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We develop an economic model of transitions in and out of employment. Heterogeneous workers switch employment status when the net benefit from working, a Brownian motion with drift, hits optimally chosen barriers. This implies that the duration of jobless spells for each worker has an inverse Gaussian distribution. We allow for arbitrary heterogeneity across workers and prove that the distribution of inverse Gaussian distributions is partially identified from the duration of two non-employment spells for each worker. We estimate the model using Austrian social security data and find that dynamic selection is a critical source of duration dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perseverance in R&D effort is the first fundamental step towards any kind of innovation. We investigate the beginning of the innovation story, rather than its end, through duration models. Among the drivers of our unconventional IO approach, we focus on heterogeneity, path dependence and market power, measured as elasticity of firm-specific demand. The Schumpeterian hypothesis emerges at the firm level. Heterogeneity at the industry level reveals Schumpeterian and Arrovian patterns, as well as U-shaped and inverted U-shaped patterns. We suggest considering the entire supply chain from a holistic perspective when evaluating mergers and innovation policies that support small firms by reducing their financial uncertainty and improving their institutional environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political scientists commonly use Grambsch and Therneau's (1994, Biometrika 81, 515–526) ubiquitous Schoenfeld-based test to diagnose proportional hazard violations in Cox duration models. However, some statistical packages have changed how they implement the test's calculation. The traditional implementation makes a simplifying assumption about the test's variance–covariance matrix, while the newer implementation does not. Recent work suggests the test's performance differs, depending on its implementation. I use Monte Carlo simulations to more thoroughly investigate whether the test's implementation affects its performance. Surprisingly, I find the newer implementation performs very poorly with correlated covariates, with a false positive rate far above 5%. By contrast, the traditional implementation has no such issues in the same situations. This shocking finding raises new, complex questions for researchers moving forward. It appears to suggest, for now, researchers should favor the traditional implementation in situations where its simplifying assumption is likely met, but researchers must also be mindful that this implementation's false positive rate can be high in misspecified models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies identification and inference in transformation models with endogenous censoring. Many kinds of duration models, such as the accelerated failure time model, proportional hazard model, and mixed proportional hazard model, can be viewed as transformation models. We allow the censoring of a duration outcome to be arbitrarily correlated with observed covariates and unobserved heterogeneity. We impose no parametric restrictions on either the transformation function or the distribution function of the unobserved heterogeneity. In this setting, we develop bounds on the regression parameters and the transformation function, which are characterized by conditional moment inequalities involving U‐statistics. Subsequently, we provide inference methods for them by constructing an inference approach for conditional moment inequality models in which the sample analogs of moments are U‐statistics. We apply the proposed inference methods to evaluate the effect of unemployment insurance on duration of joblessness using data from the Current Population Survey's Displaced Workers Supplements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies a semiparametric quantile regression model with endogenous variables and random right censoring. The endogeneity issue is solved using instrumental variables. It is assumed that the structural quantile of the logarithm of the outcome variable is linear in the covariates and censoring is independent. The regressors and instruments can be either continuous or discrete. The specification generates a continuum of equations of which the quantile regression coefficients are a solution. Identification is obtained when this system of equations has a unique solution. Our estimation procedure solves an empirical analogue of the system of equations. We derive conditions under which the estimator is asymptotically normal and prove the validity of a bootstrap procedure for inference. The finite sample performance of the approach is evaluated through numerical simulations. An application to the national Job Training Partnership Act study illustrates the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After two decades of labour market reforms at the margin, the great recession created political scope to reduce the employment protection still benefitting the workers on open-ended contracts. To support employment levels, these policies have generally been combined with generous employment subsidies. While the theoretical and empirical literature on the two interventions taken in isolation appear generally