Block Designs Robust Against the Presence of an Aberration in a Treatment-Control Setup

The author considers the problem of finding designs insensitive to the presence of an outlier in a treatment-control block design setup for estimating the set of elementary contrasts between the effects of each test treatment and a control treatment. The criterion of robustness suggested by Mandal (1989 Mandal , N. K. ( 1989 ). On robust designs . Cal. Stat. Assoc. Bull. 38 : 115 – 119 . [Google Scholar]) in block design setup for estimating a full set of orthonormal treatment contrasts is adapted. A new class viz. partially balanced treatment incomplete block designs (PBTIBD) is introduced and it is shown that balanced treatment incomplete block designs (BTIBD) and PBTIB designs, under certain conditions, are robust in the previous sense. Such designs are important in the sense that the inference on the treatment contrasts under consideration remain unaffected by the presence of an outlier.     

Weibull accelerated life tests when there are competing causes of failure

Accelerated life testing of a product under more severe than normal conditions is commonly used to reduce test time and costs. Data collected at such accelerated conditions are used to obtain estimates of the parameters of a stress translation function. This function is then used to make inference about the product's life under normal operating conditions. We consider the problem of accelerated life tests when the product of interest is a p component series system. Each of the components is assumed to have an independent Weibull time to failure distribution with different shape parameters and different scale parameters which are increasing functions stress. A general model i s used for the scale parameter includes the standard engineering models as special This model also has an appealing biological interpretation     

A class of tests for exponentiality against decreasing mean residual life alternatives

A class of tests is proposed for testing Exponentiality against the Decreasing Mean Residual Life (DMRL) class of non-exponential probability distributions. These tests are consistent and asymptotically unbiased against all continuous DMRL alternatives. They are U - statistics and hence asymptotically normally distributed. The asymptotic relative efficiency (ARE) with respect to other tests for DMRL are quite high. Small sample powers are also comparable with small sample powers of the competitors.     

A transnational lens into international student experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic

We analyse the experiences of international students living in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of transnationalism that understands mobility as broadly uninterrupted, continuing and taken-for-granted, and international student migration (ISM) literature. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, people had to contend with sudden border closures and stringent restrictions on all forms of travel. International students are regarded as the archetypal trans-migrants with frequent mobility and often multiple attachments to place. We interrogate these assumptions of mobility by drawing on interview data from 13 international students in Ontario from April to June of 2020. We found that international students experienced the pandemic transnationally and faced increased challenges, which heightened their reliance on support from transnational families, and generated anxieties about their future career and mobilities. We bring transnational theories into conversation with ISM literature to better understand international students’ lived experiences in Canada during a pandemic.     

Being “top-ranked” without “causing troubles”: Comparing federal and provincial immigration pathways for Chinese international students in Canada

Canada's immigration selection regime uses a combination of human capital measures and direct employer involvement to select economic immigrants, emphasizing pre-arranged employment as critical to secure permanent resident status. This trend affects international students in unique ways. We interviewed 17 Chinese women international students residing in Canada about their decision to study and desire to stay in Canada. Participants faced difficulties in accumulating adequate employment records for immigration applications and employer-driven immigration pathways put them at considerable risk of deskilling and exploitation. When comparing available immigration pathways, we found that participants had more success with provincial programmes than federal ones because of the availability of flexible pathways, greater options and lower requirements for eligibility. We conclude with three policy recommendations to highlight the importance of periodic revisions to selection criteria to balance human capital measures and employer reliance to retain talented foreign workers in Canada.     

Information Systems Management Issues: Reporting and Relevance*

Reports of key information systems issues have been published over the last two decades in many journals. Leading IS journals (e.g., MIS Quarterly, Information & Management, among others) have published key IS management issue reports every three or four years over the last 15 years, and will probably continue to provide such reports in the future. Although these reports claim to provide decisional guidance to practitioners, researchers, consultants, etc., the authors in their experience have noted concerns about their usefulness. While not questioning the validity of the methods and analysis conducted in these studies, we address two important questions in this article: the manner of reporting of the key issue results (which might be misleading), and the relevance of the results (are they providing what they intended to?). We hope that our discussion will provide new perspectives in making resource allocation decisions to both readers and authors of key issue articles.     

‘A life path different from one of labour in the Gulf’: Ongoing mobility among Nepali labour migrants in Qatar and their families

Labour migration is commonly attached to the idea of a ‘better’ future for the migrants and their families, but there is less emphasis on how this does not materialize for many labour migrants. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Nepalis working in Qatar and select families in Nepal, this article focuses on the intergenerational migration cycle or migration as open-ended and ongoing across generations. While the Gulf migration scholarship has mostly concentrated on low-skilled workers, I draw on the cases of migrants across different skill/income levels to show how the migrants’ and/or families’ desires for ‘ongoing mobility’ to the Gulf or the West panned out differently. I argue that despite wanting a different and better life path for the future generation, one unlike theirs of labour in the Gulf, many Gulf migrants are unable to meet these familial expectations; rather, migration histories repeat in a continual quest to overcome economic constraints.     

Cross-country disparities in skill premium and skill acquisition

Skilled individuals are rewarded more in poor than in rich countries. Why aren't more individuals acquiring skills in poor countries? We document that the unemployment rate of the skilled net of that of the unskilled decreases with a country's level of development. Using a matching model of occupational choice and skill acquisition, we quantify the role of barriers to enter entrepreneurship for these unemployment rates, skill premium and acquisition. The cross-country correlation between skill premium and acquisition decreases by 45% when each country's gap to the US in the entrepreneurship barrier is decreased enough to even the unemployment differential.