A Model to Estimate First-Order Mutation Coverage from Higher-Order Mutation Coverage

The test suite is essential for fault detection during software development. First-order mutation coverage is an accurate metric to quantify the quality of the test suite. However, it is computationally expensive. Hence, the adoption of this metric is limited. In this study, we address this issue by proposing a realistic model able to estimate first-order mutation coverage using only higher-order mutation coverage. Our study shows how the estimation evolves along with the order of mutation. We validate the model with an empirical study based on 17 open-source projects.Comment: 2016 IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security. 9 page

Politics and preferences

The overall aim of this thesis is to better understand how politics and preferences influence policy outcomes. The thesis consists of two papers that examine two different policy outcomes in Swedish municipalities. Paper I analyzes the effect of income and education on the environmental policy performance of Swedish local governments. In estimating the effects of income and education we will also examine how they interact with political participation. To examine this I use panel data based on an environmental ranking of Swedish municipalities made every year between 1993 and 2001. The empirical results show that there is a positive relationship between income and the environmental policy performance. This relationship is however captured by controlling for the education level, which has a positive relationship with the environmental policy performance. Controlling for municipal fixed effects and relevant control variables does not change this result. Furthermore we find that political participation has significant interaction effects with both income and education. Paper II develops a regression discontinuity (RD) design to estimate the causal effect of political party power on the placement of refugee immigrants in Swedish municipalities. That Swedish municipalities have a proportional election system puts forward specific challenges for using a RD design, which this paper will provide solutions to. The identification strategy is based on the idea that a specific party getting one more seat or not in the municipal council can be considered as good as random if the party is close to a seat change. Even though this paper only looks at Swedish data the method could be applied to other countries with proportional election systems. The results of the paper show that the political party power has a large effect on the placement of refugee immigrants in Swedish municipalities

Tourism and economic growth: a meta-analysis of panel data studies

Although for decades it has been acknowledged that tourism likely contributes to economic growth, theoretical models that consider a causal relationship between both are a recent phenomenon. From a sample of 11 studies based on panel data techniques published through to 2011, and for a total of 87 heterogeneous estimations, a metaanalysis is performed by applying models for both fixed and random effects, with the main objective being to calculate a summary measure of the effects of tourism on economic growth. While the results obtained point to a positive elasticity between economic growth and tourism, the magnitude of the effect was found to vary according to the methodological procedure employed in the original studies for empirical estimations

Sovereign rating actions and the implied volatility of stock index options

This paper examines the interaction between the equity index option market and sovereign credit ratings. S&P and Moody’s signals exhibit strong impact on option-implied volatility while Fitch’s influence is less significant. Moody’s downgrades reduce the market uncertainty over the rated countries’ equity markets. Strong causal relationships are found between movements in the option-implied volatility and all credit signals released by S&P and Fitch, but only actual rating changes by Moody’s, implying differences in rating agencies’ policies. The presence of additional ratings tends to reduce market uncertainty. The findings highlight the importance of rating information in the price discovery process and offer policy implications

The Effects of the Louisiana Scholarship Program on Student Achievement After Two Years

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) is a statewide initiative offering publicly-funded vouchers to enroll in local private schools to students in low-performing schools with family income no greater than 250 percent of the poverty line. Initially established in 2008 as a pilot program in New Orleans, the LSP was expanded statewide in 2012. This paper examines the experimental effects of using an LSP scholarship to enroll in a private school on student achievement in the first two years following the program’s expansion. Our results indicate that the use of an LSP scholarship has negatively impacted both ELA and math achievement, although only the latter estimates are statistically significant. Moreover, we observe less negative effect estimates in the second year of the program

Tourism carbon Kuznets-curve hypothesis: a systematic literature review and a paradigm shift to a corporation-performance perspective

Since the introduction of the carbon Kuznets-curve hypothesis in the mid-1990s, the inverted U–shaped relationship between economic development and carbon emissions has remained a subject of debate in the social sciences. We engage tourism research in this debate, in a fourfold manner. First, we offer a systematic literature review concerning the role of tourism in the carbon Kuznets-curve hypothesis using a protocol-based reporting process. Second, we present the level of consensus with the carbon Kuznets-curve hypothesis and the conceptual gaps in the identified literature (n = 22). Third, we introduce an emerging concept, offering a novel tourism corporate/performance orientation to the carbon Kuznets-curve hypothesis. Fourth, we provide evidence of empirical validity using different econometric techniques from an international tourism corporation (n = 86) data set (2005–2018). The inverted U–shaped relationship between measures of economic and carbon performance among tourism corporations is a robust result under many different specifications