abundant, almost nothing is known when they come combined. Analogously, no evidence is available on their distributional effects. This paper aims to fill these two gaps by means of counterfactual models estimated on high-frequency employer-employee-linked Italian data. Taking advantage of the quasi-experimental conditions created by the reforms enforced in Italy in 2015, we fit a (non-linear) difference-in-differences strategy into a competing risks duration model. We find prompt sensitivity of small firms to the incentives, while the large ones waited until they were combined with lower firing costs. Small firms substitute temporary for permanent employment, while larger ones do not seem inclined to forego fixed-term contracts, possibly for a probationary period. The reforms have benefitted domestic workers over foreigners, prime-age and older individuals over the young, and those with higher human capital. No gender effects emerge. Small firms operating in non-innovative sectors carry the bulk of heterogeneity effects. Finally, analysis on duration of newly activated open-ended contracts reveals a transitory effect, as separations jumped once the subsidies came to an end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effects of hospital volume on outcomes of patients undergoing percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) with stent implant in Slovakia between 2014 and 2019. The volume‐outcome relationship is estimated jointly using a discrete factor approach, where choice of hospital is correlated with durations until readmission or death, accounting for observed and unobserved characteristics. The results reveal the importance of controlling for between‐hospital differences and selectivity in patient referral. Estimates without hospital fixed effects overstate the positive effect of volume on outcomes, but the results remain statistically significant. Once selectivity is accounted for in the joint correlated model, the positive volume‐outcome relationship is not different from zero. Overall, the main driver of the volume‐outcome relationship for PTA procedures appears to be related to selective referral and differences in quality of health care providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This research considers the question of whether unemployment insurance benefit and labour-market activation measures induce the likelihood of re-employment and whether this effect differs for natives and immigrants. Design/methodology/approach: Statistical processing was carried out on the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions cross-sectional data for Finland for the period 2004 to 2016. Propensity score matching analysis was undertaken to investigate whether a treatment effect (unemployment insurance benefit) was a predictor of success in increasing re-employment rates, when controlling for participation in labour-market policy measures, subsidized employment and personal background characteristics. Findings: We find that the probability of re-employment for recipients of unemployment benefits is half that of non-recipients of benefits. Due to the influence of subsidized employment, subsequent employment income decreases for recipients of unemployment benefits and especially for immigrants. Finally, we find that due to the influence of subsidized employment, time spent as a full-time employee decreases for recipients of unemployment benefits and especially for immigrants. Originality/value: Although our results indicate that benefit determination has a marked impact on re-employment probabilities, unobserved variables turn to play a significant role in selection of labour-market activation measures. In this respect, we find the treatment assignment to activation policy measures depends on influence of unobserved variables and this effect is more important for the re-employment rates of natives than it is for immigrants. Peer review: The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2019-0668. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sanctions are a recurrent issue on the international scene that has gained relevance in recent decades. This article intends to approach this matter in an innovative way by analyzing the relative importance of sanctions' types and objectives, besides target countries' characteristics, on sanctions outcomes. Unlike most previous studies, we use more comprehensive data and a competing risk discrete-time hazard model to analyze the differences between sanctions termination by target compliance and sender capitulation. Our results show that the determinants for the two outcomes differ and that there are differences in the efficacy of sanctions according to their type and objective. We conclude that while higher levels of political volatility, democracy, and equality in target countries increase the probability of compliance, higher levels of democracy and globalization increase the probability of sender capitulation. Smart sanctions seem to be more effective at targeting compliance, as the likelihood of compliance is higher for financial and military sanctions than for trade. The likelihood of compliance also increases if the objective is to promote democracy and decreases if the objectives are policy, regime change, or terrorism. Instead, the probability of sender capitulation is higher for travel and trade sanctions and if