Cohesion and Enmeshment Revisited: Differentiation,Identity, and Well‐Being in Two European Cultures

We examined the nature and implications of family differentiation among adolescents facing a life transition in 2 European countries with differing family cultures. One hundred and twenty‐four Italian and 109 U.K. adolescents completed measures of family differentiation (cohesion and enmeshment), identity threat (perception of threat to the self associated with finishing school), life satisfaction, depressive symptoms, and anxiety. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that cohesion and enmeshment were distinguishable in both countries, orthogonal in the U.K. but positively correlated in Italy. Family cohesion was associated with better psychological well‐being in both countries; enmeshment was associated with poorer psychological well‐being in the U.K. but not in Italy. Structural equation models showed that effects on well‐being were fully mediated by identity threat in both cultures.     

Elliptical confidence regions for simple correspondence analysis

Confidence regions for simple correspondence analysis allow for the identification of categories that are consistent with independence, and those that are not. This paper describes a procedure for constructing elliptical regions which takes into account the unequal weighting of each of the axes of the plot.     

Risk Analysis for Unintentional Slide Deployment During Airline Operations

We present a risk analysis undertaken to mitigate problems in relation to the unintended deployment of slides under normal operations within a commercial airline. This type of incident entails relevant costs for the airline industry. After assessing the likelihood and severity of its consequences, we conclude that such risks need to be managed. We then evaluate the effectiveness of various countermeasures, describing and justifying the chosen ones. We also discuss several issues faced when implementing and communicating the proposed measures, thus fully illustrating the risk analysis process.     

Partitioning Pearson's chi-squared statistic for a partially ordered three-way contingency table

This paper presents a generalization of the partition of the chi-squared statistic presented in Beh & Davy (1998). For a three-way contingency table with one or two sets of ordered categories, the chi-squared statistic partition is defined using orthogonal polynomials. Using this partition, information about the relationship between the variables can be obtained by identifying important associations in terms of the location (linear), dispersion (quadratic) and higher order components. The paper compares these partitions with log-linear models for ordinal data.     

Simple and multiple correspondence analysis for ordinal-scale variables using orthogonal polynomials

Correspondence analysis (CA) has gained a reputation for being a very useful statistical technique for determining the nature of association between two or more categorical variables. For simple and multiple CA, the singular value decomposition (SVD) is the primary tool used and allows the user to construct a low-dimensional space to visualize this association. As an alternative to SVD, one may consider the bivariate moment decomposition (BMD), a method of decomposition that involves using orthogonal polynomials to reflect the structure of ordered categorical responses. When the features of BMD are combined with SVD, a hybrid decomposition (HD) is formed. The aim of this paper is to show the applicability of HD when performing simple and multiple CA.     

PRODUCTIVITY EFFECTS OF PUBLIC CAPITAL MAINTENANCE: EVIDENCE FROM U.S. STATES

This article assesses the productivity effects of infrastructure operation and maintenance (O&M) spending by state and local governments in the 48 contiguous U.S. states over the period 1978–2000. We explicitly account for transboundary spillovers of capital and O&M spending and follow a semiparametric methodology that allows us to estimate state‐specific output elasticities. We find strong evidence that in all 48 states the cross‐state spillover effects of O&M outlays on productivity exceed their within‐state impacts and are substantially higher than the spillover effects of capital expenditure. (JEL C14, E22, E62, H76, O11, O47, R11)     

A default Bayesian procedure for the generalized Pareto distribution

The generalized Pareto distribution is used to model the exceedances over a threshold in a number of fields, including the analysis of environmental extreme events and financial data analysis. We use this model in a default Bayesian framework where no prior information is available on unknown model parameters. Using a large simulation study, we compare the performance of our posterior estimations of parameters with other methods proposed in the literature. We show that our procedure also allows to make inferences in other quantities of interest in extreme value analysis without asymptotic arguments. We apply the proposed methodology to a real data set.