PEER PRESSURE: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM RESTROOM BEHAVIOR

We provide experimental evidence on the effect of peer pressure on individual behavior. Specifically, we study the effect of being exposed to an observer in a public restroom on handwashing and urinal flushing behavior. Our estimates show that being exposed to an observer increases the probability of handwashing by 13 percentage points and the probability of urinal flushing by 15 percentage points. Given that handwashing and urinal flushing have social benefits that exceed individual benefits, our findings provide support for peer pressure as an additional way of addressing the social suboptimality arising from externalities. (JEL C91, C93)     

Developmental Outcomes of School Attachment Among Students of Mexican Origin

We used a longitudinal community study of 674 grade school children (Grades 5, 6, 7, and 8; 337 males, 337 females) of Mexican origin to examine outcomes of school attachment. Attachment to school is important in this population given the high level of school dropout rates of Mexican‐origin students. Results indicated that, on average, school attachment from fifth to sixth grade remains stable, but declines from sixth to eighth grade. Boys had lower levels of school attachment at fifth grade but followed similar patterns of change as girls did. Attachment to teachers, peer competence, school aspirations and expectations, and substance‐use cognitions emerged as longitudinal outcomes of level or changes in school attachment. Gender moderated associations of school attachment.     

Don't End Up in the Fields: Identity Construction among Mexican Adolescent Immigrants,their Parents,and Sociocontextual Processes

This grounded theory study of 16 Mexican immigrant adolescents and 20 of their parents examines how they construct relational identities within their families, at school, with friends, and in the larger society. Results focus on a core identity bind faced by the adolescents: immigration messages from parents that say, “don't be like me” and the societal message, “you're not like us.” Response to this bind was guided by two contrasting sets of identity narratives: Empowering narratives invited an intentional approach to school and life choices. Restricting narratives maintained an ambivalent approach to school and life choices. Resolution of the identity bind was a collective, ongoing process that has implications for Mexican immigrant families and the professionals who work with them.     

Ports modernization and its influence on trade unions

The restructuring of production resulting from the Port Modernization Law (Law 8.630/90) caused significant changes in work organization of Brazilian Ports. In the case of Mucuripe (Fortaleza, Ceará), in particular, the changes were very intense as Mucuripe is an old port that, before the Law, had labor regulation being governed by Trade Unions. This paper aims to present the perceptions of Union Representatives on the changes brought about by the Law on work organization in the port of Fortaleza, its influence in the organization and in the way the Unions deal with this new reality. Open and exploratory interviews were conducted with representatives of occasional labor workers registered in the Port of Fortaleza OGMO (Org?o Gestor de M?o de Obra, Labor Regulation Management). The analysis of the collected material in the interviews was based on the technique of content analysis proposed by Bardin (1979). Trade Unions have undergone a great loss of power and it has reflected in a relative inability to perform its function and to fight for the rights of the workers. The obvious Trade Unions weakness - a reduction of strikes and less unionized workers - reflects the dominating ideology of capital.     

On the asymptotic distribution of Cook's distance in logistic regression models

It sometimes occurs that one or more components of the data exert a disproportionate influence on the model estimation. We need a reliable tool for identifying such troublesome cases in order to decide either eliminate from the sample, when the data collect was badly realized, or otherwise take care on the use of the model because the results could be affected by such components. Since a measure for detecting influential cases in linear regression setting was proposed by Cook [Detection of influential observations in linear regression, Technometrics 19 (1977), pp. 15–18.], apart from the same measure for other models, several new measures have been suggested as single-case diagnostics. For most of them some cutoff values have been recommended (see [D.A. Belsley, E. Kuh, and R.E. Welsch, Regression Diagnostics: Identifying Influential Data and Sources of Collinearity, 2nd ed., John Wiley & Sons, New York, Chichester, Brisban, (2004).], for instance), however the lack of a quantile type cutoff for Cook's statistics has induced the analyst to deal only with index plots as worthy diagnostic tools. Focussed on logistic regression, the aim of this paper is to provide the asymptotic distribution of Cook's distance in order to look for a meaningful cutoff point for detecting influential and leverage observations.     

Robust Wald-type tests in GLM with random design based on minimum density power divergence estimators

Statistical Methods & Applications - We consider the problem of robust inference under the generalized linear model (GLM) with stochastic covariates. We derive the properties of the minimum...     

Shortcomings in the Measurement of Innovation: Implications for Accounting Standard Setting

Innovation is nowadays a fundamental determinant of value creation in business companies and economic growth. Therefore, the measurement of innovation has become a significant concern both for business companies and governments. Traditionally, attempts to measure innovation have adopted a macroeconomic approach, as they have been largely based on broad surveys. However, no attempt has been made to date in order to complement the information provided by such surveys with aggregated data obtained from the financial reports of individual companies. This paper analyses the conceptual and methodological problems underlying the measurement of business innovation by means of surveys and discusses the lack of ability of accounting standards to accurately reflect innovative activities in the financial statements of business firms.In the light of the evidence provided by the empirical studies published to date, we analyse the Spanish situation by reviewing innovation studies conducted by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), and assessing the relationship between the value relevance of accounting information and the firm's technological level. Our results suggest that both, micro- and macroeconomic approaches towards the measurement of innovation have significant shortcomings. Thus, a joint effort seems to be needed in order to overcome the methodological limitations affecting innovation studies based on surveys and those relying on financial accounting information. Despite their limitations, surveys provide a sound basis for the identification of trends, key factors and explanatory variables. On the other hand, financial statements could provide a sound basis for the measurement of innovation if they included more relevant information on the intangible determinants of the value of companies. This has obvious implications for the standard setting process.     

Lean-healthcare approach to reduce costs in a sterilization plant based on surgical tray rationalization

Abstract

Sterilization plants process all reusable materials used in hospitals during different stages of healthcare provision. Most items sterilized come from the surgical theater in the form of individual instruments, linen and surgical trays. Reducing the number of instruments in trays impacts on the performance of the sterilization process. Here, we propose a three-phase method, based on lean healthcare principles, cluster analysis and kaizen groups of experts to rationalize surgical trays, reducing sterilization processing costs. We innovate by proposing a strategy to approach tray rationalization prioritizing surgical specialties that are both complex and frequent, and by using group technology to cluster surgical trays expediting expert analyses carried out by kaizen groups. Our propositions were tested in a high complexity, tertiary care hospital, covering 12 surgical specialties, reducing the number of instruments by average 9.75%, and the time-to-assemble trays by average 9.68%, obtaining annual savings of US$285.756,00 in sterilization processing costs.     

Rényi statistics for testing equality of autocorrelation coefficients

The problem of testing for equality of autocorrelation coefficients of two populations in multivariate data when errors are autocorrelated is considered. We derive Rényi statistics defined as divergences between unrestricted and restricted estimated joint probability density functions and we show that they are asymptotically chi-square distributed under the null hypothesis of interest. Monte Carlo simulation experiments are carried out to investigate the behavior of Rényi statistics and to make comparisons with test statistics based on the approach of Bhandary [M. Bhandary, Test for equality of autocorrelation coefficients for two populations in multivariate data when the errors are autocorrelated, Statistics & Probability Letters 73 (2005) 333–342] for the problem under consideration. Rényi statistics showed to have significantly better behavior.