We provide a concise introduction to a household-panel data infrastructure that provides the international research community with longitudinal data of private households in Germany since 1984: the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). We demonstrate the comparative strength of the SOEP data in...

The diffusion of Temporary Work Agency (TWA) jobs originated a harsh policy debate and ambiguous empirical evidence. Results for the US, based on quasi-experimental evidence, suggest that a TWA assignment decreases the probability of finding a stable job, while results for Europe, based on the...

Classical regression analysis uses partial coefficients to measure the influences of some variables (regressors) on another variable (regressand). However, a descriptive point of view shows that these coefficients are very bad measures of influence. Their interpretation as an average change of...

This paper constructs the probability space underlying the random variable of any time dependent econometric specification. The construction links concrete economic activity, both perceived and recorded, and econometric formulations. Furthermore, it is argued that the probability events...

Explained variance (R^2) is a familiar summary of the fit of a linear regression and has been generalized in various ways to multilevel (hierarchical) models. The multilevel models we consider in this paper are characterized by hierarchical data structures in which individuals are grouped into...

Various noninformative prior distributions have been suggested for scale parameters in hierarchical models. We construct a new folded-noncentral- t family of conditionally conjugate priors for hierarchical standard deviation parameters, and then consider noninformative and weakly informative...

Based on the Partial Distribution (Feng Dai, 2001), a new model to price an asset (MPA) is given. Going a step further, this paper puts forward the Multivariate Partial Distribution (MPD) for the first time. By use of MPD, we could gain a new kind of model for pricing the group assets (MPGA), in...

In this paper, the Partial Distribution (PD) and multivariate Partial Distribution (MPD) are presented in their concepts, properties and applications, and PD is compared with the lognormal and the levy distribution. Though the levy distribution is better to describe the exchange returns in...

Two regressions can be interpreted as based on Gini's Mean Difference (GMD): a semiparametric approach, which relies on weighted average of slopes defined between adjacent observations and a minimization approach, which is based on minimization of the GMD of the residuals. The estimators...

The diffusion of Temporary Work Agency (TWA) jobs originated a harsh policy debate and ambiguous empirical evidence. Results for the US, based on quasi-experimental evidence, suggest that a TWA assignment decreases the probability of finding a stable job, while results for Europe, based on the...