Sexual orientation and occupational rank

This paper presents a study of differences in occupational rank between gay and heterosexual males as well as between lesbian and heterosexual females. We estimate different specifications of an ordered probit model on register data from Sweden. Our data consist of married heterosexual men and women and homosexual men and women living in civil unions. We find that homosexual men have a lower probability of working in a profession demanding a longer university education or a management profession than heterosexual men. In contrast, we find that homosexual women are more likely than heterosexual women to work in such professions.Sexual orientation, labour market, occupational rank

Ethnic Discrimination in the Market Place of Small Business Transfers

This paper presents the first field experiment regarding ethnic discrimination in the market place of small business transfers. We let two fictitious prospective buyers, one with a typical Swedish name and one with a typical Arab/Muslim name, respond to advertisements of small business transfers on the Internet in Sweden. We then recorded the number contacts achieved by each fictitious buyer with sellers. We found that sellers discriminated against the buyer with an Arab/Muslim name in the sense that the buyer with an Arab/Muslim name obtained fewer contacts with sellers than did the buyer with a Swedish name.Discrimination, self-employment, small business transfers, ethnic minorities, field experiment.

Geometric Multi-Model Fitting with a Convex Relaxation Algorithm

We propose a novel method to fit and segment multi-structural data via convex relaxation. Unlike greedy methods --which maximise the number of inliers-- this approach efficiently searches for a soft assignment of points to models by minimising the energy of the overall classification. Our approach is similar to state-of-the-art energy minimisation techniques which use a global energy. However, we deal with the scaling factor (as the number of models increases) of the original combinatorial problem by relaxing the solution. This relaxation brings two advantages: first, by operating in the continuous domain we can parallelize the calculations. Second, it allows for the use of different metrics which results in a more general formulation. We demonstrate the versatility of our technique on two different problems of estimating structure from images: plane extraction from RGB-D data and homography estimation from pairs of images. In both cases, we report accurate results on publicly available datasets, in most of the cases outperforming the state-of-the-art

Consistency of Bayesian procedures for variable selection

It has long been known that for the comparison of pairwise nested models, a decision based on the Bayes factor produces a consistent model selector (in the frequentist sense). Here we go beyond the usual consistency for nested pairwise models, and show that for a wide class of prior distributions, including intrinsic priors, the corresponding Bayesian procedure for variable selection in normal regression is consistent in the entire class of normal linear models. We find that the asymptotics of the Bayes factors for intrinsic priors are equivalent to those of the Schwarz (BIC) criterion. Also, recall that the Jeffreys--Lindley paradox refers to the well-known fact that a point null hypothesis on the normal mean parameter is always accepted when the variance of the conjugate prior goes to infinity. This implies that some limiting forms of proper prior distributions are not necessarily suitable for testing problems. Intrinsic priors are limits of proper prior distributions, and for finite sample sizes they have been proved to behave extremely well for variable selection in regression; a consequence of our results is that for intrinsic priors Lindley's paradox does not arise.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/08-AOS606 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Pleading for the management controller profession in the trade area

Generalizing a reflection on strategy and controlling within the Romanian companies is rather recent. The environment changes and especially the changes in the nature and the dimensions of the markets due to the globalization and regulation put real questions for companies, generate a strategic thinking and make compulsory the appearance of an efficient management control. Generally, the scientific papers concerning the concept of management control deal with the production companies more than with the trade ones. This is why we chose to present the importance of the controller within a trade company. The management control has to assure the coherence between the adopted strategy (where the company in the trade domain wants to go) and the practical means of achieving it (what it has to do and what it is used for). The management controller is the person that contributes to obtain this coherence. There is plenty of information available, but for the decision making purposes only a restricted number of facts are correlated, namely the relevant ones. The trade management controller takes part in creating the information system useful for the decision making. Such a system has to offer reliable information in due time to the decision making persons concerning the profitability of certain markets, distribution areas, products, clients, the analysis of margins, distribution costs, advertising expenses etc. The trade management controller plays the role of a manager's copilot, he assists him in the management of the activity, alerts him when problems are encountered, helps him to make the necessary decisions to correct the trajectory. These are a few reasons that allow us to sustain the important role played by the management controller in the activity of the companies in the trade area.management controller, trade, customers, management, strategy, analysis, decision

Los estímulos del comportamiento de los londinenses en sus compras impulsivas de productos de moda

This paper explores the stimuli behind fashion-oriented impulse purchases within physicalshopping environments. The main focus of the study is the stimuli behind ‘emotional’ and‘rational’ consumer’s responses. The primary qualitative data was collected by indepthinterview methodology in a sample of 10 workingwomen from London aged between 25and 35 years. Findings mainly suggest that fashion-oriented impulse purchases, especiallyfor clothing,are influenced by a wide variety of stimuli/responses in a similar way asplanned purchases. However, there are specific stimuli/responses that trigger impulsebuying in a higher degree for the studied sample.Este documento explora los estímulos involucrados en las compras impulsivas de productos de moda dentro de ambientes físicos de compra. El principal foco de este estudio son los estímulos que generan respuestas ‘emocionales’ y ‘racionales’ en el consumidor.Los datos cualitativos primarios fueron recolectados utilizando la metodología de entrevistas a profundidad en una muestra de 10 mujeres trabajadoras en Londres con edades entre 25 y 35 años. Los resultados principalmente sugieren que las compras impulsivas de productos relacionados con moda, especialmente vestuario, pueden ser influenciadas por una gran variedad de estímulos/respuesta de manera similar a las compras planeadas. Sin embargo, se encontraron específicos estímulos/respuesta que estimulanlas compras impulsivas en un mayor nivel para la muestra estudiada