Contrasting the Gini and Zenga indices of economic inequality

The current financial turbulence in Europe inspires and perhaps requires researchers to rethink how to measure incomes, wealth, and other parameters of interest to policy-makers and others. The noticeable increase in disparities between less and more fortunate individuals suggests that measures based upon comparing the incomes of less fortunate with the mean of the entire population may not be adequate. The classical Gini and related indices of economic inequality, however, are based exactly on such comparisons. It is because of this reason that in this paper we explore and contrast the classical Gini index with a new Zenga index, the latter being based on comparisons of the means of less and more fortunate sub-populations, irrespectively of the threshold that might be used to delineate the two sub-populations. The empirical part of the paper is based on the 2001 wave of the European Community Household Panel data set provided by EuroStat. Even though sample sizes appear to be large, we supplement the estimated Gini and Zenga indices with measures of variability in the form of normal, t-bootstrap, and bootstrap bias-corrected and accelerated confidence intervals.     

Testing for a change in covariance operator

The paper considers a problem of equality of two covariance operators. Using functional principal component analysis, a method for testing equality of K largest eigenvalues and the corresponding eigenfunctions, together with its generalization to a corresponding change point problem is suggested. Asymptotic distributions of the test statistics are presented.     

教育:必要的乌托邦和可能存在的问题

教育需要乌托邦精神,教育的终极目标是实现人的全面发展;教育是社会变革的"阿基米德点",或大或小的内部变化都将会渗透到社会的各个子机构中;认清必要的乌托邦中教育可能存在的问题,才能保证教育朝着健康、有益、良性的方向发展。     

基于服务驱动假说的消费者自提包裹选择意愿研究

基于淘宝网买家样本,分析了上门投递服务缺陷、上门投递感知风险与消费者自提意愿的关系,试图在新的认知环境下重新检验服务驱动假说。研究表明,上门投递服务缺陷一方面对消费者自提意愿产生了直接的促进作用,另一方面也通过上门投递感知风险的中介效应施加了间接作用;自提感知价值既在上门投递服务缺陷与消费者自提意愿间发挥了调节作用,又对上门投递感知风险的中介作用产生了调节。根据研究结论,可推测当前阶段下服务驱动假说具有一定合理性,相关企业应当明确自提点服务定位,并且需要调整营销推广思路。     

Asymptotic behaviour of a test statistic for detection of change in mean of vectors

The paper gives an asymptotic distribution of a test statistic for detecting a change in a mean of random vectors with dependent components. The studied test statistic has a form of a maximum of a square Euclidean norms of vectors with components being standardized partial cumulative sums of deviations from means. The limit distribution was obtained using a result of Piterbarg [1994. High deviations for multidimensional stationary Gaussian processes with independent components. In: Zolotarev, V.M. (Ed.), Stability Problems for Stochastic Models, pp. 197–210].     

编辑选题策划中的营销策略

选题策划是出版工作的重要环节,也是编辑工作的一项重要任务。好的选题策划是好的出版物的前提和保证。而好的选题策划中的市场营销策略又是其中至为关键的要素。现针对编辑选题策划中营销策略所应重点关注的几个问题展开讨论,以期引起更多的关注。     

评库切《凶年记事》的多重叙事视角

库切近作《凶年记事》以书中主要人物C先生为视角,深刻揭示了当今社会民主进程中有关政治、经济、道德等方面存在的霸权现象,大胆挑战了普世的理性法则和价值标准,对人们的心理乃至生理上产生的矛盾和困惑做了客观深入的描述。平行发展和交替的多重叙事线,在对立和互补的叙事背后呈现多层次的阅读视野。在对当今黑暗世界的拷问中,库切开启了读者思想的闸门,并以其敏锐的观察和深度的反思唤起了人类对理性价值的思考和对各种隐性霸权的批判。     

Cooling the Mother Out: Revisiting and Revising Goffman's Account

This article revisits Erving Goffman's important yet neglected metaphor of “cooling the mark out.” Drawing on a study of mothers whose child has Down's syndrome, I explore the value of Goffman's work for capturing how mothers interpret their child's diagnosis as a loss and rectify this breach by constructing an acceptance of their new situation. The mothers' accounts highlight how Goffman's contentions can be enriched by acknowledging the gendered, temporal, and public character of a loss. This article, thus, can be read both as a celebration and critical revision of his theoretical contribution.     

甘肃特色农产品地理标志国际法律保护

立足甘肃丰富的特色农产品资源和出口量逐年上升的实际,提出利用地理标志制度对甘肃特色农产品进行国际保护,从而形成甘肃特色农产品产业自己的"品牌",提高在国际市场上的竞争力,保证甘肃特色农产品的可持续发展.从提高保护意识,进行特色农产品资源普查,协调政府部门的职能,积极进行海外注册,加强国际监测等方面,加强国际法律保护.     

A class of high-breakdown scale estimators based on subranges

We consider a new class of scale estimators with 50% breakdown point. The estimators are defined as order statistics of certain subranges. They all have a finite-sample breakdown point of [n/2]/n, which is the best possible value. (Here, [...] denotes the integer part.) One estimator in this class has the same influence function as the median absolute deviation and the least median of squares (LMS) scale estimator (i.e., the length of the shortest half), but its finite-sample efficiency is higher. If we consider the standard deviation of a subsample instead of its range, we obtain a different class of 50% breakdown estimators. This class contains the least trimmed squares (LTS) scale estimator. Simulation shows that the LTS scale estimator is nearly unbiased, so it does not need a small-sample correction factor. Surprisingly, the efficiency of the LTS scale estimator is less than that of the LMS scale estimator.