Chronopolitics: What Time Do People Vote?

Insights from time-budget studies are applied to reassess previouswork on factors conditioning the time of day when people vote.In sharp contrast to expectations raised by the literature,the findings reveal weak multivariate effects of attitudinal,behavioral, and situational conditioning factors.     

Classification of Higher-order Data with Separable Covariance and Structured Multiplicative or Additive Mean Models

Although devised in 1936 by Fisher, discriminant analysis is still rapidly evolving, as the complexity of contemporary data sets grows exponentially. Our classification rules explore these complexities by modeling various correlations in higher-order data. Moreover, our classification rules are suitable to data sets where the number of response variables is comparable or larger than the number of observations. We assume that the higher-order observations have a separable variance-covariance matrix and two different Kronecker product structures on the mean vector. In this article, we develop quadratic classification rules among g different populations where each individual has κth order (κ ≥2) measurements. We also provide the computational algorithms to compute the maximum likelihood estimates for the model parameters and eventually the sample classification rules.     

A Research Note on Family and Income Distribution: The Equalizing Impact of Married Women's Earnings in Metropolitan Brazil*

Using the 1985 Brazilian Annual Household Survey (PNAD), this study analyzes the extent to which the labor force participation of married women influenced familyincome inequality. The marginal impact on family earnings is decomposed into two components, one generated uniquely by differences in earnings inequality between spouses and another produced by imperfect assortive mating on spouses' earnings. Results show that the correlation among spouses' earnings is significantly less than one (0.4), and that the level of earnings inequality is more than 50 percent higher among wives than husbands. Because these forces are offsetting, wives' labor income has a negligible impact on family-income inequality in Brazil. The results demonstrate the importance of isolating the influence of imperfect assortive mating from that due to inequality in earnings between men and women.     

Corporate responsibility in U.S. corporate websites: A pilot study

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an essential component in the management of companies around the globe. Any key strategy used for CSR administration must reflect strong and effective communication channels to show CSR efforts. This study analyzes how the top 50 American profitable corporations from the Fortune 500 of 2009 communicate their CSR initiatives to different stakeholders through their corporate websites. To do this, an evaluation framework has been designed to examine features presented in CSR corporate websites.     

Organizational Learning,Innovation and Internationalization: A Complex System Model

Research on organizational learning, innovation and internationalization has traditionally linked these concepts through linear causality, by considering any one of them as the cause of another, an approach that might be considered contradictory and static. This paper aims to clarify these relationships and proposes a dynamic theoretical model that has mutual causality at its core and is based on ideas originating in complexity theory. The final model results from case studies of two clothing sector firms. The authors consider that the three concepts constitute a complex system and can adapt and transcend, as any alteration can take the system to the edge of chaos. Adaptability is fostered by concentration, improvement and discussion. Transcendence is fostered by attention, dialogue and inquiry. The different paces of the two case study companies led their systems to two different models: the incremental complex adaptive system model and the global complex generative system model. The incremental model is characterized by adaptive learning, incremental innovation and low internationalization; and the global system is characterized by generative learning, radical innovation and global internationalization. The paper ends with an exploration of the academic and management implications of the model.     

A geometrically motivated parametric model in manifold estimation

The general aim of manifold estimation is reconstructing, by statistical methods, an m-dimensional compact manifold S on ^d (with m≤d) or estimating some relevant quantities related to the geometric properties of S. Focussing on the cases d=2 and d=3, with m=d or m=d?1, we will assume that the data are given by the distances to S from points randomly chosen on a band surrounding S. The aim of this paper is to show that, if S belongs to a wide class of compact sets (which we call sets with polynomial volume), the proposed statistical model leads to a relatively simple parametric formulation. In this setup, standard methodologies (method of moments, maximum likelihood) can be used to estimate some interesting geometric parameters, including curvatures and Euler characteristic. We will particularly focus on the estimation of the (d?1)-dimensional boundary measure (in Minkowski's sense) of S. It turns out, however, that the estimation problem is not straightforward since the standard estimators show a remarkably pathological behaviour: while they are consistent and asymptotically normal, their expectations are infinite. The theoretical and practical consequences of this fact are discussed in some detail.     

Explaining Investment Dynamics in U.S. Manufacturing: A Generalized (S,s) Approach

In this paper we derive a model of aggregate investment that builds from the lumpy microeconomic behavior of firms facing stochastic fixed adjustment costs. Instead of the standard sharp (S,s) bands, firms' adjustment policies take the form of a probability of adjustment (adjustment hazard) that responds smoothly to changes in firms' capacity gap. The model has appealing aggregation properties, and yields nonlinear aggregate time series processes. The passivity of normal times is, occasionally, more than offset by the brisk response to large accumulated shocks. Using within and out-of-sample criteria, we find that the model performs substantially better than the standard linear models of investment for postwar sectoral U.S. manufacturing equipment and structures investment data.     

Measuring residential segregation in multi-ethnic and unequal European cities

Immigration flows and social inequalities reflect increased social and multi-ethnic segregation in contemporary urban Europe. For a better understanding of these processes, the present study investigates the main strengths of the multi-group residential indices, testing sensitivity and reliability under different metropolitan contexts in five European countries. These indices focus on different research dimensions and approach multi-group residential segregation conceptually and mathematically in a different way. A multivariate exploratory data analysis was adopted to classify the observed segregation patterns into a few homogeneous types and to delineate the multivariate relationship between the indices. The results of principal component analysis demonstrate that the indices assessing uniformity and disproportionality of the social groups analysed (H and D) contribute largely to the diversification in today's multi-ethnic communities, clarifying the importance of the dimension of evenness. Our results highlight how segregation is more evident in economically disadvantaged metropolitan regions with high levels of social vulnerability.     

Predicting burrowing owl flight trajectories in urban environments

Urban Ecosystems - It is important to understand how animals respond to changes in landscape structure, especially when considering habitat alteration and urbanization. Using the burrowing owl...     

Liquidity in Asset Markets With Search Frictions

We develop a search‐theoretic model of financial intermediation in an over‐the‐counter market and study how trading frictions affect the distribution of asset holdings and standard measures of liquidity. A distinctive feature of our theory is that it allows for unrestricted asset holdings, so market participants can accommodate trading frictions by adjusting their asset positions. We show that these individual responses of asset demands constitute a fundamental feature of illiquid markets: they are a key determinant of trade volume, bid–ask spreads, and trading delays—the dimensions of market liquidity that search‐based theories seek to explain.