Analysis of changes in mortality in Poland

Mortality rates for both sexes for 5- and 10-year age intervals are analyzed for the years 1960-1983 for various localities of Poland. The author notes a decline in mortality since 1966, and provides new estimates of that trend. Some problems concerning the data are also considered.     

Estimation of population product in presence of non-response in successive sampling

The design of this paper is to examine the problem of estimation of finite population product in mail surveys for the current occasion in the context of sampling on two occasions is attempted when there is non-response on both the occasions. Estimators for the current occasion are derived as a particular case when there is non-response on first and second occasion only. The gain in efficiency of the proposed estimate over the direct estimate using no information gathered on the first occasion is computed. The proposed strategy has been compared with other estimators. An empirical study is carried out to study the performance of the proposed strategy.     

中国工资差异变动的分解

使用CHNS（中国健康与营养调查）提供的工资横截面数据,通过Oaxaca-Blinder分解方法,在分位数回归的基础上,分别以总样本、东部样本和中西部样本,对1989—2006年、1989—1997年和1997—2006年三个时间段的工资差异的变动进行分解,研究发现：在大多数情况下,解释变量的结构效应小于解释变量的价格效应;在方向上,结构效应与工资差异变动的方向相反,而价格效应与工资差异变动方向相同;工资差异的变动无论是结构效应引起的还是价格效应引起的,都主要发生在工资分布的低端;作为重要解释变量的技能偏向型技术进步引起的工资差异变动,主要发生在工资分布的高端;在不同时间段和不同样本下,解释变量对工资差异变动的影响程度存在差异。     

Design of experiments in the presence of errors in factor levels

This paper is concerned with the statistical properties of experimental designs where the factor levels cannot be set precisely. When the errors in setting the factor levels cannot be measured, design robustness is explored. However, when the actual design could be measured at the end of the investigation, its optimality is of interest. D-optimality could be assessed in different ways. Several measures are compared. Evaluating them is difficult even in simple cases. Therefore, in general, simulations are used to obtain their values. It is shown that if D-optimality is measured by the expected value of the determinant of the information matrix of the experimental design, as has been suggested in the past, on average the designs appear to improve with the variance of the error in setting the factor levels. However, we argue that the criterion of D-optimality should be based on the inverse of the information matrix. In this case it is shown that the experiment could be better or worse than the planned one. It is also recognized that setting the factor levels with error could lead to an increased risk of losing observations, which on its own could reduce considerably the optimality of the experimental designs. Advice on choosing the design region in such a way that such a risk is controlled to an acceptable level is given.     

利用因子分析法浅析我国健康经济发展状况

在经济发展促进人们收入水平不断提高的同时,经济学界引入了一种全新的理念即"健康经济"来衡量和评价经济的发展。文章利用因子分析的方法来剖析我国各个省市在促进"健康经济"发展上的不同表现,并提出一些相关的政策建议,为促进我国各省市"健康经济"的发展提供一定的理论依据。     

Statistical Analysis of Heat Waves in the State of Victoria in Australia

The recent blistering heat waves of 2009 in the state of Victoria in Australia were so unprecedented in terms of duration and intensity that society was largely unprepared. These heat waves caused serious health, social and economic problems. In this paper, the daily maximum temperatures at ten selected stations are studied. Auto‐regressive integrated moving‐average models are used to prewhiten the time series. Uncorrelated, non‐normal and heavy‐tailed residuals are analyzed by means of a new skew t‐mixture distribution. The number of mixture components is effectively determined by an innovative penalisation procedure. It is shown that the resulting skew t‐mixture models provide an acceptable fit in all cases. Possible future temperature patterns are obtained through simulation. It is forecast that the average duration of high temperature episodes will increase by two to three days per year and a new eight‐year high temperature level is very likely in the coming few years. The relationship between heavy tail behaviour of the fitted distribution and heat waves is noteworthy.     

Evaluation of Response Surface Designs in Presence of Errors in Factor Levels

Experimenters are often confronted with the problem that errors in setting factor levels cannot be measured. In the robust design scenario, the goal is to determine the design that minimizes the variability transmitted to the response from the variables’ errors. The prediction variance performance of response surface designs with errors is investigated using design efficiency and the maximum and minimum scaled prediction variance. The evaluation and comparison of response surface designs with and without errors in variables are developed for second order designs on spherical regions. The prediction variance and design efficiency results and recommendations for their use are provided.     

Estimation of regression parameters in the presence of outliers in the response

In this paper, we consider a regression model with non-spherical covariance structure and outliers in the response. The generalized least squares estimator obtained from the full data set is generally not used in the presence of outliers and an estimator based on only the non-outlying observations is preferred. Here we propose as an estimator a convex combination of the full set and the deleted set estimators and compare its performance with the other two.     

