A model for identifying and ranking dangerous accident locations: a case study in Flanders

These days, road safety has become a major concern in most modern societies. In this respect, the determination of road locations that are more dangerous than others (black spots or also called sites with promise) can help in better scheduling road safety policies. The present paper proposes a multivariate model to identify and rank sites according to their total expected cost to the society. Bayesian estimation of the model via a Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach is discussed in this paper. To illustrate the proposed model, accident data from 23,184 accident locations in Flanders (Belgium) are used and a cost function proposed by the European Transport Safety Council is adopted to illustrate the model. It is shown in the paper that the model produces insightful results that can help policy makers in prioritizing road infrastructure investments.     

What determines the size of the HR function? A cross‐national analysis

What determines the resources allocated to an HR department? The antecedents of the size of HR departments within firms and the relationship between HR department size and the role that HR departments perform are issues of theoretical and practical importance. Using large‐scale survey data from organizations in Europe and Japan, this article explores the influence of nationality, size, and sector on the comparative ratio of HR specialists in organizations, and on the likely scope and brief of such departments. It also examines the internal organizational characteristics associated with HR department size. In contrast to previous literature on administrative components, we demonstrate that the human resources staff component is affected not only by organizational size but also by sector and national location. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The Single Market and Geographic Concentration in Europe

The stylized fact that regional concentration is lower in Europe than in the USA has led to the prediction that the creation of the Single Market might increase spatial concentration in Europe. This has raised some fears that the social and political burden of rapid change might counterbalance the economic gains, that the core might win to the detriment of the periphery, and that concentration of industry might make countries more vulnerable to asymmetric shocks in the Monetary Union. This paper uses a new disaggregated dataset to substantiate whether spatial concentration increased during the 1990s. Most other studies have not extended beyond the early 1990s or have used less comprehensive and detailed datasets. The main result is that geographic concentration did not increase, but rather decreased during the 1990s. Industrial patterns of geographic concentration and its dynamics partly conformed to the hypotheses provided by economic geography, trade theory, and industrial organization.     

Some New Evidence on the Determinants of Large- and Small-Firm Innovation

Empirical analyses presented by Acs and Audretsch suggest differences in the market structure determinants of innovation between large and small firms in U.S. manufacturing. The evidence they offer is ambiguous. By using data for a different country (The Netherlands), a different measure of innovation and a different aggregation level, we offer new evidence, allowing a revaluation of the findings for the U.S. material. Moreover, the influence of the market structure determinants does not appear to differ between a period of sluggish growth (1983) and one of relatively high growth (1989).     

Meaning Shift of Items in Different Language Versions. A Cross-National Validation Study of the Illegal Aliens Scale

The 20-item Illegal Aliens Scale, which was developed and validated by Ommundsenand Larsen at Oregon State University (1999), has been translated into Norwegian andDutch. Cross-national comparisons of attitudes require equivalence of measurementinstruments (Rogler, 1999). The results of a translation – back translation procedure anda split sample study by (Ommundsen et al., in print) suggest that linguistic equivalencemay not be sufficient to detect other non-equivalence of meaning in cross-national research.This paper discusses a follow-up methodological study of the Dutch and Norwegianversions of this scale. This study consisted of two parts: (a) A `cognitive' test by meansof the three-step test-interviews (Hak et al., 2001) with Dutch and Norwegiansubjects. (b) A comparative study of differences in political salience of the itemsof the scale between Norway and the Netherlands. Results show that differences inhistorical, political and cultural context result in different interpretations of seeminglystraightforward concepts and that this affects how responses to attitude items are constructed.     

The demand for deductibles in private health insurance: A probit model with sample selection

In this paper we analyse the decision to prefer a health insurance with a deductible to one with complete coverage. We focus on health, medical consumption, and on socio-economic characteristics like age, income, education and family size. The analysis is based on a sample of 8000 privately insured families; about 60 percent of them did not wish to have a health insurance policy with a deductible. A corrective method for sample selectivity, analogous to Heckman's (1979) method, has been applied in probit analysis; the estimation results are compared with the maximum-likelihood estimates. Health, medical consumption and income are found to have a significant influence on the decision with respect to the type of insurance. Our results give an indication of the degree of adverse selection that may take place if health insurance policies are offered with the option to take a deductible in exchange of a premium reduction.