Asylum Migration in OECD Countries: In Search of Lost Well-Being

Social Indicators Research - Alongside the economic determinants and unobserved structural forces that drive migration flows, asylum migration faces additional natural and man-made hazards, which...     

Trends in Inequality of Opportunity for Developing Countries: Does the Economic Indicator Matter?

Social Indicators Research - The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the behaviour of Inequality of Opportunity (IOp henceforth) in developing countries. The analysis is carried out using...     

Improvements over the duplicate performance method for outlier detection in categorical multivariate surveys

Summary The detection of errors and outliers is an important step in data processing, especially those errors arising from data entry operations because they are of the entire responsability of the data processing staff. The duplicate performance method, is commonly used as an attempt to detect such type of errors. It implies typically typing twice the same data without any special precedence. If the errors are uniformly distributed among individuals, retyping a fraction of the total will also remove typically the same fraction of the errors. A new method is presented, which is able to improve that procedure by sorting the records putting first the most unlikely ones. The ability of the present methodology has been tested by a Monte Carlo simulation, using an existing database of categorical answers of housing characteristics in Uruguay. At first, it has been randomly contaiminated, and after that, the proposed procedure applied. The results show that if a partial retyping is done following the proposed order about 50 % of the errors can be removed while keeping the retyping effort between 4 and 14% of the dataset, while to attain a similar result with the standard methodology 50% (on, average) of the database should be processed. The new ordering is based upon the unrotated Principal Component Analysis (PCA) transformation of the previously coded data. No special shape of the multivariate distribution function is assumed or required.     

Some issues related to the topological aggregation of preferences

This paper deals with the topological approach to social choice theory initiated by Chichilnisky. We study several issues concerning the existence and uniqueness of Chichilnisky rules defined on preference spaces. We show that on topological vector spaces the only additive, anonymous, and unanimous aggregation n-rule is the convex mean. We study the case of infinite agents and show that an infinite Chichilnisky rule might be considered as the limit of rules for finitely many agents. Finally, we show that under some restrictions on the preference space, the existence of a Chichilnisky rule for every finite case implies the existence of a weak Chichilnisky rule for the infinite case.     

Label‐ and Level‐Invariant Graphical Log‐Linear Models

We introduce two types of graphical log‐linear models: label‐ and level‐invariant models for triangle‐free graphs. These models generalise symmetry concepts in graphical log‐linear models and provide a tool with which to model symmetry in the discrete case. A label‐invariant model is category‐invariant and is preserved after permuting some of the vertices according to transformations that maintain the graph, whereas a level‐invariant model equates expected frequencies according to a given set of permutations. These new models can both be seen as instances of a new type of graphical log‐linear model termed the restricted graphical log‐linear model, or RGLL, in which equality restrictions on subsets of main effects and first‐order interactions are imposed. Their likelihood equations and graphical representation can be obtained from those derived for the RGLL models.     

Apoyo social percibido: su efecto protector frente a los acontecimientos vitales estresantes

Resumen

Este estudio examina la relación entre apoyo social percibido, eventos vitales estresantes y depresión en una muestra (N = 74) perteneciente a la comunidad de Aranjuez. Como se hipotetizó, aparecen efectos directos significativos del apoyo social y de los eventos vitales sobre la depresión. Sin embargo no se obtuvieron efectos de interacción significativos, no apoyando nuestros resultados la hipótesis del efecto protector en el caso del apoyo social percibido. Este tipo de apoyo, en vez de simplemente proteger al individuo frente al impacto negativo del estrés, puede ser importante por sí mismo en la reducción de la sintomatologia depresiva.     

Cross-National Comparison on Family Satisfaction: Super-Specialization Versus Super-Equality

Research has documented that women still assume the main burden of domestic tasks and childcare within the household, despite the recent changes towards a greater equality. This division of labor has clear implications in satisfaction with family life. However, little research has combined other domestic responsibilities, such as decision making and care of dependent relatives with housework to study satisfaction, from a comparative perspective. In this article, data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP)-2012 are used to explore the effects of a proposed index on balance in the couple, for women and men separately, through different multilevel models. The results suggest that the empowerment that could be assumed from a leading role in decision making does not improve satisfaction and that super-equality is the option yielding the highest levels of satisfaction, regardless their hours of paid-work. Differences by countries persist after controlling for individual and contextual variables, with the Latin American countries being those with the most satisfied populations.

     

The effects of wage flexibility on activity and employment in Spain

In this paper we estimate the macroeconomic effects of the greater wage and firms’ internal flexibility promoted by the economic policies implemented since 2012, which changed markedly Spanish labour regulations. To do so, we propose a structural VAR that allows us to break down changes in main macroeconomic variables into different structural shocks. From a policy perspective, the estimation of the structural shocks allows us to simulate a counterfactual scenario, whereby we conclude that the effects of less rigid labour market are positive and significant. Our results suggest that, if these policies were implemented at the beginning of the crisis, they could have avoided a significant part of the falls in GDP and employment.