Search results for "Explanatory power"
showing 10 items of 37 documents
An appraisal of Piero Sraffa's 'The Laws of Returns under Competitive Conditions'
2001
The paper proposes a new interpretation of Sraffa's 1926 Economic Journal article, ‘The Laws of Returns under Competitive Conditions’, according to which the latter derives from the same strategy of research which underlies its 1925 Italian precursor, ‘Sulle relazioni fra costo e quantità prodotta’. Sraffa tested the explanatory power of a Marshallian monopolistic partial equilibrium model and concluded that that model is able to treat one source of variable returns (firm-internal economies); but this articulation of Marshall‘s theory does not substantially improve on the trade-off between logical consistency and empirical relevance which afflicted the theory in its whole. © 2001, Taylor & …
The Impact of Internet and Social Media Use on Well-Being
2021
The present research examines the longitudinal average impact of frequency of use of Internet and social networking sites (SNS) on subjective well-being of adolescents in Germany. Based on five-wave panel data that cover a period of nine years, we disentangle between-person and within-person effects of media use on depressive symptomatology and life satisfaction as indicators of subjective well-being. Additionally, we control for confounders such as TV use, self-esteem, and satisfaction with friends. We found that frequency of Internet use in general and use of SNS in particular is not substantially related subjective well-being. The explanatory power of general Internet use or SNS use to p…
Evaluating the missing links in the relationship between executives' compensation and firm performance
2014
The research on the relationship between executive compensation and firm performance is extensive but has produced inconsistent results and, typically, weak explanatory power. One cause of these results is use of an incomplete theoretical framework that ignores some variables that are related to these two concepts. We explore the missing links between them. The paper contributes to scholarly and practical understanding of this important issue in the literature by extending and combining agency theory, upper echelons theory, and motivation theory perspectives. The paper develops a model that describes and explains the interactive relationship between executive managerial ability, executive c…
Effects of external imbalances on GDP recovery patterns
2021
Abstract A decade after the beginning of the Great Recession, flow external imbalances, measured by the current account (CA) have narrowed markedly. However, stock or net foreign assets (NFA) imbalances have kept increasing and have created challenges for future macroeconomic and financial stability. To date, early warning systems (scoreboards) have focused more on flow than on stock variables. To approach this problem, in this paper we analyze expansions using two complementary sets of indicators proposed by Harding and Pagan (2002) and Gadea et al. (2017) for the period 1950–2016. After controlling for a large set of explanatory variables, we find that the effect of CA imbalances is limit…
An Explication of the Use of Inference to the Best Explanation
2011
The aim of the present paper is, first, to give an explication of the very phrase “best explanation”, and second, to give some suggestions about its methodological use. The explication on offer will be given in terms of two set-theoretical criteria of comparing the relative explanatory power of alternatives. One criterion is designed to compare rival hypotheses put forward in the framework of a fixed background knowledge, the other is designed to compare an original background knowledge with its attempted revision. The proposal will be claimed to resolve the problems of Duhemian variety as well as the incommensurability problem.
Conclusion: Tying It All Together
2018
In this last section of the book, I will try and tie all the earlier discussions together. Expanding on the previous sections, I conclude that from the three concepts, the first is of most importance—the internal dynamics of the music industries. The concept has significant explanatory power as a factor on its own, as well as having significant impact on the two other factors. The internal structures and the (dysfunctional) nature of the music industries clearly create internal frustrations and external hostility. And more importantly, it seems to prevent the music industries from acting on the digital potential that appears.
Taste heterogeneity and latent preferences in the choice behaviour of freight transport operators
2013
In this paper we show that individual attitudes of road carriers and their latent preferences toward specific freight service attributes do play a role in determining their mode choices. Specifically, we contribute to the empirical literature on freight agents' mode choice by exploring the role of the "perceived importance" of the most relevant service dimensions in determining the attractiveness of two alternatives to "all-road" transport: logistics terminals and road-sea intermodal services. This is carried out through a revealed/stated preference experiment and a mixture of logit framework. Our results support the hypothesis that operators' attitudes towards time, punctuality and risk of…
Learning strategies explaining differences in reading proficiency. Findings of Nordic and Baltic countries in PISA 2009
2015
Abstract There are useful metacognitive learning strategies improving learning results significantly. Students can be trained to use them to achieve a higher level of proficiency in different academic domains, including reading. The current study was aimed to discover how student awareness and use of learning strategies explains differences in reading literacy test results, using PISA (the Program for International Student Assessment) 2009 data of three Nordic and three Baltic countries. The student level differences appeared partly due to the differences between schools, in the Baltic countries more than in the Nordic countries, which is considered a concern in the countries stating the eq…
Review of Agent-Based Models of Social Conflict and Civil Violence
2017
This chapter contains a review of the state of the art on agent-based models for simulation of large-scale social conflict and violence. It is structured in four parts. The first contains a summary of general definitions and concepts. The second contains the presentation and discussion of Epstein’s agent-based model, which is a landmark model of civil and ethnic violence due to its simplicity, soundness, and explanatory power. The third part contains a review of extensions of Epstein’s model that have been proposed by several authors. The chapter ends with some remarks on the limitations of existing ABM and on possibilities for their improvement.
An empirical analysis of growth volatility: A Markov chain approach
2005
This paper studies the determinants of growth rate volatility, focusing on the effect of level of GDP, structural change and the size of economy. First we provide a graphical analysis based on nonparametric techniques, then a quantitative analysis which follows the distribution dynamics approach. Growth volatility appears to (i) decrease with per capita GDP, (ii) increase with the share of the agricultural sector on GDP and, (iii) decrease with the size of the economy, measured by a combination of total GDP and trade openness. However, we show that the explanatory power of per capita GDP tends to vanish when we control for the size of the economy. © 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.