Alfred Sauvy: Statistician,Economist, Demographer and Iconoclast (1898–1990)

Articles appearing in this journal are indexed in Current Contents Environmental Periodicals Bibliography Population Index CICRED's Review Sociological Abstracts Geo Abstracts GEOBASE Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life.     

Social Capital and Subjective Wellbeing in Europe: A New Approach on Social Capital

This paper aims to analyze the relationship between the various dimensions of social capital and subjective wellbeing. Data used in this study come from the fourth wave of the European Social Survey and different measures of wellbeing are used to take account of both the cognitive and affective processes of individual wellbeing (i.e. life satisfaction, happiness, and subjective wellbeing). A factor analysis is performed to summarize information coming from a large set of variables into different components corresponding to each dimension of social capital (i.e. networks, norms, and trust). Among the results, we find that the impact of social capital on subjective wellbeing differ depending on the component of social capital which is under analysis. In particular, social networks, social trust and institutional trust are the components that show a higher correlation with subjective wellbeing. Furthermore, in addition to the positive effects of the individual variables, our results suggest that social capital at the aggregate level positively correlates with individual wellbeing, thus pointing to an external or environmental effect of social capital.     

Allocation rules for cooperative games with restricted communication and a priori unions based on the Myerson value and the average tree solution

We consider cooperatives games (TU-games) enriched by a system of a priori unions and a communication forest graph which are independent from each other. These two structures reflect the limitations of cooperation possibilities. In this framework, we introduce four Owen-type allocation rules, which are defined by a two-step application of an allocation rule à la Owen (in: Henn R, Moeschlin O (eds) Essays in mathematical economics and game theory, Springer, Berlin, 1977) to TU-games with a priori unions where the TU-game is replaced by Myerson’s (Math Oper Res 2:225–229, 1977) graph-restricted TU-game. The four possibilities arise by applying, at each step, either the Myerson value (Myerson 1977) or the average tree solution (Herings et al. in Games Econ Behav 62:77–92, 2008). Our main result offers comparable axiomatizations of these four allocation rules.

     

René Maunier (1915), Les idées sociologiques d’un philosophe arabe/The sociological ideas of an Arab philosopher in the 14th century

René Maunier (1887-1951) is usually considered to be the “founder” of “colonial sociology” in France. Much closer to the anthropologist Marcel Mauss than to the latter's uncle, Emile Durkheim, Maunier's academic career was largely connected to Arab countries like Egypt, and Algeria in particular, where he would teach for more than twenty years. Maunier's inclusion of Ibn Khaldûn into the history of sociology needs to be understood in line with the fact that at the time this article was published, the young Egyptian student Taha Hussein was beginning a thesis in France under the joint supervision of Durkheim and of the orientalist Paul Casanova. Defended in January 1918, three months after Durkheim's death, it was entitled Etude analytique et critique de la philosophie sociale d'Ibn Khaldoun (Analytic and critical study of Ibn Khaldoun's social philosophy).     

Morphological differences along a chronological gradient of urbanisation in an endemic insectivorous bird of New Zealand

Urbanisation constitutes one of the most rapid human-induced environmental changes, developing at the expense of natural and semi-natural habitats. It often implies alterations of many abiotic and biotic factors and contributes to create new environmental conditions, including temperature, food resources, competition and predation. Despite increasing empirical evidence of intra-specific divergence in phenotypic traits (e.g., physiological, behavioural or morphological) between urban and rural individuals, such patterns have often remained disconnected from the underlying mechanisms involved. In the current study, we tested for divergence in functional morphological traits that are related to feeding ecology (i.e., bill morphology, body mass and condition) and/or to the locomotory performance in escaping from predators (i.e., wing, tarsus and tail morphology, body mass and condition) along a chronological gradient of urbanisation (old urban, recent urban and rural areas), using the New Zealand fantail, an endemic insectivorous passerine species. We found divergences in phenotypic traits related to bill morphology along the urban–rural gradient: birds inhabiting the old urban area had stubbier bills (i.e., shorter, deeper and wider bills) than those inhabiting the recent urban and rural areas. We did not detect any difference in locomotion-related morphological traits. Our results suggest the urbanisation-induced alteration in food resources may drive morphological divergence in bird populations. We emphasized the need for mechanistic and experimental studies, with a particular focus on resource-based mechanisms, to identify more precisely the morphological responses of urban populations to changes in food composition, and the resulting implications for communities in urban ecosystems.

