Machinery for the Adjustment of Disputes Under New Collective Agreements

Avhandlingen består av tre empiriska studier som undersöker effekten av socialt kapital för individernas arbetsmarknadsutfall, utifrån två huvudsakliga frågeställningar. För det första: Vilka individuella egenskaper, såsom utbildningsnivå, genus och ursprungsland, underlättar eller försvårar tillgång till socialt kapital? Här studeras den avkastning som socialt kapital genererar på arbetsmarknaden, jämfört med utbildning och arbetslivserfarenhet. För det andra analyseras vilken betydelse en stigmatiserad social identitet hos vissa invandrade har för tillgången till socialt kapital och i vilken grad ett ”underskott” av socialt kapital påverkar deras arbetsmarknadsutfall. Resultatet av de empiriska undersökningarna tyder på att invandrare och deras barn, efter kontroll för produktionsrelaterade variabler, har mindre tillgång till socialt kapital och därför sämre arbetsmarknadsutfall.This thesis consists of an introduction and three self-contained studies on the impact of social capital on individuals’ labour market outcomes. It focuses on labour market conditions for immigrants and their children in Sweden. The central research questions of the thesis are twofold. First, what individual characteristics, such as educational level, gender and country of origin, enhance or hinder access to social capital, and how well is social capital rewarded in the labour market compared with education and work experience? Second, does the stigmatized social identity of some immigrant groups affect their access to social capital, and to what degree does such a social capital ‘deficit’ affect their labour market outcomes? The results demonstrate that inequality between immigrants (and their children) and natives (and their children) in access to networks with valuable resources of social capital is an important issue in their labour market outcomes

Testing for Stochastic Cointegration and Evidence for Present Value Models

Using the stochastic integration/cointegration framework of Harris, McCabe and Leybourne (2002) we revisit the problem of assessing the empirical evidence for or against the present value class of models in the bond and stock markets. This framework allows for volatility in excess of that catered for by the conventional integration/cointegration paradigm by introducing nonlinear heteroscedasticity. We propose a test for stochastic cointegration against the alternative of no cointegration and a secondary test for stationary cointegration against the heteroscedastic alternative. Asymptotic distributions of these tests under their respective null hypotheses are derived and consistency under their respective alternatives is established. In contrast to conventional cointegration tests, which we show via simulation are unreliable in the presence of the kind of volatility typical of financial data, our tests are able to uncover new cointegration evidence in favour of the present value model, particularly in the bond market.

Panel Stationarity Tests with Cross-sectional Dependence

We present a test of the null hypothesis of stationarity against unit root alternatives for panel data that allows for arbitrary cross- sectional dependence. We treat the short run time series dynamics non- parametrically and thus avoid the need to fit separate models for the individual series. The statistic is simple to compute and is asymptotically normally distributed, even in the presence of a wide range of deterministic components. Taken together, these features provide a generally applicable solution to the problem of testing for stationarity versus unit roots in macro-panel based data. The test is applied to assess the validity of the purchasing power parity hypothesis and finds significant evidence against the hypothesis being true.

Body image importance and body dissatisfaction among Indigenous Australian adolescents

Despite their elevated risk of health problems and a propensity to be more overweight or underweight relative to the other members of the Australian population, there has been no previous investigation of body image concerns among Indigenous Australians. In this study we investigated the level of body image importance and body image dissatisfaction among 19 rural Indigenous adolescents (7 males, 12 females) and 28 urban Indigenous adolescents (15 males and 13 females). Our hypotheses that there would be gender differences in body image importance and body image satisfaction were not generally supported. However, males placed more importance on muscle size and strength than females, and rural participants placed more importance on weight than urban participants. Comparison to existing data obtained from Caucasian adolescents suggested that Indigenous youth may be less concerned and dissatisfied with body weight and shape. These results are discussed in relation to findings from studies of non-Indigenous adolescents, and Indigenous health issues. The limitations of the current study and the need for further studies are also discussed

Optimal Probabilistic Forecasts for Counts

Optimal probabilistic forecasts of integer-valued random variables are derived. The optimality is achieved by estimating the forecast distribution nonparametrically over a given broad model class and proving asymptotic efficiency in that setting. The ideas are demonstrated within the context of the integer autoregressive class of models, which is a suitable class for any count data that can be interpreted as a queue, stock, birth and death process or branching process. The theoretical proofs of asymptotic optimality are supplemented by simulation results which demonstrate the overall superiority of the nonparametric method relative to a misspecified parametric maximum likelihood estimator, in large but .nite samples. The method is applied to counts of wage claim benefits, stock market iceberg orders and civilian deaths in Iraq, with bootstrap methods used to quantify sampling variation in the estimated forecast distributions.Nonparametric Inference; Asymptotic Efficiency; Count Time Series; INAR Model Class; Bootstrap Distributions; Iceberg Stock Market Orders.

Seeing a daily coronavirus death toll might actually make us take more risks

First paragraph: People are currently being bombarded with reports of the daily death toll from coronavirus. Practically every news website and channel displays the number prominently at all times. These figures provide important data to statisticians but what effect are they having on the rest of us?https://theconversation.com/seeing-a-daily-coronavirus-death-toll-might-actually-make-us-take-more-risks-13551

Extending electron orbital precession to the molecular case: Can orbital alignment be used to observe wavepacket dynamics?

The complexity of ultrafast molecular photoionization presents an obstacle to the modelling of pump-probe experiments. Here, a simple optimized model of atomic rubidium is combined with a molecular dynamics model to predict quantitatively the results of a pump-probe experiment in which long range rubidium dimers are first excited, then ionized after a variable delay. The method is illustrated by the outline of two proposed feasible experiments and the calculation of their outcomes. Both of these proposals use Feshbach 87Rb2 molecules. We show that long-range molecular pump-probe experiments should observe spin-orbit precession given a suitable pump-pulse, and that the associated high-frequency beat signal in the ionization probability decays after a few tens of picoseconds. If the molecule was to be excited to only a single fine structure state state, then a low-frequency oscillation in the internuclear separation would be detectable through the timedependent ionization cross section, giving a mechanism that would enable observation of coherent vibrational motion in this molecule.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures, PRA submissio

Patterns of stent purchasing in a collaborative procurement organisation

Leveraging purchasing power through collaborative purchasing arrangements is widely used to deliver efficiency savings in public procurement. The success of such arrangements requires the purchasing behaviours of individual members of the collaborative organisation to change in order to realise the benefits of lower prices. However the actual purchasing behaviours of organisations within a collaborative purchasing arrangement have not been widely researched. The research uses a stationary stochastic model of buyer behaviour, the NBDDirichlet, to describe and predict the purchasing behaviours of buyers of coronary and ureteral stents in a collaborative purchasing organisation in the English National Health Service. The three year analysis period is a period of major change for each category, the result of supplier promotional activity in the ureteral stent case and purchasing management activity in the case of the coronary stents. Deviations between the observed patterns of behaviour and the model predictions point to violations of the basic Dirichlet requirements of stationary markets and lack of partitioning. In both the ureteral and coronary stent cases the research identifies a segment of frequent purchasers whose behaviour differs from the rest of the population. The impact of framework agreements in restricting the purchasing repertoire of buyers is also identified as a deviation from typical purchasing patterns. Both interventions result in changes to established loyalty patterns, whereby the initial high observed levels of loyalty towards particular suppliers are replaced by a greater willingness to purchase from alternative suppliers. The data analysis also provides preliminary evidence for purchase deceleration as buyers defer purchases during a negotiation period in anticipation of improved pricing