Divergences and duality for estimation and test under moment condition models

We introduce estimation and test procedures through divergence minimization for models satisfying linear constraints with unknown parameter. These procedures extend the empirical likelihood (EL) method and share common features with generalized empirical likelihood approach. We treat the problems of existence and characterization of the divergence projections of probability distributions on sets of signed finite measures. We give a precise characterization of duality, for the proposed class of estimates and test statistics, which is used to derive their limiting distributions (including the EL estimate and the EL ratio statistic) both under the null hypotheses and under alternatives or misspecification. An approximation to the power function is deduced as well as the sample size which ensures a desired power for a given alternative.     

Board leadership structure and diversity over CEO time in office: A test of the evolutionary perspective on Italian firms

An evolutionary perspective on CEO-board relations suggests that CEO objectives and interests change over time, and that board roles should shift accordingly, from CEO leadership development during the early stages of CEO time in office toward monitoring during the latest stages. This study examines how two board characteristics, board leadership structure and board diversity, shape innovation investment among Italian firms. Empirical results support the hypothesized effects, suggesting that the board’s effects are contingent upon CEO time in office.     

Rethinking cynicism: Parrhesiastic practices in contemporary workplaces

Within the social sciences, most studies of transnationalism take the approach that migrants experience a duality between place of origin and place of residence. In that kind of approach, transnationalism refers to a sense of in‐betweenness caused by this duality. The aim of this paper is to show how the activities of an Iranian diaspora organization in Southern California (NIPOC) may seem essentialist at first but can be considered transnational because they transcend the duality of the past/place of origin and the present/place of residence. Through an example of an Iranian festival that is the creation of diaspora, I intend to show how national identity is detached from its assumed link to the nation state or ‘the country of origin’ and placed within a newly created imaginary space of a nation within a nation.     

Catching up with big fish in the big pond? Multi-level network analysis through linked design

This article contributes to the study of “duality” [Breiger, R., 1974. The duality of persons and groups. Social Forces 53, 181–190] in social life. Our study explores multi-level networks of superposed and partially connected interdependencies, the first being inter-organizational, the second inter-individual. We propose a method of structural linked design as an articulation for these levels. First, we examine separately the complete networks at each level. Second, we combine the two networks in relation to one another using systematic information about the membership of each individual in the first network (inter-individual) to one of the organizations in the second network (inter-organizational), as in bipartite networks. This dual positioning, or the linked design approach, is carried out in an empirical study examining performance variations within the “elite” of French cancer researchers in 1999. By looking at measures of centrality, we identify the actors that these top researchers consider as central or peripheral at the inter-individual level (the big and the little fish among the elite), and the laboratories that the research directors consider as central or peripheral at the inter-organizational level (the big and the little ponds among all the laboratories conducting cancer research in France at that time). In addition to the rather trivial report of the competitive advantage of big fish in big ponds (particularly because of the advantage of size for laboratories in this field), we use measurements of scientific performance to identify “catching up” strategies that the smallest fish use in this system. We suggest that this method offers new insights into the duality and multi-level dimension of complex systems of interdependencies, and also into the ways in which actors manage these interdependencies. We believe that it adds a new dimension to the sociological exploration of the determinants of performance, of meso-level phenomena such as opportunity structures and institutional change, or of macro-level phenomena such as social inequalities.     

Queues and Risk Processes with Dependencies

We study the generalization of the G/G/1 queue obtained by relaxing the assumption of independence between inter-arrival times and service requirements. The analysis is carried out for the class of multivariate matrix exponential distributions introduced in Ref.^[13 M. Bladt; B.F. Nielsen. Multivariate matrix-exponential distributions. Stochastic Models 2010, 26(1), 1–26.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]^]. In this setting, we obtain the steady-state waiting time distribution, and we show that the classical relation between the steady-state waiting time and workload distributions remains valid when the independence assumption is relaxed. We also prove duality results with the ruin functions in an ordinary and a delayed ruin process. These extend several known dualities between queueing and risk models in the independent case. Finally, we show that there exist stochastic order relations between the waiting times under various instances of correlation.     

Green Purchasing by MNC Subsidiaries: The Role of Local Tailoring in the Presence of Institutional Duality

To examine the essential determinants of green purchasing by multinational corporations’ (MNC) subsidiaries, this study takes institutional theory as a foundation and focuses on the institutional duality associated with localization and globalization. Specifically, we develop a model to explain subsidiaries’ green purchasing and empirically test the model with data from 141 purchasing managers and senior purchasing staff members from subsidiaries in 39 countries. Our results suggest that pressures from headquarters and the local environment do not affect subsidiaries’ green purchasing directly; rather, they exert indirect influences through local tailoring. This study contributes to extant literature by revealing the significance of local tailoring in an MNC context. In addition, our findings offer several implications for practice by providing a roadmap for disseminating green purchasing across the subsidiaries of an MNC, as well as highlighting the importance of both clear communication about the benefits of green purchasing and internal audits.     

Two-mode relational similarities

In a previous paper, Kovacs (2010) proposed a generalized relational similarity measure based on iterated correlations of entities in a network calibrated by their relational similarity to other entities. Here I show that, in the case of two-mode network data, Kovacs’s approach can be simplified and generalized similarities calculated non-iteratively. The basic idea is to rely on initial similarities calculated from transforming the two-mode data into one-mode projections using the familiar duality approach due to Breiger (1974). I refer to this as two-mode relational similarities and show, using the Southern Women’s data and data from Senate voting in the 112th U.S. Congress, that it yields results substantively indistinguishable from Kovacs’s iterative strategy.     

Utility‐consistent Brand Demand Systems with Endogenous Category Consumption: Principles and Marketing Applications*

This paper introduces the design and implementation of utility‐consistent, brand, and category demand systems. It extends formal demand analysis to the area of brand and category demand, which directly concerns marketing researchers and managers. The proposed brand demand system is a set of interrelated demand functions that are derived explicitly from a utility function describing consumer preferences. The model generalizes by the integration of category expenditures, which are determined endogenously. The theoretical plausibility of the proposed demand model is demonstrated first and, subsequently, brand and category level systems are derived. Econometric methods for estimating the systems are also developed and illustrated in empirical data. The results yield empirically determined, quantitative insights into the structure of consumer demand for brands and product categories. The proposed approach has the attractive feature of structuring the interdependencies of consumer decisions and ensuring an explicit role for theory in applied research.