the objective is to promote human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keele (2010, Political Analysis 18:189–205) emphasizes that the incumbent test for detecting proportional hazard (PH) violations in Cox duration models can be adversely affected by misspecified covariate functional form(s). In this note, I reevaluate Keele's evidence by running a full set of Monte Carlo simulations using the original article's illustrative data-generating processes (DGPs). I make use of the updated PH test calculation available in R's survival package starting with v3.0-10. Importantly, I find the updated PH test calculation performs better for Keele's DGPs, suggesting its scope conditions are distinct and worth further investigating. I also uncover some evidence for the traditional calculation suggesting it, too, may have additional scope conditions that could impact practitioners' interpretation of Keele (2010). On the whole, while we should always be attentive to model misspecification, my results suggest we should also become more attentive to how frequently the PH test's performance is affected in practice, and that the answer may depend on the calculation's implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: I revisit Ngai and Tenreyro (2014)'s empirical analysis of seasonal match quality in American Housing Survey (AHS) data. Using 1999 data only, Ngai and Tenreyro show that homes purchased in the summer season are occupied longer and have fewer and less costly renovations soon after purchase, pointing to superior match quality for households who move house during the thicker summer market. However, applying the same methods to other years of the AHS substantially weakens these results. In addition, I document heaping in a key variable, the prior move month, and implement a multiple imputation correction. Ngai and Tenreyro's use of a coarsened measure of duration seems to largely overcome the biases that heaping introduces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sanctions are a recurrent issue on the international scene that has gained relevance in recent decades. This article intends to approach this matter in an innovative way by analyzing the relative importance of sanctions’ types and objectives, besides target countries’ characteristics, on sanctions outcomes. Unlike most previous studies, we use more comprehensive data and a competing risk discrete-time hazard model to analyze the differences between sanctions termination by target compliance and sender capitulation. Our results show that the determinants for the two outcomes differ and that there are differences in the efficacy of sanctions according to their type and objective. We conclude that while higher levels of political volatility, democracy, and equality in target countries increase the probability of compliance, higher levels of democracy and globalization increase the probability of sender capitulation. Smart sanctions seem to be more effective at targeting compliance, as the likelihood of compliance is higher for financial and military sanctions than for trade. The likelihood of compliance also increases if the objective is to promote democracy and decreases if the objectives are policy, regime change, or terrorism. Instead, the probability of sender capitulation is higher for travel and trade sanctions and if the objective is to promote human rights.

This article analyzes the effect of a discrete treatment Z on a duration T. The treatment is not randomly assigned. The confounding issue is treated using a discrete instrumental variable explaining the treatment and independent of the error term of the model. Our framework is nonparametric and allows for random right censoring. This specification generates a nonlinear inverse problem and the average treatment effect is derived from its solution. We provide local and global identification properties that rely on a nonlinear system of equations. We propose an estimation procedure to solve this system and derive rates of convergence and conditions under which the estimator is asymptotically normal. When censoring makes identification fail, we develop partial identification results. Our estimators exhibit good finite sample properties in simulations. We also apply our methodology to the Illinois Reemployment Bonus Experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the important decisions for travellers about each trip is the time that they depart from their point of origin. The aggregation of the departure times of all travellers forms the pattern of a temporal distribution of trips in a day and also peak periods of a day. In this paper, we applied the multinomial logit (MNL) on a choice set which was derived from cluster analysis, and we also made use of the duration models to estimate departure time for home-based work trips. For the duration models, the Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional methods are used and then, the results are compared to cluster-based MNL model. This study is conducted in Mashhad city which has a population of about 2.7 million people. The results show the traveller's job and traveller's selected mode have a significant effect on his departure time choice. Comparison of the predictability power of these two modelling approaches indicates that the cluster-based MNL model in this case study is the preferable model.

