The Welfare State as Safety Net in Migration Preferences: Empirical Evidence from an Experiment Among Dutch Master Students

Population Research and Policy Review - The welfare state can be perceived as a safety net which helps individuals adjust to situations of risk or transition. Starting from this idea of the welfare...     

Hill estimator of projections of functional data on principal components

Functional principal component scores are commonly used to reduce mathematically infinitely dimensional functional data to finite dimensional vectors. In certain applications, most notably in finance, these scores exhibit tail behaviour consistent with the assumption of regular variation. Knowledge of the index of the regular variation, α, is needed to apply methods of extreme value theory. The most commonly used method of the estimation of α is the Hill estimator. We derive conditions under which the Hill estimator computed from the sample scores is consistent for the tail index of the unobservable population scores.     

Two-stage Huber estimation

In this paper we propose a new robust estimator in the context of two-stage estimation methods directed towards the correction of endogeneity problems in linear models. Our estimator is a combination of Huber estimators for each of the two stages, with scale corrections implemented using preliminary median absolute deviation estimators. In this way we obtain a two-stage estimation procedure that is an interesting compromise between concerns of simplicity of calculation, robustness and efficiency. This method compares well with other possible estimators such as two-stage least-squares (2SLS) and two-stage least-absolute-deviations (2SLAD), asymptotically and in finite samples. It is notably interesting to deal with contamination affecting more heavily the distribution tails than a few outliers and not losing as much efficiency as other popular estimators in that case, e.g. under normality. An additional originality resides in the fact that we deal with random regressors and asymmetric errors, which is not often the case in the literature on robust estimators.     

Factor analysis for ranked data with application to a job selection attitude survey

Summary.  Factor analysis is a powerful tool to identify the common characteristics among a set of variables that are measured on a continuous scale. In the context of factor analysis for non-continuous-type data, most applications are restricted to item response data only. We extend the factor model to accommodate ranked data. The Monte Carlo expectation–maximization algorithm is used for parameter estimation at which the E-step is implemented via the Gibbs sampler. An analysis based on both complete and incomplete ranked data (e.g. rank the top q out of k items) is considered. Estimation of the factor scores is also discussed. The method proposed is applied to analyse a set of incomplete ranked data that were obtained from a survey that was carried out in GuangZhou, a major city in mainland China, to investigate the factors affecting people's attitude towards choosing jobs.     

The conflict over the use of information technology in South Korean schools

This article examines the heated debate over the National Educational Information System (NEIS) in South Korea. The NEIS has been introduced by the Ministry of Education. It collects information on every South Korean primary and secondary school in regional databases, including information regarding health records, religious backgrounds, military service, grades, attendance and other sensitive information relating to individual pupils and teachers. Using the cultural theory developed by Mary Douglas, Michael Thompson and Aaron Wildavsky, it is shown in which particular ways the rivals in this debate have been talking past, and misunderstood each other. On the basis of this cultural theory, a possible way out of this impasse is sketched.     

DIFFERENT AND SAME: FAMILY THERAPY WITH ASIAN-AMERICAN FAILIES

This paper is written for non-Asian family therapists who must deal with an increasing number of Asian-American client families. Unlike some writers in fthe field who advocate that client and therapist have the same ethnic background, the authors belive that cultural sensitivity can be learned. Several culturally important values are described, and suggestions on how to orient treatment to fit this client population are offered. A Detailed case example illustrates the treatment issues involued.     

Patterns of Family Support and the Quality of Life of the Elderly

Social Indicators Research - This study addresses the issue of the quality of life of the Korean elderly in the present day by looking at the relationship between the patterns of support exchange...     

Local polynomial estimation of Poisson intensities in the presence of reporting delays

Summary.  The system for monitoring suicides in Hong Kong has considerable delays in reporting as the cause of death needs to be determined by a coroner's investigation. However, timely estimates of suicide rates are desirable to assist in the formulation of public health policies. This motivated us to develop a non-parametric procedure to estimate the intensity function of a Poisson process in the presence of reporting delays. We give closed form estimators of the Poisson intensity and the delay distribution, conduct simulation studies to evaluate the method proposed and derive their asymptotic properties. The method proposed is applied to estimate the intensity of suicide in Hong Kong.     

A qualitative comparative analysis of strategies for an ageing society, with special reference to pension and employment policies

The primary purpose of this study is to typify the respondent strategies of the OECD countries based on the interconnected structure of income and employment guarantees. More specifically, this article seeks to typify welfare policies into four types (welfare-to-work, welfare emphasis, labour emphasis, market emphasis) based on the leniency of the pension system and active state intervention in employment security. With the resultant four types, this article then places them as the dependent variable while incorporating per capita GDP, aged dependency ratio, pension maturity level, union density, constitutional structure index and degree of decommodification as causal variables. Through this process, this article aims to derive the decisive variable for each type through qualitative comparative analysis.     

Nonresponse weighting adjustment using estimated response probability

To reduce nonresponse bias in sample surveys, a method of nonresponse weighting adjustment is often used which consists of multiplying the sampling weight of the respondent by the inverse of the estimated response probability. The authors examine the asymptotic properties of this estimator. They prove that it is generally more efficient than an estimator which uses the true response probability, provided that the parameters which govern this probability are estimated by maximum likelihood. The authors discuss variance estimation methods that account for the effect of using the estimated response probability; they compare their performances in a small simulation study. They also discuss extensions to the regression estimator.