Particularism in Subsaharan Africa: ‘tribalism’ in town*

A model of particularism is proposed that distinguishes bases and levels of identification, association, unions, and organization. It is constructed from the literature on urbanization in Subsaharan Africa and the author's research in Nigeria. The context of ethnicity is described as a set of concentric circles designating the more narrowly or more largely defined ethnic groups ego identifies with, recruits his/her friends from, joins in unions, and supports in formal organizations. Socioeconomic position and religion are seen as alternative bases, each again offering different levels at which to define ‘we’ as against ‘they.’ The model thus focuses attention on both: alternative contents of particularistic attachment and action, and different levels of ethnic, socioeconomic, or religious inclusiveness at which such attachment and action crystallize.     

PROTESTANTISM AND EDUCATION: READING (THE BIBLE) AND OTHER SKILLS

During industrialization, Protestants were more literate than Catholics. This paper investigates whether this fact may be led back to the intrinsic motivation of Protestants to read the bible and to what extent other education motives might have been involved as well. We employ a historical data set from Switzerland which allows us to differentiate between different cognitive skills: reading, numeracy, essay writing, and Swiss history. We develop an estimation strategy to examine whether the impact of religious denomination was particularly large with respect to reading capabilities. We find support for this hypothesis. However, we also find evidence which is consistent with the view that Protestants' education motives went beyond acquiring reading skills. (JEL I20)     

Truncated Sequential Change-point Detection based on Renewal Counting Processes

The typical approach in change-point theory is to perform the statistical analysis based on a sample of fixed size. Alternatively, one observes some random phenomenon sequentially and takes action as soon as one observes some statistically significant deviation from the "normal" behaviour. Based on the, perhaps, more realistic situation that the process can only be partially observed, we consider the counting process related to the original process observed at equidistant time points, after which action is taken or not depending on the number of observations between those time points. In order for the procedure to stop also when everything is in order, we introduce a fixed time horizon n at which we stop declaring "no change" if the observed data did not suggest any action until then. We propose some stopping rules and consider their asymptotics under the null hypothesis as well as under alternatives. The main basis for the proofs are strong invariance principles for renewal processes and extreme value asymptotics for Gaussian processes.     

Testing the Equality of Covariance Operators in Functional Samples

Abstract. We propose a non‐parametric test for the equality of the covariance structures in two functional samples. The test statistic has a chi‐square asymptotic distribution with a known number of degrees of freedom, which depends on the level of dimension reduction needed to represent the data. Detailed analysis of the asymptotic properties is developed. Finite sample perfo‐rmance is examined by a simulation study and an application to egg‐laying curves of fruit flies.