Experimental evidence on case-based decision theory

This paper starts out from the proposition that case-based decision theory (CBDT) is an appropriate tool to explain human decision behavior in situations of structural ignorance. Although the developers of CBDT suggest its reality adequacy, CBDT has not yet been tested empirically very often, especially not in repetitive decision situations. Therefore, our main objective is to analyse the decision behavior of subjects in a repeated-choice experiment by comparing the explanation power of CBDT to reinforcement learning and to classical decision criteria under uncertainty namely maximin, maximax, and pessimism-optimism. Our findings substantiate a predominant significantly higher validity of CBDT compared to the classical criteria and to reinforcement learning. For this reason, the experimental results confirm the suggested reality adequacy of CBDT in repetitive decision situations of structural ignorance.     

马克斯·韦伯：基于社会动力学的思考

德国社会学创建的年代正值经典（自然）科学处于顶峰的时代。在唯科学主义观念的影响下,社会科学研究领域,尤其是社会学方面一度盛行因果一元论的决定论。为了改变此种状况,韦伯把“价值分析”引入社会学研究,设立了因果性说明与意义理解两种研究进路。这不仅弥补了方法论的不足,而且还形成了文化意义的社会动力学。凭借此种方法,韦伯最终较为合理地解释了西欧不同地区以及东西方的文化差异和社会现代性变迁问题,并为后人发明“轴心文明”概念和深化这一视角奠定了基础。     

Ethnic Business in der Leiharbeit – Einblicke in einen wenig bekannten Arbeitsmarkt in Deutschland

Since the Agenda 2010 temporary work is even economically and politically a success story in Germany. Inside that branch you also find Ethnic Business, id est that the director of the conferrer and the employees are belonging to the same ethnic group. The recruiting strategies are most informal within the ethnic group and working for an “ethnic conferrer” oftentimes means the last chance for migrants who get no other job on the formal job market. But the temporary work-business in Germany has a bad reputation and a lot of questions are going along with Ethnic Business in that particular branch: What are the migrant’s motives for working to an ethnic conferrer? What are the attractive aspects of founding an ethnic model of temporary employment agency? Have ethnic conferrers the ability to create new stability for the migrants inside a highly unstable branch?     

机械设计课程实验教学中的学生能力培养探讨

根据当前机械设计实验课程教学目的和任务,针对实验课程教学中突出对学生＂工程应用能力培养,创新设计能力培养＂的教学目标,从实验项目的设置、教学过程的控制和要求以及教学理论的验证几个方面进行了机械设计课程实验教学改革探索,以提高学生的应用与创新能力、可持续学习能力为目的,构建了＂以学生能力为中心＂的机械设计实验教学体系。     

Shortest paths among transient obstacles

Journal of Combinatorial Optimization - We present an optimal algorithm for determining a time-minimal rectilinear path among transient rectilinear obstacles. An obstacle is transient if it exists...     

Trimmed likelihood estimators for lifetime experiments and their influence functions

We study the behaviour of trimmed likelihood estimators (TLEs) for lifetime models with exponential or lognormal distributions possessing a linear or nonlinear link function. In particular, we investigate the difference between two possible definitions for the TLE, one called original trimmed likelihood estimator (OTLE) and one called modified trimmed likelihood estimator (MTLE) which is the finite sample version of a form for location and linear regression used by Bednarski and Clarke [Trimmed likelihood estimation of location and scale of the normal distribution. Aust J Statist. 1993;35:141–153, Asymptotics for an adaptive trimmed likelihood location estimator. Statistics. 2002;36:1–8] and Bednarski et al. [Adaptive trimmed likelihood estimation in regression. Discuss Math Probab Stat. 2010;30:203–219]. The OTLE is always an MTLE but the MTLE may not be unique even in cases where the OLTE is unique. We compare especially the functional forms of both types of estimators, characterize the difference with the implicit function theorem and indicate situations where they coincide and where they do not coincide. Since the functional form of the MTLE has a simpler form, we use it then for deriving the influence function, again with the help of the implicit function theorem. The derivation of the influence function for the functional form of the OTLE is similar but more complicated.     

Do maternal health problems influence child's worrying status? Evidence from the British Cohort Study

Conventional methods apply symmetric prior distributions such as a normal distribution or a Laplace distribution for regression coefficients, which may be suitable for median regression and exhibit no robustness to outliers. This work develops a quantile regression on linear panel data model without heterogeneity from a Bayesian point of view, i.e. upon a location-scale mixture representation of the asymmetric Laplace error distribution, and provides how the posterior distribution is summarized using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. Applying this approach to the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS) data, it finds that a different maternal health problem has different influence on child's worrying status at different quantiles. In addition, applying stochastic search variable selection for maternal health problems to the 1970 BCS data, it finds that maternal nervous breakdown, among the 25 maternal health problems, contributes most to influence the child's worrying status.     

Outlier Robust Small‐Area Estimation Under Spatial Correlation

Modern systems of official statistics require the estimation and publication of business statistics for disaggregated domains, for example, industry domains and geographical regions. Outlier robust methods have proven to be useful for small‐area estimation. Recently proposed outlier robust model‐based small‐area methods assume, however, uncorrelated random effects. Spatial dependencies, resulting from similar industry domains or geographic regions, often occur. In this paper, we propose an outlier robust small‐area methodology that allows for the presence of spatial correlation in the data. In particular, we present a robust predictive methodology that incorporates the potential spatial impact from other areas (domains) on the small area (domain) of interest. We further propose two parametric bootstrap methods for estimating the mean‐squared error. Simulations indicate that the proposed methodology may lead to efficiency gains. The paper concludes with an illustrative application by using business data for estimating average labour costs in Italian provinces.     

Reference model for collaborative management in the automotive industry

Changes in the competitive environment require corporate restructuring, strengthening the relationship between the participants in a supply chain, implementing inter-organisational collaborative actions. Different strategies for collaborative actions render the subject relevant to researchers and managers. Integration, cooperation and partnership are essential to the success of this restructuring; the practices in this subject will be treated as Collaborative Management. The main objective is to analyse and synthesise the requirements of Collaborative Management in the automotive industry. The multicase study begins with an exploratory study to identify the theoretical elements that involve collaborative activity between companies, followed by a multiple case study in order to analyse the collaborative strategies used by companies. With the data collected a reference model will be produced using the Enterprise Knowledge Development methodology under a collaborative management approach. The data will enable the systematic and consistent representation of the collaboration between companies, helping to clarify the Collaborative role, and the integration relationship with the inter-organisational managing strategies.