Is Local Financial Health Associated with Citizens’ Quality of Life?

Few studies have analysed the results of public management in terms of social welfare. However, the financial health of local governments is in decline, which means that they are no longer able to provide public services that require financial obligations. This generally results in a reduction in the quality/quantity of public services provided by local governments, thus affecting citizens’ quality of life, since the most important welfare needs are usually related to public services. This study is an original approach to understanding the importance of the financial health of local governments in relation to social welfare. We selected a sample composed of 76 Spanish cities for the period 2008–2010. The results show that citizens who live in municipalities with good financial health have a higher quality of life than others. In general, citizens from municipalities governed by right-wing parties with low political competition tend to have higher levels of quality of life.     

Weighting Elementary Prices in Consumer Price Index Construction Using Spatial Autocorrelation

The Consumer Price Indexes (CPI) are used in current economic systems to measure inflation. When constructing CPIs, however, official institutions have systematically overlooked the spatial dimension of elementary prices. Ignoring the fact that prices are collected at geographical locations implicitly implies considering prices as spatially independent, when in fact they are not. To solve this problem, this article proposes to weight basic price data by taking into account the spatial correlation they display. The weighted geometric and arithmetic means suggested generalize and improve the simple geometric and arithmetic means currently in use.     

Testing uniformity for the case of a planar unknown support

A new test is proposed for the hypothesis of uniformity on bi‐dimensional supports. The procedure is an adaptation of the “distance to boundary test” (DB test) proposed in Berrendero, Cuevas, & Vázquez‐Grande (2006). This new version of the DB test, called DBU test, allows us (as a novel, interesting feature) to deal with the case where the support S of the underlying distribution is unknown. This means that S is not specified in the null hypothesis so that, in fact, we test the null hypothesis that the underlying distribution is uniform on some support S belonging to a given class ${\cal C}$ . We pay special attention to the case that ${\cal C}$ is either the class of compact convex supports or the (broader) class of compact λ‐convex supports (also called r‐convex or α‐convex in the literature). The basic idea is to apply the DB test in a sort of plug‐in version, where the support S is approximated by using methods of set estimation. The DBU method is analysed from both the theoretical and practical point of view, via some asymptotic results and a simulation study, respectively. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 40: 378–395; 2012 © 2012 Statistical Society of Canada     

Latin America and the Caribbean Revisited: Pathways for Research

This introductory article on Third sector research on Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) was designed with two objectives in mind. The first, to present readers with a general up to date of the political, economic, and social overview as well as an actualized context of the region, intending to show the needs and trends that individuals and civil society organizations have experienced in the past 20 years by underlining some main advances and shortcomings for LAC. This was done with the intent and idea to provide the understanding of the issues that require attention to be approached in a scholarly and interdisciplinary fashion with a Third sector studies lens. The second was to present a series of pertinent original articles placed into three distinct axis or categories that correspond distinctively to major trends identified by the guest editors of this special issue as social inclusion and development, human rights and public policies and governance of Third sector organizations. The article clearly introduces original material by fourteen specialists in Third sector research who provide results on an ample and wide range of studies and theoretical analysis of this particular region of the world.     

INDEX TO VOLUME 5 (1987)

Real-time estimates of output gaps and inflation gaps differ from the values that are obtained using data available long after the event. Part of the problem is that the data on which the real-time estimates are based is subsequently revised. We show that vector-autoregressive models of data vintages provide forecasts of post-revision values of future observations and of already-released observations capable of improving estimates of output and inflation gaps in real time. Our findings indicate that annual revisions to output and inflation data are in part predictable based on their past vintages. This article has online supplementary materials.     

Multimarket pioneers: Does multimarket contact improve their performance?

First-mover advantages (FMA) and multimarket contact (MMC) have evolved independently in the strategic management literature. This is surprising because FMA erode as a result of competition which, in turn, is affected by MMC. This paper links these literatures through the concept of spheres of influence and analyses the effect of MMC on pioneers' profitability. We use the order of market entry to identify spheres of influence and to determine their distribution among multimarket firms. The distribution of spheres of influence allows us to distinguish between reciprocal MMC and non-reciprocal MMC and to study how each of them determines pioneers' profitability. We test our hypotheses in the mobile telecommunications industry. Our findings show that reciprocal MMC has a positive effect on pioneers’ results, but non-reciprocal MMC negatively affects them.     

Pretending emotions in the early years: The role of language and symbolic play

Although 3-year-old children sometimes simulate emotions to adapt to social norms, we do not know if even younger children can pretend emotions in playful contexts. The present study investigated (1) what emotions infants of 1–2 years old are capable of pretending and (2) the possible role of language and symbolic play in the ability to pretend emotions. The sample included 69 infants aged 18 to 31 months and their parents. Infants were administrated the Test of Pretend Play, and their parents responded to the MacArthur-Bates CDI-II inventory, part of the MacArthur-Bates CDI-I, and a questionnaire about the expression of pretend emotions. Results suggest that very young children simulate emotions. Furthermore, children's simulation of emotions was related to both symbolic play and language. Specifically, the ability to label emotions was linked to the ability to simulate them. The role of language and symbolic play in the development of the capacity to express and understand pretend emotions is discussed.     

Comparative assessment of analytical approaches to quantify the risk for introduction of rare animal diseases: the example of avian influenza in Spain

Trade of animals and animal products imposes an uncertain and variable risk for exotic animal diseases introduction into importing countries. Risk analysis provides importing countries with an objective, transparent, and internationally accepted method for assessing that risk. Over the last decades, European Union countries have conducted probabilistic risk assessments quite frequently to quantify the risk for rare animal diseases introduction into their territories. Most probabilistic animal health risk assessments have been typically classified into one-level and multilevel binomial models. One-level models are more simple than multilevel models because they assume that animals or products originate from one single population. However, it is unknown whether such simplification may result in substantially different results compared to those obtained through the use of multilevel models. Here, data used on a probabilistic multilevel binomial model formulated to assess the risk for highly pathogenic avian influenza introduction into Spain were reanalyzed using a one-level binomial model and their outcomes were compared. An alternative ordinal model is also proposed here, which makes use of simpler assumptions and less information compared to those required by traditional one-level and multilevel approaches. Results suggest that, at least under certain circumstances, results of the one-level and ordinal approaches are similar to those obtained using multilevel models. Consequently, we argue that, when data are insufficient to run traditional probabilistic models, the ordinal approach presented here may be a suitable alternative to rank exporting countries in terms of the risk that they impose for the spread of rare animal diseases into disease-free countries.