Calculable Power: A Case Study of IMF Quotas and Voting Rights Reform*

Voting procedure is an important mechanism for public choice in collective bodies such as international organizations. This paper measures and compares IMF member countries’ voting power before the 2008 reform and after the 2010 reform on the basis of datasets on IMF quotas and voting rights distribution provided by IMF. Our study verifies that IMF’s quotas and voting rights reforms do help to reduce the voting power gap among member countries. The 2008 and 2010 reforms produce a greater improvement in emerging members’ voting power under the 70 percent majority rule than the 85 percent rule; the 70 percent majority rule means the United States would lose its absolute veto. Moreover, the paper disproves the underlying assumption that regards a member’s voting power as proportional to its voting rights. Countries with different amounts of voting rights can still have the same voting power.     

Estimation and Inference Procedures for Semiparametric Distribution Models with Varying Linear‐Index

More flexible semiparametric linear‐index regression models are proposed to describe the conditional distribution. Such a model formulation captures varying effects of covariates over the support of a response variable in distribution, offers an alternative perspective on dimension reduction and covers a lot of widely used parametric and semiparameteric regression models. A feasible pseudo likelihood approach, accompanied with a simple and easily implemented algorithm, is further developed for the mixed case with both varying and invariant coefficients. By justifying some theoretical properties on Banach spaces, the uniform consistency and asymptotic Gaussian process of the proposed estimator are also established in this article. In addition, under the monotonicity of distribution in linear‐index, we develop an alternative approach based on maximizing a varying accuracy measure. By virtue of the asymptotic recursion relation for the estimators, some of the achievements in this direction include showing the convergence of the iterative computation procedure and establishing the large sample properties of the resulting estimator. It is noticeable that our theoretical framework is very helpful in constructing confidence bands for the parameters of interest and tests for the hypotheses of various qualitative structures in distribution. Generally, the developed estimation and inference procedures perform quite satisfactorily in the conducted simulations and are demonstrated to be useful in reanalysing data from the Boston house price study and the World Values Survey.     

中国P2P网络借贷信用风险的测量

分析中国P2P网络借贷信用风险的生成机理,借鉴商业银行典型个人信用风险测量理论基础与方法,构建基于涵盖借款人软信息的P2P网络借贷信用风险评级指标体系。通过向在银行从事信贷工作的专业人员发放调查问卷,确定具体指标,使用AHP(层次分析法)与DEMATEL(决策实验室法)相结合的方法综合确定指标体系权重,最后评级结果以百分制数值给出,并换算成具体的信用等级,有效解决了平台对借款人信用等级测量问题。     

Estimation of parameters of SDE driven by fractional Brownian motion with polynomial drift

ABSTRACT

Strongly consistent and asymptotically normal estimators of the Hurst index and volatility parameters of solutions of stochastic differential equations with polynomial drift are proposed. The estimators are based on discrete observations of the underlying processes.     

中国旅游上市公司全要素生产率研究

旅游上市公司是旅游业发展的微观主体,其全要素生产率全面反映了该行业的实际经营效率和发展趋势。本文基于Malmquist指数探讨了20家中国旅游上市公司2004-2009年的全要素生产率。Malmquist指数及其分解结果显示:中国旅游上市公司Malmquist指数年均增长率为-0.4%,其中纯技术效率的增长显著,年均增幅为1.3%;时间跨度层面,中国旅游上市公司的全要素生产率的年度波动性较大。此外,样本中旅游上市公司Malmquist指数与营业收入增长率未能兼顾;2008-2009年度粗放型增长的特征显著。     

Bayesian elastic net single index quantile regression

Single index model conditional quantile regression is proposed in order to overcome the dimensionality problem in nonparametric quantile regression. In the proposed method, the Bayesian elastic net is suggested for single index quantile regression for estimation and variables selection. The Gaussian process prior is considered for unknown link function and a Gibbs sampler algorithm is adopted for posterior inference. The results of the simulation studies and numerical example indicate that our propose method, BENSIQReg, offers substantial improvements over two existing methods, SIQReg and BSIQReg. The BENSIQReg has consistently show a good convergent property, has the least value of median of mean absolute deviations and smallest standard deviations, compared to the other two methods.     

Cumulative correspondence analysis using orthogonal polynomials

Taguchi's statistic has long been known to be a more appropriate measure of association of the dependence for ordinal variables compared to the Pearson chi-squared statistic. Therefore, there is some advantage in using Taguchi's statistic in the correspondence analysis context when a two-way contingency table consists at least of an ordinal categorical variable. The aim of this paper, considering the contingency table with two ordinal categorical variables, is to show a decomposition of Taguchi's index into linear, quadratic and higher-order components. This decomposition has been developed using Emerson's orthogonal polynomials. Moreover, two case studies to explain the methodology have been analyzed.     

Fast robust feature screening for ultrahigh-dimensional varying coefficient models

In this paper, we propose a new partial correlation, the so-called composite quantile partial correlation, to measure the relationship of two variables given other variables. We further use this correlation to screen variables in ultrahigh-dimensional varying coefficient models. Our proposed method is fast and robust against outliers and can be efficiently employed in both single index variable and multiple index variable varying coefficient models. Numerical results indicate the preference of our proposed method.     

甘肃省人口压力评估指标及定量评估研究

在对传统人口压力评价指标体系评述的基础上，将无形资源纳入人口压力评价指标体系，根据2006年甘肃省统计资料。对全省81个县级行政区划单位的人口压力进行赋值与量化。结果表明甘肃省人口压力量化值呈正态分布．有形资源与无形资源都丰富的地区人口压力较小，人口压力与社会经济发展水平密切相关。实现甘肃社会经济的可持续发展．必须注重人口压力区域差异的合理调控。     

民族素质是构成现代发展概念的重要内涵--民族素质研究之五

本文从与发展内涵相关的人类发展的诸项指数、国家实力概念的探讨情况,论述了民族素质在现代发展概念中的重要地位.