ON USING LINEAR PROGRAMMING IN DISCRIMINANT PROBLEMS

This commentary evaluates the usefulness of the Freed and Glover [6] linear programming approach to the discriminant problem, relates linear programming to other parametric and nonparametric approaches, and evaluates the linear programming approach.     

Ceremonial degradation of a doctoral candidate: An essay on the social situation of graduate student ethnographers and other inmates

The recruit comes into the establishment with a conception of himself made possible by certain stable social arrangements in his home world. Upon entrance, he is immediately stripped of the support provided by these arrangements. In the accurate language of some of the oldest total institutions, he begins a series of abasements, degradations, humiliations, and profanations of the self. His self is systematically, if often unintentionally, mortified. He begins some radical shifts in his moral career, a career composed of the progressive changes that occur in the beliefs that he has concerning himself and the significance of others. (Goffman 1961: 14) His research areas are Deviance and Social Control and Social Psychology     

A critical review of end-user information system satisfaction research and a new research framework

This paper presents a critical review of research in end-user information system satisfaction (EUISS). An extensive literature search is conducted from which over 50 EUISS related papers are identified. It is found that the past research is dominated by the expectation disconfirmation approach. To provide more insights into the psychological processing of the information system performance construct and its impact upon EUISS, we propose an integrated conceptual model based on the equity and needs theories. The implications of the proposed model for EUISS are discussed, and suggestions are made for testing the model.     

Power,prosperity and social choice: A review

Mancur Olson's book, The Rise and Decline of Nations [45], used ideas from his earlier Logic of Collective Action [44] to argue that entrenched interest groups in a polity could induce economic sclerosis, or slow growth. These ideas seemed relevant to the perceived relative decline of the U.S. and Britain during the 1970's. Five years later, Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers [27] proposed a more general “declinist” argument, that a great power such as the USA would engage in fiscal irrationality through increasing military expenditure, thus hastening its own decline. Neither of these two declinist arguments seem applicable to the situation of the new millennium. Olson's last book, Power and Prosperity [46], published posthumously in 2000, attempted a more general theoretical analysis of the necessary and sufficient causes of prosperity and growth. For Olson only “securely democratic societies” could be conducive to long-lived individual rights to property and contract, but democracy itself need not be sufficient for the protection of rights. This review attempts to further develop Olson's logic on the connection between prosperity and liberty, by exploring insights derived from William Riker's interpretation of U.S. federalism [51], from the contribution of Douglass North and Barry Weingast [43] to neo-institutional economic theory, and from recent work on war and fiscal responsibility by Ferguson [20, 21] and Stasavage [70, 71]. Received: 25 June 2001/Accepted: 29 January 2002 This review is one of a series of papers on constitutional choice based on research supported by NSF grants SBR 97 30275 and 98 18582. I appreciate the assistance of Diana Ivanova, Annette Milford, Andrew Rutten and Tsvetan Tsvetkov. Unpublished work by David Stasavage was very helpful.     

Much ado about Goffman

“The claim that all the world’s a stage is sufficiently commonplace for readers to be familiar with its limitations and tolerant of its presentation.” (Goffman 1959, 72, 254) “Given that the logic of privatization....now odiously shapes archetypes of citizenship, [and] manages our perceptions of what constitute the ‘good society’....it stands to reason that new ethnographic research approaches must take global capitalism not as an end point of analysis, but as a starting point.” (Kincheloe and McLaren 2000, 304) “My abhorrence of neoliberalism helps to explain my legitimate anger when I speak of the injustices to which the ragpickers among humanity are condemned. It also explains my total lack of interest in any pretension of impartiality, I am not impartial, or objective...[this] does not prevent me from holding always a rigorously ethical position.” (Freire 1998, 22)     

Political equilibria with electoral uncertainty

After an election, when party positions and strengths are known, there may be a centrally located large party at the core position. Theory suggests that such a core party is able to form a minority government and control policy. In the absence of a core party, theory suggests that the outcome be a lottery associated with coalition risk. Stochastic models of elections typically indicate that all parties, in equilibrium, will adopt positions at the electoral center. This paper first presents an existence theorem for local Nash equilibrium (LNE) under vote maximization, and then constructs a more general model using the notion of coalition risk. The model allows for the balancing of office and policy motivations. Empirical analyses of elections in the Netherlands and Israel are used as illustrations of the model and of the concept of a structurally stable LNE. The figures and tables are reproduced from Schofield and Sened (2006) with permission from Cambridge University Press.     

The effects of model mis-specifications in linear measurement error models

In the literature, there are many results on the consequences of mis-specified models for linear models with error in the response only, see, e.g., Seber(1977). There are also discussions of estimation for the model writh errors both in the response and in the predictor variables (called measurement error models; see, e.g., Fuller(1987)). In this paper, we consider the problem of model mis-specification for measurement error models. Only a few special cases have been tackled in the past (Edland, 1996; Carroll and Ruppert, 1996 and Lakshminarayanan Amp; Gunst, 1984); we deal with the situation here in some generality. Results have been obtained as follows: (a) When a model is under-fitted, the estimate of the variance of the measurement error will be asymptotically biased, as will the regression coefficients, and the asymptotic biases in the estimates of the regression coefficients will always exist for under-fitted models. Even orthogonality of the variables in the model will not make the biases vanish. (b)For over-fitting, the estimates of the variances of measurement errors and of the regression coefficients are asymptotically unbiased. However, the variance of the estimated regression coefficients will increase. Over-fitting will cause larger changes in the variances of the estimated parameters in measurement error models than in no measurement error models.     

Ethnic population projections for the UK, 2001–2051

This paper reports on projections of the United Kingdom’s ethnic group populations for 2001–2051. For the years 2001–2007 we estimate fertility rates, survival probabilities, internal migration probabilities and international migration flows for 16 ethnic groups and 355 UK areas. We make assumptions about future component rates, probabilities and flows and feed these into our projection model. This model is a cohort-component model specified for single years of age to 100+. To handle this large state space, we employed a bi-regional model. We implement four projections: (1) a benchmark projection that uses the component inputs for 2001; (2) a trend projection where assumptions beyond 2007 are adjusted to those in the UK 2008-based National Population Projections (NPP); (3) a projection that modifies the NPP assumptions and (4) a projection that uses a different emigration assumption. The projected UK population ranges between a low of 63 millions in 2051 under the first projection to a high of 79 million in the third projection. Under all projections ethnic composition continues to change: the White British, White Irish and Black Caribbean groups experience the slowest growth and lose population share; the Other White and Mixed groups to experience relative increases in share; South Asian groups grow strongly as do the Chinese and Other Ethnic groups. The ethnic minority share of the population increases from 13% (2001) to 25% in the trend projection but to only 20% under our modified emigration projection. However, what is certain is that the UK can look forward to be becoming a more diverse nation by mid-century.