     

Difference-in-difference estimation by FE and OLS when there is panel non-response

We show that the ordinary least squares (OLS) and fixed-effects (FE) estimators of the popular difference-in-differences model may deviate when there is time-varying panel non-response. If such non-response does not affect the common-trend assumption, then OLS and FE are consistent, but OLS is more precise. However, if non-response is affecting the common-trend assumption, then FE estimation may still be consistent, while OLS will be inconsistent. We provide simulation as well as empirical evidence for this phenomenon to occur. We conclude that in case of unbalanced panels, deviating OLS and FE estimates should be considered as evidence that non-response is not ignorable for the differences-in-differences estimation.     

Joint Modeling of Survival and Longitudinal Ordered Data Using a Semiparametric Approach

Medical research frequently focuses on the relationship between quality of life (QoL) and survival time of subjects. QoL may be one of the most important factors that could be used to predict survival, making it worth identifying factors that jointly affect survival and QoL. We propose a semiparametric joint model that consists of item response and survival components, where these two components are linked through latent variables. Several popular ordinal models are considered and compared in the item response component, while the Cox proportional hazards model is used in the survival component. We estimate the baseline hazard function and model parameters simultaneously, through a profile likelihood approach. We illustrate the method using an example from a clinical study.     

Model selection for mixture‐based clustering for ordinal data

One of the key questions in the use of mixture models concerns the choice of the number of components most suitable for a given data set. In this paper we investigate answers to this problem in the context of likelihood‐based clustering of the rows of a matrix of ordinal data modelled by the ordered stereotype model. Two methodologies for selecting the best model are demonstrated and compared. The first approach fits a separate model to the data for each possible number of clusters, and then uses an information criterion to select the best model. The second approach uses a Bayesian construction in which the parameters and the number of clusters are estimated simultaneously from their joint posterior distribution. Simulation studies are presented which include a variety of scenarios in order to test the reliability of both approaches. Finally, the results of the application of model selection to two real data sets are shown.     

Time-varying coefficients in a multivariate frailty model: Application to breast cancer recurrences of several types and death

During their follow-up, patients with cancer can experience several types of recurrent events and can also die. Over the last decades, several joint models have been proposed to deal with recurrent events with dependent terminal event. Most of them require the proportional hazard assumption. In the case of long follow-up, this assumption could be violated. We propose a joint frailty model for two types of recurrent events and a dependent terminal event to account for potential dependencies between events with potentially time-varying coefficients. For that, regression splines are used to model the time-varying coefficients. Baseline hazard functions (BHF) are estimated with piecewise constant functions or with cubic M-Splines functions. The maximum likelihood estimation method provides parameter estimates. Likelihood ratio tests are performed to test the time dependency and the statistical association of the covariates. This model was driven by breast cancer data where the maximum follow-up was close to 20 years.     

From knowledge to decision – a case study of sales and operations planning in health care

One of the most important challenges in health care management is balancing resources with fluctuating and uncertain demand. This study examines whether introducing a standardised process for sales and operations planning at a large university hospital improved specialty department managers’ knowledge of planning conditions and if so, whether decisions were made based on this knowledge. Using responses from a survey of 30 specialty department managers at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden, the analyses indicate that operational knowledge strengthens insights about the needs for strategic decisions, and vice versa. Moreover, knowledge is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for making decisions at the department level. An overall planning and decision structure is required and should be implemented first at the hospital level to effectively allocate resources.