Quantitative methods in a developing country: Managers' perceptions and desires

The role of quantitative methods in business decision making has been a subject of much discussion in the literature. Most of this discussion has emanated from developed countries. In this paper, the current practice in a developing country is examined, as well as the desires and perceptions of management. It is evident that the current practice lags that of the developed countries. Moreover, while the practice in companies with international association is not markedly different from local companies, the management of these companies desire a situation closer to that found in the developed countries. It is suggested that adequately trained personnel are not currently available and that a career orientated masters programme in quantitative methods is necessary in developing countries.     

Subjective Well-being in Rural India: The Curse of Conspicuous Consumption

Using data on 697 individuals from 375 rural low income households in India, we test expectations on the effects of relative income and conspicuous consumption on subjective well-being. The results of the multi-level regression analyses show that individuals who spent more on conspicuous consumption report lower levels of subjective well-being. Surprisingly an individual’s relative income position does not affect feelings of well-being. Motivated by positional concerns, people do not passively accept their relative rank but instead consume conspicuous goods to keep up with the Joneses. Conspicuous consumption always comes at the account of the consumption of basic needs. Our analyses point at a positional treadmill effect of the consumption of status goods.     

Stepping stones for the unemployed: the effect of temporary jobs on the duration until (regular) work

Transitions from unemployment into temporary work are often succeeded by a transition from temporary into regular work. This paper investigates whether temporary work increases the transition rate to regular work. We use longitudinal survey data of individuals to estimate a multi-state duration model, applying the ‘timing of events’ approach. The data contain multiple spells in labour market states at the individual level. We analyse results using novel graphical representations, which unambiguously show that temporary jobs shorten the unemployment duration, although they do not increase the fraction of unemployed workers having regular work within a few years after entry into unemployment.     

Education-related inequity in healthcare with heterogeneous reporting of health

Reliance on self-rated health to proxy medical need can bias estimation of education-related inequity in healthcare utilization. We correct this bias both by instrumenting self-rated health with objective health indicators and by purging self-rated health of reporting heterogeneity that is identified from health vignettes. Using data on elderly Europeans, we find that instrumenting self-rated health shifts the distribution of visits to a doctor in the direction of inequality favouring the better educated. There is a further, and typically larger, shift in the same direction when correction is made for the tendency of the better educated to rate their health more negatively.     

EVALUATING THE EMPLOYMENT IMPACT OF A MANDATORY JOB SEARCH PROGRAM

This paper exploits area‐based piloting and age‐related eligibility rules to identify treatment effects of a labor market program—the New Deal for Young People in the U.K. A central focus is on substitution/displacement effects and on equilibrium wage effects. The program includes extensive job assistance and wage subsidies to employers. We find that the impact of the program significantly raised transitions to employment by about 5 percentage points. The impact is robust to a wide variety of nonexperimental estimators. However, we present some evidence that this effect may not be as large in the longer run. (JEL: J18, J23, J38)     

On an extension of the von Mises distribution due to Batschelet

This paper considers the three-parameter family of symmetric unimodal circular distributions proposed by Batschelet in [1 Batschelet, E. 1981. Circular Statistics in Biology, London: Academic Press.  [Google Scholar]], an extension of the von Mises distribution containing distributional forms ranging from the highly leptokurtic to the very platykurtic. The family's fundamental properties are given, and likelihood-based techniques described which can be used to perform estimation and hypothesis testing. Analyses are presented of two data sets which illustrate how the family and three of its most direct competitors can be applied in the search for parsimonious models for circular data.     

Therapy Outcome with Children in Foster Care: A Longitudinal Study

The present paper describes a naturalistic study of therapy with children in foster care. The goal was to attempt to begin to understand what happens to children in foster care while they are in therapy. The functioning of all children referred for therapy in a foster care agency was assessed as rated by different informants at different points in time over an 18-month period. These children present with low-level behavior problems but the level and type of problem they present with depends on the person rating the child and the child’s gender and age. Two thirds of the children improve and do so within the early stages of therapy. One third of the children do not improve. The distinguishing feature of this group appears to be the high level of aggressive behaviors reported at intake. Results suggest that improvement depends on the eye of the beholder. These findings are discussed and recommendations for therapeutic and systemic practice are made. The importance of using multiple informants when evaluating the treatment needs of children in care is pointed out as is the need to rethink therapeutic strategies with children that present with high levels of aggressive behavior at intake and show no improvement after the first 6 months of therapy.     

Religious differentials in marital fertility in The Hague (Netherlands) 1860-1909

Previous studies of the marital fertility transition in Europe have found religious differentials. Using data collected from the population registers of The Hague, our aim in this study is to search for answers to the following questions: whether religious differentials result from socio-economic characteristics; to what extent religious ideology explains the behaviour of religious groups; which proximate determinants account for the religious differentials; and whether the Jews were forerunners in the marital fertility transition in Europe. The results provide some evidence of relatively low levels of parity-dependent fertility control among Jews before the transition and among Catholics during the transition. Religious ideology probably accounts for the low level of fertility control among Catholics. The ultimate reason for the relatively high marital fertility among Jews before the transition remains unclear. Our findings do not support the hypothesis that Jews were forerunners in the marital fertility transition.     

Plebiscites,Fiscal Policy and the Poor: Learning from US Experience with Direct Democracy

Many countries are contemplating direct political participation as a way of giving marginalised people more say in national fiscal policies. The United States is a natural laboratory for studying how large‐scale direct democracy actually works in this regard. Every state allows voters to decide certain ballot questions about how to raise and spend public revenue. The 100‐year record shows, however, that state‐wide plebiscites fail to produce uniformly equitable or financially sustainable government budgets, or to mobilise low‐income groups to defend their economic interests. When called upon to make decisions about state government spending, the electorate is apt to disregard any hardship for poor people. Traditional political parties and advocacy organisations are usually a more promising avenue for promoting anti‐poverty budgets.