The education pillar of the Europe 2020 strategy: a convergence analysis

Empirica - In March 2010, the European Commission launched the Europe 2020 strategy ‘for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth’ in the EU. Education is a major pillar of the Europe...     

Modularization of hybrid censoring schemes and its application to unified progressive hybrid censoring

In this paper, a structural analysis of hybrid censoring models is presented. This new modularization approach to hybrid censoring models enables a convenient derivation of distributional results. For instance, it allows to derive the exact distribution of the MLEs under an exponential assumption for very complex hybrid scenarios. In order to illustrate the benefit of this idea, we apply it to four new unified progressive hybrid censoring schemes. They are extensions of already proposed unified Type-I/II/III/IV hybrid censoring schemes to progressively Type-II censored data. The resulting analysis shows that the modularization approach provides a powerful, efficient, and elegant tool to study even more complex hybrid censoring models.     

Use of Derivatives and Analysts’ Forecasts: New Evidence from Non‐financial Brazilian Companies

This study investigates whether market analysts’ forecasts are influenced by the presence of derivative financial instruments in listed firms. From a sample of firms comprising 1173 derivative users and 7797 non‐users for the 2006–14 period, the results indicate the existence of less error behaviour (bias) on earnings per share forecasts for derivative user firms compared to non‐user firms. This finding suggests that these instruments may be used to protect businesses and provide greater stability in the results of companies that use them. The presence of derivative financial instruments is increasing among listed firms, and management can use them for hedging or speculation (thus mitigating or increasing risk). The literature contains few studies on this issue, and the general understanding relies on the assumption that derivative financial instruments provide relevant information for decision making.     

Unfolding Patterns of Unpaid Household Work in Latin America

Although Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay show similar empirical patterns in terms of time women devote to unpaid work, they also present important variations in how unpaid work is distributed between men and women. Using time-use surveys for the 2007–10 period, this study finds a uniform pattern across the four countries regarding the main individual-level variables related to the allocation of unpaid work. When decomposing the gender gap in hours devoted to unpaid work, most of the difference cannot be attributed to variations in observable characteristics of men and women: the unexplained part of the gap is the dominant part. Results suggest that both the strength of traditional gender roles and existing welfare architecture are relevant factors in understanding variations in how unpaid work is distributed between men and women in these four countries. The results reaffirm that powerful interventions are needed to shift gender norms about unpaid work.     

Characterization of the Row Geometric Mean Ranking with a Group Consensus Axiom

An axiomatic approach is applied to the problem of extracting a ranking of the alternatives from a pairwise comparison ratio matrix. The ordering induced by row geometric mean method is proved to be uniquely determined by three independent axioms, anonymity (independence of the labelling of alternatives), responsiveness (a kind of monotonicity property) and aggregation invariance, which requires the preservation of group consensus, that is, the pairwise ranking between two alternatives should remain unchanged if unanimous individual preferences are combined by geometric mean.     

Inflation,real economic growth and unemployment expectations: an empirical analysis based on the ECB survey of professional forecasters

Expectations are at the centre of modern macroeconomic theory and policymakers. In this article, we examine the predictive ability and the consistency properties of macroeconomic expectations using data of the European Central Bank (ECB) Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF). In particular, we provide evidence on the properties of forecasts for three key macroeconomic variables: the inflation rate, the growth rate of real gross domestic product and the unemployment rate.     

Stock market volatility forecasting: Do we need high-frequency data?

The general consensus in the volatility forecasting literature is that high-frequency volatility models outperform low-frequency volatility models. However, such a conclusion is reached when low-frequency volatility models are estimated from daily returns. Instead, we study this question considering daily, low-frequency volatility estimators based on open, high, low, and close daily prices. Our data sample consists of 18 stock market indices. We find that high-frequency volatility models tend to outperform low-frequency volatility models only for short-term forecasts. As the forecast horizon increases (up to one month), the difference in forecast accuracy becomes statistically indistinguishable for most market indices. To evaluate the practical implications of our results, we study a simple asset allocation problem. The results reveal that asset allocation based on high-frequency volatility model forecasts does not outperform asset allocation based on low-frequency volatility model forecasts.     

Towards an operations strategy model of servitization: the role of sustainability pressure

Servitization requires an important strategic shift to drive changes in the operations of manufacturing firms. Using a large-scale survey, the purpose of this paper is (1) to build and validate an operations strategy model of servitization confirming previous case study findings on servitization as a strategic action and (2) to explore the role of sustainability pressures in, and the sustainability performance effects of, pursuing service-based operations strategies. To reach these objectives, a dataset including the responses of 735 manufacturing plants from 21 different countries is analyzed using the PLS-SEM method. The results indicate that the sustainability pressures of stakeholders can push manufacturers to adopt a service-based operations strategy, materializing in the provision of both basic (product-oriented) and advanced (customer-oriented) services (BAS and ADS). Our analysis further indicates that while offering BAS is a precondition for ADS provision, only ADS can offer a competitive edge for manufacturers, both in terms of service and sustainability-related operational performance.