Italy’s Non-Negligible Cohabitational Unions

Italy has long been regarded as the country with negligible non-marital cohabitation par excellence, but lately the pattern has begun to change and entry into consensual unions has increased strongly in younger Italian generations. This article is devoted to a study of such features between 1980 and 2003 based on the data from the Italian variant of the Gender and Generations Survey, Round 1. We consider entry into marriage and entry into cohabitation as competing risks and show how the incidence of cohabitation consistently much lower but has increased by some 70% over the 20-odd years of our study, while the marriage rate has dropped by almost as much. We find great variation across major regions of the country. The rise in cohabitation is confined to Northern and Central Italy, while the risk of marriage formation has declined strongly all over the country. Unlike previous investigations, our data suggest that non-marital cohabitation may be taking over whatever minor role civil marriage has had in Italian union formation.     

Applying fuzzy logic to personnel assessment: a case study

The main results of a research project spanning over several years are presented in this paper. The aim of the research was the improvement of the effectiveness of personnel assessment within a large Italian corporation operating in the research sector. The first step of the research consisted of the analysis of the raters’ behavior, so as to elicit the judgement categories and prototypes they used in the judgement formulation, based on the rating method adopted in the corporation. The second step consisted of improving the rating method using fuzzy logic. The corporate management tested the new rating method and found it more efficient and reliable than the previous one.     

Exploring the absolutist vs relativist perception of poverty using a cross-country questionnaire survey

Questionnaires eliciting the absolutist vs relativist perception of poverty are administered to 1941 undergraduate students in eight countries - Bolivia, Brazil, Italy, Kenya, Laos, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. We find that the perception of poverty expressed by a large fraction of respondents exhibits both absolutist and relativist concerns, with the former components prevailing over the latter. High-income countries exhibit a significantly more pronounced relativist attitude. Personal characteristics such as past experience of material hardship and relative standard of living play a germane role in shaping respondents’ views.     

Some measures of kurtosis and their inference on large datasets

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis - This paper deals with the estimation of kurtosis on large datasets. It aims at overcoming two frequent limitations in applications: first, Pearson's...     

Fitting spatial regressions to large datasets using unilateral approximations

Maximum likelihood estimation of a spatial model typically requires a sizeable computational capacity, even in relatively small samples, and becomes unfeasible in very large datasets. The unilateral approximation approach to spatial model estimation (suggested in Besag 1974 Besag, J. E. 1974. Spatial interaction and the statistical analysis of lattice systems. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B (Methodological) 36 (2):192–236.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) provides a viable alternative to maximum likelihood estimation that reduces substantially the computing time and the storage required. In this article, we extend the method, originally proposed for conditionally specified processes, to simultaneous and to general bilateral spatial processes over rectangular lattices. We prove the estimators’ consistency and study their finite-sample properties via Monte Carlo simulations.     

Some remarks on Lorenz ordering-preserving functionals

Basing on two well-known characterization results on stochastic dominance and continuous majorization relation, the ordering-preserving property-with respect to Lorenz ordering-is deduced for a wide class of families of functionals on a class of distributions. As a consequence the isotonicity ofZ Zenga concentration index is deduced as an immediate application of a characterization result, in particular of the first degree stochastic dominance relation. Moreover it is also shown that a classical inequality by Fan and Lorenz is a basic reference for the determination of a wide class of Lorenz ordering-preserving functionals. Isotonicity ofZ could also be seen as a straighforward application of Fan and Lorenz inequality.     

Who are the objects of positive and negative gossip at work?: A social network perspective on workplace gossip

Gossip is informal talking about colleagues. Taking a social network perspective, we argue that group boundaries and social status in the informal workplace network determine who the objects of positive and negative gossip are. Gossip networks were collected among 36 employees in a public child care organization, and analyzed using exponential random graph modeling (ERGM). As hypothesized, both positive and negative gossip focuses on colleagues from the own gossiper's work group. Negative gossip is relatively targeted, with the objects being specific individuals, particularly those low in informal status. Positive gossip, in contrast, is spread more evenly throughout the network.     

A developmental perspective of gambling behavior in children and adolescents

Although it has been determined that gambling is a popular activity amongst the young, there seems to be a lack of studies examining developmental differences in children's gambling behavior. This study examines developmental differences in children's blackjack gambling behavior. One hundred and four students (51 males; 53 females) from grades 4, 6, and 8 completed a questionnaire examining their gambling behavior in general and individually played a computerized blackjack game with the following data being recorded: percentage of accuracy, amounts of money bet, gross winnings, percentage of wins, number of hands played, and end balance. Findings revealed few developmental differences in prevalence and frequency of gambling behavior and performance on a blackjack task. Males were found to wager greater amounts of money and have larger gross winnings than females on the blackjack task. Furthermore, males were more likely to view gambling as involving both large amounts of skill and luck, thus suggesting an illusion of control for gambling activities. The results are discussed from a cognitive developmental perspective.This research was partially supported by a grant from the McGill University Social Science Computer Committee. The authors would like to thank the administration, staff, and students in T.H. Bowes, Prince Charles, Souvenir, Gerald McShane, Our Lady of Pompei, Pierrefond Comprehensive High School, and Western Laval High School, for their participation and cooperation in this study.This is a revision of a paper presented at the Ninth International Conference on Gambling and Risk-Taking, Las Vegas, 1994.     

Measuring cross-country technological catch-up through variable-parameter FDH

In this paper, we estimate indices of technological catch-up for a sample of 52 countries through the FDH approach with variable scaling parameters proposed in Kerstens and Vanden Eeckaut (1999). We show that this technique has significant advantages for the international comparisons of productivity and, more generally, wherever the assumption of convexity for the production set is not likely to be appropriate. We want to thank Laurens Cherchye, Hal Fried, Kristian Kerstens and an anonymous referee for useful comments on preceding versions of this paper. The usual disclaimer applies. Financial support from the MURST, Italy, is gratefully acknowledged.