The Apparent‐Time Construct and stable variation: Final /z/ devoicing in northwestern Indiana1

As real‐time language data becomes increasingly available for sociolinguistic research, a growing number of studies are benefitting from it in order to study language changes in progress, some of which even explicitly seek to scrutinize the Apparent‐Time Construct itself. Vanishingly few real‐time studies, however, have focused specifically on stable sociolinguistic variables, leaving an important gap in our understanding of the Apparent‐Time Construct's abilities to model real‐time facts. In an effort to address this gap, the present study analyzes a presumably stable sociolinguistic variable – final /z/ devoicing – in extreme northwestern Indiana through real and apparent time. A series of Varbrul analyses indicate that this variable is, indeed, stable throughout the 20 years of real time covered by the data and that its stability is successfully modeled in apparent time. Additionally, similarities in /z/ devoicing between this community and some other communities where it has also been studied are identified and discussed.     

Age of Onset in Pathological Gambling: Clinical,Therapeutic and Personality Correlates

We aimed to explore the association between age of onset of gambling problems and current psychopathological and clinical status, personality profile and therapeutic outcome in a sample of pathological gamblers. A total of 904 consecutive pathological gambling patients were administered several instruments about gambling behavior, psychopathology and personality. They received a 4-month cognitive-behavioral group treatment. Information of dropouts and relapses during treatment was registered. Older age of onset of gambling problems was associated with higher general psychopathology (SCL-90-R Paranoid Ideation, Psychoticism, Depression; P < 0.015). Younger age of onset was related to greater severity of pathological gambling (P < 0.015), higher novelty seeking, and lower self-directedness (P < 0.015). No statistically significant association was found between age of onset and relapse and dropouts during treatment. Age of onset of gambling problems seems to influence the clinical presentation of pathological gambling but not treatment outcome.     

中国和平崛起的国际环境分析和外交战略选择

和平崛起的中国面临从不平等的国际社会成员变成平等的成员,从国际体系的抗争者变成受益者,从国际舞台的边缘走向中心,国际关系的重心由大西洋转向太平洋等国际环境等基本特征,应作出适当的外交战略选择。把握方向,坚持＂韬光养晦＂;承担责任,善于＂有所作为＂;求同存异,阐述和谐主张;擅用传播,塑造良好形象等应是当前中国外交战略中应有的内容。     

Smoking risk factors and gender differences among Spanish high school students

The objectives of the present study were to analyze the pattern of tobacco use among Spanish adolescents, as well as to determine gender differences in specific risk factors of cigarette use. The study sample was made up of 1,483 boys and 1,358 girls, aged 12-16 (M = 14). Participants were asked to answer an ad-hoc instrument to evaluate the pattern of use, perceived availability, risk of harm, family- and peer-use, engagement in leisure activities, drive for thinness, and self-esteem. Results showed no gender differences in the pattern of use. With regard to risk and protector factors, a predictive analysis showed that peer-related variables were the most determinant for tobacco use both for boys and girls. Some gender differences were also detected: Playing sports was protective for boys only, and listening to music for girls only. Drive for thinness and self-esteem were not related to tobacco use for either boys or girls. These findings help increase our understanding of smoking risk factors in adolescence and to pay special attention to the group of friends when planning prevention programs to reduce risk factors.     

Characterizing best–worst voting systems in the scoring context

An increasing body of theoretical and empirical work on discrete choice considers a choice design in which a person is asked to select both the best and the worst alternative in an available set of alternatives, in contrast to more traditional tasks, such as where the person is asked to: select the best alternative; select the worst alternative; rank the alternatives. Here we consider voting systems motivated by such “best–worst” choice; characterize a class of “best–worst” voting systems in terms of a set of axioms in the context of scoring rules; and discuss briefly possible extensions to approval–disapproval systems.     

Two-tailed asymptotic inferences for a proportion

This paper evaluates 29 methods for obtaining a two-sided confidence interval for a binomial proportion (16 of which are new proposals) and comes to the conclusion that: Wilson's classic method is only optimal for a confidence of 99%, although generally it can be applied when n≥50; for a confidence of 95% or 90%, the optimal method is the one based on the arcsine transformation (when this is applied to the data incremented by 0.5), which behaves in a very similar manner to Jeffreys’ Bayesian method. A simpler option, though not so good as those just mentioned, is the classic-adjusted Wald method of Agresti and Coull.     

Too risk averse to purchase insurance?

This paper suggests a new explanation for the low level of annuitization, which is valid even if one assumes perfect markets. We show that, as soon there is a positive bequest motive, sufficiently risk averse individuals should not purchase annuities. A model calibration accounting for lifetime risk aversion generates a significantly smaller willingness-to-pay for annuities than the one generated by a standard time-additive model. Moreover, the calibration predicts that riskless savings finance one third of consumption, in line with empirical findings.     

Persistence in entrepreneurship and its implications for the European entrepreneurial promotion policy

By considering entrepreneurs who hire employees – employers – and entrepreneurs without personnel – own-account workers – as related but distinct groups within entrepreneurship, this work analyzes the roles of different factors in entrepreneurship survival in Europe from a new perspective: contrasting the determinants of own-account workers’ survival with those affecting employers’ survival in the EU-15. Our results confirm the presence of persistence in entrepreneurship. However, we also obtain a strong negative effect on survival of entering entrepreneurship from unemployment. Hence, policymakers should balance these mixed results to evaluate the medium- and long-term suitability of the existing entrepreneurial promotion policy across European regions.     

Bayes Hilbert Spaces

A Bayes linear space is a linear space of equivalence classes of proportional σ‐finite measures, including probability measures. Measures are identified with their density functions. Addition is given by Bayes' rule and substraction by Radon–Nikodym derivatives. The present contribution shows the subspace of square‐log‐integrable densities to be a Hilbert space, which can include probability and infinite measures, measures on the whole real line or discrete measures. It extends the ideas from the Hilbert space of densities on a finite support towards Hilbert spaces on general measure spaces. It is also a generalisation of the Euclidean structure of the simplex, the sample space of random compositions. In this framework, basic notions of mathematical statistics get a simple algebraic interpretation. A key tool is the centred‐log‐ratio transformation, a generalization of that used in compositional data analysis, which maps the Hilbert space of measures into a subspace of square‐integrable functions. As a consequence of this structure, distances between densities, orthonormal bases, and Fourier series representing measures become available. As an application, Fourier series of normal distributions and distances between them are derived, and an example related to grain size distributions is presented. The geometry of the sample space of random compositions, known as Aitchison geometry of the simplex, is obtained as a particular case of the Hilbert space when the measures have discrete and finite support.     

On the Evolution and Asymptotic Analysis of Open Markov Populations: Application to Consumption Credit

In this paper, we study, by means of randomized sampling, the long-run stability of some open Markov population fed with time-dependent Poisson inputs. We show that state probabilities within transient states converge—even when the overall expected population dimension increases without bound—under general conditions on the transition matrix and input intensities.

Following the convergence results, we obtain ML estimators for a particular sequence of input intensities, where the sequence of new arrivals is modeled by a sigmoidal function. These estimators allow for the forecast, by confidence intervals, of the evolution of the relative population structure in the transient states.

Applying these results to the study of a consumption credit portfolio, we estimate the implicit default rate.