Empirical Analysis

The growing incidence of withdrawal of Muslim girls from physical education prompted this study into tensions between religious freedom and educational practices. It was located in a city in the West Midlands of England. Data on experiences, issues, concerns and solutions related to participation of Muslim girls in physical education were collected by a team of eight researchers including Islamic studies and physical education subject specialists, city advisors and teachers. Methods used were: eight in-depth case studies across primary, secondary and Muslim state schools including interviews with 19 head teachers and teachers (two were Muslim), focus-group interviews with 109 pupils and 32 parents. In addition, four focus-group interviews were held with 36 young people in community/supplementary schools for Muslim communities. All city schools (402) and 12 community providers received questionnaires, 50 were returned. Consultations were held with key national associations including the Muslim Council of Britain and the National Subject Association for Physical Education. Empirical analysis is reported elsewhere. During the experience of conducting the study four problem areas emerged that required attention to effectively address tensions between religious freedom and educational practices in physical education: bridging the gap between research and educational practice; the concept of embodied faith; the significance of context*physical education and religion in England; and finally widening researchers' frames of reference to include intersectionality and interdisciplinary approaches. The discussion exposes the complexity of pursuing social justice in a democratic society that embraces people of multiple ethnicities and religions. The paper concludes by exploring ways in which theoretical constructs increase understanding and can influence policy and practice.

We compared the effectiveness of two extinction interventions, extinction by omission and noncontingent delivery of reinforcement, to treat aggressive behavior with a 10-year-old boy. Before the intervention, a functional analysis revealed that aggression was maintained by positive reinforcement in the form of attention. The extinction by omission intervention consisted of ignoring aggressive behavior. Noncontingent reinforcement involved delivering attention to the boy on a fixed-time schedule. Both treatments were compared using a multielement research design. Noncontingent reinforcement produced a more rapid elimination of aggression. Additionally, the schedule of noncontingent reinforcement was gradually thinned during the intervention. Finally, both parents successfully implemented the noncontingent schedule of reinforcement independently for up to 5 weeks after treatment.

This article uses the concept of institutional thickness to describe key features of the local governance of economic development. For this purpose, a methodology for the empirical assessment of institutional thickness is developed and applied to the case of Birmingham, England. The results from this empirical analysis are threefold. First, they make it possible to draw some conclusions on the role that local governments can play to promote local economic development. Second, they suggest that institutional thickness is a useful organizing concept for analyses of the local governance of economic development. Finally, they demonstrate the value of a verifiable and replicable methodology for the detection and measurement of local institutional conditions and of governance arrangements.

Rising costs, falling ore grades and a stagnant gold price are steadily eroding the economic viability of gold mining in South Africa. This paper explores the major economic dynamics behind the profit squeeze. The empirical analysis highlights the negative effect of the low gold prices-a development which more than drowned out the positive impact of increased labor productivity. Attention is also paid to the hemorraging of labor from the industry as well as to recent profit-sharing agreements with the National Union of Mineworkers. The paper concludes by arguing that world goal market conditions are not conducive to any sustained gold price increase in the near future. * I would like to thank Courtney Jung and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft. The research was funded by the International Development Research Center (IDRC) Canada, and by the University of Cape Town. Final revision accepted

For decades the Vogel-Fulcher-Tammann equation has dominated the description of dynamics of the non-Arrhenius behavior in glass forming systems. Recently, this dominance has been questioned. Hecksher et al. [Nat. Phys. 4, 737 (2008)], Elmatad et al. [J. Phys. Chem. B 113, 5563 (2009)], and Mauro et al. [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A . 106, 19780 (2009)] indicated superiority of several equations showing no divergence at a finite (nonzero) temperature. This paper shows distortionsensitive and derivative based empirical analysis of the validity of leading equations for portraying the previtreous evolution of primary relaxation time.

