The Shortest Clopper–Pearson Confidence Interval for Binomial Probability

The existence of the shortest confidence interval for binomial probability is shown. The method of obtaining such an interval is presented as well.     

Maximum likelihood estimation for ordered expectations of correlated binary variables

A multivariate binary distribution that incorporates the correlation between individual variables is considered. The availability of auxiliary information taking the form of simple ordering constraints on their expected values is assumed. The problem of constructing constraint-preserving estimates for expectations is formulated as conditional maximization of convex likelihood function for corresponding multinomial distribution with suitably chosen restrictions. Starting values for convex optimization algorithms are proposed. The proposed estimator is consistent under mild assumptions.     

Manipulability of Future‐Independent Tests

The difficulties in properly anticipating key economic variables may encourage decision makers to rely on experts' forecasts. Professional forecasters, however, may not be reliable and so their forecasts must be empirically tested. This may induce experts to forecast strategically in order to pass the test. A test can be ignorantly passed if a false expert, with no knowledge of the data‐generating process, can pass the test. Many tests that are unlikely to reject correct forecasts can be ignorantly passed. Tests that cannot be ignorantly passed do exist, but these tests must make use of predictions contingent on data not yet observed at the time the forecasts are rejected. Such tests cannot be run if forecasters report only the probability of the next period's events on the basis of the actually observed data. This result shows that it is difficult to dismiss false, but strategic, experts who know how theories are tested. This result also shows an important role that can be played by predictions contingent on data not yet observed.     

Book Review: The Death Knell of the Utilitarianism: A Review and Theoretical Implications of To Profit or Not to Profit

This paper uses the edited volume To Profit or Not to Profit; The Commercial Transformation of the Nonprofit Sector as an opportunity to review the theories of the nonprofit sector based on the utility maximization behavioral model linked to neoclassical economics. The existence of a large nonprofit sector and its increasing commercialism undermines the logical sufficiency of these theories to explain organizational behavior. The book in question is an effort to solve that problem and reconcile the utility maximization model with seemingly contradicting evidence. In the end, however, these efforts are not very successful and lead to the partial acceptance of an alternative model, grounded in the neo-institutional theory of organizations.     

Belief‐Free Equilibria in Repeated Games

We introduce a class of strategies that generalizes examples constructed in two‐player games under imperfect private monitoring. A sequential equilibrium is belief‐free if, after every private history, each player's continuation strategy is optimal independently of his belief about his opponents' private histories. We provide a simple and sharp characterization of equilibrium payoffs using those strategies. While such strategies support a large set of payoffs, they are not rich enough to generate a folk theorem in most games besides the prisoner's dilemma, even when noise vanishes.     

Beyond Nonprofits: Re-conceptualizing the Third Sector

The idea of a “third sector” beyond the arenas of the state and the market is probably one of the most perplexing concepts in modern political and social discourse, encompassing as it does a tremendous diversity of institutions and behaviors that only relatively recently have been perceived in public or scholarly discourse as a distinct sector, and even then with grave misgivings. Initial work on this concept focused on what is still widely regarded as its institutional core, the vast array of private, nonprofit institutions (NPIs), and the volunteer as well as paid workers they mobilize and engage. These institutions share a crucial characteristic that makes it feasible to differentiate from for-profit enterprises: the fact that they are prohibited from distributing any surplus they generate to their investors, directors, or stakeholders and therefore presumptively serve some broader public interest. Many European scholars have considered this conceptualization too narrow; however, arguing that cooperatives, mutual societies, and, in recent years, “social enterprises” as well as social norms should also be included. However, this broader concept has remained under-conceptualized in reliable operational terms. This article corrects this short-coming and presents a consensus operational re-conceptualization of the third sector fashioned by a group of scholars working under the umbrella of the European Union’s Third Sector Impact Project. This re-conceptualization goes well beyond the widely recognized definition of NPIs included in the UN Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts by embracing as well some, but not all, of these additional institutions and forms of direct individual activity, and does so in a way that meets demanding criteria of comparability, operationalizability, and potential for integration into official statistical systems.     

County-Level Patterns of Undeclared Work: An Empirical Analysis of a Highly Diversified Region in the European Union

Social Indicators Research - The scale and impact of undeclared work on the economy and on society are more apparent in emerging countries compared to developed economies. The same issue concerns...     

Imagining is Not Observing: The Role of Simulation Processes Within the Mimicry-Liking Expressway

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior - Individuals automatically mimic a wide range of different behaviors, and such mimicking behavior has several social benefits. One of the landmark findings in the...     

The Discreet Charm of the Nonprofit Form: Service Professionals and Nonprofit Organizations (Poland 1989-1993)

This paper examines the role of social proximity (nonprofit) organizations in the process of professional innovation that involved a transfer of human service technologies from Western Europe and the United States to Poland during the 1989 political–economic reform. To explain that role, the paper introduces a theoretical model that posits the existence of elective affinity between the social proximity form and occupational interests of service providers. As the existing system of professions is no longer sufficient to legitimate expert services and curb competition among different types of providers, the social proximity form bestows social legitimacy on novel or controversial types of services, and is thus instrumental in marketing those services. The proposed model is supported by quantitative data and in-depth interviews. Theoretical implications are discussed.     

Best exact nonparametric confidence intervals for quantiles

Well-known nonparametric confidence intervals for quantiles are of the form (X _{i : n} , X _{j : n} ) with suitably chosen order statistics X _{i : n} and X _{j : n} , but typically their coverage levels differ from those prescribed. It appears that the coverage level of the confidence interval of the form (X _{i : n} , X _{j : n} ) with random indices I and J can be rendered equal, exactly to any predetermined level γ?∈?(0, 1). Best in the sense of minimum E(J???I), i.e., ‘the shortest’, two-sided confidence intervals are constructed. If no two-sided confidence interval exists for a given γ, the most accurate one-sided confidence intervals are constructed.