CAN TRADE REALLY HURT? AN EMPIRICAL FOLLOW‐UP ON SAMUELSON'S CONTROVERSIAL PAPER

This paper investigates Samuelson's [Samuelson, P. A. “Where Ricardo and Mill Rebut and Confirm Arguments of Mainstream Economists Supporting Globalization.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18(3), 2004, 135–46] argument that technical progress of the trade partner may hurt the home country. We illustrate this prospect in a simple Ricardian model for situations with outward knowledge spillovers. Within this framework Samuelson's Act II effects may occur. Based on industry level panel data for 17 OECD countries for the period 1973–2000 we show econometrically that the outflow of domestic knowledge via exports or foreign direct investment (FDI) to the rest of the world may have a negative impact on industry output in the home country. This is particularly so when exporting to technologically less advanced countries and, more specifically, China. (JEL F10, F11, F14, O30)     

From the employment office to the social welfare office: Social assistance recipiency among first-time unemployed in Sweden

Social assistance receipt among first-time unemployed in Sweden is investigated by analysing data files obtained by merging register data from the city of Goteborg. First-time unemployed males were observed during 1993 and 1994 and were followed in the register of social assistance recipients for 18 months after the debut. Many of the newly unemployed had no access to unemployment compensation. Slightly more than one out of five newly unemployed became social assistance recipients. Lengthy periods of unemployment combined with no access to unemployment compensation signify a high risk of becoming a social assistance recipient. This risk varies a great deal with age, citizenship, human capital and job search activity of the unemployed.     

A new modified Jackknifed estimator for the Poisson regression model

The Poisson regression is very popular in applied researches when analyzing the count data. However, multicollinearity problem arises for the Poisson regression model when the independent variables are highly intercorrelated. Shrinkage estimator is a commonly applied solution to the general problem caused by multicollinearity. Recently, the ridge regression (RR) estimators and some methods for estimating the ridge parameter k in the Poisson regression have been proposed. It has been found that some estimators are better than the commonly used maximum-likelihood (ML) estimator and some other RR estimators. In this study, the modified Jackknifed Poisson ridge regression (MJPR) estimator is proposed to remedy the multicollinearity. A simulation study and a real data example are provided to evaluate the performance of estimators. Both mean-squared error and the percentage relative error are considered as the performance criteria. The simulation study and the real data example results show that the proposed MJPR method outperforms the Poisson ridge regression, Jackknifed Poisson ridge regression and the ML in all of the different situations evaluated in this paper.     

Influence of Distribution of Animals between Dose Groups on Estimated Benchmark Dose and Animal Distress for Quantal Responses

Increasingly, dose‐response data are being evaluated with the benchmark dose (BMD) approach rather than by the less precise no‐observed‐adverse‐effect‐level (NOAEL) approach. However, the basis for designing animal experiments, using equally sized dose groups, is still primed for the NOAEL approach. The major objective here was to assess the impact of using dose groups of unequal size on both the quality of the BMD and overall animal distress. We examined study designs with a total number of 200 animals distributed in four dose groups employing quantal data generated by Monte Carlo simulations. Placing more animals at doses close to the targeted BMD provided an estimate of BMD that was slightly better than the standard design with equally sized dose groups. In situations involving a clear dose‐response, this translates into fewer animals receiving high doses and thus less overall animal distress. Accordingly, in connection with risk and safety assessment, animal distress can potentially be reduced by distributing the animals appropriately between dose groups without decreasing the quality of the information obtained.     

Being Relaxed and Powerful: Children’s Lived Experiences of Coping with Stress

Our aim was to describe and develop an understanding of children’s lived experiences of coping with stress. Twenty‐three Swedish children, ages 10–12, wrote open letters and were interviewed. The phenomenological analysis resulted in three main themes: (i) depending on oneself, others and the world around, (ii) choosing to be a doer and (iii) being in the here and now. We understood the children’s lived experiences of coping with stress as them being relaxed and powerful. The children chose to be active doers or inactive beings and their relationships, as well as their surroundings, helped or hindered their coping. Possible health promotion work is discussed.     

Letter to the Editor

The aim of this letter to acknowledge of priority on calibration estimation. There are numerous studies on calibration estimation in literature. The studies on calibration estimation are reviewed and it is found out that an existing calibration estimator is reprocessed in the recent paper published by Nidhi et al. (2007 Nidhi, B. V. S. Sisodia, Subedar Singh, and Sanjay K. Singh. 2017. Calibration approach estimation of the mean in stratified sampling and stratified double sampling. Commun.Statist.Theor.Meth. 46 (10):4932–4942.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).     

A Bayesian Approach for Zero-Inflated Count Regression Models by Using the Reversible Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo Method and an Application

In this study, estimation of the parameters of the zero-inflated count regression models and computations of posterior model probabilities of the log-linear models defined for each zero-inflated count regression models are investigated from the Bayesian point of view. In addition, determinations of the most suitable log-linear and regression models are investigated. It is known that zero-inflated count regression models cover zero-inflated Poisson, zero-inflated negative binomial, and zero-inflated generalized Poisson regression models. The classical approach has some problematic points but the Bayesian approach does not have similar flaws. This work points out the reasons for using the Bayesian approach. It also lists advantages and disadvantages of the classical and Bayesian approaches. As an application, a zoological data set, including structural and sampling zeros, is used in the presence of extra zeros. In this work, it is observed that fitting a zero-inflated negative binomial regression model creates no problems at all, even though it is known that fitting a zero-inflated negative binomial regression model is the most problematic procedure in the classical approach. Additionally, it is found that the best fitting model is the log-linear model under the negative binomial regression model, which does not include three-way interactions of factors.     

Thirteen‐ and 18‐month‐old Infants Recognize When They Need Referential Information

To learn from conspecifics, infants would be greatly advantaged by knowing when to seek information from them. Although in prior work infants used a labeler's gaze direction to infer the referent of a novel label, it was unclear whether infants in these studies recognized that they needed information or were happening upon the information by simply orienting to the labeler's voice. To address this issue, we presented 13‐ and 18‐month‐olds with either one or two novel objects and provided a novel label. If infants seek referential information, they should look more to the labeler in the presence of two objects relative to one object, because the labeler's intended referent is highly ambiguous in the two‐object case. This prediction was confirmed in two studies. In contrast, infants' looking was equivalent in the presence of one vs. two objects in a baseline phase, when no labels were provided. Thus, 13‐ and 18‐month‐olds actively seek clarifying gaze information to resolve ambiguous learning situations. Word learning appears to be a rich pragmatic process as early as the end of the first year of life.