This study uses a firm-level panel data set from Romania to examine whether the nationality of foreign investors affects the degree of vertical spillovers from FDI. Investors' country of origin may matter for spillovers to domestic producers in upstream sectors (supplying intermediate inputs) in two ways. First, the share of intermediate inputs sourced by multinationals from a host country is likely to increase with the distance between the host and the source economy. Second, the sourcing pattern is likely to be affected by preferential trade agreements that cover some but not other source economies. In our case, the Association Agreements signed between Romania and the EU implies that inputs sourced from the EU are subject to a lower tariff than inputs sourced from the US or Asia. Moreover, while for European investors intermediate inputs sourced from home country suppliers comply with the rules of origin and thus can be exported to the EU on preferential terms, this would not be the case for home country suppliers of American or Asian multinationals. Therefore, we would expect that American and Asian investors source more from Romania than EU investors and thus present greater potential for vertical spillovers. The empirical analysis produces evidence in support of our hypothesis. We find a positive association between presence of American and Asian companies in downstream sectors and the productivity of Romanian firms in the supplying industries. Further, the productivity of Romanian firms in the supplying sectors is negatively correlated with operations of European investors in downstream sectors. The differences between the effects associated with investors of different origin are statistically significant.

Much has been said about the institutional determinants of transitional justice (TJ). Yet, we still have little knowledge about the determinants of citizens' attitudes towards restorative policies aimed at addressing human rights violations of the past. This paper draws on an original survey of a representative sample of Spanish citizens in 2008. One year previously, the Spanish socialist government had approved the so-called "Law of Historical Memory" that aimed at restitution for the victims of the Spanish Civil War (1936)(1937)(1938)(1939) and the Francoist dictatorship . We analyze individual-level attitudes towards a set of TJ policies, (i.e. truth commissions, trials, and symbolic reparations) in a comprehensive overview of the field. We study the effect of different sets of variables: individual sociodemographic and ideological factors, family and socialization variables, and context-related factors. Both ideology and family victimization during the dictatorship are highly relevant in explaining individual attitudes towards TJ policies.

textabstractAbstract: Discussions on the role of markets in healthcare easily lead to political and unfruitful polarized positions. Actors arguing in favour of markets as a solution for the quality/cost conundrum entrench themselves against others pointing out the risk of markets for the delivery and governance of healthcare. These binary options of more or less marketization preclude a more empirical analysis of how markets, as multiple arrangements, are constructed and what their consequences are for public values like affordability and quality. To empirically explore the relation between markets and public values in healthcare, in this paper we analyze the construction of a market for hospital care in the Netherlands, based on a system of diagnoserelated groups (DBCs), and the development of a market for long term care based on care-load packages (ZZPs). In these cases we address the intended result of care markets according to various policy actors, the visible and invisible wor...

In the paper we address the problem of estimating the effort required to develop dynamic web applications. In particular, we provide an adaptation of the Cosmic Full Function Point method to be applied on design documents for counting data movements. We also describe the empirical analysis carried out to verify the usefulness of the method for predicting web application development effort.

In the last decade the strategic role of operations has increased, which led to fast improvements in management and methodology. In parallel, two basic principles have been strengthened. One of the principles is the idea to concentrate on processes instead of organizational function based task orientation. The other principle is the extension of coordination and integration of value creating processes. Changes did not stop at the border of companies, the nature of inter-company relations has also changed according to the principles above. On the basis of these dimensions of supply chain management we hypothesized that companies go through three development stages: 1) transaction dominated companies, 2) internally integrated companies, 3) externally integrated companies. We assumed that these models are the results of historical development with increasing performance levels. We tested the hypotheses by IMSS data. The empirical analysis confirmed the existence of three very different...

Under perfect competition and constant returns to scale, firms producing homogeneous products set their prices at their marginal costs which also equal their average costs. However, the departure from these standard assumptions has important implications with respects to the derived theoretical results and the validity of the related empirical analysis. In particular, monopolistic firms will charge a markup over their marginal costs. We show that firms' markups tend to be directly associated with the employed production technology, more specifically with their returns to scale. Accordingly, we analyze the implications for the markup ratios from the incidence of non-constant returns to scale. We present quantitative results illustrating the effect of the returns to scale index on the firms' price markups, as well as the relationship between the two indicators, on the basis of firm-level data for Bulgarian and Hungarian manufacturing firms. JEL classification numbers: C23, D21, D24

