An experimnetal look at seasonal adjustment

Summary This paper offers an empirical appraisal of nine seasonal adjustment methods on the basis of seven criteria (percentage change, orthogonality, idempotency, two tests on residuals, stability, estimation accuracy of known seasonals).The results hardly favour any method explicitly but suggest that the user has to think about the purposes in his mind. Our tests offer the ingredients for an appropriate decision framework.If e.g. predictive power, i.e. stability, along with absence of residual seasonal and trend-cycle movement is wanted, the X-11 method of the Bureau of the Census and the Burman procedure of the Bank of England should be preferred.This paper has been presented at the meeting of the Econometric Society, Oslo, August 1973. We are indebted to Mr. N. J. A. van der Hoeven for his excellent research assistance. We gratefully acknowledge the help obtained the Dutch Central Planning Bureau, and Mr. M. Mesnage of the Statistical Office of the EEC in running our series. Dr. Burman was also kind enough to comment on an earlier draft of this paper presented to the OECD group of financial statisticians held in Paris, October 1972. Of course, the responsibility for the results is solely ours.     

The Enclave,The Citadel and the Ghetto: The Threefold Segregation of Upper‐Class Muslims in India

The urban sociology literature has identified three types of segregated spaces: the ghetto, the enclave and the citadel. While the ghetto stems from a high constraint, the enclave accounts for a more intentional form of segregation and the citadel refers to a deliberate attempt to exclude undesirable populations. While these three figures are often contrasted in the American literature, this article focuses on a specific type of neighbourhood that combines all of these: the upper‐class minority neighbourhood. By introducing the main results of an interview study I conducted in the Indian city of Aligarh, I show that Muslim upper‐class residential choices are informed by contradictory feelings: while the threat of Hindu–Muslim riots forces them to segregate in homogenous neighbourhoods (the ghetto), their segregation also stems from a genuine desire to live in an Islamic environment (the enclave). Finally, the Muslim upper classes also indulge in a sharp process of socio‐spatial differentiation from their poorer coreligionists (the citadel). These processes of compelled segregation, self‐aggregation and social distancing lead to an enduring spatial concentration along religious and class lines. The simultaneity of these three logics indicates that the categories of the ghetto, the enclave and the citadel, framed in reference to the American context, can be applied to the Indian city of Aligarh if understood as dynamic processes rather than static spatial units. Such a reformulation allows theory to travel across the North–South divide in a more productive way.     

Impact of assertive and defensive impression management tactics on recruiter evaluation: The case of post-failure entrepreneurs in employment interviews

This study investigates how human-resource professionals examine, during a job interview, the application of post-bankruptcy entrepreneurs seeking to rebound as salaried workers. We assume that the way candidates talk about their failure (impression management tactics—IM) impacts the assessment of the recruiter. Thanks to an experimental methodology we compare the impact of three distinct IM tactics on the assessment of the hiring manager (a defensive IM tactic based on excuses, a defensive IM tactic based on justification, and an assertive IM tactic). We demonstrate that recruiters are more inclined to recruit the post-bankruptcy entrepreneur if the candidate has been able to turn the ordeal into an element of self-valorization.     

A polymorphism associated with entrepreneurship: evidence from dopamine receptor candidate genes

The tendency to be an entrepreneur may be influenced by genetic variation. Sensation seeking is more common among entrepreneurs than among the general population. Twin studies show that the tendency to be an entrepreneur is heritable and that common genes influence both sensation seeking and entrepreneurial tendency (Nicolaou et al. Manag Sci 54:167–179, 2008a; Strateg Entrep J 2:7–21, 2008b). Since dopamine receptor genes have been associated with novelty seeking/sensation seeking (Benjamin et al. Nat Genet 12:81–84, 1996; Ebstein et al. Nat Genet 12:78–80, 1996; Noblett and Coccaro Curr Psychiatry Rep 7:73–80, 2005), and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been reported to occur at greater rates among entrepreneurs, we examined the association between five dopamine receptor genes and four ADHD-associated genes, with the tendency to be an entrepreneur in a sample of 1,335 individuals from the UK. We found a single nucleotide polymorphism (rs1486011) of the DRD3 gene on chromosome 3 to be significantly associated with the tendency to be an entrepreneur. This result is the first evidence of the association of a specific gene with entrepreneurship. Further studies are needed to replicate this association.     

Identity Talk of Aspirational Ethical Leaders

This study investigates how business leaders dynamically narrate their aspirational ethical leadership identities. In doing so, it furthers understanding of ethical leadership as a process situated in time and place. The analysis focuses on the discursive strategies used to narrate identity and ethics by ethnic Chinese business leaders in Indonesia after their conversion to Pentecostal–charismatic Christianity. By exploring the use of metaphor, our study shows how these business leaders discursively deconstruct their ‘old’ identities and construct their ‘new’ aspirational identities as ethical leaders. This leads to the following contributions. First, we show that ethical leadership is constructed in identity talk as the business leaders actively narrate aspirational identities. Second, the identity narratives of the business leaders suggest that ethical leadership is a context-bound and situated claim vis-à-vis unethical practice. Third, we propose a conceptual template, identifying processes of realisation and inspiration followed by significant shifts in understanding, for the study of aspirational ethical leadership.     

Confidence intervals for maximal reliability in tau‐equivalent models

Subjective probabilities play an important role in marketing research, for example where individuals rate the likelihood that they will purchase a new developed product. The tau‐equivalent model can describe the joint behaviour of multiple test items measuring the same subjective probability. In this paper we stress the use of confidence intervals to assess reliability, as this allows for a more critical assessment of the items as measurement instruments. To improve the reliability one can use a weighted sum as the outcome of the test rather than an unweighted sum. In principle, the weights may be chosen so as to obtain maximal reliability. We propose two new confidence intervals for the maximal reliability in the tau‐equivalent model and we compare these two new intervals with intervals derived earlier in Yuan and Bentler (Psychometrika, 67 , 2002, 251) and Raykov and Penev (Multivariate Behavioral Research, 41 , 2006, 15). The comparison involves coverage curves, a methodology that is new in the field of reliability. The existing Yuan–Bentler and Raykov–Penev intervals are shown to overestimate the maximal reliability, whereas one of our proposed intervals, the stable interval, performs very well. This stable interval hardly shows any bias, and has a coverage for the true value which is approximately equal to the confidence level.