likely to be optimal.     

Single‐Period Two‐Product Assemble‐to‐Order Systems with a Common Component and Uncertain Demand Patterns

We consider a single‐period assemble‐to‐order system that produces two types of end products to satisfy two independent and stochastic customer orders. Each type of product is used to fulfill a particular customer order and these two products share a common component. Furthermore, one customer may confirm her order before the other one, and the manufacturer needs to make a commitment immediately upon the receipt of each customer order on how many products to be delivered. We propose a model for optimizing the inventory and production decisions under the above ATO environment. We also extend our model to the situation where the manufacturer can fulfill the unsatisfied low‐priority demand using the left‐over inventories after fulfilling the high‐priority demand, in case the low‐priority customer arrives first. Numerical experiments are conducted, which provide some interesting insights on the impact of uncertain demand pattern.     

Financial Reciprocity and Elder Care: Interdependent Resource Transfers

A sample from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study was used to examine the influence of parent-to-child financial transfers and economic resources on child-to-parent financial transfers, caregiving, time-help, and coresidence as multiple, interdependent transfers from middle-aged adult children to their elderly parents. There were strong positive effects of prior parent-to-child financial transfers in the models of caregiving, time help, and coresidence but no effect on child-to-parent financial transfers. Coresidence, caregiving, and time-help are complements but there was no interdependence between child-to-parent financial transfers and caregiving or time-help. The effects of parents’ incomes and net worth are interpreted as evidence about motives for transfers to them.

Personality and Life Events as Predictors of Adolescents’ Life Satisfaction: Do Life Events Mediate the Link Between Personality and Life Satisfaction?

This study examined the association among personality traits, life events and life satisfaction, and the underlying pathways from personality traits to life satisfaction. A total of 1,961 adolescents were recruited from 21 secondary schools in Hong Kong. The adolescent version of the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI-A), the Chinese Adolescent Life Events Checklist (CALEC) and the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) were employed to assess their personality, life events and life satisfaction, respectively. Multiple regression analysis showed there was an additional value of the indigenously derived scales of CPAI-A, including the Family Orientation, Harmony and Ren-Qing scales, in predicting life satisfaction beyond the universal personality traits. Results also indicated that there was a partial mediation effect of negative life events on personality traits in the prediction of life satisfaction.     

Nonparametric inference for the joint distribution of recurrent marked variables and recurrent survival time

Time between recurrent medical events may be correlated with the cost incurred at each event. As a result, it may be of interest to describe the relationship between recurrent events and recurrent medical costs by estimating a joint distribution. In this paper, we propose a nonparametric estimator for the joint distribution of recurrent events and recurrent medical costs in right-censored data. We also derive the asymptotic variance of our estimator, a test for equality of recurrent marker distributions, and present simulation studies to demonstrate the performance of our point and variance estimators. Our estimator is shown to perform well for a wide range of levels of correlation, demonstrating that our estimators can be employed in a variety of situations when the correlation structure may be unknown in advance. We apply our methods to hospitalization events and their corresponding costs in the second Multicenter Automatic Defibrillator Implantation Trial (MADIT-II), which was a randomized clinical trial studying the effect of implantable cardioverter-defibrillators in preventing ventricular arrhythmia.