Association,agreement, and equity

The paper attempts to make a clear distinction between three broad families of statistical indices: association, agreement, and what one may call equity. The need for this distinction arises in social research, for example, where reliability (accuracy, reproducibility, and stability) is assessed by measures of association rather than agreement. In this application, the assumptions built into an association measure conflict with the reality that gives rise to reliability data. A second motivation for this distinction is that association measures tend to express chance as the product of two potentially very different frequency distributions, agreement as the product of two identical distributions, and equity ignores such distributions altogether. A third motivation for this distinction is that the probability distribution of such measures does not depend on whether they are linear or non-linear, symmetrical or asymmetrical, or whether they express predictability or the extremality of a frequency distribution, but on their family membership. Notions of association, agreement, and equity have inherently nothing to do with the (nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio) ordering in data. The 2-by-2 case is therefore chosen as the basis of the proposed distinction. All statistical indices, whether they are designed to characterise multivariate data or to identify complex orderings, ought to be applicable to this most reduced case of two variables, making one distinction in each. To test a coefficient's membership in one of the three families, nothing more complex is needed.     

Using voice analysis for analyzing bargaining processes in industrial marketing

Marketing processes on capital goods markets are often characterized as bargaining processes. Bargaining behavior is influenced by cognitive as well as activating factors. This article is concerned with the development of a new concept to measure the activation component by using voice analysis as an activational indicator. Literature concerning voice analysis is reviewed and two experiments are reported to support the hypothesis that the voice pitch may be used as a valid activational indicator.     

Evaluating Pseudo-R2's for binary probit models

Many applied researchers of limited dependent variable models found it disadvantageous that a widely accepted Pseudo-R² does not exist for this type of estimation. The paper provides guidance for researchers in choosing a Pseudo-R² in the binary probit case. The starting point is that R² is best understood in the ordinary least squares (OLS) case with continuous data, which is chosen as the reference situation. It is considered which Pseudo-R² is best able to mimic the OLS-R². The results are surprisingly clear: a measure suggested by McKelvey-Zavoina performs the best under our criterion. However, in the more likely case of low Pseudo-R²'s, a normalization of a measure proposed by Aldrich-Nelson which we suggest is almost as good as the McKelvey-Zavoina, and is in general easier to calculate. We also show that if the underlying R² is predicted using cubic regressions given the Pseudo-R², all measures perform much better.     

Portfolio selection by Austrian insurance companies

Zusammenfassung Ausgehend von einem modifizierten Modell vonParkin (1970) wird versucht, das Anlageverhalten der österreichischen Vertragsversicherungen ökonometrisch zu erfassen. In diesem Modell wird das gewünschte Portefeuille abhängig von den erwarteten Ertragsraten der einzelnen Aktiva gemacht. Um diesen Ansatz auf Daten anwenden zu können, sind Annahmen über den Zusammenhang von tatsächlichem und gewünschtem Portefeuille sowie über die Erwartungsbildung notwendig. In dieser Arbeit wurden der Stockanpassungsmechanismus und der marginale Anpassungsmechanismus sowie unitäre und rationale Erwartungen näher untersucht.Die Anwendung dieser Modelle auf Daten der österreichischen Versicherungswirtschaft im Zeitraum 1973 bis 1982 zeigt, daß der marginale Anpassungsmechanismus besser geeignet ist, die Enge der heimischen Finanzmärkte wiederzugeben, und daß unitäre Erwartungen rationalen vorzuziehen sind. Im Gegensatz zu Wertpapieren und Forderungen, die zueinander Substitute sind, herrscht bei den Einlagen das Transaktionsmotiv vor, sodaß für diese Position das Portfoliomodell wenig geeignet erscheint. Es ist jedoch nicht auszuschließen, daß die Ergebnisse stark von institutionellen Gegebenheiten beeinflußt worden sind.

---

---

The author is indebted to G. Winckler for helpful discussions.     

The debt crisis and IMF policy

The discussions anticipating the annual joint meeting of the IMF and the World Bank in Berlin this autumn have again drawn the increased attention of a broader public to the debt problems of the developing countries. Alternative groups are planning to hold an anti-congress, in which especially the role of the IMF and the World Bank in this connection are to be subjected to a critical examination. The following article describe the basic points of criticism.     

SAVING AND INVESTMENT: PARADIGMS, PUZZLES, POLICIES

The 1990s have seen a renewed interest in issues of capitalaccumulation and growth. New paradigms for saving, investment,and growth have been advanced to address theoretical and empiricalpuzzles and to guide the design of better policies. This paperprovides a policy-oriented review of recent theoretical andempirical work on the determinants of saving and investmentand on their links to growth. It takes stock of new findingsas well as still unresolved questions and gives particular attentionto empirical regularities and to the policy issues relevantto developing countries.