Social Position and Behaviour: A Formalization

Modern society has witnessed anever-increasing development in the social sciences;partly due to changes in mentality, and partly due tothe growing requirements of the economic and political world – requirements which frequently takeon the guise of necessity, as for instance in thecases of market research and electoral opinion polls.Such development has produced an increasing paralleldemand for mathematical accuracy and exactitude inthese fields.The intention here is to rationalize the basic logicand methodology of the sociological procedure; anintention, it is hoped, which could be influential inimproving practical sociological work by rendering itmore comprehensible. This requires the employment offairly sophisticated mathematical and statisticalnotions.Section 1 outlines the definitions considered essential for the rationalization of the basiclogic framework previously described.Section 2 discusses the general concept of statisticalvariance. Section 3 introduces the notion of ``heterogeneity'and offers several propositions linked to this concept.Section 5 revolves around the notion of ``inaccuracy'.Section 6 presents a theorem relating to theimmersion of metric spaces in Banach spaces, andshows how the theorem can be used to constructtheoretically satisfactory immersion algorithms.Section 7 together with the material, which ispreviously introduced in Section 4, outlines thecluster analysis and the principal components methodologies.     

Adult Outcomes for Children of Teenage Mothers

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, this study examines the relationship between several outcomes in early adulthood (e.g. education, inactivity, earnings and health) and being born to a teenage mother. Besides standard cross‐sectional multivariate regression estimates, we also present evidence from non‐parametric estimates and from estimates that account for unmeasured family background heterogeneity by comparing siblings born to the same mother who timed their births at different ages. Regardless of the econometric technique, being born to a teenage mother is usually associated with worse outcomes. An important channel of transmission of this adverse effect is childhood family structure, which plays a more powerful role than childhood family poverty. Albeit smaller, some of the detrimental effects are also found for children of mothers who gave birth in their early 20s.     

Collaboration,motivation, and the size of organizations

We present an analytical model of an organization that offers operational drivers of limits on team size. The model trades off benefits from collaborative problem solving against the disadvantages of diminishing motivation when groups get large. Collaboration is represented as parallel employee activity combined with frequent sharing of partial information, with a resulting superlinear performance increase over team size. Motivation is modeled by team members periodically setting an effort level either to contribute to the best of their ability or to “cruise”; at the minimum level not recognizable as shirking. Each individual decision is limited by bounded rationality based on team rewards, the time horizon of team interaction, and individual expectations about colleagues’ behavior. The decision collapses to a simple “barrier rule”;. Work hard when a certain “barrier percentage”; of team members work hard, and otherwise shirk. The influence of team size on this barrier percentage depends on the extent of benefits from collaboration: As long as performance increases quadratically with team size, the increased benefits resulting from collaboration exactly balance the temptation to shirk, with the barrier percentage approaching a fixed limit for large team sizes. As soon as the performance increase slows to anything less than quadratic, shirking eventually sets in and limits the possible size of the team. This implies that cooperation is sustainable in large organizational units, provided the problem‐solving processes used are powerful enough to ensure sufficient performance increases. Thus, effective problem‐solving methods are of double value, improving direct productivity and mitigating the social dilemma from team production. A manager should enlarge his or her organization up to the minimum of the limit set by the cooperation barrier and the exogenous performance limit.     

Knowledge Synthesis and Innovative Logistics Processes: Enhancing Operational Flexibility and Performance

Research results are presented providing an empirical examination of the impact of knowledge synthesis and innovative logistics processes on operational flexibility. The research is theoretically grounded in the resource‐based view of the firm, augmented with the knowledge‐based view. Knowledge synthesis and innovative logistics processes are proposed as key resources in the development of an important logistics capability: operational flexibility. A structural model analysis of survey data collected from logistics executives supports the proposed relationships and indicates that innovative logistics processes can lead to greater operational flexibility. Operational flexibility is also shown to lead to higher levels of logistics performance.     

ARBITRAGE BOUNDS FOR PRICES OF WEIGHTED VARIANCE SWAPS

We develop a theory of robust pricing and hedging of a weighted variance swap given market prices for a finite number of co‐maturing put options. We assume the put option prices do not admit arbitrage and deduce no‐arbitrage bounds on the weighted variance swap along with super‐ and sub‐replicating strategies that enforce them. We find that market quotes for variance swaps are surprisingly close to the model‐free lower bounds we determine. We solve the problem by transforming it into an analogous question for a European option with a convex payoff. The lower bound becomes a problem in semi‐infinite linear programming which we solve in detail. The upper bound is explicit. We work in a model‐independent and probability‐free setup. In particular, we use and extend Föllmer's pathwise stochastic calculus. Appropriate notions of arbitrage and admissibility are introduced. This allows us to establish the usual hedging relation between the variance swap and the “log contract” and similar connections for weighted variance swaps. Our results take the form of a FTAP: we show that the absence of (weak) arbitrage is equivalent to the existence of a classical model which reproduces the observed prices via risk‐neutral expectations of discounted payoffs.     

FORECASTING VOLATILITY WITH THE MULTIFRACTAL RANDOM WALK MODEL

We study the problem of forecasting volatility for the multifractal random walk model. In order to avoid the ill‐posed problem of estimating the correlation length T of the model, we introduce a limiting object defined in a quotient space; formally, this object is an infinite range log volatility. For this object and the nonlimiting object, we obtain precise prediction formulas and we apply them to the problem of forecasting volatility and pricing options with the MRW model in the absence of a reliable estimate of σ and T.     

Memoryless Reigns of the “Sons of Heaven”

Human lifetimes have increasing failure rates; as people age (beyond early childhood) they are more likely to die. Viewing the succession of Chinese Emperors as a statistical ensemble we show that, unlike lifetimes, their reigns ceased at a constant rate for over two millennia, unaffected by elapsed time. In fact reign lengths of the “Sons of Heaven”, as the Chinese Emperors were known, followed a memoryless exponential distribution with a 10-year half-life. Becoming emperor not only influenced the duration of remaining life, but length of rule was independent of age at ascent. We propose an explanation for the observed exponentiality using asymptotic results from the theory of stationary stochastic processes.     

A discrete and a continuous-time model based on a technical trading rule

In this article we propose a model in discrete and continuoustime that incorporates explicitly a technical trading rule inthe specification of the volatility. The proposed discrete-timemodel is an alternative to GARCH-type processes. We derive conditionsfor the covariance and strict stationarity of the discrete-timeprocess and we study the estimation and inference problems.We also analyze the conditions under which the discrete-timeprocess converges in distribution to a diffusion process. Toillustrate the proposed model and compare it with the GARCHspecification, we analyze the daily closing stock prices oftwo major U.S. companies (Microsoft and Oracle), two stock indices(DAX and NASDAQ) and two U.S. Dollar exchange rates (Euro andSterling)     

SUCCESSIVE MEASUREMENT EXPERIMENTS

Abstract. We consider methods for the analysis of successive measurements, with emphasis on practical usefulness. It is described how the methods can be applied by using common techniques like regression analysis and analysis of variance.     

人口学领域的定量研究过程与方法

通过实例剖析,介绍了社会科学研究领域定量分析的研究过程和方法。科学研究是具有明确目的的、对事物之间关系严谨、缜密的探索;它具有整体性,通过系统的程序和过程,在理论的指导下进行。科学研究必须有好的研究问题、理论设计、可以信赖的数据、正确的模型和分析方法、客观的分析结果展示。掌握正确的研究过程和方法将会产生高质量的研究成果。