The generalized two-sided power distribution

The generalized standard two-sided power (GTSP) distribution was mentioned only in passing by Kotz and van Dorp Beyond Beta, Other Continuous Families of Distributions with Bounded Support and Applications, World Scientific Press, Singapore, 2004. In this paper, we shall further investigate this three-parameter distribution by presenting some novel properties and use its more general form to contrast the chronology of developments of various authors on the two-parameter TSP distribution since its initial introduction. GTSP distributions allow for J-shaped forms of its pdf, whereas TSP distributions are limited to U-shaped and unimodal forms. Hence, GTSP distributions possess the same three distributional shapes as the classical beta distributions. A novel method and algorithm for the indirect elicitation of the two-power parameters of the GTSP distribution is developed. We present a Project Evaluation Review Technique example that utilizes this algorithm and demonstrates the benefit of separate powers for the two branches of activity GTSP distributions for project completion time uncertainty estimation.     

Más allá de la sociología. Sobre catástrofes,expertos y comunidades

We could state that a catastrophic discourse is one that refers to a catastrophe which is avoided by the same discourse. This kind of discourse stimulates cautious behaviours. It is necessary that the actors do not know that the catastrophe exists and that they are avoiding it so that this situation can work. Nevertheless, the analyst knows everything. The catastrophic discourse takes part in a stable situation in which the analyst's knowledge is directly proportional to the actor alienation. The economist knows that unstable situations like panic produce an opposite phenomenon: the analyst does not know very well what is going on but the actor knows how to manage. If the market, as well as stable operation, permits instability, the prevention of catastrophes could admit an unstable one, similar to panic and together with the catastrophic solution. This paper suggests some concepts to think about this unstable and anticatastrophic situation. They are notions which give prominence to ‘emergentism’, autopoiesis and uncertainty. The reinterpretation of the Hobbesian natural state developed by Foucault, the analysis of the mobilization power of fear by Bataille and the unpolitical reflections of the community which have been proposed by Esposito, Nancy and Agamben will be reinterpreted in order to achieve this goal.     

Working mothers’ decisions on childcare: the case of Spain

This paper aims to analyze household decisions regarding the childcare of young children. We present two specifications. The first one assumes a sequential decision process. Firstly, parents choose between paid or unpaid care and, secondly, those who opt for paid childcare must decide whether to take their children to a nursery or pre-school or employ somebody to care for them. The second specification is a multinomial Logit in which it is assumed that parents choose from three alternatives: unpaid care, paid care by a nanny, and center-based care. We apply our models to a sample of working mothers with children under three. The database used is the 2008–2010 Spanish Survey of Quality of Working Life (Encuesta de Calidad de Vida en el Trabajo). The results are in line with previous work: Parental education, family composition, income and the characteristics of the mother’s job are important factors in determining the type of childcare chosen for under-three-year-olds.     

The Impact of Remittances on Nutritional Status of Children in Ecuador1

This work analyzes the impact of remittances on nutritional status of children aged <5 years old in Ecuador in 2006. Using a set of anthropometric indicators constructed according to the new World Health Organization standards, the last household survey available for this country, and an instrumental variables strategy controlling for endogeneity of remittances, this study finds a positive and significant effect of remittance income on short-term and middle-term child nutritional status; nevertheless, no significant impact on long-run anthropometric indicators.     

Bayesian multivariate GARCH models with dynamic correlations and asymmetric error distributions

The main goal in this paper is to develop and apply stochastic simulation techniques for GARCH models with multivariate skewed distributions using the Bayesian approach. Both parameter estimation and model comparison are not trivial tasks and several approximate and computationally intensive methods (Markov chain Monte Carlo) will be used to this end. We consider a flexible class of multivariate distributions which can model both skewness and heavy tails. Also, we do not fix tail behaviour when dealing with fat tail distributions but leave it subject to inference.     

Open Borders to a Revolution: Culture,Politics and Migration

Susan Migden Socolow, The Bureaucrats of Buenos Aires, 1769–1810: Amor al Real Servicio (1987), xxi + 356 (Duke University Press, Durham, N.C., $45.00).

W. Hamish Fraser, Conflict and Class. Scottish Workers 1700–1838 (1988), 202 (John Donald, £20.00).

Margaret Ripley Wolfe, Kingsport, Tennessee: A Planned American City (1987), xii + 259 (The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, £24.00).

Carl Chinn, They Worked All Their Lives. Women of the Urban Poor in England, 1880–1939 (1988), xii + 187 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, £22.50).

Linda Bryder, Below the Magic Mountain: A Social History of Tuberculosis in Twentieth‐Century Britain (1988), xv + 298 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, £30.00).

F. B. Smith, The Retreat of Tuberculosis 1850–1950 (1988), 271 (Croom Helm, £25.00).     

A Corporate Culture Pattern to Manage Business Ethics

Within the general frame of proposals for an adequate management of business ethics, this paper is based on the vision of corporate culture as a pattern to achieve such purpose. If we consider ethics as a specific value of corporate culture, we may resort to the mechanism of cultural change and implementation in order to manage ethics. Despite the difficulties it entails in terms of time and money investment, this procedure is one of the safest ways to reach ethical values which are known, shared and then practiced by all the members of a corporation, whatever the category. From this central standpoint, and basing ourselves on our own proposal for the management of culture, we shall describe which specific steps must be taken in order to achieve a set of ethical values which are both realistic and furthermore shared by all collaborators of an organization. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The minimal overlap rule revisited

This paper provides an analysis of the Minimal Overlap Rule, a solution for bankruptcy problems introduced by O’Neill (1982). We point out that this rule can be understood as a composition of Ibn Ezra’s proposal and the recommendation given by the Constrained Equal Loss Rule. Following an interpretation of bankruptcy problems in terms of TU games, we show that the Minimal Overlap Value is the unique solution for bankruptcy games which satisfies Anonymity and Core Transition Responsiveness.     

Influence diagnostics in the capital asset pricing model under elliptical distributions

In this paper we consider the Capital Asset Pricing Model under Elliptical (symmetric) Distributions. This class of distributions, which contains the normal distribution, t, contaminated normal and power exponential, among others, offers a more flexible framework for modelling asset prices or returns. In order to analyze the sensibility to possible outliers and/or atypical returns of the maximum likelihood estimators, the local influence method was implemented. The results are illustrated by using a set of shares from companies who trade in the Chilean Stock Market. Our main conclusion is that symmetric distributions having heavier tails than those of the normal distribution, especially the t distribution with small degrees of freedom, show a better fit and allow the reduction of the influence of atypical returns in the maximum likelihood estimators.