ADOLESCENTS AS A SOURCE OF SOCIAL CONTROL: THE UTILITY OF ADOLESCENT SOCIAL CAPITAL FOR REDUCING VIOLENT DELINQUENCY

Parental social capital has emerged as an important social control component of adolescent delinquency. However, for severe forms of delinquency, such as violence, adolescent social capital is as likely a source of social control as adult social capital. This study uses the first two waves of the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to show that parental social capital has little effect on violence once parental and family characteristics are controlled. However, both neighborhood and school adolescent social capital reduce adolescents' violent behavior in spite of strong controls of peer fighting, prior violent offending, and neighborhood-level variables.     

Profit implications of estimation methods for the allocation of marketing resources

We deal with the question whether estimating heterogeneous multiplicative sales response models without carry over effects by either ordinary least squares or Gibbs sampling makes a difference if resources (like advertising budgets, sales budgets, sales force sizes, sales calls) have to be allocated to sales units (like sales districts, customer groups, individual costumers or prospects) in a profit maximizing way and only short time series are available. To this end we generate artificial series on sales and allocations by stochastic simulation. These series are used to estimate multiplicative models whose coefficients are either specific to individual sales units or follow a hierarchical Bayesian framework. Ordinary least squares and Gibbs sampling serve as appropriate estimation methods. Performance of the two estimation methods is measured by recovery of optimal profits which are computed on the basis of the known true parameter values. We start to determine optimal allocations based on the plug-in method which uses average coefficients to determine expected profits. Gibbs sampling always leads to profits nearer to the true optima. This advantage of Gibbs sampling is especially pronounced for combinations with high average elasticity, high variation of elasticity and high number of sales units. On the other hand, differences between Gibbs sampling and OLS become smaller the more observations are available. Optimization with expected profits taking parameter uncertainty (i.e., the distribution of parameters) into account leads to higher profits than the plug-in method, but relative increases turn out to be rather small.     

‘We are chameleons’: identity capital in a multicultural workplace

This exploratory research investigates ‘identity capital’ in a multicultural workplace environment. Guided by Pierre Bourdieu's theoretical approach to capital and James Côté's concept of identity capital, we examine the strategic deployment of identity capital among adults in a multicultural immigrant-serving organization in Mississauga, serving the region of Peel, Ontario. The study involves 15 personal interviews with staff of this organization. The findings show that identity capital is deployed in social situations with clients, colleagues, and supervisor in the workplace. Moreover, the deployment of identity capital occurs through greetings, body language, finding connecting pieces, and methods of communication. Finally, the deployment of identity capital is strategic. The paper concludes that identity capital is a useful concept to explain the varied resources individuals have available to negotiate changing workplace environments.     

Comparison of prediction methods for multicollinear data

In this paper we discuss the partial least squares (PLS) prediction method. The method is compared to the predictor based on principal component regression (PCR). Both theoretical considerations and computations on artificial and real data are presented.     

Sickness Absence,Sick Leave Pay,and Pay Schemes

Utilizing Norwegian linked register and survey data, while exploiting a discontinuity in public sick pay legislation, I show that the public sick pay compensation level causally affects male performance pay workers' sick leave days. Both male and female performance pay workers experience longer sick leaves when provided private supplementary sick pay compared with those being eligible for public sick pay only. This differential impact of the replacement rate on workers' sick leave rates reveals heterogeneous behavioural changes following public sick pay cuts, and this heterogeneity will be reinforced by the provision of employer‐provided sick pay to attractive worker groups.     

Analyzing the dependences of multi-category purchases on interactions of marketing variables

We extend the usual specification of the multivariate probit model frequently used to analyze multi-category purchase incidence data by introducing interaction effects between marketing variables. Models are estimated by a Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation method using 24,047 shopping visits made by a random sample of 1500 households in one specific grocery store over a one year period. Our data refer to a total of 25 food and non-food product categories and include socio-demographic household attributes in addition to purchases and marketing variables. Information criteria agree on the superiority of the extended specification. Estimation results demonstrate that many interaction effects are erroneously attributed to the main effects of marketing variables if one applies the usual specification instead. We derive managerial implications with respect to sales revenue by stochastic simulation. If managers base decisions on the usual specification in spite of its worse statistical performance, they run the risk to overestimate sales revenue increases due to sales promotion activities.     

Long-Term Effects of a Plant Closure: a Multistate Duration Analysis of Event History Data in a Ten-Year Follow-Up Study

This paper discusses the possible effects on future prospects in the labour market of those who suffer a plant closure. A multistate duration model is estimated on monthly event data comprising 172 individuals over ten years, with the occurrence of the plant closure among the regressors. An individual can escape to one of several destinations when exiting one of three origin states (unemployed, sick leave, outside the labour force). Our prime concern has been transitions leading to a new job or to destination states outside the labour force (disability pension and at home, without any social security benefit). We find indications of severe negative long-term effects on employment from a plant closure: long durations in unemployment when searching for new jobs, higher incidence of leaving the labour force, longer periods of sick leave and higher incidence of disability pension. Thus, an adverse shock reducing employment may have negative long-term effects on the labour market through long spells of unemployment and a shrinking labour force. Our findings thus support the hypothesis of hysteresis dynamics in the labour market.