Expressing Economic Risk—Review and Presentation of a Unifying Approach

Risk related to economic values is treated by many disciplines, including safety and production engineering, business, and project management. Within each of these and across these disciplines different nomenclature and principles are adopted for describing and communicating risk. The situation is rather confusing. In this article, we review various approaches and concepts that are used to express risk. We present and discuss a unifying approach for dealing with economic risk, with uncertainty being the key risk concept. The approach represents a rethinking on how to implement the Bayesian paradigm in practice to support decision making.     

Goodness‐of‐Fit based on Downsampling with Applications to Linear Drift Diffusions

Abstract. A goodness‐of‐fit test for continuous‐time models is developed that examines if the parameter estimates are consistent with another for different sampling frequencies. The test compares parameter estimates obtained from estimating functions for downsamples of the data. We prove asymptotic results for stationary and ergodic processes, and apply the downsampling test to linear drift diffusions. Simulations indicate that the test is quite powerful in detecting non‐Markovian deviations from the linear drift diffusions.     

ANOVA for unbalanced data: Use Type II instead of Type III sums of squares

Methods for analyzing unbalanced factorial designs can be traced back to Yates (1934). Today, most major statistical programs perform, by default, unbalanced ANOVA based on Type III sums of squares (Yates's weighted squares of means). As criticized by Nelder and Lane (1995), this analysis is founded on unrealistic models—models with interactions, but without all corresponding main effects. The Type II analysis (Yates's method of fitting constants) is usually not preferred because of the underlying assumption of no interactions. This argument is, however, also founded on unrealistic models. Furthermore, by considering the power of the two methods, it is clear that Type II is preferable.     

Simultaneous Credible Bands for Latent Gaussian Models

Abstract. Deterministic Bayesian inference for latent Gaussian models has recently become available using integrated nested Laplace approximations (INLA). Applying the INLA‐methodology, marginal estimates for elements of the latent field can be computed efficiently, providing relevant summary statistics like posterior means, variances and pointwise credible intervals. In this article, we extend the use of INLA to joint inference and present an algorithm to derive analytical simultaneous credible bands for subsets of the latent field. The algorithm is based on approximating the joint distribution of the subsets by multivariate Gaussian mixtures. Additionally, we present a saddlepoint approximation to compute Bayesian contour probabilities, representing the posterior support of fixed parameter vectors of interest. We perform a simulation study and apply the given methods to two real examples.     

Mental and Physical Health Trajectories of Norwegian Parents and Children before and after Union Dissolution

The aim was to examine the mental and physical health trajectories of mothers, fathers, and children before and after union dissolution. Register data covering the entire Norwegian population, and including information on consultations with general practitioners in 2006–2018, were used. Constant unobserved characteristics were controlled for with individual fixed effects. As judged by the number of consultations, mothers’ and fathers’ mental health deteriorates before the dissolution but improves immediately afterwards. In contrast, a worsening mental health among children before the dissolution is followed by an even more adverse development afterwards. There is only modest evidence of predissolution increases in noninfectious physical diseases, but more clearly rising numbers afterwards especially for mothers and daughters. Less adverse trends are seen for infections, although mothers experience a sharp temporary increase at the breakup time. On the whole, mothers’ health is more adversely affected by dissolution than that of fathers. Daughters may have a disadvantage compared to sons, but results vary across model specifications. The results suggest that effects on children's health do not operate through parents’ health. With respect to union type, the health changes before and after dissolution of a consensual union are not very different from those before and after marital separation.     

Child-care availability and fertility in Norway

The child-care and fertility hypothesis has been in the literature for a long time and is straightforward: As child care becomes more available, affordable, and acceptable, the antinatalist effects of increased female educational attainment and work opportunities decrease. As an increasing number of countries express concern about low fertility, the child-care and fertility hypothesis takes on increased importance. Yet data and statistical limitations have heretofore limited empirical tests of the hypothesis. Using rich longitudinal data and appropriate statistical methodology, We show that increased availability of child care increases completed fertility. Moreover, this positive effect of child-care availability is found at every parity transition. We discuss the generalizability of these results to other settings and their broader importance for understanding variation and trends in low fertility.     

Democratic Participation in Voluntary Associations: A Multilevel Analysis of Sports Clubs in Europe

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Non-profit associations are usually democratically organized, and this feature plays a legitimizing role for the public...     

A Sequential Point Process Model and Bayesian Inference for Spatial Point Patterns with Linear Structures

Abstract. We introduce a flexible spatial point process model for spatial point patterns exhibiting linear structures, without incorporating a latent line process. The model is given by an underlying sequential point process model. Under this model, the points can be of one of three types: a ‘background point’ an ‘independent cluster point’ or a ‘dependent cluster point’. The background and independent cluster points are thought to exhibit ‘complete spatial randomness’, whereas the dependent cluster points are likely to occur close to previous cluster points. We demonstrate the flexibility of the model for producing point patterns with linear structures and propose to use the model as the likelihood in a Bayesian setting when analysing a spatial point pattern exhibiting linear structures. We illustrate this methodology by analysing two spatial point pattern datasets (locations of bronze age graves in Denmark and locations of mountain tops in Spain).