This paper explores the return volatility predictability inherent in high-frequency speculative returns. Our analysis focuses on a refinement of the more traditional volatility measures, the integrated Õolatility, which links the notion of volatility more directly to the return variance over the relevant horizon. In our empirical analysis of the foreign exchange market the integrated volatility is conveniently approximated by a cumulative sum of the squared intraday returns. Forecast horizons ranging from short intraday to 1-month intervals are investigated. We document that standard volatility models generally provide good forecasts of this economically relevant volatility measure. Moreover, the use of highfrequency returns significantly improves the longer run interdaily volatility forecasts, both in theory and practice. The results are thus directly relevant for general research methodology as well as industry applications. q 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: C15; C22; G15

ABSTRACT An increasing interest in dynamic activity scheduling could be witnessed in travel behavior research over the past years. This research analyzes the factors influencing the actual activity scheduling process, using detailed activity-travel data from an extensive dataset that was collected in Flanders (Belgium). A first model examines the attributes that influence activity planning; a second model analyzes the factors that affect activity rescheduling. The explanatory variables considered in both models are individual, household, activity and schedule attributes and their impact is analyzed using mixed logit models. Random effects are added to the models to test for within-individual variance.

Our aim is to test if the leverage and the debt maturity of Chilean firms quoted in the stock market are related with their growth opportunities, their ownership structure and the environment in which they operate. We perform an empirical analysis over an unbalanced panel of 169 Chilean firms for the period 1990-2001. Chilean firms growth opportunities are financed with long term debt. However, when firms need external funds they finance their growth opportunities with short term debt. The high ownership concentration, characteristic of Chilean firms, along with the presence of growth opportunities favours debt financing. The largest firms and the more needed of external financing prefer longer maturities for their debt. Finally, our results indicate that the presence of internal capital markets within a group influences firms financing decisions, particularly in those firms within the group with financing deficit. Pecking order theory offers partial explanations of Chilean firms financing decisions.

This study empirically investigates the performance of Australian hedge funds by extending and modifying . Analysis of hedge funds performance. Journal of Empirical Finance 11, 55-89]. model. This model performs better in explaining Australian hedge fund returns than the traditional Fama and French three-factor model. The results show that Australian hedge fund returns have low correlation with market indexes and also outperform standard market index returns. We also observe that Australian hedge fund returns are positively related to incentive fees and negatively related to management fees. Further, managers do not have any significant market timing skill and market conditions do not significantly influence hedge fund performance.

This paper examines herding behavior in global markets. By applying daily data for 18 countries from May 25, 1988, through April 24, 2009, we find evidence of herding in advanced stock markets (except the US) and in Asian markets. No evidence of herding is found in Latin American markets. Evidence suggests that stock return dispersions in the US play a significant role in explaining the non-US market's herding activity. With the exceptions of the US and Latin American markets, herding is present in both up and down markets, although herding asymmetry is more profound in Asian markets during rising markets. Evidence suggests that crisis triggers herding activity in the crisis country of origin and then produces a contagion effect, which spreads the crisis to neighboring countries. During crisis periods, we find supportive evidence for herding formation in the US and Latin American markets.

From time to time, economies undergo far-reaching structural changes. In this paper we investigate the consequences of structural breaks in the factor loadings for the specification and estimation of factor models based on principal components and suggest test procedures for structural breaks. It is shown that structural breaks severely inflate the number of factors identified by the usual information criteria. Based on the strict factor model the hypothesis of a structural break is tested by using Likelihood-Ratio, Lagrange-Multiplier and Wald statistics. The LM test which is shown to perform best in our Monte Carlo simulations, is generalized to factor models where the common factors and idiosyncratic components are serially correlated. We also apply the suggested test procedure to a US dataset used in Stock and Watson (2005) and a euro-area dataset described in Altissimo et al. (2007). We find evidence that the beginning of the so-called Great Moderation in the US as well as the Maastricht treaty and the handover of monetary policy from the European national central banks to the ECB coincide with structural breaks in the factor loadings. Ignoring these breaks may yield misleading results if the empirical analysis focuses on the interpretation of common factors or on the transmission of common shocks to the variables of interest.

