This paper uses player/match level data drawn from five playing seasons of the English Premiership League (EPL) to test for the presence of a refereeing susceptibility to social pressure in the application of soccer’s commonest sanction, the yellow disciplinary card. Using both player-specific fixed and random effects models, tentative support for the proposition is uncovered. The estimated eff...

Repeated measures refer to the observations taken on the same subject (plant, animal, person, etc). There is usually a variation among the subjects, which is modeled by random effects. Here is an example. A completely randomized design with a single factor (with fertilizer or without). Each treatment is applied to three plants and the root length of each plant is measured on five occasions (wee...

Estimation of parameters and random effects using true maximum likelihood methods is compared to the commonly used penalized maximum likelihood method. The simulated catch-at-age datasets have all conceivable noise in stock and fishing dynamics in addition to the observation error on the catch. Improvement is modest in simple models but refinements that are only possible with these methods prov...

For inferences from random-effect models Lee and Nelder (1996) proposed to use hierarchical likelihood (h-likelihood). It allows inference from models that may include both fixed and random parameters. Because of the presence of unobserved random variables h-likelihood is not a likelihood in the Fisherian sense. The Fisher likelihood framework has advantages such as generality of application, s...

In this paper we consider the relation between the volume deceleration parameter obtained within the Buchert averaging scheme and the deceleration parameter derived from supernova observation. This work was motivated by recent findings that showed that there are models which despite having Λ = 0 have volume deceleration parameter qvol < 0. This opens the possibility that back-reaction and avera...

We use data on the largest U.S.-based franchised chains, measured by worldwide sales, from 1998 to 2007, to explore scale and scope (or spillovers) effects. Because franchised chains are fundamentally single-product or single-concept entities that usually continue to be developed separately when they belong to multi-chain firms, we can distinguish scale from scope effects much better than in mo...

It is shown that the critical (or deconfinement) temperature for the Nambu-Goto string connecting the point-like masses (quarks) does not depend on the value of these masses. This temperature turns out to be the same as that in the case of string with fixed ends (infinitely heavy immobile quarks).

This paper examines the ability of Board Members of the most important multilateral donor to developing countries, the International Development Association (IDA) of the World Bank, to influence IDA allocations toward their home countries. I show that a system of Bank staff ratings of individual countries' policies, which has become more important in IDA lending over time, has systematically re...

The idea that wages are determined by firm and individual characteristics leads to gather that there is a firms’ effect that influences wage differentials. This paper presents the results of an empirical analysis of gender wage differentials based on INPS data firms for people between the ages of 20 and 25 employed in the private sector in 1996 which takes into account the characteristics of wo...

The macroeconomy and social policies can have substantial influences on poverty in the United States. In this paper, I investigate whether these influences differ across metro and nonmetro areas. To do so, using a 16-year panel of state-level data, I estimate state and year fixed effects models separately for metro and nonmetro areas to see if the effects of the macroeconomy and social policies...