25Debates surrounding the use of policies to avoid further spread of invasive species 26 highlight the need to establish priorities in public resource allocations. We explore the 27 consistency or discrepancy among stakeholder groups involved in the risk and control 28 management of invasive species to identify the extent to which different factors 29 influence stakeholder choices of major relevant plant invaders. Based on stakeholder 30 ranking of invasive plants, we explore the reasons behind stakeholders' support for 31 policy management. Data were collected in Galicia, Spain, where a catalogue of 32 prohibited entry and trade of invasive species is currently under debate. We estimate a 33 rank ordered logit model using information from semi-structured interviews conducted 34 with respondents from four stakeholder groups: public administration sector, 35 ornamental sector, research and social groups. The characteristics of plant invaders that 36 provoke stakeholders to rank a species more highly are wide distribution of plant 37 invaders, existence of public control programmes, use and sale of species in the 38 ornamental sector and media coverage. The influence these aspects have in the selection 39 of top-ranked invaders varies across different stakeholder groups and with stakeholders' 40 level of knowledge, awareness and attitudes towards different potential policy 41 measures. A small group of invaders are perceived as top rated by all stakeholder 42 groups. 43

This paper discusses how to test for conditional symmetry in time series regression models. To that end, we utilize the Bai and Ng test. We also examine the performance of some popular (unconditional) symmetry tests for observations when applied to regression residuals. The tests considered include the coeficient of skewness, a joint test of the third and fifth moments, the Runs test, the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and the Triples test. An easy-to-implement symmetric bootstrap procedure is proposed to calculate critical values for these tests. Consistency of the bootstrap procedure will be shown. A simple Monte Carlo experiment is conducted to explore the finite-sample properties of all the tests.Codes JEL: C12; C15; C22

A new test for hysteresis based on a nonlinear unobserved components model is proposed. Observed unemployment rates are decomposed into a natural rate component and a cyclical component. Threshold type nonlinearities are introduced by allowing past cyclical unemployment to have a different impact on the natural rate depending on the regime of the economy. The impact of lagged cyclical shocks on the current natural component is the measure of hysteresis. To derive an appropriate p-value for a test for hysteresis two alternative bootstrap algorithms are proposed: the first is valid under homoskedastic errors and the second allows for heteroskedasticity of unknown form. A Monte Carlo simulation study shows the good performance of both bootstrap algorithms. The bootstrap testing procedure is applied to data from Italy, France and the United States. We find evidence of hysteresis for all countries under study.JEL classification: C12; C13; C15; C32; E24.

We discuss how to test whether the distribution of regression errors belongs to a parametric family of continuous distribution functions, making no parametric assumption about the conditional mean or the conditional variance in the regression model. We propose using test statistics that are based on a martingale transform of the estimated empirical process. We prove that these statistics are asymptotically distributionfree, and two Monte Carlo experiments show that they work reasonably well in practice.

En un momento histórico en el que el feminismo está a la orden del día, la conciliación masculina es un tema de vital importancia para poder alcanzar la igualdad de género. Tras un repaso de la legislación en España respecto a la conciliación, se utilizará el path modeling como herramienta estadística para analizar los factores que pueden influir a los hombres para no conciliar en España a pesar de tener las facilidades para ello.