Poverty Among Elderly in India

Using consumption expenditure data of the National Sample Survey 2004?C2005, this paper estimates the size of elderly poor and tests the hypotheses that elderly households are not economically better-off compared to non-elderly households in India. Poverty estimates are derived under three scenarios??by applying the official cut-off point of the poverty line to household consumption expenditure (unadjusted), consumption expenditure adjusted to household size and consumption expenditure adjusted to household composition. Results show that an estimated 18?million elderly in India are living below the poverty line. On adjusting the consumption expenditure to household size and composition, there are no significant differences in the incidence of poverty among elderly and non-elderly households in India. This is in contrast to the notion that elderly households are better off than non-elderly households in India. Based on the findings, we suggest that the age dimension should be integrated into social policies for evidence based planning.     

Managing retailer-supplier partnerships with EDI: Evaluation and implementation

Methods for electronically linking suppliers and retailers (Electronic data interchange systems also known as EDI) have become commonplace. This study develops a methodology for assessing the value provided by an EDI system. The importance of implementation in generating value through EDI is illustrated through the use of a case study of a major retailer implementing an EDI system using the methodology. The case study also shows that EDI systems are likely to be most effective for product categories with unpredictable sales patterns and demonstrates how other technologies (e.g. flexible manufacturing capabilities) can be leveraged to increase the value of EDI.     

Estimation of the inverse of mean

For the inverse of mean, a class of estimators with finite moments is considered and its properties are analyzed in the context of normal and non-normal populations.     

A TWO-PHASE SAMPLING ESTIMATOR IN SAMPLE SURVEYS

A two-phase sampling estimator of the ratio-type for estimating the mean of a finite population, has been considered where the value of ρC_y/C_x can be guessed or estimated in advance. Here C_y and C_x denote respectively the coefficients of variation of the characteristic under study, y, and the auxiliary characteristic x and ρ denotes the coefficient of correlation between y and x. When the value of ρC_y/C_x is guessed or estimated exactly, the estimator has a smaller large-sample variance compared with either an ordinary ratio estimator or an ordinary linear regression estimator in two-phase sampling in the case where the first-phase sample is drawn independently from the second-phase sample. If the sample at the second phase is a subsample of the first-phase sample, the estimator has variance equal to that of the linear regression estimator. The largest value of the difference between the assumed value and the actual value of ρC_y/C_x has been obtained so as not to result in the variance of the estimator being larger than the variances of either an ordinary ratio estimator or an ordinary linear regression estimator.     

Time Use and Household Division of Labor in India—Within-Gender Dynamics

Household allocation of labor is an important area of scholarship in developing countries where women's well-being is affected by the heavy load of unpaid work within the household. This study extends nuclear household-centric research on labor allocation by drawing attention to bargaining between female in-laws in multigenerational households in India. This paper empirically tests two competing theories based on the impact of a daughter-in-law's education on household division of labor in multigenerational households. First is Caldwell's thesis that contends that increasing education would increase the bargaining power of daughter-in-law, thereby tilting the distribution of household labor in her favor, and the second is patriarchal bargain theory that makes an opposite claim. Both these theories are tested using time-use data, and the latter is found to have higher explanatory power. Further layers are added to the analysis by tracing the effects of caste, class, and religion. Findings show that these mediate and determine the division of housework and bargaining outcomes between female in-laws. This study emphasizes the need for an intersectional understanding of gender norms that are inextricably tied to factors such as religion, caste, class, and family structure. Findings also underline the need to study within-gender dynamics systematically.     

A model selection criterion for discriminant analysis of high-dimensional data with fewer observations

This paper is concerned with the problem of selecting variables in two-group discriminant analysis for high-dimensional data with fewer observations than the dimension. We consider a selection criterion based on approximately unbiased for AIC type of risk. When the dimension is large compared to the sample size, AIC type of risk cannot be defined. We propose AIC by replacing maximum likelihood estimator with ridge-type estimator. This idea follows Srivastava and Kubokawa (2008). It has been further extended by Yamamura et al. (2010). Simulation revealed that the proposed AIC performs well.