State‐led transnationalism and migration: reaching out to the Argentine community in Spain

Abstract This article focuses on when and how states develop transnational policies. It presents a case study of a relatively small emigrant community, whose departure was not simply caused by poverty or crisis, but most recently by an economic and political debacle that questioned people's values and expectations. I focus on the state side of the equation and identify a shift in Argentina's policy after 2003, though also show how such policies came out of a long history of state intervention in population and migration and are now related to human rights concerns and the unfinished process of democratic consolidation. I argue that the state initiates political transnationalism, not migrants, and highlight the importance of some relatively unexplored factors in the understanding of the motivation, intensity and impact of the state's involvement, such as the characteristics of the emigrant community, the existence of specific political projects, the role of some domestic actors and processes, and the nature of international agreements.     

Improving the Efficiency of the Nelson–Aalen Estimator: the Naive Local Constant Estimator

Abstract.  The Nelson–Aalen estimator is well known to be an asymptotically efficient estimator of the cumulative hazard function, see Andersen et al. ( Statistical models based on counting processes , Springer-Verlag, New York, 1993) among many others. In this paper, we show that the efficiency of the Nelson–Aalen estimator can be considerably improved by using more information in the estimation process than the traditional Nelson–Aalen estimator uses. While our approach results in a biased estimator, the variance improvement is substantial. By optimizing the balance between the bias loss and the variance improvement, we obtain results on the efficiency gain. Several examples for known failure time distributions are used to illustrate these ideas.     

The Effects of Truth: Re-Presentations of the Past and the Imagining of Community

Abstract Social memory is integral to the creation of social meaning; representations of the past are central to the symbolic constitution of social groups and social identities. This paper examines the production of effects of truth and power in both official and popular historical discourses in Mexico and demonstrates how representations of the past configure the imagining of community (social memory; official/popular historical discourses; nationalism: revolution; hegemony; Mexico).     

Robust Tests in Semiparametric Partly Linear Models

Abstract.  This paper focuses on the problem of testing the null hypothesis that the regression parameter equals a fixed value under a semiparametric partly linear regression model by using a three-step robust estimate for the regression parameter and the regression function. Two families of tests statistics are considered and their asymptotic distributions are studied under the null hypothesis and under contiguous alternatives. A Monte Carlo study is performed to compare the finite sample behaviour of the proposed tests with the classical one.     

Parameter Estimation in Pair-hidden Markov Models

Abstract.  This paper deals with parameter estimation in pair-hidden Markov models. We first provide a rigorous formalism for these models and discuss possible definitions of likelihoods. The model is biologically motivated and therefore naturally leads to restrictions on the parameter space. Existence of two different information divergence rates is established and a divergence property is shown under additional assumptions. This yields consistency for the parameter in parametrization schemes for which the divergence property holds. Simulations illustrate different cases which are not covered by our results.     

Testing Constancy for Isotonic Regressions

Abstract.  In this paper, we propose a bootstrap method for testing the constancy of an isotonic regression. The technique we develop is completely non-parametric and enlarges the appli-cability of the classical chi-bar-squared tests, which require normality assumptions. We prove that our procedure is asymptotically correct and consistent. Moreover, by means of simulations we show that it behaves suitably in practice, and similarly to the chi-bar-squared tests under normality. Finally, we illustrate the method with the study of a real case that is well known in the related literature.     

The 3×1 Programme and criminal violence in Mexico

Are levels of criminal violence lower where emigrants collaborate with the state authorities in the funding and provision of public goods and services? In this article, I examine the causal effect on violence levels in the municipalities participating in Mexico's Three‐for‐One (3×1) Programme for Migrants. Using municipal‐level data for the period between 2001 and 2010, the analysis shows that the implementation of this programme led to an increase in violence in the municipalities in question, and that this effect is driven by the ‘war on drugs’ initiated by the Mexican government in 2006. Because cartels splinter when kingpins are captured, they look for sources of revenue other than drug smuggling. The budgetary gains obtained via the 3×1 Programme inadvertently increased the returns of extortion and directed the attention of organized criminals to the participant municipalities. The evidence highlights some of the unintended effects that the leveraging of emigrants' money may have in home countries where governments make the so‐called ‘kingpin strategy’ a centrepiece of their security strategy.