Impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the Portuguese banking system. Linear ordering method

The goal of this paper is to assess the resilience of Portuguese banks to the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, diagnostic variables of 19 banks were selected and prioritized using linear ordering methods. This methodology allowed us to perform rankings of banks using six linear ordering methods and taking into account two weighting procedures and two variants of the diagnostic feature. The study was also supplemented by a sensitivity analysis and an optimization procedure aimed at identifying the optimal linear ordering method. The main results obtained show that the resilience of Portuguese banks is not evenly distributed among individual banks. These findings could be used by regulators to plan support measures for the most fragile banks.

Developing a Methodology for Aggregated Assessment of the Economic Sustainability of Pig Farms

The economic sustainability of agricultural production is a crucial concern for most farmers, especially for pig producers who face dynamic changes in the market. Approaches for economic sustainability assessment found in the literature are mainly focused on the short-term economic viability of the farm and rarely take a long-term perspective. In this paper, we propose and test a new, innovative assessment and aggregation method, which brings about a broader view on more long-term aspects of economic sustainability. This wider view on economic sustainability, in addition to classical concepts such as technical efficiency, labor productivity, and farm profitability, incorporates the assessment of the levels of entrepreneurship, risk management, and the resilience of the invested resources. All indicators were scaled and aggregated using scaling and weighting procedures proposed by experts into subthemes and themes. The methodology was tested on a sample of 131 pig farms located in 6 EU countries: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Finland, and Austria. We hypothesized that closed-cycle farms might be economically more sustainable than those farms that are specialized in pig breeding or finishing. The results showed that closed-cycle farms do indeed have advantages in terms of raising healthy animals and having slightly better overall resilience of resources, however specialized breeding and finishing farms appeared to be more sustainable in the areas of profitability, risk management, and reproductive efficiency. Our approach supports evidence-based economic sustainability assessments of pig farms and provides a tool that can be used for economic sustainability improvement strategies for farms.

A Simple Method to Handle Non-response Bias in School Surveys on Drug Use

Background: Studies have proved the positive link between truancy and substances use in school surveys. In spite of this, no adapted weighting treatment is generally provided; even when the share of missing and truant pupils is high, and all drug use estimates are biased downward. The necessary data can be collected: on one side, individual current drug use and past episodes of absence and truancy of the respondents; on the other, the count of the presents and absents the day of the survey, including truants, in each class. However, the nature of these data prevents any classical modelling of the survey response without additional assumptions. Methods: We review one method proposed in 2002 by Guttmacher and al. that uses only the individual data and propose two methods that combine both kind of data and in which we can distinguish or not between truancy and legitimate absence. We apply them to the French release of the 2015 Espad survey (European survey project on alcohol and other drugs). The theoretical number of pupils was n=7166; 981 were absent (including 359 truants), while 178 were discarded because of the poor quality of their questionnaires and 6007 were considered final respondents. Assumptions, point estimates and variances are compared. Results: Guttmacher’ method is not conceptually valid and can lead to irrelevant corrections with high variances. Our estimate of cannabis regular use is 8.6% (std=0.75) instead of 7.7% (std=0.67), that is a non-response bias of circa 14%. Conclusion: The proposed approach relies on simple and plausible assumptions; it is preferable to any speculative consideration about the magnitude of the underestimation yielded by the classical weighting procedures. Survey designers should evaluate and discuss the potential bias of their surveys and eventually correct it.

Criminal Justice Contacts and Psychophysiological Functioning in Early Adulthood: Health Inequality in the Carceral State

Despite increased attention to the links between the criminal justice system and health, how criminal justice contacts shape health and contribute to racial health disparities remains to be better understood. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 5,488) and several analytic techniques—including a quasi-treatment–control design, treatment-weighting procedures, and mediation analyses—this study examines how criminal justice contacts shape inflammatory and depressive risk and contribute to black–white health gaps. Findings revealed that incarceration is associated with increased C-reactive protein and depressive risk, particularly for individuals who experienced long durations of incarceration. Arrests are also associated with mental health, and mediation analyses showed that racial disparities in arrests and incarceration were drivers of black–white gaps in depressive symptoms. Together, this study provides new evidence of the role of the criminal justice system in shaping health and patterning black–white health gaps from adolescence through early adulthood.

