Unemployment and mental health: evidence from research in the Nordic countries

In this article we examine research on effects of unemployment on mental health in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. We describe studies that use cross-sectional, longitudinal and time-series data, and we discuss studies that investigated the duration-dependence issue in exit rates out of unemployment. Not surprisingly, cross-sectional studies reveal that unemployed persons have worse mental health than do others. Most longitudinal studies suggest that unemployment is associated with deteriorating mental health, even though it is somewhat unclear how long such an effect persists. Most duration-dependence studies were done using Swedish data. It turns out that unemployment benefits and labour-market policies affect the pattern of exit rates out of unemployment.     

Evolutionary politics? Union differences and political activities in the 1990s

Conclusion The political environment faced by U.S. unions has changed substantially over the past decade. The cost of election campaigns has increased dramatically and many interest groups have become actively involved in election financing. More importantly, the election of a Republican majority to Congress in 1994 caused a major change in the nature of unions' interactions with Washington legislators. Organized labor has faced a barrage of bills aimed at reducing the power of unions and minimizing their political involvement. Such efforts have also occurred across the country as conservative groups have attempted to qualify referenda that limit unions in some way. At a time when unions must organize new workers to survive as a viable force in society, these political challenges are especially serious matters.     

Rockefeller Philanthropy and the Institute of Pacific Relations: A Reappraisal of Long-Term Mutual Dependency

Archival evidence is used to explore the development of funding for the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) and the Canadian Institute of International Affairs (the secretariat for the Canadian national council of the IPR) provided by the Rockefeller Foundation (RF). It suggests that the withdrawal of funding should be interpreted in a long-term perspective as a joint responsibility of mutually dependent recipients and funders, rather than simply as the fault of RF decision makers responding reactively to the prevailing climate of McCarthyism. Moreover, it is argued that the conventional wisdom as to the balance of influence within the RF between key staff and trustees is in need of revision. Conceptual implications of these examples of recipient dependence are explored, including the reasons for and dangers of such mutual dependence, the meaning of donor responsibility, and the mediating role of foundation officers.     

Normalized Quadratic Systems of Consumer Demand Functions

Empirically estimated demand systems frequently fail to satisfy the appropriate theoretical curvature conditions. We propose and estimate two demand systems for which these conditions can be imposed globally; the first is derived from a normalized quadratic reciprocal indirect utility function and the second is derived from a normalized quadratic expenditure function. The former is flexible if there are no restrictions on its free parameters, but loses flexibility if the curvature conditions need to be imposed. The latter is flexible, in the class of functions satisfying local money metric scaling, even if the curvature conditions need to be imposed.     

Modified weighted squared error estimation procedures with special emphasis on the stable laws

Two families of parameter estimation procedures for the stable laws based on a variant of the characteristic function are provided. The methodology which produces viable computational procedures for the stable laws is generally applicable to other families of distributions across a variety of settings. Both families of procedures may be described as a modified weighted chi-squared minimization procedure, and both explicitly take account of constraints on the parameter space. Influence func-tions for and efficiencies of the estimators are given. If x₁, x₂, …x_n random sample from an unknown distribution F , a method for determining the stable law to which F is attracted is developed. Procedures for regression and autoregres-sion with stable error structure are provided. A number of examples are given.     

Identification of composite (∑+II) arma models by relatively simpler models

In the real world situations, many time series are aggregates of two or more time series. An aggregation may take place due to an addition or the product or both of two or more time series. We are often interested in the study of the properties of aggregates which are, in turn, dependent on the properties of the constituent series. Motivated by this problem, the authors study in this paper the properties of models generated by the operator (Σ+II) on autoregressive-moving-average (ARMA) processes of orders (p_i,q_i), i = l→n . A few practical examples where such models have been used are given in the introduction and an illustrative numerical example is discussed at the end of the paper.     

Evaluation of heuristics for scheduling in a flowshop: a case study

The problem of finding the best permutation schedule for a flowshop has engaged the attention of researchers for almost four decades. In view of its NP-completeness, the problem is not amenable to the development of efficient optimizing algorithms. A number of heuristics have been proposed, most of which have been evaluated by using randomly generated problems for a single measure of performance. However, real-life problems often have more than one objective. This paper discusses a live flowshop problem that has the twin objectives of minimizing the production run-time as well as the total flowtime of jobs. Five heuristics are evaluated in this study and some interesting findings are reported.     

Risk analysis of PCB exposure via the soil-food crop pathway, and alternatives for remediation at Serpukhov, Russian Federation.

A risk assessment was conducted to determine the likelihood of certain health risks resulting from exposure to soils and food crops contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs). PCBs have contaminated soils, river sediments, and air in the past as a result of industrial activities at a capacitor plant located in the City of Serpukhov, Russian Federation. This risk assessment and suggestions for remediation are designed to aid in decision-making efforts by a joint Russian-American research team developing a community, national, and international response to industrial contamination. Bobovnikova et al. (The Science of the Total Environment 139/140, 357-364, [1993]) have reported that PCBs are elevated in soils and sediments, breast milk, and locally grown foods in the Serpukhov area. Data from these and other investigators have been used in this risk assessment to calculate a potential cancer risk resulting from exposure to PCBs. Our assessment indicates that members of the local population may be at increased risk of cancer, and possibly other adverse health effects, as a result of PCB contamination of their environment. Because previously unassessed environmental contamination is a common problem in the former Soviet Republics, as well as many other areas of the world, we believe this type of evaluation, using known methods, can serve as a model for assessment efforts in other parts of the globe and result in remediative efforts in regions constrained by faltering economies.     

A clustering approach to interpretable principal components

A new method for constructing interpretable principal components is proposed. The method first clusters the variables, and then interpretable (sparse) components are constructed from the correlation matrices of the clustered variables. For the first step of the method, a new weighted-variances method for clustering variables is proposed. It reflects the nature of the problem that the interpretable components should maximize the explained variance and thus provide sparse dimension reduction. An important feature of the new clustering procedure is that the optimal number of clusters (and components) can be determined in a non-subjective manner. The new method is illustrated using well-known simulated and real data sets. It clearly outperforms many existing methods for sparse principal component analysis in terms of both explained variance and sparseness.