A Theory of Mutable and Immutable Characteristics: Their Impact on Allocation and Structural Positions

This article presents the global-mutable-immutable scheme. Globals are purely macro properties of societies, while immutables are purely micro properties of individuals. Mutables are the micro-macro bridging elements, having both an aggregated macro (distributional) form, as well as a micro form. The importance of this distinction for the analysis of norm, status and role is shown. The article concludes by showing how the configuration of globals, mutables and immutables affect the allocation of an individual into the five-dimensional mutable structure of his or her society at a given point in time.     

The asymmetry of judgemental confidence intervals in time series forecasting

In forecasting a time series, one may be asked to communicate the likely distribution of the future actual value, often expressed as a confidence interval. Whilst the accuracy (calibration) of these intervals has dominated most studies to date, this paper is concerned with other possible characteristics of the intervals. It reports a study in which the prevalence and determinants of the symmetry of judgemental confidence intervals in time series forecasting was examined. Most prior work has assumed that this interval is symmetrically placed around the forecast. However, this study shows that people generally estimate asymmetric confidence intervals where the forecast is not the midpoint of the estimated interval. Many of these intervals are grossly asymmetric. Results indicate that the placement of the forecast in relation to the last actual value of a time series is a major determinant of the direction and size of the asymmetry.     

A Brief Survey of Modern Optimization for Statisticians

Modern computational statistics is turning more and more to high‐dimensional optimization to handle the deluge of big data. Once a model is formulated, its parameters can be estimated by optimization. Because model parsimony is important, models routinely include non‐differentiable penalty terms such as the lasso. This sober reality complicates minimization and maximization. Our broad survey stresses a few important principles in algorithm design. Rather than view these principles in isolation, it is more productive to mix and match them. A few well‐chosen examples illustrate this point. Algorithm derivation is also emphasized, and theory is downplayed, particularly the abstractions of the convex calculus. Thus, our survey should be useful and accessible to a broad audience.     

Life-cycle patterns in male/female differences in job search

We investigate whether women search longer for a job than men and whether these differences change over the life cycle. Our empirical analysis exploits German register data on highly attached displaced workers. We apply duration models to analyze gender differences in job search taking into account observed and unobserved worker heterogeneity and censoring. Simple survival functions show that displaced women take longer to find a new job than comparable men. Disaggregation by age groups reveals that these differences are driven by differential behavior of women in their prime-childbearing years. There is no significant difference in job search duration among the very young and older workers. These differential outcomes remain even after we control for differences in human capital and when unobserved heterogeneity is incorporated into the model.     

Evaluating Projects and Assessing Sustainable Development in Imperfect Economies

We are interested in three related questions:(1) How should accounting prices be estimated?(2) How should we evaluate policy change in animperfect economy? (3) How can we check whetherintergenerational well-being will be sustainedalong a projected economic programme? We do notpresume that the economy is convex, nor do weassume that the government optimizes on behalfof its citizens. We show that the same set ofaccounting prices should be used both forpolicy evaluation and for assessing whether ornot intergenerational welfare along a giveneconomic path will be sustained. We also showthat a comprehensive measure of wealth,computed in terms of the accounting prices, canbe used as an index for problems (2) and (3)above. The remainder of the paper is concernedwith rules for estimating the accounting pricesof several specific environmental naturalresources, transacted in a few well knowneconomic institutions.     

Price Competition and Advertising Signals: Signaling by Competing Senders

Can price and advertising be used by vertically differentiated duopolists to signal qualities to consumers? We show that pure price separation is impossible if the vertical differentiation is small, while adding dissipative advertising ensures the existence of separating equilibria. Two simple, but nonstandard, equilibrium refinements are introduced to deal with the multisender nature of the game, and they are shown to produce a unique separating and a unique pooling profile. Pooling results in a zero‐profit Bertrand outcome. Separation gives strictly positive duopoly profits, and dissipative advertising is used by the high‐quality firm when products are sufficiently close substitutes. Finally, compared to the complete‐information benchmark, the separating prices of both firms are distorted upwards when the degree of vertical differentiation is large, and downwards when it is small.