Pendekatan Penentuan Bobot dengan Surrogate Weighting Procedures untuk Metode Simple Additive Weighting dalam Pengambilan Keputusan Multikriteria

Penentuan bobot multikriteria dalam pengambilan keputusan menjadi suatu kesulitan bagi pengambil keputusan, penentuan bobot diperlukan untuk melakukan evaluasi kriteria. Namun dalam beberapa situasi pengambil keputusan tidak percaya diri atau tidak memiliki pengetahuan untuk mendefinisikan nilai preferensi untuk bobot dan lebih menyukai menggunakan informasi parsial dan penilaian subyektif terhadap bobot kriteria. Salah satu cara penentuan bobot adalah dengan menentukan urutan prioritas kriteria dan menggunakan Surrogate Weight (bobot pengganti) untuk menentukan bobot sesuai dengan jumlah kriteria yang digunakan. Dalam penelitian ini mengimplementasikan Surrogate Weight Procedures yang terdiri dari Rank Sum(RS), Rank Reciprocal(RR), Rank Order Centroid(ROC) dan Equal Weight(EW) untuk menentukan bobot dan metode Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) untuk melakukan perankingan. Simulasi kasus yang digunakan yaitu seleksi pemberian beasiswa PPA (Peningkatan Prestasi Akademik) dengan 9 kriteria dan 22 alternatif. Hasil pengujian dalam penelitian ini yaitu analisis perbandingan hasil akhir alternatif dari kombinasi metode RS-SAW, RR-SAW, ROC-SAW dan EW-SAW .Kata Kunci : Multikriteria,Surrogate Weight, SAW

Do alternative weighting approaches for an Index of Multiple Deprivation change the association with mortality? A sensitivity analysis from Germany

ObjectivesThis study aimed to assess the impact of using different weighting procedures for the German Index of Multiple Deprivation (GIMD) investigating their link to mortality rates.Design and settingIn addition to the original (normative) weighting of the GIMD domains, four alternative weighting approaches were applied: equal weighting, linear regression, maximization algorithm and factor analysis. Correlation analyses to quantify the association between the differently weighted GIMD versions and mortality based on district-level official data from Germany in 2010 were applied (n=412 districts).Outcome measuresTotal mortality (all age groups) and premature mortality (<65 years).ResultsAll correlations of the GIMD versions with both total and premature mortality were highly significant (p<0.001). The comparison of these associations using Williams’s t-test for paired correlations showed significant differences, which proved to be small in respect to absolute values of Spearman’s rho (total mortality: between 0.535 and 0.615; premature mortality: between 0.699 and 0.832).ConclusionsThe association between area deprivation and mortality proved to be stable, regardless of different weighting of the GIMD domains. The theory-based weighting of the GIMD should be maintained, due to the stability of the GIMD scores and the relationship to mortality.

Correcting for non-participation bias in health surveys using record-linkage, synthetic observations and pattern mixture modelling

Surveys are key means of obtaining policy-relevant information not available from routine sources. Bias arising from non-participation is typically handled by applying weights derived from limited socio-demographic characteristics. This approach neither captures nor adjusts for differences in health and related behaviours between participants and non-participants within categories. We addressed non-participation bias in alcohol consumption estimates using novel methodology applied to 2003 Scottish Health Survey responses record-linked to prospective administrative data. Differences were identified in socio-demographic characteristics, alcohol-related harm (hospitalisation or mortality) and all-cause mortality between survey participants and, from unlinked administrative sources, the contemporaneous general population of Scotland. These were used to infer the number of non-participants within each subgroup defined by socio-demographics and health outcomes. Synthetic observations for non-participants were then generated, missing only alcohol consumption. Weekly alcohol consumption values among synthetic non-participants were multiply imputed under missing at random and missing not at random assumptions. Relative to estimates adjusted using previously derived weights, the obtained mean weekly alcohol intake estimates were up to 59% higher among men and 16% higher among women, depending on the assumptions imposed. This work demonstrates the universal value of multiple imputation-based methodological advancement incorporating administrative health data over routine weighting procedures.

Mapping the Austrian political spectrum with the help of VAAs

This paper uses data from the Austrian Voting Advice Application (VAA) wahlkabine.at to locate parties in policy spaces for the 2006, 2008, 2013 and 2017 national elections. It formulates an approach that combines positional information from the VAA data with information about issue saliences that stems from the VAA itself as well as from manifestos coded by the regularly conducted Austrian National Election Study. The VAA-inherent and the external weights serve to calibrate party policy spaces that underlie the VAA data. The paper depicts the Austrian political party space by means of a two-dimensional multidimensional scaling (MDS) map, and furthermore assesses the usefulness of the two weighting procedures. The findings suggest that the use of the internal weights cannot make much of a difference in the present form. In contrast, the external weights not only alter the structure of the party space but also enhance the confidence in the results for substantial reasons.