The impact of early-life economic conditionson cause-specific mortality during adulthood

The aim of this study is to assess the effects of economic conditions in early life on cause-specific mortality during adulthood. The analyses are performed on a unique historical sample of 14,520 Dutch individuals born in 1880–1918, who are followed throughout life. The economic conditions in early life are characterized using cyclical variations in annual real per capital gross domestic product during pregnancy and the first year of life. Exposure to recessions in early life appears to significantly increase cancer mortality risks of older males and females. It also significantly increases other mortality risks especially for older females. The residual life expectancies are up to about 8 and 6 % lower for male and female cancer mortality, respectively, and up to about 5 % lower for female cardiovascular mortality. Our analyses show that cardiovascular and cancer mortality risks are related and that not taking this association into account leads to biased inference.     

Selecting logistic populations using the sample medians

This paper is concerned primarily with subset selection procedures based on the sample mediansof logistic populations. A procedure is given which chooses a nonempty subset from among kindependent logistic populations, having a common known variance, so that the populations with thelargest location parameter is contained in the subset with a pre‐specified probability. Theconstants required to apply the median procedure with small sample sizes (≤= 19) are tabulated and can also be used to construct simultaneous confidence intervals. Asymptotic formulae are provided for application with larger sample sizes. It is shown that, under certain situations, rules based on the median are substantially more efficient than analogous procedures based either on sample means or on the sum of joint ranks.     

Matching Performance of Continuous Sampling Plans with Single Sampling Plans

Single sampling plans are widely used for appraising incoming product quality. However, for situations where a continuous product flow exists, lot-by-lot demarcations may not exist, and it may be necessary to use alternate procedures, such as CSP-1, for continuous processes. In this case, one would like to be able to understand how average performance of the continuous sampling procedures compares to the more commonly used single sampling plans.

In this study, a model is devised which can be used to relate plan performance between single sample lot acceptance procedures and Dodge's(1943) CSP-1 continuous sampling plan. It is shown that it is generally not possible to match up performance based upon operating characteristic curve expressions for the two plans. Instead, the plans are matched by equating expressions for π(p), the long run proportion of product which is accepted, under both procedures. This is shown to be equivalent to matching up properties on an average outgoing quality basis. The methodology may be extended for any derivative plan under MIL-STD-1235B (1982), the military standard for continuous acceptance sampling.     

Comment: Sequential Moment Restrictions in Panel Data

We present a three-stage, nonparametric estimation procedure to recover willingness to pay for housing attributes. In the first stage we estimate a nonparametric hedonic home price function. In the second stage we recover each consumer's taste parameters for product characteristics using first-order conditions for utility maximization. Finally, in the third stage we estimate the distribution of household tastes as a function of household demographics. As an application of our methods, we compare alternative explanations for why blacks choose to live in center cities while whites suburbanize.     

If Men Do More Housework,Do Their Wives Have More Babies?

We analyze data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey waves 1–6, to investigate whether the housework and childcare contributions of coupled Australian men with one child affect the likelihood that their wives will have a second child. We find no evidence that the way housework or childcare is shared has an effect, nor that the amount of men’s contribution to housework or childcare has an effect. In addition, the effect of men’s housework and childcare time on fertility does not appear to be mediated through its effect on their wives’ housework and childcare.     

Evaluation of alternative confidence intervals to address non-inferiority through the stratified difference between proportions

The confidence interval (CI) for the difference between two proportions has been an important and active research topic, especially in the context of non-inferiority hypothesis testing. Issues concerning the Type 1 error rate, power, coverage rate and aberrations have been extensively studied for non-stratified cases. However, stratified confidence intervals are frequently used in non-inferiority trials and similar settings. In this paper, several methods for stratified confidence intervals for the difference between two proportions, including existing methods and novel extensions from unstratified CIs, are evaluated across different scenarios. When sparsity across the strata is not a concern, adding imputed observations to the stratification analysis can strengthen Type-1 error control without substantial loss of power. When sparseness of data is a concern, most of the evaluated methods fail to control Type-1 error; the modified stratified t-test CI is an exception. We recommend the modified stratified t-test CI as the most useful and flexible method across the respective scenarios; the modified stratified Wald CI may be useful in settings where sparsity is unlikely. These findings substantially contribute to the application of stratified CIs for non-inferiority testing of differences between two proportions.     

Strain,ethnic competition,and power devaluation: white supremacist protest in the U.S., 1948–1997

Many Western democracies have seen an increase in extreme right mobilization over the past several decades but extreme right mobilization is not a new phenomenon when we look historically. In this paper, we examine fifty years of white supremacist protest in the United States to help shed light on the factors that explain variation in levels of right-wing mobilization. Using annual time-series analysis, we find that traditional strain explanations do not explain these protests but that threats to the traditional economic, political, and social power of whites were critical. Ethnic competition associated with black population growth and political threats stemming from the political power of northern Democrats, a divided federal government, and civil rights protest stimulated this mobilization. These findings support a broadened ethnic competition/power devaluation model of right-wing mobilization that emphasizes the mobilizing effects of economic and political threats to a relatively advantaged group.     

On multivariate confidence regions and simultaneous confidence limits for ratios

Convenient general linear model computational procedures are presented for constructing multivariate confidence regions and simultaneous confidence limits for ratios of linear combinations of the parameters. The practical consequence is that a single general linear model computer program, capable of validating the underlying model and estimating the parameters, can (after slight modification) also construct the confidence regions, and even determine their precise analytic form (ellipsoid, hyperboloid, etc.). The text is deliberately factual while the appendices extend and help clarify earlier work by Henry Scheffe. As an example, a confidence ellipse and simultaneous confidence limits are constructed for several relative potencies in a classical multiple parallel line bioassay.