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Explanation (Linguistics) --- Explanatory (Linguistics) --- Explanatory adequacy (Linguistics) --- Linguistic analysis (Linguistics) --- Grammar

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Many empirical researchers yearn for an econometric model that better explains their data. Yet these researchers rarely pursue this objective for fear of the statistical complexities involved in specifying that model. This book is intended to alleviate those anxieties by providing a practical methodology that anyone familiar with regression analysis can employ--a methodology that will yield a model that is both more informative and is a better representation of the data. Most empirical researchers have been taught in their undergraduate econometrics courses about statistical misspecification testing and respecification. But the impact these techniques can have on the inference that is drawn from their results is often overlooked. In academia, students are typically expected to explore their research hypotheses within the context of theoretical model specification while ignoring the underlying statistics. Company executives and managers, by contrast, seek results that are immediately comprehensible and applicable, while remaining indifferent to the underlying properties and econometric calculations that lead to these results. This book outlines simple, practical procedures that can be used to specify a better model; that is to say, a model that better explains the data. Such procedures employ the use of purely statistical techniques performed upon a publicly available data set, which allows readers to follow along at every stage of the procedure. Using the econometric software Stata (though most other statistical software packages can be used as well), this book shows how to test for model misspecification, and how to respecify these models in a practical way that not only enhances the inference drawn from the results, but adds a level of robustness that can increase the confidence a researcher has in the output that has been generated. By following this procedure, researchers will be led to a better, more finely tuned empirical model that yields better results.

Econometric models. --- cross-sectional data --- inference --- misspecification testing --- panel data --- regression --- regression models --- respecification --- Stata --- statistical adequacy

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This paper reviews the experience of the Middle East and North Africa region in education attainment over the past four decades (1970-2010). It documents the following main findings: (a) all countries in the region experienced significant improvements in educational attainment over this period; (b) most countries in the region did better in this regard than comparators that had roughly the same education stocks in 1970; (c) collectively, the region achieved a greater percentage increase in education than other regions; (d) the region's better performance was in part because of higher rates of public spending on education, better food sufficiency status, and a lower initial stock of education in 1970 in comparison with most other developing country regions; and (e) the region had among the lowest payoffs to public spending in terms of increments in education stock; the impressive advance in education was achieved at high cost.

Access & Equity in Basic Education --- Disability --- Economic Development --- Education --- Education For All --- Food Adequacy --- Middle East --- Primary Education --- Public Spending --- Social Protections and Labor --- Teaching and Learning

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Food in Cuba follows Cuban families as they struggle to maintain a decent quality of life in Cuba's faltering, post-Soviet welfare state by specifically looking at the social and emotional dimensions of shifts in access to food. Based on extensive fieldwork with families in Santiago de Cuba, the island's second largest city, Hanna Garth examines Cuban families' attempts to acquire and assemble "a decent meal," unraveling the layers of household dynamics, community interactions, and individual reflections on everyday life in today's Cuba. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and the subsequent loss of its most significant trade partner, Cuba entered a period of economic hardship. Although trade agreements have significantly improved the quantity and quality of rationed food in Cuba, many Cubans report that they continue to live with food shortages and economic hardship. Garth tells the stories of families that face the daily challenge of acquiring not only enough food, but food that meets local and personal cultural standards. She ultimately argues that these ongoing struggles produce what the Cuban families describe as "a change in character," and that for some, this shifting concept of self and sense of social relation leads to a transformation in society. Food in Cuba shows how the practices of acquisition and the politics of adequacy are intricately linked to the local moral stances on what it means to be a good person, family member, community member, and ultimately, a good Cuban.

Food supply --- Food consumption --- Food habits --- Quality of life --- Cuba --- Social conditions --- Adequacy. --- Caribbean. --- Consumption. --- Cuba. --- Distribution. --- Everyday Life. --- Food. --- Household. --- Inequality. --- Socialism.

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This is the second volume of papers on sign-based linguistics to emerge from Columbia School linguistics conferences. One set of articles offers semantic analyses of grammatical features of specific languages: English full-verb inversion; Serbo-Croatian deictic pronouns; English auxiliary do; Italian pronouns egli and lui; the Celtic-influenced use of on (e.g., 'he played a trick on me'); a monosemic analysis of the English verb break. A second set deals with general theoretical issues: a solution to the problem that noun class markers (e.g. Swahili) pose for sign-based linguistics; the appropriateness of statistical tests of significance in text-based analysis; the word or the morpheme as the locus of paradigmatic inflectional change; the radical consequences of Saussure's anti-nomenclaturism for syntactic analysis; the future of 'minimalist linguistics' in a maximalist world. A third set explains phonotactic patterning in terms of ease of articulation: aspirated and unaspirated stop consonants in Urdu; initial consonant clusters in more than two dozen languages. An introduction highlights the theoretical and analytical points of each article and their relation to the Columbia School framework. The collection is relevant to cognitive semanticists and functionalists as well as those working in the sign-based Jakobsonian and Guillaumist frameworks.

Analyse linguistique (Linguistique) --- Explanation (Linguistics) --- Explication (Linguistique) --- Linguistic analysis (Linguistics) --- Semeiotics --- Semiology (Linguistics) --- Semiotics --- Semiotiek --- Sémiologie --- Sémiotique --- Séméiologie --- Séméiotique --- Taalanalyse (Taalwetenschap) --- Verklaring (Taalwetenschap) --- Lexicology. Semantics --- Psycholinguistics --- Phonetics --- Explanatory (Linguistics) --- Explanatory adequacy (Linguistics)