Can Quasi‐market and Multi‐level Governance Co‐exist? Insights from the Case of Lombardy's Employment Services System

This article explores the functioning of Lombardy's networked employment services system, inspired by quasi‐market and horizontal subsidiarity principles, and specifically addresses a gap in the quasi‐market literature, where little attention is devoted to the role played by institutions at lower levels of government. A qualitative study of the Lombardy system, with a focus on the municipality of Milan, is relied upon in order to explore the extent to which the principles of quasi‐market and multi‐level governance pursued by the regional government are allowed to co‐exist in practice. Here, sub‐regional levels of government are directly involved in services provision, but enjoy a more privileged condition relative to the private providers, thereby jeopardizing the implementation of an effective quasi‐market. The article contributes to existing theories by suggesting that horizontal subsidiarity and marketization cannot neglect multi‐level governance in those sectors where public bodies at various levels of government are directly involved in implementation.     

Mixture inverse Gaussian for unobserved heterogeneity in the autoregressive conditional duration model

In this paper, we assume that the duration of a process has two different intrinsic components or phases which are independent. The first is the time it takes for a trade to be initiated in the market (for example, the time during which agents obtain knowledge about the market in which they are operating and accumulate information, which is coherent with Brownian motion) and the second is the subsequent time required for the trade to develop into a complete duration. Of course, if the first time is zero then the trade is initiated immediately and no initial knowledge is required. If we assume a specific compound Bernoulli distribution for the first time and an inverse Gaussian distribution for the second, the resulting convolution model has a mixture of an inverse Gaussian distribution with its reciprocal, which allows us to specify and test the unobserved heterogeneity in the autoregressive conditional duration (ACD) model.

Our proposals make it possible not only to capture various density shapes of the durations but also easily to accommodate the behaviour of the tail of the distribution and the non monotonic hazard function. The proposed model is easy to fit and characterizes the behaviour of the conditional durations reasonably well in terms of statistical criteria based on point and density forecasts.     

Control‐based imputation for sensitivity analyses in informative censoring for recurrent event data

In clinical trials, missing data commonly arise through nonadherence to the randomized treatment or to study procedure. For trials in which recurrent event endpoints are of interests, conventional analyses using the proportional intensity model or the count model assume that the data are missing at random, which cannot be tested using the observed data alone. Thus, sensitivity analyses are recommended. We implement the control‐based multiple imputation as sensitivity analyses for the recurrent event data. We model the recurrent event using a piecewise exponential proportional intensity model with frailty and sample the parameters from the posterior distribution. We impute the number of events after dropped out and correct the variance estimation using a bootstrap procedure. We apply the method to an application of sitagliptin study.     

A Multi-Dimensional Conceptual Framework for Trauma-Informed Practice in Addictions Programming

Previous research has conceptualized trauma-informed practice in relation to five key values: safety, trust, choice, collaboration, and empowerment. This research identifies key organizational, programmatic, and interpersonal characteristics in community-based residential addictions treatment programming that exemplify each of these principles. Utilizing qualitative research methods, involving open-ended, one to one interviews with clients in residential substance misuse treatment (n = 41), respondents identified the importance of experiencing “safety” in relation to physical safety, confidentiality, reassurance, rule enforcement, and peer relationships. “Trust” was manifested in sharing, staff availability, nonjudgmental interactions, positive relationship dynamics, and caring. “Choice” was articulated in relation to individual needs, participation, opportunities, and focus of efforts. “Collaboration” was characterized in relation to opportunities for feedback, planning, goal setting, specificity, and support. Finally, “empowerment” was characterized by comfort in sharing, trigger management, trauma awareness, and understanding. The findings provide a conceptual framework for a trauma-informed social services organizational practice environment. Findings can inform adaptations to social service delivery processes and programs to become aligned with the values of trauma-informed practice. Future research can build on this framework by testing the study findings with quantitative methods along with replicating current methods in other social service delivery sectors.