Using data from 137 completed new product design (NPD) projects, we examine the direct and indirect effects on new product design quality of technological novelty, project organization complexity, and design-manufacturing integration (DMI). We use structural equation modeling to test the potential of DMI as a mediator of the effects of project organization complexity and technology novelty on product design quality. The results suggest that DMI is a strong driver of design quality, whereas technology novelty and project organization complexity serve to improve design quality only indirectly, in so much as they are associated with greater DMI. These findings extend prior research by establishing the importance of DMI at the NPD project level, suggesting that it is an effective means for coping with technological uncertainty and project organization complexity. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research and for managerial practice.

Estimation of bilateral trade elasticities between countries is less well documented than is the case for aggregate trade flows. This study estimates bilateral trade equations for Mexico and the United States. The empirical analysis is carried out using an error correction approach that allows imports and exports to adjust over time to changes in the independent variables that affect the demands for them. Thus, the modeling strategy allows joint examination of both the long-run determinants of U.S.-Mexico trade flows as well as short-run dynamic adjustments to those trade patterns. Empirical results indicate that imports and exports between the two countries react heterogeneously to variations in domestic prices, foreign prices, and the exchange rate. Lag structures for the trade equations also differ from each other. The results suggest that short-run changes in U.S. imports from Mexico are more sensitive to income changes than to price changes. Changes in U.S. exports to Mexico due to price changes are likely to be equal to or greater than those associated with income shocks in Mexico in the short-run. Over the long-run, however, changes in trade flows between the U.S. and Mexico will likely be dominated by the income effect. I.

Numerous studies are currently addressing the issue of contextual effects on health and disease outcomes. The majority of these studies fall short of providing a theoretical basis with which to explain what context is and how it affects individual disease outcomes. We propose a theoretical model, entitled collective lifestyles, which brings together three concepts from practice theory: social structure, social practices and agency. We do so in an attempt to move away from both behavioural and structural-functionalist explanations of the differential distribution of disease outcomes among areas by including a contextualisation of health behaviours that considers their meaning. We test the framework using the empirical example of smoking and pre-adolescents in 32 communities across Qu! e ebec, Canada. Social structure is operationalised as characteristics and resources; characteristics are the socio-economic aggregate characteristics of individuals culled from the 1996 Canadian Census, and resources are what regulates and transforms smoking practices. Information about social practices was collected in focus groups with pre-adolescents from four of the participating communities. Using zero-order and partial correlations we find that a portrait of communities emerges. Where there is a high proportion of more socio-economically advantaged people, resources tend to be more smoking discouraging, with the opposite being true for disadvantaged communities. Upon analysis of the focus group material, however, we find that the social practices in communities do not necessarily reflect the ''objectified'' measures of social structure. We suggest that a different conceptualisation of accessibility and lifestyle in contextual studies may enable us to improve our grasp on how differential rates of disease come about in local areas. r

An increasing number of countries show a trend towards a certain degree of consolidation of powers in financial supervision, which has resulted in the establishment of unified regulators, that are different from the national central banks. By contrast a high involvement of the central bank in supervision seems to be correlated with a multi -authorities regime (central bank fragmentation effect). This paper, using a simple application of a general common agency game, sheds light on which conditions the politicians prefer when implementing a unified sector supervision outside the central bank. From a theoretical point of view the quality of public sector governance plays a crucial role in determining the supervision unification. Focusing on the behaviour of the "good" policymaker (helping hand type), it will prefer a unified financial authority that is different from the central bank if the correspondent welfare gains -linked to at least one of the three effects: moral hazard, conflict of interest, bureaucracy -are considered higher respect to the information losses. The "bad" policymaker (grabbing hand type) will choose the single financial authority if the financial industry likes it, and the central bank is not a captured one. On the other hand, the paper tests the model, confirming the robustness of the institutional position of the central bank in explaining the recent trend in supervision consolidation, with an empirical analysis performed with ordered functions on an updated dataset.

... Dr.Sarita Singh Bhadauria Department of Elex & CSE MITS Gwalior (MP) India [email protected] Vishnu Sharma, Department of Computer Science Jaypee University of Engineering and Technology, Guna (MP) India [email protected] ...