Logit and probit (L/P) models are a mainstay of binary time-series cross-sectional (BTSCS) analyses. Researchers include cubic splines or time polynomials to acknowledge the temporal element inherent in these data. However, L/P models cannot easily accommodate three other aspects of the data's temporality: whether covariate effects are conditional on time, whether the process of interest is causally complex, and whether our functional form assumption regarding time's effect is correct. Failing to account for any of these issues amounts to misspecification bias, threatening our inferences' validity. We argue scholars should consider using Cox duration models when analyzing BTSCS data, as they create fewer opportunities for such misspecification bias, while also having the ability to assess the same hypotheses as L/P. We use Monte Carlo simulations to bring new evidence to light showing Cox models perform just as well—and sometimes better—than logit models in a basic BTSCS setting, and perform considerably better in more complex BTSCS situations. In addition, we highlight a new interpretation technique for Cox models—transition probabilities—to make Cox model results more readily interpretable. We use an application from interstate conflict to demonstrate our points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing the labour market participation rates of older workers is a means to secure the sustainability of public finances. However, questions about the effects of job loss of unemployed older workers and their employment prospects remain. This paper investigates why workers, aged 50 and over, have less employment opportunities. Using a competing risks model on British panel data, we examine the chances of re-employment after unemployment spells for older individuals. We find that human capital characteristics and economic incentives play an important role in their chances of getting back to work. We show that the probability of returning to employment after an unemployment spell decreases as workers get older. A decomposition analysis supports the role of age in the unemployment duration gap between 'older' and 'younger' individuals. The duration of leaving unemployment to employment of older workers would be lower if they will be treated in the same way as the younger ones, which is consistent with elderly employment barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical studies emphasise that higher financial development (FD) amplifies the output cost of banking crises. However, no study has so far investigated the effect of FD on another key dimension of banking crises, namely their duration. Using a large sample of banking crises over the 1977–2014 period, we find that higher FD is associated with a significant increase in the duration of banking crises (DBC). This result is robust to a broad range of alternative specifications and is unaffected by unobserved heterogeneity or endogeneity. Finally, we show that the effect of FD on DBC is subject to nonlinearities and varies across decades and with the level of economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an accessible introduction to the phenomenon of monotone likelihood in duration modeling of political events. Monotone likelihood arises when covariate values are monotonic when ordered according to failure time, causing parameter estimates to diverge toward infinity. Within political science duration model applications, this problem leads to misinterpretation, model misspecification and omitted variable biases, among other issues. Using a combination of mathematical exposition, Monte Carlo simulations and empirical applications, this article illustrates the advantages of Firth's penalized maximum-likelihood estimation in resolving the methodological complications underlying monotone likelihood. The results identify the conditions under which monotone likelihood is most acute and provide guidance for political scientists applying duration modeling techniques in their empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The length of stay for tourists is shrinking for traditional tourism destinations, with tourists instead opting for short breaks to multiple destinations. The reasons for these changes include the increasing number of low cost airlines reduces the cost per journey, alongside heightened disposable income and strong marketing strategies by competing destinations. Madeira Island is well placed in this study as it faces a typical issue of declining length of stay, meanwhile acquires rich data in carrying out thorough analyses in the factors that explain length of stay in Madeira Island-Portugal by five different econometric approaches, further policy implications of the research findings, particularly those that could potentially prove useful to increase the length of stay, are also discussed.

Few micro-level empirical papers have addressed the impact of the patent system on industry structure. Using firm-level patent data for public and private firms in plant biotechnology, we develop a measure of patent enforceability. Duration models show that patent statistics are a useful predictor of the timing of merger activity. We find that patent enforceability is an important factor influencing the likelihood of mergers. Mergers in plant biotechnology may be partially motivated by the enforcement of patent rights when firms have overlapping technologies; some of the merger activity may be explained by attempts to avoid mutually blocking technology, as exemplified in the case of Roundup Ready corn.

