Technological change and energy consumption in US iron and steel manufacturing

This paper examines the extent to which the rising relative energy prices of the past decade have influenced managerial decisions in U.S. iron and steel manufacturing. Efforts at energy conservation, as well as opportunities for short-run substitutions among energy sources, were constrained mainly by existing process technology. The actual pattern of substitution can be explained to a large extent by changes in techniques. Decisions concerning such investments were guided by many factors, among which considerations of energy savings played only a minor role. This observation can be explained by the fact that, although the industry in the aggregate is a prodigious consumer of energy, energy costs at any one production stage are but a small fraction of total variable costs. Integrated greenfield plants embodying state-of-the-art technology would achieve much higher levels of energy efficiency than are currently realized, but such new plants are unlikely to be built in the United States, under the current conditions of global excess capacity.     

Pathological gambling and criminal culpability: An analysis of forensic evaluations presented to German penal courts

In Germany penal courts and expert witnesses are being confronted with an increasing number of offenders claiming that their criminal behavior had been caused by an irresistible urge to gamble. In 48 of 56 evaluated cases the defendants were diagnosed as pathological gamblers. However, diminished culpability (§ 21 German Criminal Code) was granted in only 32 cases. In these cases the illegal activity to get money could be classified as primarily gambling related.This Article is a revised version of a paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Gambling & Risk-Taking, Las Vegas, Nevada. May 31st–June 3rd, 1994.     

Efficient child care subsidies: any need for cash for care?

We model choices between caring for an infant at home or through some market provision of child care. Maternal labor supply necessitates child care purchas     

Nonprofit versus corporate governance: An economic approach

This article proposes a new theoretical concept of nonprofit governance using transaction cost economics and the economic theory of contracts. After a short review of economic approaches to corporate governance, I clarify the specific nature of the governance problem in nonprofit organizations. Based on this analysis, I derive criteria for selecting an organization's relevant stakeholders. If stakeholders provide valuable specific resources without the protection of a comprehensive contract that details exactly how the organization is to use these resources, then such stakeholders seek decision and control rights in order to direct the use of the resources they have provided. I argue that the core problem of governance is how to enhance valuable specific contributions of the relevant stakeholders while keeping the costs of bargaining between stakeholders and the costs of collective decision making low. The theory developed is then applied in a discussion of practically relevant governance mechanisms, and the concept of governance is used to contribute to the discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of the nonprofit character of organizations from a governance perspective.     

Does Religion Make You Healthier and Longer Lived? Evidence for Germany

Researchers in the US have consistently reported substantial—not just statistically significant—links between religious belief and practice, and improved health and longevity. In this paper we report evidence for Germany, using data from the long-running, nationally representative German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP 1984). The SOEP dataset includes multiple measures of health, plus many ‘controls’ which it is appropriate to use in assessing links between religious practice, health and longevity. These controls include personality traits known to be associated with better health (notably conscientiousness), and also the age of death of parents of the survey respondents. Initial results suggested that religious practice (church attendance) may be linked only to subjective (self-rated) measures of health, not to more objective measures. It seemed possible that results in some previous research could be due to what may be termed satisfaction bias or positivity bias; the known tendency of religious people to report higher than average satisfaction with almost all aspects of life. Further investigation indicated that relationships between church attendance and subjective measures of health were weaker, when a control for satisfaction bias was in place. However, there was countervailing evidence that the subjective measures in SOEP may actually be more not less valid than the objective measures; they are better not worse predictors of mortality. It was also clear that religious belief and church attendance are associated with health-protective behaviors and attitudes, including taking more exercise, not smoking and higher life satisfaction. At the end of the paper we estimate a structural equation model which maps links between religious practice, these protective behaviors and attitudes, and improved health outcomes.     

Coaching und Neurowissenschaften

Representatives of coaching hold that coaching and psychotherapy largely overlap regarding concepts and methods. Therefore, they recommend to adapt from established psychotherapies like behavioral therapy or psychoanalysis scientifically proven concepts and successful treatments. However, psychological and neurobiological personality and effectiveness research demonstrates that the established psychotherapies reveal clear deficits in their working concepts and interventions. In general, the trustful relationship between client/patient and coach/therapist, called “working alliance” or “therapeutic alliance” turns out to be the most effective factor. There is no other form of interventions that is equally effective in all clients or patients. Thus, any coach must be capable of sufficiently identifying the mental state of the client, his/her unique personality, type and strength of his/her deficits and the available resources. Each treatment must occur in parallel at three different levels, i.?e. the mental state and memories, behavior and the manifestations of deficits and problems in the body state.     

Inverse censoring weighted median regression

We implement semiparametric random censorship model aided inference for censored median regression models. This is based on the idea that, when the censoring is specified by a common distribution, a semiparametric survival function estimator acts as an improved weight in the so-called inverse censoring weighted estimating function. We show that the proposed method will always produce estimates of the model parameters that are as good as or better than an existing estimator based on the traditional Kaplan–Meier weights. We also provide an illustration of the method through an analysis of a lung cancer data set.     

On cross-validation for discrete kernel estimates in discrimination

The choice of smoothing determines the properties of nonparametric estimates of probability densities. In the discrimination problem, the choice is often tied to loss functions. A framework for the cross–validatory choice of smoothing parameters based on general loss functions is given. Several loss functions are considered as special cases. In particular, a family of loss functions, which is connected to discrimination problems, is directly related to measures of performance used in discrimination. Consistency results are given for a general class of loss functions which comprise this family of discriminant loss functions.     

Weak representation of the cumulative hazard function under semiparametric random censorship models

In this paper we derive a weak representation of the semiparametric estimator A^se _nof the cumulative hazard function A in the random censorship model. Based on this representation we show that |A^se _n- A| is uniformly bounded in probability up to the last order statistic of the observations.     

Shrinkage and variable selection by polytopes

Constrained estimators that enforce variable selection and grouping of highly correlated data have been shown to be successful in finding sparse representations and obtaining good performance in prediction. We consider polytopes as a general class of compact and convex constraint regions. Well-established procedures like LASSO (Tibshirani, 1996) or OSCAR (Bondell and Reich, 2008) are shown to be based on specific subclasses of polytopes. The general framework of polytopes can be used to investigate the geometric structure that underlies these procedures. Moreover, we propose a specifically designed class of polytopes that enforces variable selection and grouping. Simulation studies and an application illustrate the usefulness of the proposed method.