如何应用EM算法处理调研中的无回答问题

在市场调研中,由于无回答情况所造成数据的缺失,给调查结果的估计带来一定困难。文章将通过对EM算法的介绍,讨论如何应用EM算法来解决调研中的无回答问题,并通过具体实例演示其操作过程。     

Deletion residuals in the detection of heterogeneity of variances in linear regression

The heterogeneity of error variance often causes a huge interpretive problem in linear regression analysis. Before taking any remedial measures we first need to detect this problem. A large number of diagnostic plots are now available in the literature for detecting heteroscedasticity of error variances. Among them the ‘residuals’ and ‘fits’ (R–F) plot is very popular and commonly used. In the R–F plot residuals are plotted against the fitted responses, where both these components are obtained using the ordinary least squares (OLS) method. It is now evident that the OLS fits and residuals suffer a huge setback in the presence of unusual observations and hence the R–F plot may not exhibit the real scenario. The deletion residuals based on a data set free from all unusual cases should estimate the true errors in a better way than the OLS residuals. In this paper we propose ‘deletion residuals’ and the ‘deletion fits’ (DR–DF) plot for the detection of the heterogeneity of error variances in a linear regression model to get a more convincing and reliable graphical display. Examples show that this plot locates unusual observations more clearly than the R–F plot. The advantage of using deletion residuals in the detection of heteroscedasticity of error variance is investigated through Monte Carlo simulations under a variety of situations.     

对《国际服务贸易统计制度》中服务贸易统计框架的分析与评价

 2010年8月1日新版《国际服务贸易统计制度》开始在中国正式实施,我国的服务贸易统计框架从制度上得以确定。本文首先对《制度》所构建的服务贸易统计框架进行介绍,然后通过与《国际服务贸易统计手册》的比较,找出其与《手册》相关建议的差异之处并结合我国服务贸易统计存在的问题提出相应的建议。     

西部地区经济增长中的难点分析

要解决西部地区经济增长缓慢的问题,必须首先正视西部地区在劳动力、企业现状等方面存在的问题.只有准确地认识或找到与东部地区的差距,才能找到西部地区大开发的思路.文章以详实的统计资料为依据,采用对比的方法,揭示了东西部地区在劳动力素质、就业、国有企业经营状况、企业创新能力及产权等方面的差距,并提出了相应的对策见解.     

The sensitivity of estimates of the change in population behaviour to realistic changes in bias in repeated surveys

Summary.  The first British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL) was conducted in 1990–1991 and the second in 1999–2001. When surveys are repeated, the changes in population parameters are of interest and are generally estimated from a comparison of the data between surveys. However, since all surveys may be subject to bias, such comparisons may partly reflect a change in bias. Typically limited external data are available to estimate the change in bias directly. However, one approach, which is often possible, is to define in each survey a sample of participants who are eligible for both surveys, and then to compare the reporting of selected events that occurred before the earlier survey time point. A difference in reporting suggests a change in overall survey bias between time points, although other explanations are possible. In NATSAL, changes in bias are likely to be similar for groups of sexual experiences. The grouping of experiences allows the information that is derived from the selected events to be incorporated into inference concerning population changes in other sexual experiences. We use generalized estimating equations, which incorporate weighting for differential probabilities of sampling and non-response in a relatively straightforward manner. The results, combined with estimates of the change in reporting, are used to derive minimum established population changes, based on NATSAL data. For some key population parameters, the change in reporting is seen to be consistent with a change in bias alone. Recommendations are made for the design of future surveys.     

美国对国际服务贸易统计制度的促进及动因

服务贸易是当今国际经济贸易关系中最为重要的领域之一 ,也是在WTO体制内重点谈判的议题之一。服务贸易中丰厚的利润及其对国民经济的贡献日益为各国政府和企业所认识。中国在加入WTO以后既面临着对外开放国内服务市场的压力 ,也可以抓住机遇发展我国的服务贸易 ,提高国民经济发展水平 ,从而加快全面建设小康社会的步伐。因此 ,近年来国内官、产、学三方对服务贸易的理论和实践的研究快速升温。然而对服务贸易的理论和实践的研究离不开服务贸易统计数据 ,否则无法进行实证研究。而服务贸易统计数据的全面性、及时性和准确性 ,又取决于官…     

Comparison of order statistics in two-sample problem in the sense of Pitman closeness

In this paper, we study the Pitman measure of closeness of order statistics of two independent samples from the same distribution to population quantiles. We then derive various exact expressions of the probability closeness of order statistics from the X and Y samples. Some distribution-free results for the median of the sampling distribution are obtained. Exact and explicit expressions are presented for Uniform(?1, 1) and exponential distributions. Numerical results for illustrative purposes are also provided.     

Efficient use of multi-auxiliary information in search of good rotation patterns in successive sampling

This article considers the problem of estimating the population mean on the current (second) occasion using multi-auxiliary information in successive sampling over two occasions. A general class of estimators is proposed for estimating population mean on the current occasion and expressions for bias and mean square error for these estimators are obtained up to first degree of approximation. The minimum variance bound estimator in the proposed class is discussed. Many popular estimators have been shown to belong to this class. Optimum replacement policy is also discussed. Finally, the superiority of the proposed class of estimators over multivariate version of chain type ratio estimator envisaged by Singh (2005 Singh, G.N. (2005). On the use of chain type ratio estimator in successive sampling. Stat Transition 7:21–26. [Google Scholar]) is established empirically.     

Tests of specification in econometrics

This survey of recent developments in testing for misspecification of econometric models reviews procedures based on a method due to Hausman. Particular attention is given to alternative forms of the test, its relationship to classical test procedures, and its role in pre-test estimation.