  The potential of location-shift models to find adequate models between the
proportional odds model and the non-proportional odds model is investigated. It
is demonstrated that these models are very useful in ordinal modeling. While
proportional odds models are often too simple, non proportional odds models are
typically unnecessary complicated and seem widely dispensable. The class of
location-shift models is also extended to allow for smooth effects. The
additive location-shift model contains two functions for each explanatory
variable, one for the location and one for dispersion. It is much sparser than
hard-to-handle additive models with category-specific covariate functions but
more flexible than common vector generalized additive models.
