Some reflections on song theory,signed song and traditional song

In this article I will aim to present results of research which deals with the French word ‘chanson’ and song theory. My observations will be conducted within a metalinguistic and a linguistic corpora. My corpora was largely constituted by works published in France in addition to other countries in Europe. The study of European dictionaries has shown me how important the French song culture has become in German dictionaries (in which chansonnier and chanson de geste sometimes appear) and in Italian dictionaries (in which chansonnier as a synomym of cantaautore appears). This presentation contains some diachronical and theoretical observations. The research appears to be the first significant research conducted about the vocabulary of song in French. This will finally lead us to present the theoretical vocabulary that we have created to study song phenomena.     

Recursive Methods in Discounted Stochastic Games: An Algorithm for δ→ 1 and a Folk Theorem

We present an algorithm to compute the set of perfect public equilibrium payoffs as the discount factor tends to 1 for stochastic games with observable states and public (but not necessarily perfect) monitoring when the limiting set of (long‐run players') equilibrium payoffs is independent of the initial state. This is the case, for instance, if the Markov chain induced by any Markov strategy profile is irreducible. We then provide conditions under which a folk theorem obtains: if in each state the joint distribution over the public signal and next period's state satisfies some rank condition, every feasible payoff vector above the minmax payoff is sustained by a perfect public equilibrium with low discounting.     

Does the Representation of Household Behavior Matter for Welfare Analysis of Tax-benefit Policies? An Introduction

A widely shared intuition holds that individual control over money matters for the decision process within the household and the subsequent distribution of resources and welfare. As a consequence, there are good reasons to depart from the unitary model of the household and to explore the possibilities offered by models of the family accounting for several decision makers in the household and for the potential impact of tax reforms on the balance of power. This paper summarizes both the methodological and empirical findings presented in the next three papers of this special issue of the Review of the Economics of the Household. This series of contributions primarily entails a concrete comparison of the policy implications of the choice between the unitary and a particular multi-person representation: the collective representation. On the one hand, it suggests a methodology to implement the collective model of labor supply in a realistic context where participation is modeled together with working hours, and where the full tax-benefit system is accounted for. On the other hand, the empirical part relies on comprehensive simulations of tax reforms in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and allows to quantify the distortions that may affect policy recommendations based on the unitary model.

An alternative competing risk model to the Weibull distribution for modelling aging in lifetime data analysis

A simple competing risk distribution as a possible alternative to the Weibull distribution in lifetime analysis is proposed. This distribution corresponds to the minimum between exponential and Weibull distributions. Our motivation is to take account of both accidental and aging failures in lifetime data analysis. First, the main characteristics of this distribution are presented. Then, the estimation of its parameters are considered through maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference. In particular, the existence of a unique consistent root of the likelihood equations is proved. Decision tests to choose between an exponential, Weibull and this competing risk distribution are presented. And this alternative model is compared to the Weibull model from numerical experiments on both real and simulated data sets, especially in an industrial context.     

Order selection in finite mixtures of linear regressions

Finite mixture models can adequately model population heterogeneity when this heterogeneity arises from a finite number of relatively homogeneous clusters. An example of such a situation is market segmentation. Order selection in mixture models, i.e. selecting the correct number of components, however, is a problem which has not been satisfactorily resolved. Existing simulation results in the literature do not completely agree with each other. Moreover, it appears that the performance of different selection methods is affected by the type of model and the parameter values. Furthermore, most existing results are based on simulations where the true generating model is identical to one of the models in the candidate set. In order to partly fill this gap we carried out a (relatively) large simulation study for finite mixture models of normal linear regressions. We included several types of model (mis)specification to study the robustness of 18 order selection methods. Furthermore, we compared the performance of these selection methods based on unpenalized and penalized estimates of the model parameters. The results indicate that order selection based on penalized estimates greatly improves the success rates of all order selection methods. The most successful methods were \(MDL2\) , \(MRC\) , \(MRC_k\) , \(ICL\) – \(BIC\) , \(ICL\) , \(CAIC\) , \(BIC\) and \(CLC\) but not one method was consistently good or best for all types of model (mis)specification.     

An Automated MCEM Algorithm for Hierarchical Models with Multivariate and Multitype Response Variables

In this article, we consider a model allowing the analysis of multivariate data, which can contain data attributes of different types (e.g., continuous, discrete, binary). This model is a two-level hierarchical model which supports a wide range of correlation structures and can accommodate overdispersed data. Maximum likelihood estimation of the model parameters is achieved with an automated Monte Carlo expectation maximization algorithm. Our method is tested in a simulation study in the bivariate case and applied to a data set dealing with beehive activity.     

Public vs. Private Offers in the Market for Lemons

We study the role of observability in bargaining with correlated values. Short‐run buyers sequentially submit offers to one seller. When previous offers are observable, bargaining is likely to end up in an impasse. In contrast, when offers are hidden, agreement is always reached, although with delay.     

Perfect sampling algorithm for small <Emphasis Type="Italic">m</Emphasis>×<Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis> contingency tables

A Markov chain is proposed that uses coupling from the past sampling algorithm for sampling m×n contingency tables. This method is an extension of the one proposed by Kijima and Matsui (Rand. Struct. Alg., 29:243–256, 2006). It is not polynomial, as it is based upon a recursion, and includes a rejection phase but can be used for practical purposes on small contingency tables as illustrated in a classical 4×4 example.     

Estimation of Models With Multiple-Valued Explanatory Variables

ABSTRACT

We study estimation and inference when there are multiple values (“matches”) for the explanatory variables and only one of the matches is the correct one. This problem arises often when two datasets are linked together on the basis of information that does not uniquely identify regressor values. We offer a set of two intuitive conditions that ensure consistent inference using the average of the possible matches in a linear framework. The first condition is the exogeneity of the false match with respect to the regression error. The second condition is a notion of exchangeability between the true and false matches. Conditioning on the observed data, the probability that each match is correct is completely unrestricted. We perform a Monte Carlo study to investigate the estimator’s finite-sample performance relative to others proposed in the literature. Finally, we provide an empirical example revisiting a main area of application: the measurement of intergenerational elasticities in income. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.