Values and happiness among Asian adolescents: a cross-national study

Despite policy efforts to increase adolescent happiness, their impact has been unsatisfactory. Their limited impact may be rooted from a discrepancy between values that adolescents pursued and those that the policies were based on. To provide policy implications, our study aims to identify prevailing values for South Korean, Japanese, and Chinese adolescents and to examine the relationship between the values and self-rated happiness (SRH). A cross-sectional study was conducted using survey data collected on approximately 2000 middle and high school students (7th to 12th school grade) from each country in 2008. Firstly, an explanatory factor analysis was conducted to identify salient adolescent values from each country. Subsequently, a multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted for each population group to examine the relationship between the identified values and adolescent SRH after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics. We found that benevolence and altruism were positively associated with adolescent SRH in all three population groups. Patriarchy was associated with SRH positively in Chinese yet inversely in Japanese. Success pursuit was inversely associated with SRH in Korean. Policy efforts based on values of communities or social harmony may benefit adolescents’ SRH in these three countries.     

Marginal likelihood estimation from the Metropolis output: tips and tricks for efficient implementation in generalized linear latent variable models

The marginal likelihood can be notoriously difficult to compute, and particularly so in high-dimensional problems. Chib and Jeliazkov employed the local reversibility of the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm to construct an estimator in models where full conditional densities are not available analytically. The estimator is free of distributional assumptions and is directly linked to the simulation algorithm. However, it generally requires a sequence of reduced Markov chain Monte Carlo runs which makes the method computationally demanding especially in cases when the parameter space is large. In this article, we study the implementation of this estimator on latent variable models which embed independence of the responses to the observables given the latent variables (conditional or local independence). This property is employed in the construction of a multi-block Metropolis-within-Gibbs algorithm that allows to compute the estimator in a single run, regardless of the dimensionality of the parameter space. The counterpart one-block algorithm is also considered here, by pointing out the difference between the two approaches. The paper closes with the illustration of the estimator in simulated and real-life data sets.     

Model selection for factor analysis: Some new criteria and performance comparisons

This paper derives Akaike information criterion (AIC), corrected AIC, the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) and Hannan and Quinn’s information criterion for approximate factor models assuming a large number of cross-sectional observations and studies the consistency properties of these information criteria. It also reports extensive simulation results comparing the performance of the extant and new procedures for the selection of the number of factors. The simulation results show the di?culty of determining which criterion performs best. In practice, it is advisable to consider several criteria at the same time, especially Hannan and Quinn’s information criterion, Bai and Ng’s IC_p2 and BIC₃, and Onatski’s and Ahn and Horenstein’s eigenvalue-based criteria. The model-selection criteria considered in this paper are also applied to Stock and Watson’s two macroeconomic data sets. The results differ considerably depending on the model-selection criterion in use, but evidence suggesting five factors for the first data and five to seven factors for the second data is obtainable.     

商业信用风险管理绩效影响因素的实证分析

近年来,Jianmin Jia等学者对"我国信用风险管理现状"及其相关问题进行研究,取得一定的研究成果,但相应研究中存在着"简单使用线性回归,未能消除变量间的相互影响"等局限。基于对已有相关研究成果的评析,并运用因子分析和Pearson相关分析方法,对我国商业信用风险管理绩效的影响因素进行实证研究。研究表明:商业信用风险管理绩效的关键影响因素为"信用管理职能设置"、"客户资信评估"和"信用政策制定",我国企业应从"完善信用风险管理职能"、"改善信息不对称状况"和"提高信用政策制定水平"三方面提高风险管理绩效。     

西部地区工业竞争力综合评价

本文基于面板数据的因子分析,从经济效益、科技与人才、能源与环保三个维度对西部十一省工业综合竞争力进行评估。结果表明,西部地区工业竞争力总体水平不高且不平衡明显。其中四川、重庆、陕西、广西、云南是西部具有较强的工业竞争力的地区,而贵州、甘肃、内蒙古、新疆、青海、宁夏竞争力较弱。因此要有针对性地实施发展规划,以促进西部地区工业差距缩小与总体发展水平的提升。     

