When Financial Intermediaries are Corporate Owners: An Agency Model of Institutional Ownership

Increasingly, the equity investments of individual investors are being channeled through financial institutions. This article posits that the role of institutional owners as financial intermediaries, and the resulting complexity that institutions bring to ownership, distinguish institutional ownership from individual ownership. I develop a model of institutional ownership, referred to as the nexus agency model (NAM), which reflects this complexity. The model provides a framework for identifying the potential additional agency costs to beneficial owners that are associated with owning via financial institutions. The degree to which owning via institutions benefits individual owners depends on the adequacy of the legal and regulatory environment and governance mechanisms in protecting individual owners' interests. The applicability of the nexus model to different institutional owner types is then demonstrated in a discussion of U.S. public and private pension plans and mutual funds, leading to the generation of a NAM-based research agenda for each type and across the types. The article ends with discussion of the model's applicability to non-U.S. institutional environments.     

‘What Was I Thinking?!’ Rhetorical Questions as a Technique to Identify and Explore Impasses in Therapy

Rhetorical questions emerging spontaneously in consultations can be used as a tool for developing self‐reflexivity and exploring the therapeutic alliance in the process of therapy with couples and families. This paper presents a technique based on the enunciation of rhetorical questions, which can point to an impasse in the process of therapy and contain a key to its resolution. The technique focuses on the distinctive feature of rhetorical questions as convening a paradoxical injunction: a question not intended as a question, while uttered as such. The technique in four steps is illustrated by examples from therapy, supervision, consultation, and self‐supervision. Its focus is the interlink between the therapeutic relationship and the process of therapy and it is informed by a second‐order cybernetics approach, dialogical practice, and the systemic literature on emotion. The technique can help develop curiosity in working with families, lead to unforeseen developments, and touch on prejudices not made explicit in previous therapeutic encounters. Whether we are acting as supervisors, therapists, or clients, the creation of a ‘secure enough’ context for rhetorical questions becomes critical to allow freeform exploration.     

Relative Risk Regression for Binary Outcomes: Methods and Recommendations

Relative risks are often considered preferable to odds ratios for quantifying the association between a predictor and a binary outcome. Relative risk regression is an alternative to logistic regression where the parameters are relative risks rather than odds ratios. It uses a log link binomial generalised linear model, or log‐binomial model, which requires parameter constraints to prevent probabilities from exceeding 1. This leads to numerical problems with standard approaches for finding the maximum likelihood estimate (MLE), such as Fisher scoring, and has motivated various non‐MLE approaches. In this paper we discuss the roles of the MLE and its main competitors for relative risk regression. It is argued that reliable alternatives to Fisher scoring mean that numerical issues are no longer a motivation for non‐MLE methods. Nonetheless, non‐MLE methods may be worthwhile for other reasons and we evaluate this possibility for alternatives within a class of quasi‐likelihood methods. The MLE obtained using a reliable computational method is recommended, but this approach requires bootstrapping when estimates are on the parameter space boundary. If convenience is paramount, then quasi‐likelihood estimation can be a good alternative, although parameter constraints may be violated. Sensitivity to model misspecification and outliers is also discussed along with recommendations and priorities for future research.     

Bayesian density regression for discrete outcomes

We develop Bayesian models for density regression with emphasis on discrete outcomes. The problem of density regression is approached by considering methods for multivariate density estimation of mixed scale variables, and obtaining conditional densities from the multivariate ones. The approach to multivariate mixed scale outcome density estimation that we describe represents discrete variables, either responses or covariates, as discretised versions of continuous latent variables. We present and compare several models for obtaining these thresholds in the challenging context of count data analysis where the response may be over‐ and/or under‐dispersed in some of the regions of the covariate space. We utilise a nonparametric mixture of multivariate Gaussians to model the directly observed and the latent continuous variables. The paper presents a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm for posterior sampling, sufficient conditions for weak consistency, and illustrations on density, mean and quantile regression utilising simulated and real datasets.     

