A note on the information content of a consistent pairwise comparison judgment matrix of an AHP decision maker

A decision maker using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) could be consistent, and still provide no information in the resulting vector of priorities. An extreme example would be a pairwise comparison judgment matrix filled with 1s which is totally consistent under the various definitions of consistency, but has provided no information about the prioritization of alternatives resulting from the decision maker's judgments. In this paper, the quality of a consistent decision maker's judgments using the Analytic Hierarchy Process is placed in the context of the entropy of the resulting vector of priorities. Indeed, it is the purpose of this paper to provide a formal definition of this notion ofentropy of a priority vector, and to provide a framework for a quantitative measurement of the information content of consistent pairwise comparison judgment matrices of a decision maker who is using the Analytic Hierarchy Process. We will prove that the entropy of the vector of priorities for consistent matrices follows a normal distribution and discuss some general considerations of this result.     

The endogeneity of union status and the application of the hausman test

Union endogeneity in relative wage equations has been long recognized. Recently, a new specification test, parsimonious in its computational requirements, has been advocated. This paper investigates the suitability of the test in a switching regression framework and critiques its most widely cited application.     

The Influence of Service Orientation on B2B e‐Service Capabilities: An Empirical Investigation

E‐Services, or the company's portfolio of service offerings available to its customers through the Internet, are an emerging area of interest to operations management. Yet little is known about the operations and capabilities needed for provision of business‐to‐business (B2B) e‐services. This paper aims to make a contribution toward closing this gap. First, we develop a new construct of B2B e‐service capability, a term that captures a generic set of five interrelated and complementary dimensions: (1) e‐service recovery, (2) e‐customization, (3) ease of navigation, (4) service portfolio comprehensiveness, and (5) information richness. These combined operational abilities are associated with B2B service delivery, including its portal design, technology architecture, and mix of product and service offerings. They are posited to be necessary for delivering effective B2B e‐services. We also argue that, both service orientation (SO) and customer receptivity to technology, influence B2B e‐service capability. We empirically test a path model using structural equation modeling on a sample of 181 businesses that have deployed B2B e‐services. We find that the influence of SO on performance is not direct but rather mediated by the e‐service capability, a finding that holds for both goods producers and service providers. We suggest that a firm's SO may mitigate industrial customers' resistance toward conducting business online.     

Model-Based Estimation of Unemployment Rates in Small Areas of Portugal

The high level of unemployment is a major problem in most European countries nowadays. Hence, the demand for small area labor market statistics has rapidly increased over the past few years. The Portuguese Labour Force Survey is the main source of official statistics at the macro level. However, it was not designed to produce reliable design-based statistics at the micro level due to small sample sizes. The goal of this article is to analyze the performance of model-based small area estimators to estimate the unemployment rate at micro level. Our results showed that the temporal estimator is the most suitable.     

A comparative study of multiattribute decision making methodologies

Three real life cases are considered in this paper to apply and compare the rankings obtained by the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and other Multicriteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques such as Simple Additive Weighting (SAW), ELECTRE and Weighted Linear Assignment Method (WLAM). The results indicated that the AHP, SAW, and ELECTRE rankings do not differ significantly, however, the WLAM tends to exhibit more disagreement. However, because of the limited nature of this study, we do not suggest this as a general conclusion.     

Portuguese PR consultancy websites: Content and presence

The overall objective of this work is to understand the online presence of Portuguese PR, Consultancies associated with APECOM by undertaking an analysis of the content and features of their, websites. This analysis will demonstrate how the PR Consultancies are promoting themselves and their, services.     

Model selection for stock prices data

The geometric Brownian motion (GBM) is very popular in modeling the dynamics of stock prices. However, the constant volatility assumption is questionable and many models with nonconstant volatility have been developed. In the papers [7 M.L. Esquível and P.P. Mota, On some auto-induced regime switching double-threshold glued diffusions, J. Stat. Theory Pract. 8 (2014), pp. 760–771. doi: 10.1080/15598608.2013.854184.[Taylor &; Francis Online] , [Google Scholar],12 P. P. Mota and M.L. Esquível, On a continuous time stock price model with regime switching, delay, and threshold, Quant. Financ. 14 (2014), pp. 1479–1488. doi: 10.1080/14697688.2013.879990.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]] the authors introduce a regime switching process where in each regime the process is driven by GBM and the change in regime is defined by the crossing of a threshold. In this paper we used Akaike's and Bayesian information criteria to show that the GBM with regimes provides a better fit than the GBM. We also perform a forecasting comparison of the models for two selected companies.     

Role versatility among men who have sex with men in urban Peru

Role versatility refers to the practice in which individual men who have sex with men (MSM) play both insertive and receptive sexual roles over time. Versatility has been thought to be relatively uncommon among Latin American MSM but possibly rising. Versatility has also been shown to be a potentially large population-level risk factor for HIV infection. In this study we examine the correlates of versatile behavior and identity among 2,655 MSM in six Peruvian cities. Versatile behavior with recent male partners was found in 9% of men and versatile ("moderno") identity was reported by 16%. Significant predictors included high education, white-collar occupation, sex work, and residence in Lima. Age was not significant in any analysis. Since sex work is negatively correlated with other predictors, versatile men appear to comprise two distinct sub-populations. Insertive-only men appear to play a strong role in bridging the HIV epidemic between MSM and women.     

Predicting weed invasion in a sugarcane cultivar using multispectral image

The cultivation of sugar cane has been gaining great focus in several countries due to its diversity of use. The modernization of agriculture has allowed high productivity, which is affected by the invasion of weeds. With sustainable agriculture, the use of herbicides has been increasingly avoided in society, requiring more effective weed control methods. In this paper, we propose a statistical model capable of identifying the invasion of weeds in the field, using four color spectra as regressor variables obtained by a multispectral camera mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle. With the exact identification of the weed infestation, it is possible to carry out the management in the field with herbicide applications in the exact places, thus avoiding the increase of the cost of production or even dispensing with the use of herbicides, effecting the mechanical removal of them. Results show that in the experimental field, it was possible to reduce herbicide spraying by 57%.     

Through the Lens of Sexual Stigma: Attitudes Toward Lesbian and Gay Parenting

Drawing from the literature on sexual stigma, the principal aim of this study was to investigate predictors of heterosexual's internalization of negative attitudes regarding lesbian and gay parenting and the mediating role of beliefs in the controllability of homosexuality. A Portuguese sample of 1,430 heterosexual women and 502 heterosexual men responded to an online questionnaire about attitudes toward lesbian and gay parenting. Structural equation modeling was used to explore attitudinal predictors and mediation analysis. Mediation analyses revealed that sexual prejudice toward same-gender-parented families was predicted by gender, age, education, and religiosity, in that heterosexual men, those who were older, had less education, and were more religious held significantly more negative beliefs about lesbian and gay parenting, as well as lower perception of benefits associated with lesbian and gay parenting. Further, etiological beliefs mediated the effects of gender, age, and religiosity on sexual attitudes, highlighting the importance of the perception of controllability of homosexuality in justifying sexual prejudice.