A bibliographic study of public relations in Spanish media and communication journals, 2000–2012

This study analyses the trends and visibility of research on public relations in the most relevant Spanish media and communication journals between the years 2000 and 2012. Bibliometrics and content analysis are used to show the reduced presence of articles on public relations in these publications. A trend towards gender parity in authorship is confirmed in the sample, as well as a plurality of universities and a variety of research themes. The study also proves preference for generic questions rather than for specialised topics. Another finding is that almost one fourth of the specific articles on this discipline do not contain the term “public relations”. This can hint towards the need to have a specific high-impact publication on public relations to bring together and provide visibility to the contributions of researchers in this field.     

Complex Latent Variable Modeling in Educational Assessment

Bayesian item response theory models have been widely used in different research fields. They support measuring constructs and modeling relationships between constructs, while accounting for complex test situations (e.g., complex sampling designs, missing data, heterogenous population). Advantages of this flexible modeling framework together with powerful simulation-based estimation techniques are discussed. Furthermore, it is shown how the Bayes factor can be used to test relevant hypotheses in assessment using the College Basic Academic Subjects Examination (CBASE) data.     

Patience moderates the class cleavage in demand for redistribution

Previous studies on class voting have yielded mixed results linking income and demand for redistribution. Why do some poor people oppose redistribution, while some rich people support it? This article argues that an individual's level of patience, an important personal characteristic that influences how people calculate immediate and distinct outcomes, may moderate the effect of class on redistributive preference. In a one-shot game, redistribution between the rich and the poor is zero sum. When people extend their time horizons, however, the poor see the possibility of upward mobility, while the rich emphasize future losses, such as unemployment and economic instability. Consistent with the hypotheses, analyses of the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study and a representative Taiwanese dataset from 2016 reveal a clear class cleavage in demand for redistribution among impatient poor and rich respondents, but the cleavage between their patient counterparts diminished. This pattern of convergence extends previous studies on upward mobility and risk perception theory.     

动态视角下中国城市群土地利用TFP测度及影响因素研究

提高城市群土地利用TFP对合理高效利用土地资源,协调好城市群经济发展、资源配置和环境保护具有重大理论和实践意义.文章运用DEA-Malmquist指数对2003—2016年动态视角下中国城市群土地利用TFP进行测度和时空演变分析,并利用Tobit回归模型对影响城市群土地利用TFP变化的因素进行深入研究.结果表明:从时间维度看,城市群土地利用TFP年均上升0.7％,城市群土地利用TFP增长由技术效率和技术进步"双核驱动",技术效率的提升主要与纯技术效率提升有关,规模效率是技术效率和土地利用TFP提升的瓶颈约束;从空间维度看,晋中、哈长、海峡西岸、中原、长江中游、北部湾、成渝、黔中、关中平原和兰西城市群土地利用TFP呈下降趋势,其余城市群土地利用TFP均呈上升趋势,且京津冀、呼包鄂榆、辽中南、长江三角洲、山东半岛和天山北坡城市群土地利用TFP增长为技术进步和技术效率"双核驱动";从影响因素看,人均GDP和年末金融机构人民币各项贷款余额对中国城市群土地利用TFP具有正向促进作用,城市财政支出占本市GDP的比重和人口密度具有负向阻碍作用.     

On the mathematics of the Jeffreys–Lindley paradox

This paper is concerned with the well known Jeffreys–Lindley paradox. In a Bayesian set up, the so-called paradox arises when a point null hypothesis is tested and an objective prior is sought for the alternative hypothesis. In particular, the posterior for the null hypothesis tends to one when the uncertainty, i.e., the variance, for the parameter value goes to infinity. We argue that the appropriate way to deal with the paradox is to use simple mathematics, and that any philosophical argument is to be regarded as irrelevant.