Methods for measuring school performance through cohort analysis

In order to evaluate the main educational characteristics of a grade cohort—which are the proportion of those who get a degree, the average time spent in school and finally the mean educational attainment of the cohort—we present a school system in which repeat enrolments are well identified. In this discrete model, we present, for each grade, three transition coefficients: the proportion of those passing to the next grade, the proportion of those repeating the grade and the proportion of those leaving the school system. Afterwards, we set up a system of equations leading to the distribution of the entrants in the cohort according to the levels of their educational attainment, a system of equations for which a simple solution will depend on two assumptions.     

The Effects of Environmental Regulations on the Productivity of Large Companies: An Empirical Analysis of the Spanish Case

This article provides evidence to the debateabout whether or not investments designated forcompliance with environmental performance andtechnology standards favor or harm the workproductivity of companies. A panel data modelis analyzed, which panel refers to 53 largeSpanish companies quoted on the stock exchangeand that have participated in a subsidizedenvironmental protection program during the1990–1995 period, specifically in theIndustrial and Technological Program for theEnvironment (PITMA). A Cobb-Douglas productionfunction is used to relate the workproductivity to a measure of the pollutionabatement investment dedicated to compliancewith standards. The resulting negativecoefficient, although close to zero, should notbe interpreted as a result derived from justany kind of regulation, but rather a result ofthe kind of regulation analyzed in this work,meaning the command and control regulation thatoften binds companies to make environmentalinvestments that are not productive in theconventional economic sense, although they areproductive in terms of environmental quality.In addition, and in order to specify the kindof company to which the conclusions of thispaper are applicable, the characteristics ofthe companies that participated in PITMA areanalyzed comparatively with companies that didnot participate.     

Ownership Structure,Corporate Value and Firm Investment: A Simultaneous Equations Analysis of Spanish Companies

This paper is concerned with the set of mutualrelationships between firm valuation andinvestment, and with the possible endogeneityof ownership structure. In order to deal withthem properly, we aim to test the mutual impactof investment, corporate value and ownership bybroadening the usual framework with asimultaneous equations approach. Using a sampleof 140 Spanish listed companies for the1991–1997 period, we have found that,consistent with previous research, thealignment and entrenchment hypotheses seem tobe confirmed by the estimation of aone-equation model. However, when analyzed bymeans of a system of simultaneous equations inwhich a set of mutual relationships isintroduced, quite different results wereobtained. Although valuation and investment offirms are determined by managerial ownership,we have found that ownership structure may alsobe influenced both by investment and value.Consequently, it is not completely right toinfer that ownership structure determines firmvalue unidirectionally; however the benchmarkshould be broadened so as to take an explicitaccount of the mutual links between firm value,investment and ownership.     

Beyond the Myths: Equality, Impartiality, and Justice

Violence against women is as much a matter of equality as it is an offence against human dignity and a violation of human rights. As the Supreme Court of Canada has repeatedly recognized, eliminating myths and stereotypes from the law constitutes an important part of remedying the law's historically inadequate response to violence against women. The author explores how the concepts of impartiality, equality, and justice shed light on the ways in which myths and stereotypes distort the truth-finding process and perpetuate discrimination. Looking toward the future, further equality-informed legislative amendments, judicial education, and international norms, such as those set out in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979), will provide key means of ensuring that myths and stereotypes are fully and permanently eradicated from the law. The goals of equality and justice for all require nothing less.     

Identification of factors influencing dispersion in split-plot experiments

As split-plot designs are commonly used in robust design it is important to identify factors in these designs that influence the dispersion of the response variable. In this article, the Bergman-Hynén method, developed for identification of dispersion effects in unreplicated experiments, is modified to be used in the context of split-plot experiments. The modification of the Bergman-Hynén method enables identification of factors that influence specific variance components in unreplicated two-level fractional factorial splitplot experiments. An industrial example is used to illustrate the proposed method.     

Adaptive importance sampling in general mixture classes

In this paper, we propose an adaptive algorithm that iteratively updates both the weights and component parameters of a mixture importance sampling density so as to optimise the performance of importance sampling, as measured by an entropy criterion. The method, called M-PMC, is shown to be applicable to a wide class of importance sampling densities, which includes in particular mixtures of multivariate Student t distributions. The performance of the proposed scheme is studied on both artificial and real examples, highlighting in particular the benefit of a novel Rao-Blackwellisation device which can be easily incorporated in the updating scheme. This work has been supported by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) through the 2006–2008 project ’ . Both last authors are grateful to the participants to the BIRS meeting on “Bioinformatics, Genetics and Stochastic Computation: Bridging the Gap”, Banff, for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. The last author also acknowledges an helpful discussion with Geoff McLachlan. The authors wish to thank both referees for their encouraging comments.     

UNDERSTANDING THE EFFECTS OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING ON CONSUMPTION

Recent evidence suggests that consumption rises in response to an increase in government spending. That finding cannot be easily reconciled with existing optimizing business cycle models. We extend the standard new Keynesian model to allow for the presence of rule‐of‐thumb consumers. We show how the interaction of the latter with sticky prices and deficit financing can account for the existing evidence on the effects of government spending. (JEL: E32, E62)     

Nonparametric estimation of a regression function from backward recurrence times in a cross-sectional sampling

This study considers the nonparametric estimation of a regression function when the response variable is the waiting time between two consecutive events of a stationary renewal process, and where this variable is not completely observed. In these circumstances, our data are the recurrence times from the occurrence of the last event up to a pre-established time, along with the corresponding values of a certain set of covariates. Estimation of the error density function and some of its characteristics are also considered. For the proposed estimators, we first analyze their asymptotic behavior and, thereafter, carry out a simulation study to highlight their behavior in finite samples. Finally, we apply this methodology to an illustrative example with biomedical data.