Closed Sequential and Multistage Inference on Binary Responses With or Without Replacement

Logistic regression is used by practitioners and researchers in many fields, but is undoubtedly used most frequently in medical and biostatistical applications. Maximum likelihood is generally the estimation method of choice, but we show that maximum likelihood can produce very poor results under certain conditions. Specifically, the poor performance of maximum likelihood in the case of rare events is known and we review research on this topic. We primarily examine the performance of maximum likelihood in the presence of near separation, which has apparently not been studied. Exact logistic regression is the logical alternative to maximum likelihood. We offer a comparison of the two methods of estimation.     

Effort-reward imbalance,overcommitment and sleep in a working population

The relationship between workplace characteristics and nocturnal sleep in a working population was investigated. Data from 709 employees (mean age=39 years; 87% men) from two German companies were analysed at the entry of the longitudinal cohort study (overall accrual 73%). We investigated the association between the effort-reward imbalance model at work (Siegrist, ) and self-reported sleep quality and sleep disturbances, as assessed by the Jenkins Sleep Quality Index. Effort and overcommitment were found to be higher, and reward was lower in participants with lower (N=328) vs. higher sleep quality (N=381), as well as in participants with (N=217) vs. without (N=492) disturbed sleep (all ps<.001). In regression analyses, lower sleep quality (R ²=.33) and sleep disturbances (R ² _Nagelkerke=.33) were predicted by older age, female gender (only significant for sleep disturbances), shift-work, lower physical and mental health functioning, and higher overcommitment. Individuals were 1.7 times more likely to report disturbed sleep per standard deviation increase in overcommitment. Gender-stratified analyses revealed that higher overcommitment was associated with unfavourable sleep in men, while in women poor sleep was related to lower reward. The findings suggest that overcommitment at work interferes with restful sleep in men, while in women disturbed sleep may be associated with the amount of overcommitment and perceived job reward and sleep quality associated with the perceived reward.     

The Use of Incarceration in Canada: A Test of Political and Social Threat Explanations on the Variation in Prison Admissions across Canadian Provinces, 2001–2010

Recent scholarship has indicated that political and ethnic threat theories—which maintain that the use of prison is not only determined by the extent of crime in society but also by various features related to power, ideology, and access to resources—provide powerful accounts as to why the use of punishment varies within and between societies. However, no study to date has tested these theories within Canada, a country in which such theories are quite plausible. This study begins to fill this void by assessing these theoretical claims using a pooled time series analysis of the variation in imprisonment rates across Canadian provinces from the years 2001 to 2010. After accounting for several measures including charge rates, the results show that Canadian incarceration rates are largely driven by ethnic threat. The size of the Aboriginal and visible minority populations across each province are the most significant determinants of the variation in punishment. Furthermore, we find a nonlinear relationship consistent with a political version of the threat hypothesis. Results, however, do not support political accounts which stress the power of right‐wing parties or a conservative public.     

Adult-Adult and Adult-Child/Adolescent Online Sexual Interactions: An Exploratory Self-Report Study on the Role of Situational Factors

Alcohol intoxication, sexual arousal, and negative emotional states have been found to precede certain sexual behaviors. Using data from an online self-report survey distributed to adults (N = 717; 423 men and 304 women), we compared adults with adult online sexual interactions (n = 640; 89.3%) to adults with interactions with a child or an adolescent (n = 77; 10.7%) on how much they reported being affected by the following factors surrounding the time of the interactions: alcohol intoxication, sexual arousal, sadness, boredom, stress, and shame. We found that those with a child or adolescent contact reported higher sexual arousal and more shame before the interaction, compared with those with an adult contact. In addition, the levels of negative emotional states varied when levels before the interactions were compared with levels after the interactions, suggesting that engaging in online sexual interactions alleviated negative emotional states, at least temporarily. The alleviatory effects, however, were accompanied by higher levels of shame after the interactions. Overall, adults that engage in online sexual interactions have remarkably similar perceptions of the situation surrounding these activities, independent of the age of their online contacts. Limitations of the study are discussed.     

Wife or frau,women do worse: A comparison of men and women in the United States and Germany after marital dissolution

Longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the German Socio-Economic Panel show that in the Federal Republic of Germany, women experience even sharper drops in economic status immediately after a marital split than in the United States, while German and American men fare about the same. German social policy does little to reduce the disparities.     

Free riders and the redistributive effects of international commodity agreements: The Case of Coffeee

Most studies on the redistributive effects of international commodity agreements neglect the existence of free riders. This article shows, however, that incentives for a free rider behavior may exist under various systems of commodity control. The International Coffee Agreement includes an export quota scheme that is faced with free riders on the import side. The factors that determine the impacts of such a scheme on prices, trade, earnings, and expenditures on the world market and on welfare of importing nonmember countries are elaborated theoretically. An econometric model of the world coffee market is then used to measure the effects of coffee export quotas on different variables of the world market. By use of estimated national import demand functions for coffee, the national welfare gains of importing nonmember countries due to the quota policy of the International Coffee Agreement are also computed.     

Adaptive exponentielle glättung erster ordnung

In the paper we introduce an adaptive procedure of the first order exponential smoothing. In this procedure we get a sequence of estimation converging in mean square to the unknown smoothing parameter and an asymptotically optimum prediction in the sense of the least square error. In case of breaks in the structure of time series we recommend a modification of the procedure.     

Veränderung öffentlicher Beschäftigung im Prozess der Liberalisierung und Privatisierung

The paper summarises the empirical results of a study on the impact of liberalisation and privatisation of public services on employment, working conditions and labour relations and links these results to a broader sociological debate on the current restructuring of work and employment in the emergence of a market-oriented accumulation regime. The consequences of liberalisation and privatisation include a massive cut in public sector jobs, an extension of atypical forms of employment, a reduction in wage costs and a substantial deterioration of working conditions. Another result is the decentralisation and fragmentation of bargaining structures in public services. Privatisation and liberalisation, hence, do not only alter public ownership and governance structures of public sector firms, but also change the character and function of the public employment regime that played a decisive role in the post-war model of development. With privatisation and liberalisation the political character of employment standards in the public sector is increasingly questioned and subjected to supposedly non-political market mechanisms. The result is not only a marketisation of work and employment as indicated by the concept of the market-oriented accumulation regime, but also a far-reaching flexibilisation, precarisation and henceforth recommodification of labour.