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An extensive literature in econometrics focuses on finding the exact and approximate first and second moments of the least-squares estimator in the stable first-order linear autoregressive model with normally distributed errors. Recently, Kiviet and Phillips (2005) developed approximate moments for the linear autoregressive model with a unit root and normally distributed errors. An objective of this paper is to analyze moments of the estimator in the first-order autoregressive model with a unit root and nonnormal errors. In particular, we develop new analytical approximations for the first two moments in terms of model parameters and the distribution parameters. Through Monte Carlo simulations, we find that our approximate formula perform quite well across different distribution specifications in small samples. However, when the noise to signal ratio is huge, bias distortion can be quite substantial, and our approximations do not fare well.

This paper aims to analyze the dynamics of the Spanish public debt–gross domestic product ratio during the period 1850–2020.

This study uses a recent procedure to test for recurrent explosive behavior (Phillips et al., 2011; Phillips et al., 2015a, 2015b) to identify episodes of explosive public debt dynamics and also the episodes of fiscal adjustments over this long period.

The identified episodes of explosive behavior of public debt coincided with fiscal stress events, whereas fiscal adjustments and changes in economic policies stabilized public finances after periods of explosive dynamics of public debt.

The longer than usual span of the data should allow the authors to obtain some more robust results than in most of previous analyses of long-run sustainability.

This paper proposes a new class of estimators for the autoregressive coefficient of a dynamic panel data model with random individual effects and nonstationary initial condition. The new estimators we introduce are weighted averages of the well-known first difference (FD) GMM/IV estimator and the pooled ordinary least squares (POLS) estimator. The proposed procedure seeks to exploit the differing strengths of the FD GMM/IV estimator relative to the pooled OLS estimator. In particular, the latter is inconsistent in the stationary case but is consistent and asymptotically normal with a faster rate of convergence than the former when the underlying panel autoregressive process has a unit root. By averaging the two estimators in an appropriate way, we are able to construct a class of estimators which are consistent and asymptotically standard normal, when suitably standardized, in both the stationary and the unit root case. The results of our simulation study also show that our proposed estimator has favorable finite sample properties when compared to a number of existing estimators.

Studies of the social construction of markets have not determined which social environments, which we refer to as proximate social space, are most likely to trigger social construction processes. We find that U.S. nonprofit fiscal sponsors respond to greater potential for category emergence when proximate social space is defined by geography but not by market segment. Further, in addition to responding to potential claimants based on geographic peers, organizations also respond to actual claimants based on peers in the market segment. The pattern suggests that geographic social proximity triggers initial label claiming, which in turn triggers responses from market segment peers.

Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, women did nearly three-quarters of the world’s unpaid work. As institutional supports, including in-person school and community-based care for children, the elderly, and the disabled vanished early in the pandemic, many women’s caregiving responsibilities increased. In some cases, opportunities for paid employment disappeared due to layoffs and furloughs, while in others, paid work was no longer possible without access to the missing institutional supports. Either way, access to needed supports – financial, practical, and social – was diminished. The lapse of needed supports also had severe impacts on subgroups of women, including pregnant and post-partum women. A range of considerations – vaccine safety, social interaction and infection risk, disease severity – have posed serious challenges for pregnant and post-partum women. Across the board, women’s need for continuous access to better social, financial, and practical supports at home, in the community, and in the workplace was made even more evident by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The chapter aims to analyze an innovative intervention in the context of public housing in Italy. Over the past decade, in Italy, neighborhoods with a high concentration of public housing have increasingly become spaces of exclusion, where conflicts are rife, due to a multiplicity of factors (e.g., immigration, social deprivation, ageing, health problems). In particular, because of the global economic crisis and the impoverishment of Italian families, competition and quarrels between lower middle-class natives and migrants have been exacerbated, undermining the recent fragile pattern of social cohesion. However, housing and urban policies are still residual, especially in the political agenda of mid-sized towns, which witness an ungoverned urban growth not always accompanied by a concurrent complete recognition of citizenship. Moreover, policies tackling rising social tension to reduce or prevent it are lacking. Nonetheless, at a local level, some more dynamic municipalities are starting to promote original initiatives also thanks to the sharing of the best national and international practices. In particular we wish to focus on the social mediation processes implemented to prevent conflict and promote sustainable cohabitation, improving relationships between neighbors and fostering empowerment and participation. In this perspective, the chapter explores a two-year project of social mediation for households living in public housing which has been developed in the Marche region.