Estimating Abundance from Presence–Absence Maps via a Paired Negative‐Binomial Model

The estimation of abundance from presence–absence data is an intriguing problem in applied statistics. The classical Poisson model makes strong independence and homogeneity assumptions and in practice generally underestimates the true abundance. A controversial ad hoc method based on negative‐binomial counts (Am. Nat.) has been empirically successful but lacks theoretical justification. We first present an alternative estimator of abundance based on a paired negative binomial model that is consistent and asymptotically normally distributed. A quadruple negative binomial extension is also developed, which yields the previous ad hoc approach and resolves the controversy in the literature. We examine the performance of the estimators in a simulation study and estimate the abundance of 44 tree species in a permanent forest plot.     

Effect of aggregation on the estimation of trend in mortality

There are three approaches to analyzing and forecasting age‐specific mortality: (1) analyze age‐specific data directly, (2) analyze each cause‐specific mortality series separately and add the results, (3) analyze cause‐specific mortality series jointly and add the results. We show that if linear models are used for cause‐specific mortality, then the three approaches often give close results even when cause‐specific series are correlated. This result holds for cross‐correlations arising from random misclassification of deaths by cause, and also for certain patterns of systematic misclassification. It need not hold, if one or more causes serve as “leading indicators”; for the remaining causes, or if outside information is incorporated into forecasting either through expert judgment or formal statistical modeling. Under highly nonlinear models or in the presence of modeling error the result may also fail. The results are illustrated with U.S. age‐specific mortality data from 1968–1985. In some cases the aggregate forecasts appear to be the more credible ones.     

Practices and Flows of Digital Photography: An Ethnographic Framework

This article develops a methodological framework for undertaking empirical studies of practices and flows, of doings and circulations, of digital tourist photography. The article outlines what might be termed a non‐representational approach to photography concerned with affordances, actor‐networks, hybridized practices and networked flows of photographs. The article falls in three parts. It begins with rethinking photography theory. Traditional dualisms between affordance and practice are challenged, and photography is conceptualized as a hybridized, embodied performance. How digital photography changes photography's traditional affordances is then discussed. The third part discusses various methods to describe how affordances of digital tourist photography are used, twisted and resisted in concrete hybridized practices. I suggest undertaking multi‐sided ethnographies with ‘busy photographers’ to craft non‐representational accounts of mobile practices of photographing and flows of photographic images across various sites and actor‐networks. In a broader sense, this article is a methodological contribution to ‘the new mobilities paradigm’.     

A Social Problems Framework for the Critical Appraisal of Automobility and Sustainable Systems Innovation

Over the past three decades, critical assessment of the automobile has evolved from a focus on the technical inadequacies of the internal combustion engine to a more comprehensive appraisal of the sociotechnical system for providing mobility. The following study charts the evolution of this discourse by focusing in particular on the way in which the Worldwatch Institute has interpreted the various problems of the motorcar during this timeframe. There are now indications that a more thoroughgoing systems view of automobile dependency is developing predicated upon three problem dimensions: fuel use, urban congestion and sedentary lifestyles. The analysis presents a social‐problems framework for beginning to conceptualize more sustainable modes of mobility in the post‐automobile era.     

Sightseeing Buses: Cruising,Timing and the Montage of Attractions

Abstract

This article focuses on spatial performances, modes of vision and touring practices enabled by sightseeing bus‐tours. Thereby, three aspects of the process by which these buses transform urban space into destination space are discussed. First, bus‐tours delineate, as they move, a unique geography of routes and stops, which is based on structured improvisation. Second, guiding practices of tour guides are crucial for assembling together a destination and their success depends on timing. Third, tourist experiences enabled by sightseeing bus‐tours involve a ‘cruise‐ship‐like’ style of movement and a mode of vision reminiscent of the ‘montage of coming attractions’ characteristic of film‐trailers. The article concludes by stressing the multiple spatial displacements involved in bus‐tour production of destination space.     

Joint Modelling of Survival and Longitudinal Data with Informative Observation Times

In this paper, we consider the joint modelling of survival and longitudinal data with informative observation time points. The survival model and the longitudinal model are linked via random effects, for which no distribution assumption is required under our estimation approach. The estimator is shown to be consistent and asymptotically normal. The proposed estimator and its estimated covariance matrix can be easily calculated. Simulation studies and an application to a primary biliary cirrhosis study are also provided.