We develop regression methods for inference on conditional quantiles of time-to-transition in multistate processes. Special cases include survival, recurrent event, semicompeting, and competing risk data. We use an ad hoc representation of the underlying stochastic process, in conjunction with methods for censored quantile regression. In a simulation study, we demonstrate that the proposed approach has a superior finite sample performance over simple methods for censored quantile regression, which naively assume independence between states, and over methods for competing risks, even when the latter are applied to competing risk data settings. We apply our approach to data on hospital-acquired infections in cirrhotic patients, showing a quantile-dependent effect of catheterization on time to infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cox proportional hazards model is a commonly used method for duration analysis in political science. Typical quantities of interest used to communicate results come from the hazard function (for example, hazard ratios or percentage changes in the hazard rate). These quantities are substantively vague, difficult for many audiences to understand and incongruent with researchers' substantive focus on duration. We propose methods for computing expected durations and marginal changes in duration for a specified change in a covariate from the Cox model. These duration-based quantities closely match researchers' theoretical interests and are easily understood by most readers. We demonstrate the substantive improvements in interpretation of Cox model results afforded by the methods with reanalyses of articles from three subfields of political science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a new Bayesian split population survival model for the analysis of survival data with misclassified event failures. Within political science survival data, right-censored survival cases are often erroneously misclassified as failure cases due to measurement error. Treating these cases as failure events within survival analyses will underestimate the duration of some events. This will bias coefficient estimates, especially in situations where such misclassification is associated with covariates of interest. Our split population survival estimator addresses this challenge by using a system of two equations to explicitly model the misclassification of failure events alongside a parametric survival process of interest. After deriving this model, we use Bayesian estimation via slice sampling to evaluate its performance with simulated data, and in several political science applications. We find that our proposed "misclassified failure" survival model allows researchers to accurately account for misclassified failure events within the contexts of civil war duration and democratic survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approximately 70 per cent of the parties emerging in the post‐Second World War era failed to keep their seats in parliament. Party survival is an important issue, especially in parliamentary democracies, where parties are the means through which voters' preferences are linked to government policy outputs. Using an event history modeling framework, and data from 37 democracies, covering 830 parties, this article analyses two questions regarding party durability. First, when do parties fail? Second, which parties survive longer? The article shows that most parties fail at the beginning of their lifespan, and disappear before the end of their fourth term in parliament. Moreover, it is found that moderate policy position, distinct ideology and participation in governing coalitions increase the duration of party survival, even when controlling for party size. This article contributes to the extensive literature about the electoral benefits of ideological moderation and distinct policy positions by showing the long‐term benefits of these factors. Moreover, the long‐term benefit of party participation in government in terms of survival overcomes the short‐term cost of ruling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important strand of research on corporate bankruptcies via Chapter 11 in the United States has appropriately focused on the firm characteristics associated with emergence as viable business entities. This necessarily involves considering factors (such as management changes) that arise during the restructuring process. We consider a narrower question - which ex-ante factors are important in influencing the bankruptcy court's decision in a Chapter 11 application: approval of the reorganization plan or dismissal culminating in the firm's liquidation. We use a competing risks model and find that while financial attributes such as firm size matter, the formation of a creditors committee, debt prepackaging prior to filing, and judicial experience significantly impact the outcome as well as the duration of the legal process. The latter is important because it clearly influences the direct costs of bankruptcy and has also been used in the literature as a useful proxy for harder to measure indirect costs. We believe our approach which explicitly captures the time dimension provides a useful input to the cost-benefit considerations associated with a Chapter 11 filing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a strategic framework to account for fertility choices in polygamous households. It uses unique data on fertility histories of a representative sample of co-wives in Senegal to estimate a duration model of birth intervals with individual baseline hazards. Exploiting entries and exits of co-wives as well as gender of births, empirical tests show that children are strategic complements. One wife raises her fertility in response to an increase by the other wife, because children are the best claim to resources controlled by the husband. This result is the first quantitative evidence that the competition