Stochastic orders and measures of skewness and dispersion based on expectiles

Recently, expectile-based measures of skewness akin to well-known quantile-based skewness measures have been introduced, and it has been shown that these measures possess quite promising properties (Eberl and Klar in Comput Stat Data Anal 146:106939, 2020; Scand J Stat, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1111/sjos.12518). However, it remained unanswered whether they preserve the convex transformation order of van Zwet, which is sometimes seen as a basic requirement for a measure of skewness. It is one of the aims of the present work to answer this question in the affirmative. These measures of skewness are scaled using interexpectile distances. We introduce orders of variability based on these quantities and show that the so-called weak expectile dispersive order is equivalent to the dilation order. Further, we analyze the statistical properties of empirical interexpectile ranges in some detail

Expectile-based measures of skewness

In the literature, quite a few measures have been proposed for quantifying the deviation of a probability distribution from symmetry. The most popular of these skewness measures are based on the third centralized moment and on quantiles. However, there are major drawbacks in using these quantities. These include a strong emphasis on the distributional tails and a poor asymptotic behavior for the (empirical) moment‐based measure as well as difficult statistical inference and strange behaviour for discrete distributions for quantile‐based measures. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce skewness measures based on or connected with expectiles. Since expectiles can be seen as smoothed versions of quantiles, they preserve the advantages over the moment‐based measure while not exhibiting most of the disadvantages of quantile‐based measures. We introduce corresponding empirical counterparts and derive asymptotic properties. Finally, we conduct a simulation study, comparing the newly introduced measures with established ones, and evaluating the performance of the respective estimators

Centre-free kurtosis orderings for asymmetric distributions

The concept of kurtosis is used to describe and compare theoretical and empirical distributions in a multitude of applications. In this connection, it is commonly applied to asymmetric distributions. However, there is no rigorous mathematical foundation establishing what is meant by kurtosis of an asymmetric distribution and what is required to measure it properly. All corresponding proposals in the literature centre the comparison with respect to kurtosis around some measure of central location. Since this either disregards critical amounts of information or is too restrictive, we instead revisit a canonical approach that has barely received any attention in the literature. It reveals the non-transitivity of kurtosis orderings due to an intrinsic entanglement of kurtosis and skewness as the underlying problem. This is circumvented by restricting attention to sets of distributions with equal skewness, on which the proposed kurtosis ordering is shown to be transitive. Moreover, we introduce a functional that preserves this order for arbitrary asymmetric distributions. As application, we examine the families of Weibull and sinh-arsinh distributions and show that the latter family exhibits a skewness-invariant kurtosis behaviour

When and how does volunteering influence wages? – Evidence from panel data

Volunteering is an activity in which individuals work for free to benefit others; however, research has also focused on the benefits volunteers themselves might experience. We add to the literature by focusing on how not only volunteering itself has an impact on wages but how the intensity, duration and timing of volunteering also have an effect on these. In addition, we distinguish between the effects on volunteers in the same job and when changing a job, and test the role of social capital. Using German data from the Socio-Economic Panel, we find that current volunteering has positive effects on wages in a fixed effects wage regression, especially if individuals volunteer with low to medium intensity. The duration of volunteering does not increase wages. However, based on the dummy impact function, we find that volunteering increases wages almost immediately and that this effect remains fairly constant over time. We find no indication that reverse causality drives this effect. Furthermore, we show that the wage benefits of volunteering are realized only through job changes, not on-the-job wage progression. With regard to job changers, we show that social capital accumulation through volunteering is one reason explaining the observed wage effects

Die Vor- und Nachteile von Fixed-effects-Regressionen in der empirischen Anwendung

Abstract With the broader availability of panel data, fixed effects (FE) regression models are becoming increasingly important in sociology. However, in some studies the potential pitfalls of these models may be ignored, and common critiques of FE models may not always be applicable in comparison to other methods. This article provides an overview of linear FE models and their pitfalls for applied researchers. Throughout the article, we contrast FE and classical pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) models. We argue that in most cases FE models are at least as good as pooled OLS models. Therefore, we encourage scholars to use FE models if possible. Nevertheless, the limitations of FE models should be known and considered.Durch die Zunahme von Längsschnittdaten werden „fixed effects“ (FE) Regressionsmodelle in der Soziologie immer wichtiger. Jedoch ignorieren einige Studien potenzielle Probleme bei der Anwendung von FE-Modellen, während andere ungerechtfertigte Kritik üben. Dieser Artikel liefert daher einen Überblick über lineare FE-Modelle und deren Limitationen für Anwender. Im vorliegenden Beitrag vergleichen wir hierfür FE- mit gepoolten OLS-Modellen. Wir plädieren dafür, FE-Modelle zu verwenden, wenn es die Daten und die Fragestellung erlauben, da FE-Modelle klassischen Querschnittsmodellen in den meisten Fällen überlegen sind. Jedoch sollte man die Limitationen von FE-Modellen kennen

Social capital as a partial explanation for gender wage gaps

Abstract Despite a long record of research on the sources of the gender wage gap, a large fraction of gender wage differences remains unexplained. In this paper, we propose gender differences in social capital as a novel explanation for the gender wage gap. We use British data from the Understanding Society (UKHLS) survey and wage decompositions to estimate the contribution of social capital derived from network homophily, that is, the similarity to one's peer group, to the gender wage differential. Our results show that differences in network structure explain as much as 15% of the overall gender wage gap. This finding is largely driven by gender differences in the number of males among closest friends, while other social capital measures used in this study hardly matter. We further show that differences in returns to social capital are not statistically significant

Grenzen demokratischen Rechts? Die Entsendeentscheidungen zum Irakkrieg in Großbritannien, den USA und Spanien

'Die Debatte um den Irakkrieg spaltete die demokratischen Staaten. Die Gegner verweigerten eine Beteiligung, während die so genannte Koalition der Willigen Truppen entsandte. Letztere führte vor allem moralische und Sicherheitsgründe ins Feld, mit denen sie auch in der eigenen Bevölkerung um Zustimmung warb. Dennoch hatten die gewählten Repräsentanten der Bevölkerung, das Parlament, in vielen Fällen kein Mitspracherecht. Dies kritisieren die Autoren. Sie gehen von Immanuel Kants Demokratie- und Verfassungstheorie aus, die das moderne demokratische Staatsdenken begründet, und untersuchen die Entscheidungsprozesse zur Truppenentsendung in drei Demokratien: Großbritannien, Spanien und den USA. Nach Kant müssten in Demokratien drei wesentliche Prinzipien eingehalten werden. Erstens dürfen Regierungen nicht im Alleingang über Militäreinsätze entscheiden, zweitens müssen ihre Entscheidungen im Einklang mit nationalen Gesetzen und dem Völkerrecht sein und drittens muss die gerichtliche Kontrolle über die Einhaltung dieser Anforderungen ermöglicht sein. In allen drei untersuchten Demokratien zeigt sich, dass militärische Entsendeentscheidungen unter Missachtung der genannten Grundsätze getroffen werden können und wurden. Zumindest in Spanien ist jedoch nach der letzten Wahl Bewegung in die verfassungsrechtliche Debatte gekommen. Dort hat ein Gesetzesentwurf die ersten Hürden genommen, der die Zustimmungspflicht des Parlaments zu Auslandseinsätzen des Militärs vorsieht. Sollte dieses Gesetz in Kraft treten, wäre dies ein wichtiger Schritt beim Abbau von Demokratiedefiziten.' (Autorenreferat