Perfect simulation of positive Gaussian distributions

We provide an exact simulation algorithm that produces variables from truncated Gaussian distributions on ( ₊) ^p via a perfect sampling scheme, based on stochastic ordering and slice sampling, since accept-reject algorithms like the one of Geweke (1991) and Robert (1995) are difficult to extend to higher dimensions.     

Prevalence Rates of Gambling Problems in Montreal,Canada: A Look at Old Adults and the Role of Passion

The purpose of the present research was to determine the prevalence rate of gambling problems in senior citizens (55 years and older). A community-dwelling sample composed of 810 old adults living in the greater Montreal area in the Province of Quebec completed the Revised South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS-R). Results revealed that the 12-month prevalence rate was 1.2% for pathological gambling and 1.6% for at-risk gambling. Although, these rates are comparable to those reported elsewhere in Canada and in the US for senior citizens, the at-risk gambling rate was significantly higher than the current one for the general population of the overall Province of Quebec. Finally, a smaller portion of participants also completed two key items from the Gambling Passion Scale (GPS). Results revealed that obsessive passion was higher for pathological gamblers than for at-risk and non-problematic gamblers, while harmonious passion was lower for pathological gamblers than for at-risk and non-problematic gamblers.     

Patterns of employment among individuals with mental illness in vocational recovery

This article provides empirical evidence about the patterns of competitive employment among individuals with serious mental illness who are in vocational recovery. The findings are based on a 5-year longitudinal study on sustained employment, conducted with a national sample of 529 individuals with serious mental illness who were in vocational recovery at the time of study enrollment. Data analysis from the 328 participants who completed the study-from baseline through all five annual follow-up assessments-revealed three different postrecovery employment patterns: continuous, stable, and fluctuating. Although many participants demonstrated the capacity to sustain competitive employment during prolonged periods of time, others experienced employment interruptions. Work interruptions were most frequently attributed to exacerbation of psychiatric symptoms. Schizophrenia spectrum disorder, difficulties with daily functioning, and current receipt of disability benefits predicted the psychiatric-based work interruptions in this sample. Implications for clinical practice are also discussed.     

Categorical multiblock linear discriminant analysis

Techniques of credit scoring have been developed these last years in order to reduce the risk taken by banks and financial institutions in the loans that they are granting. Credit Scoring is a classification problem of individuals in one of the two following groups: defaulting borrowers or non-defaulting borrowers. The aim of this paper is to propose a new method of discrimination when the dependent variable is categorical and when a large number of categorical explanatory variables are retained. This method, Categorical Multiblock Linear Discriminant Analysis, computes components which take into account both relationships between explanatory categorical variables and canonical correlation between each explanatory categorical variable and the dependent variable. A comparison with three other techniques and an application on credit scoring data are provided.     

Efficient Design with Interdependent Valuations

We study efficient, Bayes‐Nash incentive compatible mechanisms in a social choice setting that allows for informational and allocative externalities. We show that such mechanisms exist only if a congruence condition relating private and social rates of information substitution is satisfied. If signals are multi‐dimensional, the congruence condition is determined by an integrability constraint, and it can hold only in nongeneric cases where values are private or a certain symmetry assumption holds. If signals are one‐dimensional, the congruence condition reduces to a monotonicity constraint and it can be generically satisfied. We apply the results to the study of multi‐object auctions, and we discuss why such auctions cannot be reduced to one‐dimensional models without loss of generality.     

INCOMPLETE SOCIAL CONTRACTS

There is a long normative ‘Social Contract’ tradition that attempts to characterize ex‐post income inequalities that are agreeable to all ‘behind a veil of ignorance.’ This paper takes a similar normative approach to characterize social decision‐making procedures. It is shown that quite generally some form of majority‐voting is preferred to unanimity ‘behind a veil of ignorance’ whenever society faces deadweight costs in making compensating transfers. Deviations from unanimity (or ex‐post Pareto optimality) are ex‐ante efficient to the extent that they economize on costly compensating transfers. Put another way, the optimal decision rule trades off the benefits of minority protection and those from greater flexibility. (JEL: H11, G33, G34, D63, P16, P48)     

METRIC VS. NONMETRIC PROCEDURES FOR MULTIATTRIBUTE MODELING: SOME SIMULATION RESULTS *

Nonmetric procedures such a MONANOVA have been developed to estimate attribute utilities with ranked observations. It is argued that the goodness of the estimation procedure is another criterion which favors a metric procedure like Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) Regression. MONANOVA and OLS Regression are compared in their ability to recover attribute utilities with both ranked and scaled observations.     

Emergence of Selective Social Referencing in Infancy

Seven and 10‐month‐old infants were presented with a remote‐controlled toy dog that intermittently barked at 30‐sec intervals as they faced an experimenter who either attended to them (look toward condition) or looked away (look away condition). Seven‐month‐old infants' looking toward the experimenter was significantly greater after the dog barking events compared to before regardless of experimental condition. In contrast, 10‐month‐old infants' looks were significantly greater after the barking events compared to before only when the experimenter was attending to them. These results suggest that by 10 months infants monitor and refer to people in an ambiguous situation depending on their attention toward them. This development is viewed as indexing the emergence of an intentional stance in social referencing by 10 months of age.     

Automatic and location-adaptive estimation in functional single-index regression

This paper develops a new automatic and location-adaptive procedure for estimating regression in a Functional Single-Index Model (FSIM). This procedure is based on k-Nearest Neighbours (kNN) ideas. The asymptotic study includes results for automatically data-driven selected number of neighbours, making the procedure directly usable in practice. The local feature of the kNN approach insures higher predictive power compared with usual kernel estimates, as illustrated in some finite sample analysis. As by-product, we state as preliminary tools some new uniform asymptotic results for kernel estimates in the FSIM model.     

Axiomatization and implementation of a class of solidarity values for TU-games

A new class of values combining marginalistic and egalitarian principles is introduced for cooperative TU-games. It includes some modes of solidarity among the players by taking the collective contribution of some coalitions to the grand coalition into account. Relationships with other class of values such as the Egalitarian Shapley values and the Procedural values are discussed. We propose a strategic implementation of our class of values in subgame perfect Nash equilibrium. Two axiomatic characterizations are provided: one of the whole class of values, and one of each of its extreme points.