The aim of this paper is to explore how Total Quality Management (TQM) can act as a foundation and key catalyst for developing Sustainable Management and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within Public Organizations. In the public sector we have too often experienced low quality services,...

This paper provides asymptotic standard errors for the moving average (MA) impact matrix for the second differences of a vector autoregressive (VAR) process integrated of order 2,I(2). Standard errors of the row space of the MA impact matrix are also provided; bases of this row space define the...

Ways of improving the efficiency of Monte-Carlo (MC) techniques are studied for dynamic models. Such models cause the conventional Antithetic Variate (AV) technique to fail, and will be proved to reduce the benefit from using Control Variates with nearly nonstationary series. This paper suggests...

We propose a general procedure for constructing nonparametric priors for Bayesian inference. Under very general assumptions,the proposed prior selects absolutely continuous distribution functions, hence it can be useful with continuous data. We use the notion of Feller-type approximation, with a...

Minty variational inequalities have proven to define a stronger notion of equilibrium than Stampacchia variational inequalities. This conclusion leads to argue that some regularity, e.g. convexity or generalized convexity, has to be implicit for any function that admits a solution of the...

The class of Metropolis-Hastings algorithms can be modified by delaying the rejection of proposed moves. The new samplers are proved to perform better than the original ones in terms of asymptotic variance of the estimates on a sweep by sweep basis. The delaying rejection algorithms also allow...

We develop a Bayesian hierarchical logistic regression model to predict the credit risk of companiers classified in different sectors. Explanatory variables derived by experts from balance-sheets are included. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are used to estimate the proposed model. In...

Let X be a real linear space, X0 - X a convex set, Y and Z topological real linear spaces. The constrained optimization problem minCf(x), g(x) 2 -K is considered, where f : X0 ! Y and g : X0 ! Z are given (nonsmooth) functions, and C - Y and K - Z are closed convex cones. The weakly efficient...

This paper proposes likelihood-based procedures for determining the number of cointegrating vectors in the presence of constraints on the cointegration rank. The tests can be applied when a priori information suggests a lower bound on the number of common stochastic trends in the system. The...

As long-time enthusiast for auxiliary variables methods in Bayesian MCMC, we are glad to have the opportunity to discuss this interesting paper.The authors have a reputation for picturesque and metaphorical titles, and this paper is no exception. We were intrigued by the 'artistic' aspirations...