Religious life is studied by way suggested by the rational choice theory and the religious capital theory. The basic contentions of the theory on the nature of religious life having to do with an exchange upon a religious market, by firms offering compensators and rewards, and consumers, is considered. In the empirical analysis, it was validated that the independent (religious capital) and dependent (religious rewards of two types) were empirically separate constructs. Cross-sectional analysis of survey data indicated a very strong association between religious capital and institutional and ritual experience rewards within religious life, at a cross-cultural analysis, including Bosnian Muslims, Serbian Orthodox, Slovenian Catholics and US Protestants. The association was confirmed as robust at regression inspection with religious socialization. This extends further support for the empirical validity these novel theories of religious life and extensions of economic analysis into reli...

While many theoretical arguments against or in favor of open source and closed source software development have been presented, the empirical basis for the assessment of arguments and the development of models is still weak. Addressing this research gap, this paper presents the first comprehensive empirical investigation of published vulnerabilities and patches of 17 widely deployed open source and closed source software packages, including operating systems, database systems, web browsers, email clients, and office systems. The empirical analysis uses comprehensive vulnerability data contained in the NIST National Vulnerability Database and a newly compiled data set of vulnerability patches. The results suggest that it is not the particular software development style that determines the severity of vulnerabilities and vendors' patching behavior, but rather the specific application type and the policy of the particular development community, respectively.

Learning from imbalanced datasets is difficult. The insufficient information that is associated with the minority class impedes making a clear understanding of the inherent structure of the dataset. Most existing classification methods tend not to perform well on minority class examples when the dataset is extremely imbalanced, because they aim to optimize the overall accuracy without considering the relative distribution

In this article, we estimate the degree of market power held by AT&T in the interstate long-distance market in the postdivestiture period. Our approach makes use of the dominant firm/competitive fringe model to impose the structure needed both to obtain estimates of the relevant structural parameters and to translate these parameters into an estimate of AT&T's residual demand elasticity and associated Lerner index. Because of the continued presence of regulation and other considerations, however, a direct estimation of the residual demand elasticity is not feasible. Consequently, we take a more indirect approach that combines estimation of the elasticity of fringe firm supply, market demand estimation, and extant market share data to generate estimates of the desired elasticity. The resulting estimates strongly support the conclusion that AT&T lacks significant market power in the postdivestiture long-distance market. * The authors would like to thank John Jackson, Michael Ward, Sam Peltzman, an unnamed editor, and the anonymous referees for valuable insights and comments on earlier versions of this article. We retain sole responsibility for any remaining errors.

Almost all of the existing studies on product architecture adopt the research framework of comparing the advantages and disadvantages of modular architecture with those of integral architecture. In this paper, we attempt to propose an evolutionary perspective of product architecture. In order to consider the evolution of a product architecture, we analyze the history of Fanuc numerical controllers regarding the evolution of NC architecture from 1962 to 1997. Then we can derive the following hypotheses concerning the evolution of the product architecture. First, the product architecture basically evolves from the integral architecture to the module architecture, and then in the direction of open architecture. Second, in specific circumstances this change does not always progress in the same direction. When epoch-making technology, such as the microprocessor, is incorporated into the product system the direction of the progress in architecture may be reversed from the module to the integral.

The solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change is analyzed by using an empirical bi-scale climate model characterized by both fast and slow characteristic time responses to solar forcing: t 1 ¼ 0:470:1 yr and t 2 ¼ 872 yr or t 2 ¼ 1273 yr. Since 1980 the solar contribution to climate change is uncertain because of the severe uncertainty of the total solar irradiance satellite composites. The sun may have caused from a slight cooling, if PMOD TSI composite is used, to a significant warming (up to 65% of the total observed warming) if ACRIM, or other TSI composites are used. The model is calibrated only on the empirical 11-year solar cycle signature on the instrumental global surface temperature since 1980. The model reconstructs the major temperature patterns covering 400 years of solar induced temperature changes, as shown in recent paleoclimate global temperature records.