between co-wives drives fertility upwards. It suggests that polygamy undermines the fertility transition in Sub-Saharan Africa by incentivizing women to want many children. This article is also one of the few attempts to open the black box of non-nuclear families, placing strategic interactions at the heart of household decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the school-to-work transition of young people from subsequent school exit cohorts between 2001 and 2012 in Egypt, thus, presenting an early evidence on the adjustments of the labor market in terms of patterns of youth transition to a first job following the 2011 Egyptian uprising. Design/methodology/approach: The analysis compares the early employment outcomes of those who left school after the January 25, 2011 uprising to that of those who left before 2011. The authors also separately control for the cohorts who left school in 2008 and 2009, in an attempt to disentangle any labor market adjustments that might have happened following the financial crisis, and before the revolution. Using novel and unexploited representative data from the 2014 Survey of Young People in Egypt (SYPE), the authors estimate the probability of transition to any first job within 18 months from leaving education and that of the transition to a good-quality job, controlling for the year of school exit. The authors also estimate the hazard of finding a first job and a good-quality job using survival analysis. Findings: School exit cohorts of 2008–2009 (following the financial crisis) and those of 2011–2012 (in the aftermath of the 2011 uprisings) experienced a significantly higher likelihood of finding a first job within 18 months than that of the cohorts of 2001–2007. However, this came at the expense of the quality of job, conditional on having found a first job. The results of the hazard model show that school leavers after 2008 who were not able to transition to a job shortly after leaving school experienced longer unemployment spells than their peers who left school before 2007. The odds of finding a good-quality job appears to decline with time spent in non-employment or in a bad-quality first job. Originality/value: This paper contributes to a limited, yet growing, literature on how school-to-work transition evolved during the global financial crisis and the Egyptian 2011 revolution. Using data from SYPE 2014, the most recent representative survey conducted in Egypt on youth and not previously exploited to study youth school-to-work transition, the paper investigates the short-term adjustments of the youth labor market opportunities during that critical period of Egypt and the region's history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical evidence shows that firms' internationalization process can be non-linear and often includes de-internationalization events. This study focuses on one type of de-internationalization event - a firm's decision to exit an export market - and asks how international experience affects its probability of occurrence. In particular, this study complements existing literature by looking at the effect of import-based market experience - considered as a source of market-specific knowledge prior to export market entry - on the probability of a firm exiting an export market. Conceptually, this study contrasts two views on the consequences of increased market knowledge and hypothesizes that, from a learning perspective, import-based market experience ought to reduce export market exit, whereas, from a sunk cost logic, it ought to increase export market exit. Using duration analysis of detailed data on the internationalization history of 1920 Danish firms, I find that the sunk cost logic primarily explains the relationship between import-based market experience and a firm's probability to exit an export market, and that the effect is strongest for exports to similar destinations. Further analysis shows that this result is partly driven by experimentation-like export behavior by firms with import-based market experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study estimates the effect of local labor demand on the likelihood that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries are able to transition out of the program. Our data include SNAP administrative records from New York (2007 to 2012), linked at the person‐level to the 2010 Census, and linked at the county‐month‐level to industry‐specific labor market conditions. We find that local labor markets matter for the length of time spent on SNAP, but there is substantial heterogeneity in estimated effects across local industries. Using Bartik‐style instruments to isolate the effect of labor demand and controlling for the changing composition of entrants and program rules brought on by the Great Recession, we find that fluctuations in labor demand in industries with high shares of SNAP participants—especially food service and retail—change the likelihood of exiting the program. Notably, estimated industry effects vary across race and parental status, with black participants being most sensitive to changes in local labor market conditions and mothers benefiting less from growth in local labor demand than fathers and non‐parents. We confirm that our results are not driven by endogenous inter‐county mobility or New York City labor markets and are robust to multiple specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I empirically evaluate the subsidized default insurance policy (implemented through the guarantee for government-sponsored enterprises) in the U.S. mortgage market. First, I find that the subsidy raised mortgage interest rates for loans eligible for the subsidy (conforming loans), which is contrary to conventional wisdom. I do so by applying regression discontinuity designs and using the exogenous variation generated by a mandate of the U.S. Congress. My strategy circumvents the endogeneity problem in