Quantile hidden semi-Markov models for multivariate time series

Statistics and Computing - Parametric regression, such as linear regression, plays an important role in statistics. The use of parametric regression models typically involves the specification of a...     

A review of inflation accounting and its economic implications

The purposes of this paper are firstly to identify the problems which inflation creates in the context of conventional accounting methods, secondly to consider the alternative forms of inflation accounting which have been proposed, thirdly to look in more detail at the particular method which is to be adopted in the UK, and finally to consider the effects which that method will have on company results and on broader economic issues.     

Patterns of evolutions of social enterprises in France: a focus on work integration social enterprises

The objective of this paper is to characterize the patterns of emergence and evolution of social enterprise in France with a focus on work integration social enterprises (WISEs). After a review of the history of social and solidarity economy practices, identifying the processes that brought these practices to develop, we discuss the boundaries of the notion of social enterprise in the French case. We then briefly present the historical evolution of work integration. On that basis, two models of social enterprise applied to the case of work integration are extracted, crystallizing crucial tendencies. The limits and prospects of social enterprise in the field of work integration in France are discussed in the conclusion.     

A hierarchical theory of occupational segregation and wage discrimination

Becker's model of discrimination is extended to the case where men exhibit distastes for working under female managers. The distribution of women in the resulting occupational hierarchy depends on the number of women in lower occupations, the wages of male workers in lower occupations, and male distastes for female management. Thus, there exists an occupational sorting function, related to wages, that determines the occupational distribution of women. We integrate this sorting function into a standard wage equation to derive a new decomposition of male-female wage differentials and apply it to a sample of insurance industry workers from the 1988 CPS.     

How individual characteristics affect university students drop-out: a semiparametric mixed-effects model for an Italian case study

University drop-out is a topic of increasing concern in Italy as well as in other countries. In empirical analysis, university drop-out is generally measured by means of a binary variable indicating the drop-out versus retention. In this paper, we argue that the withdrawal decision is one of the possible outcomes of a set of four alternatives: retention in the same faculty, drop out, change of faculty within the same university, and change of institution. We examine individual-level data collected by the administrative offices of “Sapienza” University of Rome, which cover 117 072 students enrolling full-time for a 3-year degree in the academic years from 2001/2002 to 2006/2007. Relying on a non-parametric maximum likelihood approach in a finite mixture context, we introduce a multinomial latent effects model with endogeneity that accounts for both heterogeneity and omitted covariates. Our estimation results show that the decisions to change faculty or university have their own peculiarities, thus we suggest that caution should be used in interpreting results obtained without modeling all the relevant alternatives that students face.     

Access to Childcare Services: The Role of Demand and Supply-Side Policies

Different demand-side or supply-side instruments can be used in order to encourage the use of formal childcare. With the budgetary constraints of the last two decades, some countries have changed their childcare policy leading to the implementation of demand-side rather than supply-side instruments. The introduction of demand-side subsidies to encourage the use of formal childcare services was a major change in Belgium since, until 1988, subsidies were directly granted to childcare services providers in order to reduce their running costs. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of both demand-side and supply side subsidies on the use of formal childcare by low-income families. From this perspective, we analyzed, on the one hand, the effect of the tax deduction instrument implemented in Belgium and, on the other hand, the effect of an increase in the provision of childcare places on the use of formal childcare services. We found that the choice of policy instruments is not neutral in terms of access to formal childcare for families belonging to different income groups. Indeed, while a higher supply of childcare places increases the probability of access for low-income families, the tax deduction can have a mixed outcome as far as access to childcare is concerned.     

Cross-Country Assessment of Systemic Risk in the European Stock Market: Evidence from a CoVaR Analysis

Social Indicators Research - This work is intended to assess the contribution to systemic risk of major companies in the European stock market on a geographical basis. We use the EuroStoxx 50 Index...     

The teaching of business policy—A fresh approach

The artificiality of the circumstances in which much of management education takes place is exemplified in the teaching of business policy where the missing ingredient of responsibility is most crucial. The use of ready made cases compounds this problem by presenting the student with a partly identified problem and the information he must use in tackling it. A different approach in which students prepare their own studies of named companies and discuss their analysis and proposals with senior executives from those companies reduces to a worthwhile degree the artificiality of much business policy teaching. This paper discusses the problems of teaching in this field and describes an approach using the method described above.