Models of economic planning under uncertainty: A selective survey and appraisal

Uncertainty and risk have played significant roles in policy making, at the micro and macro levels, from formulation of policy models to their actual implementation in several countries. The impact of risk aversion on policy making has differedm however, both in magnitude and intensity. Thus, for less developed countries with large commodity exports, stabilization policies have played a role as important as those for income growth and employment; for centrally planned economies, the investment cycles leading to large-scale divergences of actual from planned targets in strategic sectors have led policy makers to consider the need for building adequate safety margins in the planning process. Finally, for developed economies, the applied theory of indicative planning and decentralization has stressed the various informational gaps and competing risks that may impede an efficient and cooperative solution between private and public sectors. A selective survey and appraisal of the planning methods as they relate to risk and uncertainty is attempted here for less developed, centrally planned, and developed market economies.     

Centrality Asymmetry and Partner Complementarity as Influences on Alliance Dissolution

Research on interfirm alliances indicates that partner firms’ asymmetry in network centrality increases the likelihood of alliance dissolution because it gives rise to a power imbalance and opportunism in the partnership. We contend that this view of centrality asymmetry does not consider the binding force that network resource complementarity can provide in an alliance, which motivates partners to ally for the long term. We propose that centrality asymmetry can have both divisive and cohesive forces in an alliance, which – when considered together – lead to a prediction that centrality asymmetry has a U‐shaped relationship with alliance dissolution. Moderate levels of asymmetry lead to lower rates of dissolution than high and low levels of asymmetry. The degree of cooperation between partners and the degree of external competition reduce the effects of centrality asymmetry on alliance dissolution because they mitigate power imbalances while encouraging partners to strengthen the alliance to withstand competitive challenges.     

Three-stage and accelerated sequential point estimation of the normal mean using LINEX loss function

Consider a normal population with unknown mean μ and unknown variance σ². We estimate μ under an asymmetric LINEX loss function such that the associated risk is bounded from above by a known quantity w. This necessitates the use of a random number (N) of observations. Under a fairly broad set of assumptions on N, we derive the asymptotic second-order expansion of the associated risk function. Some examples have been included involving accelerated sequential and three-stage sampling techniques. Performance comparisons of these procedures are considered using a Monte-Carlo study.     

Admissible and optimal sampling strategy for estimating finite population mean in randomized response surveys with multiple responses

ABSTRACT

We consider the problem of estimation of a finite population mean (or proportion) related to a sensitive character under a randomized response model when independent responses are obtained from each sampled individual as many times as he/she is selected in the sample and prove the admissibility of a sampling strategy in a class of comparable linear unbiased strategies. We prove that the admissible strategy is also optimal in this class under a super-population model.     

On the asymptotic distribution of a simple unit root test for trending and breaking series

In this paper, we derive the asymptotic distribution of Popp's (2008) innovational outlier unit root test for trending series with a break. The results of Zivot and Andrews (1992) are applied to provide the limiting results of these new test statistics. We tabulate their asymptotic and finite sample critical values, and illustrate the use of the new statistics with an application to the unemployment rate series for 23 OECD countries.     

A simple unit root testing methodology that does not require knowledge regarding the presence of a break

We develop a simple methodology that allows practitioners to test for the presence of a unit root without a priori knowledge regarding the occurrence of a break under the null hypothesis. We use a pre-test that is readily available in the estimated regression used to calculate the unit root statistics, and so our methodology is very easy to implement. The t-statistic corresponding to the impulse dummy variables evaluated at break date estimator is used as a pre-test to ascertain whether a break exists under the null hypothesis. Finite sample simulations show that our methodology yields tests that maintain their size.     

Optimum release time of a software under periodic debugging schedule

In this paper, we study the problem of finding the optimal release time of a software meant to be marketed over a finite time horizon. The optimal design scheme considers reduction of the whole cost, achievement of a specified reliability with some high probability, or a combination of the both. We assume that the software is debugged periodically and the bug detection rates in the pre-release and post-release periods are different. We derive the optimal solution in each case. We also demonstrate the utility of the results through simulations, leading to different types of graphs showing the relationship between the target reliability, specified budget and the optimal number of additional debugging periods.     

A Unified Approach for Construction of Probability Models for Bivariate Linear and Directional Data

This article considers a unified approach based on the mixture method to construct linear bivariate models and those on the cylinder and torus involving the exponential and cardioid distributions with the truncated exponential distribution as the mixing distribution. Parameter estimation of the bivariate model on the torus is considered for the data set of phase angles of circadian-related genes in heart and liver tissues.     

Testing for the Proportionality of Hazards in Two Samples Against the Increasing Cumulative Hazard Ratio Alternative

A number of tests of the proportional hazards hypothesis have been proposed in the past. In recent years, researchers have proposed tests geared specially for the alternative hypothesis of increasing hazard ratio, keeping in mind the case of crossing hazards. This alternative may be too restrictive in many situations. In this paper we develop a test of the proportional hazards model for the weaker increasing cumulative hazard ratio alternative. The work is motivated by a data analytic example given by Gill & Schumacher (1987) where their test fails to reject the null hypothesis even though the faster ageing of one group is quite apparent from a plot. The normalized test statistic proposed here has an asymptotically normal distribution under either hypothesis. We also present two graphical methods related to our analytical test.