Exploring the nonverbal facet of ethnic discrimination: a field experiment on anti-Roma racism in the Paris métro

A field experiment on the discrimination of Roma migrants from Eastern Europe was conducted in two stations of the Paris metro to explore the behaviors that may communicate misrecognition in everyday encounters. An actress asked for help to randomly chosen passengers on a metro platform, wearing a glaringly Romani skirt in the treatment condition but an unconspicuous middle-class style in the control condition. In interaction with the actress wearing the Romani skirt, passengers were found to enact the so-called “visual dominance pattern”, and male passengers in particular were found to keep greater distances. Reverse discrimination also occurred as women kept shorter distances from the actress bearing the ethnic stigma. Last, passengers helped less the stigmatized actress, but only in one of the two metro stations where trials were conducted.     

‘It's afforded us a huge flexibility’: the impact of ‘Disabled Children's Access to Childcare Pilots’ on families with a disabled child in England

For many parents of disabled children, finding affordable and suitable childcare that meets their needs is very challenging. Research in the UK has shown that parents with disabled children experience barriers not just with cost, but also accessibility, the attitudes of childcare providers and in getting good information about sources of childcare. The Disabled Children's Access to Childcare (DCATCH) pilots was an initiative designed to improve access to childcare for disabled children in England. As part of an evaluation of DCATCH, qualitative interviews were carried out with 38 members of 22 families who had received support from the initiative. All of the families reported positive outcomes and highlighted: a beneficial impact on the parents' capacity to work; enjoyable experiences for the disabled child; increased confidence and independence for both parents and children; and the creation of time for parents to pursue other activities. The results of the DCATCH initiative support other research which argues that whilst cost is a significant factor around childcare choices for families with a disabled child, having confidence in the childcare provider's ability to meet specific needs (including complex health care needs) and providing positive experiences for the disabled child are also key, determining factors.     

Graphical and Numerical Methods for Detecting Influential Observations in Complex Bingham Data

We describe methods to detect influential observations in a sample of pre-shapes when the underlying distribution is assumed to be complex Bingham. One of these methods is based on Cook's distance, which is derived from the likelihood of the complex Bingham distribution. Other method is related to the tangent space, which is based on the local influence for the multivariate normal distribution. A method to detect outliers is also explained. The application of the methods is illustrated in both a real dataset and a simulated sample.     

Academic economists behaving badly? A survey on three areas of unethical behavior

This article measures the degree to which academic economists have engaged in unethical behavior and the degree to which academic economists believe the profession as a whole engages in unethical behavior. Three main types of unethical behavior are examined: (1) falsification of research; (2) expropriation of graduate student research or including an undeserving co-author on a research paper; and (3) exchange of grades for gifts, money, or sex. Using a unique data set gathered at the 1998 American Economic Association (AEA) meetings, we find that there is a significant amount of misconduct, particularly in the second category.     

Asymptotic relative efficiency of wald tests in measurement error models

In this paper, asymptotic relative efficiency (ARE) of Wald tests for the Tweedie class of models with log-linear mean, is considered when the aux¬iliary variable is measured with error. Wald test statistics based on the naive maximum likelihood estimator and on a consistent estimator which is obtained by using Nakarnura's (1990) corrected score function approach are defined. As shown analytically, the Wald statistics based on the naive and corrected score function estimators are asymptotically equivalents in terms of ARE. On the other hand, the asymptotic relative efficiency of the naive and corrected Wald statistic with respect to the Wald statistic based on the true covariate equals to the square of the correlation between the unobserved and the observed co-variate. A small scale numerical Monte Carlo study and an example illustrate the small sample size situation.     

A Note on the Large Sample Properties of Estimators Based on Generalized Linear Models for Correlated Pseudo‐observations

Pseudo‐values have proven very useful in censored data analysis in complex settings such as multi‐state models. It was originally suggested by Andersen et al., Biometrika, 90, 2003, 335 who also suggested to estimate standard errors using classical generalized estimating equation results. These results were studied more formally in Graw et al., Lifetime Data Anal., 15, 2009, 241 that derived some key results based on a second‐order von Mises expansion. However, results concerning large sample properties of estimates based on regression models for pseudo‐values still seem unclear. In this paper, we study these large sample properties in the simple setting of survival probabilities and show that the estimating function can be written as a U‐statistic of second order giving rise to an additional term that does not vanish asymptotically. We further show that previously advocated standard error estimates will typically be too large, although in many practical applications the difference will be of minor importance. We show how to estimate correctly the variability of the estimator. This is further studied in some simulation studies.     

Validation of Nonparametric Two-sample Bootstrap in ROC Analysis on Large Datasets

The nonparametric two-sample bootstrap is applied to computing uncertainties of measures in receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis on large datasets in areas such as biometrics, speaker recognition, etc. when the analytical method cannot be used. Its validation was studied by computing the standard errors of the area under ROC curve using the well-established analytical Mann–Whitney statistic method and also using the bootstrap. The analytical result is unique. The bootstrap results are expressed as a probability distribution due to its stochastic nature. The comparisons were carried out using relative errors and hypothesis testing. These match very well. This validation provides a sound foundation for such computations.     

The Local Power of the CADF and CIPS Panel Unit Root Tests

Very little is known about the local power of second generation panel unit root tests that are robust to cross-section dependence. This article derives the local asymptotic power functions of the cross-section argumented Dickey–Fuller Cross-section Augmented Dickey-Fuller (CADF) and CIPS tests of Pesaran (2007), which are among the most popular tests around.     

The Transitional Discharge Model: comparing implementation in Canada and Scotland

Effective discharge planning is needed to facilitate clients' transition from psychiatric hospital wards to community care. Previous studies have shown that client outcomes can be improved by using a Transitional Discharge Model (TDM) that includes peer support and an extension of inpatient-practitioner relationships that are introduced prior to discharge. However, countries vary in many ways that may affect implementation of the model. This article describes some of the similarities and differences related to introducing transitional discharge in two countries: Canada and Scotland. It is important to elucidate facilitators and challenges in implementing the TDM to identify and disseminate strategies to aid implementation. Implications for future implementation of the model are also discussed.