The benefits of joint and separate financial management of couples

Financial management differs across households with consequences for financial outcomes and well-being of partners in households. A large-sample study has been performed, investigating the relationship between financial management of households and the occurrence of financial problems. To our knowledge, this is the first study on this relationship. Data from both partners was collected on having joint and separate bank accounts, on financial decision making, on drivers of financial management, and on financial outcomes. Based on the data, four financial management styles were derived: syncratic/joint, male-dominant, female-dominant, and autonomous financial management. In the syncratic style, partners have a joint bank account and take most financial decisions together. In the male/female-dominant styles, one partner (husband or wife) takes the main financial decisions. In the autonomous style, both partners have their own bank accounts and make their own decisions. As a conclusion, we find that syncratic financial management and having a joint instead of a separate bank account correlates with fewer financial problems, as compared with male-dominant money management and having separate bank accounts. Deciding together as partners is beneficial for the quality of financial management and for avoiding financial problems.     

Exponentiated half logistic distribution: Different estimation methods and joint confidence regions

In this article, we study the problem of estimating the unknown shape and scale parameters of the exponentiated half logistic distribution. For the maximum-likelihood estimation, we obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence and uniqueness of maximum-likelihood estimates of the parameters. Inverse moment and modified inverse moment estimators are derived. Monte Carlo simulations are conducted to compare their performances. Two methods for constructing joint confidence regions for the two parameters are also proposed and their performances are discussed. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the methods.     

Analysis of censored longitudinal data with skewness and a terminal event

In HIV/AIDS study, the measurements viral load are often highly skewed and left-censored because of a lower detection limit. Furthermore, a terminal event (e.g., death) stops the follow-up process. The time to terminal event may be dependent on the viral load measurements. In this article, we present a joint analysis framework to model the censored longitudinal data with skewness and a terminal event process. The estimation is carried out by adaptive Gaussian quadrature techniques in SAS procedure NLMIXED. The proposed model is evaluated by a simulation study and is applied to the motivating Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS).     

Stability and Complexity of Inter-Firm Co-operation:: The case of Multi-Point Alliances

The authors examine alliances involving inter-firm co-operation which they term ‘multi-point alliances’. These are first defined and considered in varying degrees of complexity. A typology of multi-point alliances is produced, and interviews conducted with French and Spanish corporations followed by a two-stage questionnaire survey of France's largest corporations. The dynamics of multi-point co-operation were then examined. The results include support for the authors' research hypothesis that both business complexity (scope) and organizational complexity (structure) impact the evolution of co-operation: the higher the complexity, the more likely the co-operative arrangement will diverge from its initial objective.     

Latent variable model for mixed correlated power series and ordinal longitudinal responses with non ignorable missing values

We propose a joint model based on a latent variable for analyzing mixed power series and ordinal longitudinal data with and without missing values. A bivariate probit regression model is used for the missing mechanisms. Random effects are used to take into account the correlation between longitudinal responses. A full likelihood-based approach is used to yield maximum-likelihood estimates of the model parameters. Our model is applied to a medical data set, obtained from an observational study on women where the correlated responses are the ordinal response of osteoporosis of the spine and the power series response of the number of joint damages. Sensitivity analysis is also performed to study the influence of small perturbations of the parameters of the missing mechanisms and overdispersion of the model on likelihood displacement.     

Partial sufficient dimension reduction on joint model of recurrent and terminal events

Joint modeling of recurrent and terminal events has attracted considerable interest and extensive investigations by many authors. The assumption of low-dimensional covariates has been usually applied in the existing studies, which is however inapplicable in many practical situations. In this paper, we consider a partial sufficient dimension reduction approach for a joint model with high-dimensional covariates. Some simulations as well as three real data applications are presented to confirm and assess the performance of the proposed model and approach.     

Simultaneous prediction intervals for multiple comparisons with a standard

k normal populations having common variance are used to construct two-sided and one-sided simultaneous prediction intervals for the differences between the future means of independent random sample from each of these populations compared to a standard. These prediction intervals are particularly useful if one has sampled the performance of several products and wishes to simultaneously predict the differences between future sample mean performance of these products and a standard with a predetermined joint probability. Methods on sample size determination are also given. The procedures are illustrated with a numerical example. Received: February 25, 2000; revised version: February 6, 2001     

青少年犯罪心理浅析

青少年犯罪心理是青少年时期青少年的生理、心理发展及社会化过程中的各种矛盾引起的。青少年时期生理发育与心理发展之间的矛盾、心理活动本身各部分之间的矛盾以及心理发展与客观现实之间的矛盾的产生及其相互作用,是青少年产生犯罪心理的重要原因。     

Using orientation statistics to investigate variations in human kinematics

This paper applies orientation statistics to investigate variations in upper limb posture of human subjects drilling at six different locations on a vertical panel. Some of the drilling locations are kinematically equivalent in that the same posture could be used for these locations. Upper limb posture is measured by recording the co-ordinates of four markers attached to the subjects hand, forearm, arm and torso. A 3×3 rotation characterizes the relative orientation of one body segment with respect to another. Replicates are available since each subject drilled at the same location five times. Upper limb postures for the six drilling locations are compared by one-way analysis-of-variance tests for rotations. These tests rely on tangent space approximations at the estimated modal rotation of the sample. A parameterization of rotations in terms of unit quaternions simplifies the computations. The analysis detects significant differences in posture between all pairs of drilling locations. The smallest changes, less than 10° at all joints, are obtained for the kinematically equivalent pairs of locations. A short discussion of the biomechanical interpretation of these findings is presented.