Hong Kong managers' perceptions of American business values

This report describes empirical research conducted to study the research question, “To what extent do foreign managers' own cultural values influence their perceptions of the corporate values of companies in other cultures?” Using the authors' “Business Values Questionnaire,” business managers from Hong Kong gave their perceptions of publicly stated corporate values of very large U.S. service companies. A similar United States sample was used as a comparison group. Results gave partial support to the authors' hypotheses that an individual's own cultural values influence perceived values of another culture.     

Ranking opportunity sets in the space of functionings

We develop a ranking of compact, convex and comprehensive opportunity sets defined in the evaluative space of individual functionings. We suppose the existence of a target, that is a multi-dimensional bliss point in terms of functionings. This leads us to define concepts such as essentiality and freedomin a novel way. As a main result, we give an axiomatic characterization of the ranking obtained by minimizing the Euclidean distance between each opportunity set and the target.     

Pan-European groupings: A case study in paint manufacture

This complete Case Study, including Teaching Notes, won the 1991 EFMD Case Writing Competition Prize on a European theme, as well as receiving much praise from the judges. The Case concerns a group of four different European paint manufacturers co-operating in an EC Economic Interest Grouping to improve their economic position in European markets. The co-ordination of raw material purchasing policies was the first area of joint action; they obtained significant discounts straight away. Then they could begin to think about competing together against the big paint multinationals established in Europe. Later, talks started on joint investment and technology transfer.Lluis Renart and Francesco Parés have written a stimulating Case Study with Teaching Notes of value to business students and managers wishing to test out their analytical abilities.     

Studying the relationship between anxiety and school achievement: evidence from PISA data

Statistical Methods & Applications - Using the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 data for Italy, this paper offers a complete overview of the relationship between test...     

A multiattribute measure of human development

A measure of human development, which is not affected by some relevant drawbacks of the commonly utilized measures, is constructed. It is a function of several attributes associated with various factors — economic, social, environmental — and also includes non-homogeneous attributes. It is non-linear in its variables, so that it includes possible interactions among the attributes. Furthermore, it takes into account public opinion about human development through a well-defined procedure of assessment elicitation. The formulation of the human development function constituting the measure is described when considering just one attribute and then several attributes, and the difference between independence and dependence in assessment is shown. Such a procedure is applied to the measurement of human development in 9 countries of the EU, by using thirteen attributes related to the economic, social and environmental fields as well as to the quality of life.     

Zenga Distribution and Inequality Ordering

The aim of this article is to establish an ordering related to the inequality for the recently introduced Zenga distribution. In addition to the well-known order based on the Lorenz curve, the order based on I(p) curve is considered. Since the Zenga distribution seems to be suitable to model wealth, financial, actuarial, and, especially, income distributions, these findings are fundamental in the understanding of how parameter values are related to inequality. This investigation shows that for the Zenga distribution, two of the three parameters are inequality indicators.     

Semiparametric quasi-likelihood estimation with missing data

Abstract

This article develops quasi-likelihood estimation for generalized varying coefficient partially linear models when the response is not always observable. This article considers two estimation methods and shows that under the assumption of selection on the observables the resulting estimators are asymptotically normal. As an application of these results this article proposes a new estimator for the average treatment effect parameter. A simulation study illustrates the finite sample properties of the proposed estimators.     

Survival Estimation with Missing Censoring Times for the Generalized Koziol–Green Model

ABSTRACT

When analyzing time-to-event data, there are various situations in which right censoring times for unfailed units are missing. In that context, by taking a supplementary sample of a convenient percentage of unfailed units, we propose a semi-parametric method for estimating a survival function under the natural extension of the Koziol–Green model to double random censoring. Some large sample properties of this estimator are derived. We prove uniform strong consistency and asymptotic weak convergence to a Gaussian process. A simulation study is also presented in order to analyze the behavior of the proposed estimator.     

Partial and inverse autocorrelations in portmanteau-type tests for time series

We present a decomposition of the correlation coefficient between x_t and x_t?k into three terms that include the partial and inverse autocorrelations. The first term accounts for the portion of the autocorrelation that is explained by the inner variables {x_t?1 , x_t?2 , …, x _{t? k+1}}, the second one measures the portion explained by the outer variables {x _t+1, x _t+2, } ∪ {x _t?k?1, x _t?k?2,…} and the third term measures the correlation between x _t and x_t?k given all other variables. These terms, squared and summed, can form the basis of three portmanteau-type tests that are able to detect both deviation from white noise and lack of fit of an entertained model. Quantiles of their asymptotic sample distributions are complicated to derive at an adequate level of accuracy, so they are approximated using the Monte Carlo method. A simulation experiment is carried out to investigate significance levels and power of each test, and compare them to the portmanteau test.     

Mobile Money and School Participation: Evidence from Africa

This paper shows that mobile money technology—an electronic wallet service that allows users to deposit, transfer, and receive money using their mobile phones—is positively correlated with increased school participation of children in school age. By using data from 4 African countries, we argue that, by reducing transaction costs, and by making it easier and less expensive to receive remittances, mobile money reduces the need for coping strategies that are detrimental to child development, such as withdrawing children from school and sending them to work. We find that mobile money increases the chances of children attending school. This finding is robust to different empirical models. In a nutshell, our results show that 1 million children could start attending school in low-income countries if mobile money was available to all.