Building Financial Satisfaction

This paper aims to contribute further research on the conceptualization of individual financial satisfaction as a particular domain of satisfaction with life as a whole. Based on the 2003 Survey on Living Conditions and Poverty for Andalucía (Spain) and using a self-reported measure of welfare, ordered probit models are used to analyze the extent to which individual financial satisfaction can be solely explained by income in absolute terms, or alternatively, by taking into account the importance of relative income in its two dimensions: (1) personal aspirations as individual’s adaptation to previous and future income levels (intra-individual comparisons), and (2) social comparisons as individual’s concern for her peer’s income (inter-personal dependency).     

LETTER GRADING GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY

We mailed letters to non‐existent business addresses in 159 countries (10 per country), and measured whether they come back to the return address in the United States and how long it takes. About 60% of the letters were returned, taking over six months, on average. The results provide new objective indicators of government efficiency across countries, based on a simple and universal service, and allow us to shed light on its determinants. The evidence suggests that both technology and management quality influence government efficiency, just as they do that of the private sector.     

Species composition,abundance and diet of a squamate assemblage from the Carnaval stream headwaters (Buenos Aires,Argentina)

Urban Ecosystems - The present work summarizes 10 years of field observations of an exurban squamate assemblage occupying a 1200 ha patch in the suburbs of La Plata City (Los...     

Comparisons of coherent systems with non-identically distributed components

The signature-based mixture representations for coherent systems are a good way to obtain distribution-free comparisons of systems. Unfortunately, these representations only hold for systems whose component lifetimes are independent and identically distributed (IID) or exchangeable (i.e., their joint distribution is invariant under permutations). In this paper we obtain comparison results for generalized mixtures, that is, for reliability functions that can be written as linear combinations of some baseline reliability functions with positive and negative coefficients. These results are based on some concepts in Graph Theory. We apply these results to obtain new comparison results for coherent systems without the IID or exchangeability assumptions by using their generalized mixture representations based on the minimal path sets.     

A maximum likelihood estimator for left-truncated lifetimes based on probabilistic prior information about time of occurrence

In forestry, many processes of interest are binary and they can be modeled using lifetime analysis. However, available data are often incomplete, being interval- and right-censored as well as left-truncated, which may lead to biased parameter estimates. While censoring can be easily considered in lifetime analysis, left truncation is more complicated when individual age at selection is unknown. In this study, we designed and tested a maximum likelihood estimator that deals with left truncation by taking advantage of prior knowledge about the time when the individuals enter the experiment. Whenever a model is available for predicting the time of selection, the distribution of the delayed entries can be obtained using Bayes' theorem. It is then possible to marginalize the likelihood function over the distribution of the delayed entries in the experiment to assess the joint distribution of time of selection and time to event. This estimator was tested with continuous and discrete Gompertz-distributed lifetimes. It was then compared with two other estimators: a standard one in which left truncation was not considered and a second estimator that implemented an analytical correction. Our new estimator yielded unbiased parameter estimates with empirical coverage of confidence intervals close to their nominal value. The standard estimator leaded to an overestimation of the long-term probability of survival.     

Effects of Uncertainties on Exposure Estimates to Methylmercury: A Monte Carlo Analysis of Exposure Biomarkers versus Dietary Recall Estimation

This article presents a general model for estimating population heterogeneity and "lack of knowledge" uncertainty in methylmercury (MeHg) exposure assessments using two-dimensional Monte Carlo analysis. Using data from fish-consuming populations in Bangladesh, Brazil, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, predictive model estimates of dietary MeHg exposures were compared against those derived from biomarkers (i.e., [Hg]hair and [Hg]blood). By disaggregating parameter uncertainty into components (i.e., population heterogeneity, measurement error, recall error, and sampling error) estimates were obtained of the contribution of each component to the overall uncertainty. Steady-state diet:hair and diet:blood MeHg exposure ratios were estimated for each population and were used to develop distributions useful for conducting biomarker-based probabilistic assessments of MeHg exposure. The 5th and 95th percentile modeled MeHg exposure estimates around mean population exposure from each of the four study populations are presented to demonstrate lack of knowledge uncertainty about a best estimate for a true mean. Results from a U.K. study population showed that a predictive dietary model resulted in a 74% lower lack of knowledge uncertainty around a central mean estimate relative to a hair biomarker model, and also in a 31% lower lack of knowledge uncertainty around central mean estimate relative to a blood biomarker model. Similar results were obtained for the Brazil and Bangladesh populations. Such analyses, used here to evaluate alternative models of dietary MeHg exposure, can be used to refine exposure instruments, improve information used in site management and remediation decision making, and identify sources of uncertainty in risk estimates.     

THE ROLE OF SOCIAL WORK NORMS IN JOB SEARCHING AND SUBJECTIVE WELL‐BEING

Social norms are usually neglected in economics, because they are to a large extent enforced through nonmarket interactions and difficult to isolate empirically. In this paper, we offer a direct measure of the social norm to work and we show that this norm has important economic effects. The stronger the norm, the more quickly unemployed people find a new job. This behavior can be explained by utility differences, probably due to social pressure. Unemployed people are significantly less happy than employed people and their reduction in life satisfaction is the larger, the stronger the norm is. (JEL: I31, J64)     

Restarting “Normal” Life after Covid-19 and the Lockdown: Evidence from Spain,the United Kingdom,and Italy

Social Indicators Research - In this article, we examine the expectations of the economic outlook, fear of the future, and behavioural change during the first Covid-19 wave, for three European...