conventional studies. Second, using various time-to-default models, I find that the subsidy raised the mortgage default probabilities of all conforming loans. The paper has important policy implications on financial regulation and financial stability: I caution regulators against interpreting the observed jumbo-conforming spread as an indication that the subsidy necessarily lowers mortgage rates and benefits conforming borrowers; highlights the adverse impact of the subsidy on financial stability; and calls for deeper housing finance reforms in the U.S. beyond the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an empirical analysis of the determinants of the length of temporary art and cultural exhibitions. Using a sample of 659 exhibitions that took place in Italy in the period 2001-2010, a generalized linear model with a logit link and the binomial family was estimated. We also focus on the subsample of prolonged exhibitions, using a logistic accelerated failure time model. The empirical evidence supports the relevance of the subject, location and timing of the exhibition on duration; however, differences in the estimated impact of explanatory variables seem to suggest alternative marketing strategies for prolonged exhibitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A mortgage borrower has several options once a foreclosure proceedings is initiated, mainly default and prepayment. Using a sample of FHA mortgage loans, we develop a dependent competing risks framework to examine the determinants of time to default and time to prepayment once the foreclosure proceedings is initiated. More importantly, we examine the interdependence between default and prepayment, through both the correlation of the unobserved heterogeneity terms and the preventive behavior of the individual mortgage borrowers. We find that time to default and time to prepayment are affected by several factors, such as the Loan-To-Value ratio (LTV), FICO score and unemployment rate. In addition, we find strong evidence that supports the existence of interdependence between the default and prepayment hazards through both the correlation of the unobserved heterogeneity terms and the preventive behavior of individual mortgage borrowers. We show that neglecting the interdependence through the preventive behavior of the individual mortgage borrowers can lead to biased estimates and misleading inference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing a reliable and robust automatic earthquake detection system is quite a challenging and highly necessary task as two conditions can make this task a difficult one. First, earthquake detection systems may perform more poorly if they are employed in a region that is different from the one where the training database corresponds to. Systems trained with local databases are assumed to perform better. Nevertheless, these databases are usually limited. Second, the performance of such systems worsens when the SNR of the seismogram signals decreases. This paper proposes an end-to-end DNN-HMM based scheme to address these limitations, i.e. it does not require previous phase-picking, backed by engineered features and combined with duration modeling of states and seismic events. The proposed engine requires 10- or 15-times fewer parameters than state-of-the-art methods and therefore needs a smaller training database. Modeling duration can improve the noise robustness of the detection system significantly, particularly with limited training data; having a negligible increase in the number of training parameters. The system described here provides a F1-score 101% higher on average than schemes published elsewhere with Iquique and North Chile databases. It provides a reduction in F1-score equal to 10% when the average SNR is reduced by approximately 18 dB. This reduction in F1-score is at least half of the one observed with the state-of-the-art schemes in the same testing conditions. With respect to the detection of small earthquakes at short epicenter-station distances, the averaged precision provided by the DNN-HMM system with duration modeling is at least 5% higher than other systems. • Robust earthquake detection with a DNN-HMM system and duration modeling. • Models trained on local data are more accurate than those trained on global data. • Fewer trainable parameters requires smaller training databases. • Duration modeling increases the noise robustness of earthquake detection. • Engineering features softens the requirement of training data size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tried to determine whether systematic changes have taken place in the size (amplitude) and duration (length) of business cycle phases in industrial countries over the past half century and to analyze, by using two parametric duration models, mainly, Gompertz and Weibull models, the possible effects of some macroeconomic variables, such as labor productivity growth, inflation, real interest rate, openness, oil prices, and gross saving rate, on the duration of the contraction phases of business cycles. The reference turning point chronology elaborated by the OECD for 23 industrial countries for the post-1956 period was used. The sample included 258 expansions and 267 contraction spells. The widespread belief that the length of expansions has, on average, become longer and that of contractions has become shorter over time was not supported in our sample. There is sufficient evidence of monotonically increasing hazard rates for both contraction and expansion durations; i.e., the spells are positively duration-dependent. Regarding the impacts of covariates on the hazard rate of contractions, the saving rate, openness, productivity growth, and size (depth) were found to have significant positive impacts, whereas the real interest rates have a negative effect. Inflation, oil prices, and length of previous expansion period have no significant impact on contraction durations.