Robust signed-rank estimation and variable selection for semi-parametric additive partial linear models

A fully nonparametric model may not perform well or when the researcher wants to use a parametric model but the functional form with respect to a subset of the regressors or the density of the errors is not known. This becomes even more challenging when the data contain gross outliers or unusual observations. However, in practice the true covariates are not known in advance, nor is the smoothness of the functional form. A robust model selection approach through which we can choose the relevant covariates components and estimate the smoothing function may represent an appealing tool to the solution. A weighted signed-rank estimation and variable selection under the adaptive lasso for semi-parametric partial additive models is considered in this paper. B-spline is used to estimate the unknown additive nonparametric function. It is shown that despite using B-spline to estimate the unknown additive nonparametric function, the proposed estimator has an oracle property. The robustness of the weighted signed-rank approach for data with heavy-tail, contaminated errors, and data containing high-leverage points are validated via finite sample simulations. A practical application to an economic study is provided using an updated Canadian household gasoline consumption data.     

Examining Depression,Anxiety, and Foster Care Placement as Predictors of Substance Use and Sexual Activity in Adolescents

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the impact of anxiety and depression on sexual activity and substance use behaviors in a sample of 56 community- (traditional living arrangements) and foster care-dwelling adolescents aged 12 to 17 years. It was hypothesized that higher levels of anxiety and depression would be related to higher rates of risky sexual activity and substance use. Regression analyses were used to examine impact of the internalizing predictors on the risky behaviors. Results of the sample were presented with group membership emerging as a robust predictor of both sexual activity and substance use. Results suggest that adolescents within out-of-home care are at increased risk for engaging in these behaviors when compared with community-dwelling peers, and they may benefit from specific interventions aimed at decreasing participation. Future research may focus on assessing the effectiveness of interventions for these youth.     

Teaching Mands for Information Using “Why” to Children With Autism

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - Mands for information (MFIs) play an important role in language development and are important for successfully acquiring new information from one’s...     

Peer evaluations and team performance: when friends do worse than strangers

We use peer assessments as a tool to allocate joint profits in a real-effort team experiment. We find that using this incentive mechanism reduces team performance. More specifically, we show that teams composed of acquaintances rather than strangers actually underperform in a context of peer evaluations. We conjecture that peer evaluations undermine the inherently high level of intrinsic motivation that characterizes teams composed of friends and possibly exacerbate negative reciprocity among partners. Finally, we analyze the determinants of peer assessments and stress the crucial importance of equality concerns.     

Deprivation,welfare and inequality

We provide a characterization of the generalised satisfaction—in our terminology non-deprivation—quasi-ordering introduced by S.R. Chakravarty (Keio Econ Stud 34:17–32, (1997)) for making welfare comparisons. The non-deprivation quasi-ordering obeys a weaker version of the principle of transfers: welfare improves only for specific combinations of progressive transfers, which impose that the same amount be taken from richer individuals and allocated to one arbitrary poorer individual. We identify the extended Gini social welfare functions that are consistent with this principle and we show that the unanimity of value judgements among this class is identical to the ranking of distributions implied by the non-deprivation quasi-ordering. We extend the approach to the measurement of inequality by considering the corresponding relative and absolute ethical inequality indices. This is a shortened version of Magdalou and Moyes (2008), which contains the details of the proofs as well as an empirical illustration.     

My teammate,myself and I: Experimental evidence on equity and equality norms

We study team formation in real-effort experiments in which participants bargain over a jointly produced outcome. Participants decide between undertaking a task alone or with another participant by releasing the minimum share of the future team outcome that they are willing to accept. We find that the equality norm prevails in a context in which merit could play an important role. The inability of high-ability individuals to claim a large share of the joint profits makes the dissolution of inefficient teams difficult, and results in unprofitable cooperation.     

Inference for Income Distributions Using Grouped Data

We develop a general approach to estimation and inference for income distributions using grouped or aggregate data that are typically available in the form of population shares and class mean incomes, with unknown group bounds. We derive generic moment conditions and an optimal weight matrix that can be used for generalized method-of-moments (GMM) estimation of any parametric income distribution. Our derivation of the weight matrix and its inverse allows us to express the seemingly complex GMM objective function in a relatively simple form that facilitates estimation. We show that our proposed approach, which incorporates information on class means as well as population proportions, is more efficient than maximum likelihood estimation of the multinomial distribution, which uses only population proportions. In contrast to the earlier work of Chotikapanich, Griffiths, and Rao, and Chotikapanich, Griffiths, Rao, and Valencia, which did not specify a formal GMM framework, did not provide methodology for obtaining standard errors, and restricted the analysis to the beta-2 distribution, we provide standard errors for estimated parameters and relevant functions of them, such as inequality and poverty measures, and we provide methodology for all distributions. A test statistic for testing the adequacy of a distribution is proposed. Using eight countries/regions for the year 2005, we show how the methodology can be applied to estimate the parameters of the generalized beta distribution of the second kind (GB2), and its special-case distributions, the beta-2, Singh–Maddala, Dagum, generalized gamma, and lognormal distributions. We test the adequacy of each distribution and compare predicted and actual income shares, where the number of groups used for prediction can differ from the number used in estimation. Estimates and standard errors for inequality and poverty measures are provided. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Biodiversity,coastal protection and resource endowment: Policy options for improving ocean health

The paper develops a production function for the Global Ocean Health Index (OHI) for 2013. Data from the Ocean Health Statistics, plus from the Human Development Index (HDI) for 151 countries are used. We employ two-stage regression model to conduct this evaluation. The Tobit model, used to obtain the estimated dependent variable, results show Coastal Protection, Livelihoods and Economies, Tourism and Recreation, Iconic Species, Clean Water and Biodiversity, Food Provision, Artisanal Fisheries Opportunities, Natural Products, and Carbon Storage are significant variables. The rank regression in the second stage showed that HDI and Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) significantly influenced the predicted value of the OHI. Policy makers should note that biodiversity increases have the greatest effect on OHI, and its improvement is within reach of even the poorest country. Countries with varying levels of resource endowment may choose different techniques to improve OHI, but the implementation of MPAs should be priority.