The valuation of American-style options gives rise to an optimal stopping problem involving the computation of a time dependent exercise boundary over the whole life of the contract. An exact computational formula for this time dependent optimal boundary is not known. Nevertheless, some numerical approaches can be proposed to approximate the optimal boundary. In particular, in this contribution we study three different numerical techniques: an improved lattice method, a randomization approach based on the American option valuation procedure proposed by Carr and an analytic approximation procedure proposed by Bunch and Johnson. The three techniques studied are tested and compared through a wide empirical analysis.

We study the multidimensional knapsack problem, present some theoretical and empirical results about its structure, and evaluate different Integer Linear Programming (ILP) based, metaheuristic, and collaborative approaches for it. We start by considering the distances between optimal solutions to the LP-relaxation and the original problem and then introduce a new core concept for the MKP, which we study extensively. The empirical analysis is then used to develop new concepts for solving the MKP using ILP-based and memetic algorithms. Different collaborative combinations of the presented methods are discussed and evaluated. Further computational experiments with longer run-times are also performed in order to compare the solutions of our approaches to the best known solutions of another so far leading approach for common MKP benchmark instances. The extensive computational experiments show the effectiveness of the proposed methods, which yield highly competitive results in significantly shorter run-times than previously described approaches.

This paper describes a mathematical model for all path length parameters (APL: Average Path Length, LPL: Longest Path Length, and SPL: Shortest Path Length) of Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs). The proposed model is based on an empirical analysis of randomly generated Boolean functions. The formal core of the developed model is a unique equation for the path-related objective functions over

Most data involving organizations are hierarchical in nature and often contain variables measured at multiple levels of analysis. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) is a relatively new and innovative statistical method that organizational scientists have used to alleviate some common problems associated with multilevel data, thus advancing our understanding of organizations. This article presents a broad overview of HLM's logic through an empirical analysis and outlines how its use can strengthen sport management research. For illustration purposes, we use both HLM and the traditional linear regression model to analyze how organizational and individual factors in Major League Baseball impact individual players' salaries. A key implication is that, depending on the method, parameter estimates differ because of the multilevel data structure and, thus, findings differ. We explain these differences and conclude by presenting theoretical discussions from strategic management and consumer behavior to provide a potential research agenda for sport management scholars.

Corporate turnaround has received much attention in the strategy literature and, increasingly, in finance. These two streams have, however, differed in their focus, i.e. type of strategies, in their approach, i.e. whether descriptive or prescriptive and in the definition of performance decline. A range of strategies has been prescribed for their potency in corporate recovery. Corporate responses to performance decline cover a wide range of restructuring: managerial, asset or strategic, financial, operational and organizational.

The design and management of the manufacturing network for a firm is an important factor for its competitive position. By manufacturing network we mean the plant or plants of a manufacturing firm and the relationships with external suppliers. The way that these operate together is crucial for supporting the competition of the products in the marketplace. This paper presents the results of a survey of 106 Swedish manufacturing plants. We find that the markets and supply networks of Swedish plants are global, but there is a focus on Europe. The main reason for locating a plant in Sweden is proximity to skills and knowledge, and we find no pure low-cost plants. The overall level of site competence is very high. There are many significant differences between how internal and external suppliers are selected. The choice of internal suppliers, i.e. those suppliers in the manufacturing network that belong to the same firm, is to a large extent based on a single corporate decision reflecting quality and competence, while external suppliers are chosen based on quality, price, and delivery dependability considerations. All in all, this study provides a broad analysis of the manufacturing networks in which Swedish plants operate, and the roles of these plants.

We find that option listings are associated with a decrease in the variance of the pricing error, a decrease in the adverse selection component of the spread, and an increase in the relative weight placed by the specialist on public information in revising prices for the underlying stocks. We also find that there is a decrease in the spread and increases in quoted depth, trading volume, trading frequency, and transaction size after option listings. Overall, our results suggest that option listings improve the market quality of the underlying stocks.

Italian bicameralism is a constitutional feature that is quite often the object of criticism from both politicians and scholars. It is also a somewhat neglected topic within Italian political science. The main aim of the present article is to evaluate the level of congruence ...