While well-being and resilience in the workplace continue to be important areas of research, the role age plays in well-being and resilience at work and associated positive work outcomes is often ignored. In most studies age is simply treated as a control variable. In this chapter, we outline the importance of considering age in well-being and resilience research by focusing on how age may impact both of these variables and drawing on research from both the organizational psychology and developmental psychology literature. Theoretical models of these relationships are put forth, and future research directions are discussed.

Similar to community colleges in the United States, the Israeli tertiary system includes two-year technological colleges, which provide students with a labor-market relevant qualification. Nonetheless, unlike the community colleges, the technological colleges are not considered to be part of the higher education system and their transfer function is irregular and confined. In order to understand these differences, the chapter has two complementary objectives: (a) to describe the emergence and development of technological colleges and (b) to evaluate the implications for social inequality in access to higher education in Israel. We use a mixed-methods research design, including analyzing primary and secondary sources describing the official policy and public discourse around these colleges (qualitative/historical research) and comparing students attending academic institutions to students attending technological colleges and students across different fields of study offered by these colleges (quantitative research). Drawing on Phillip's (2004) model for policy attraction in education, we find that technological colleges in Israel were based on the Dutch HTS model, while the founding of these colleges was initiated by local impulse. The implementation of the technological colleges in the Israeli context was shaped by a cultural logic for higher education that emphasizes research and knowledge production, creating a binary tertiary system. Drawing on sociological literature on diversification and stratification in tertiary education, we find that technological colleges attract more students from disadvantaged groups and more students with relatively low academic ability than academic institutions. In addition, within technological colleges, students from advantaged background and higher academic ability are more likely to study in more prestigious fields of study. These findings suggest that if policy makers in Israel aspire to increase access to higher education, they should rethink policy instruments and cultivate the transfer function of technological colleges. This is among the first studies to examine technological colleges in Israel and we conclude with different directions for further research.

Past studies have shown that acculturation has been linked with media consumption (Shi, 2005; Shohat & Stam, 1996). Some risky health behaviors are associated with immigrants’ acculturation into the American society. In this study, we investigate the association between Latino adolescents’ recreational use of media with acculturation as related to risky health behaviors such as the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, the experience of getting sunburns, smoking, and drinking alcohol.

Regression models were run to analyze the Latino adolescent subsample (aged 12–17) of the 2009 California Health Interview Survey (Ponce et al., 2004).

The regression models show that weekend television and video gaming are significantly associated with the number of sunburns one had in the past year (incident rate ratio = 1.008, z = 2.73), and weekend recreational computer use is significantly associated with the number of cans of soda with sugar one drank during the previous day (incident rate ratio = 1.003, z = 2.09). The use of English for the interview, age, parents’ educational attainment, household size, and gender are also found to be associated with different acculturation-related risky health behaviors investigated in this study.

This study is the first to analyze media consumption’s association with sunburn among Latino adolescents. Our findings indicate that among Latino adolescents in the United States, a large amount of media consumption can lead to risky health behaviors that were not common in Latin America. Therefore, parents should heed possible behavioral consequences when they decide on the amount of media exposure children have.

It is shown in the literature that the Arellano–Bond type generalized method of moments (GMM) of dynamic panel models is asymptotically biased (e.g., Hsiao & Zhang, 2015; Hsiao & Zhou, 2017). To correct the asymptotical bias of Arellano–Bond GMM, the authors suggest to use the jackknife instrumental variables estimation (JIVE) and also show that the JIVE of Arellano–Bond GMM is indeed asymptotically unbiased. Monte Carlo studies are conducted to compare the performance of the JIVE as well as Arellano–Bond GMM for linear dynamic panels. The authors demonstrate that the reliability of statistical inference depends critically on whether an estimator is asymptotically unbiased or not.