Intertemporal consumer behaviour under structural changes in income

In this paper we analyze models of forward looking consumer behaviour and give empirical evidence for aggregate quarterly data for the Netherlands, 1967-1984. Special attention is devoted to the implications of unanticipated structural changes in the income process, which because of replanning, will have an impact on the consumption decision. We start with the life cycle hypothesis. Since the fall in aggregate consumption in the Netherlands in the eighties can not be explained by the life cycle model, the theory is reformulated by assuming that the planning horizon of the consumers moves ahead as time goes on. As a result, an error correction mechanism has to be introduced in the consumption function.The modified model is found to be in agreement with the data.     

就业结构、收入结构与居民消费行为研究

按照现行统计口径 ,我国城镇居民的可支配收入来源于 1 1个方面 :( 1 )国有经济单位职工工资 ,( 2 )集体经济单位职工工资 ,( 3)其他经济类型(包括股份制企业、外国企业及港、澳、台企业等 )职工收入 ,( 4 )个体经营者的净收益 ,( 5 )个体被雇者收入 ,( 6)离退休再就业人员收入 ,( 7)其它就业者收入 ,( 8)其它劳动者收入 ,( 9)财产性收入 (包含利息、红利及其它财产租金收入 ) ,( 1 0 )转移收入 (包含离退休金、赡养收入、赠送收入等 8项内容 ) ,( 1 1 )家庭副业收入。其中 ,前 8项基本包括了各种经济成分、经济类型职工的收入。本文将着重…     

基于持久收入和财富目标的跨时消费选择——中国城市居民消费行为的实证研究

 摘　　要:标准生命周期消费理论假定消费者有能力求解复杂的动态优化问题，这一假定至少在中国是不能成立的。本文从中国实际出发，提出了关于中国城市居民消费行为的基本假设。即由于存在信贷约束和消费支出高峰，中国城市居民跨时消费的理性选择是：在避免未来发生流动性约束的前提下尽可能平滑各个时期的消费。与之相对应，本文假定中国城市居民跨时消费决策的主要依据是财富目标和持久收入，并在此基础上构建了经济计量模型。实证分析的主要结论是：（1）1990年以来，随着城市居民财富目标的不断提高，持久收入的边际消费倾向呈持续下降趋势。（2）中国城市居民的消费行为的确存在一个学习和适应过程。     

Intertemporal persistence in healthcare spending and utilization: the role of insurance

This paper develops a dynamic panel model of healthcare demand, with particular emphasis on the relationship between insurance and intertemporal persistence in demand. The model combines flexible marginal distributions for single-period demand with a tight intertemporal dynamic structure. The dynamic component follows a first-order nonlinear Markov process, which is constructed using copula functions. The model considers different insurance plans, including private plans with gatekeepers, private plans without gatekeepers, and public plans. Results indicate that individuals who lack insurance exhibit higher intertemporal persistence in medical spending compared to those with insurance coverage.     

Maximum likelihood estimation in a model with interval data: a comment and extension

The purpose of this article is, first, to extend Poon et al. 's (1993) maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) of the correlation coefficient based on interval data to the regression case. Secondly, this paper shows how the traditional method of collecting interval data with the intervals chosen by the researcher can be easily modified to avoid the problems discussed by Poon et al. (1993). The MLE for this modification to the regression problem is presented. Finally, all the methods discussed in this paper are used to estimate the effects of grade point average and gender on student perceptions of the percentage of their classmates who have cheated on at least one exam in college.     

State space modeling of multiple time series: a comment

This paper provides guidance in choosing k₁ andk₂ of the double k-class (KK) estimator such that it will improve upon both the ordinary least squares (OLS) and Stein-rule (SR) estimators in predictive mean squared error (PMSE). Asymptotic bias and mean squared error (MSE) results are derived for nonnormal and other cases. A simulation compares the KK estimator with the OLS and SR estimators.     

Female athletic participation and income: evidence from a latent class model

This paper introduces and applies an EM algorithm for the maximum-likelihood estimation of a latent class version of the grouped-data regression model. This new model is applied to examine the effects of college athletic participation of females on incomes. No evidence for an “athlete” effect in the case of females has been found in the previous work by Long and Caudill [12], Henderson et al. [10], and Caudill and Long [5]. Our study is the first to find evidence of a lower wage for female athletes. This effect is present in a regime characterizing 42% of the sample. Further analysis indicates that female athletes in many otherwise low-paying jobs actually get paid less than non-athletes.     

Investigating emergent nested geographic structure in consumer purchases: a Bayesian dynamic multi-scale spatiotemporal modeling approach

Spatial modeling of consumer response data has gained increased interest recently in the marketing literature. In this paper, we extend the (spatial) multi-scale model by incorporating both spatial and temporal dimensions in the dynamic multi-scale spatiotemporal modeling approach. Our empirical application with a US company’s catalog purchase data for the period 1997–2001 reveals a nested geographic market structure that spans geopolitical boundaries such as state borders. This structure identifies spatial clusters of consumers who exhibit similar spatiotemporal behavior, thus pointing to the importance of emergent geographic structure, emergent nested structure and dynamic patterns in multi-resolution methods. The multi-scale model also has better performance in estimation and prediction compared with several spatial and spatiotemporal models and uses a scalable and computationally efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo method that makes it suitable for analyzing large spatiotemporal consumer purchase datasets.KEYWORDS: Clustering, dynamic linear models, empirical Bayes methods, Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, multi-scale modeling, spatial models     

Operational Research changes: tales from a parallel universe

Operational research and statistics share many common features. A review of the historical development and of some current dilemmas in operational research is given, in the belief that the narrative will fulfil a wider purpose by causing statisticians to reflect on related aspects of the evolution of their own subject in a rapidly changing environment.     

On the importance of nonparametric approaches for a comparison of income inequality in different countries

"A comparison of income inequality in different countries can be made on the basis of parametric or nonparametric approaches. Using nonparametric instead of parametric approaches may raise the validity of such comparisons in some respects. However, new sources of validity reduction may be linked with nonparametric approaches. An important source of validity reduction is the influence of the type of data grouping on inequality measures. Therefore, nonparametric approaches are not strictly preferable to parametric approaches when comparing income inequality in different countries." (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

On square ordinal contingency tables: a comparison of social class and income mobility for the same individuals

Summary.  Square contingency tables with matching ordinal rows and columns arise in particular as empirical transition matrices and the paper considers these in the context of social class and income mobility tables. Such tables relate the socio-economic position of parents to the socio-economic position of their child in adulthood. The level of association between parental and child socio-economic position is taken as a measure of mobility. Several approaches to analysis are described and illustrated by UK data in which interest focuses on comparisons of social class and income mobility tables that are derived from the same individuals. Account is taken of the use of the same individuals in the two tables. Additionally comparisons over time are considered.     

Computation of the run-length percentiles of CUSUM control charts under changes in variances

In this paper, the run-length distributions of cumulative sum (CUSUM) charts for monitoring mean changes under normal distributions have been investigated thoroughly. However, there are few studies devoted to the analysis of the run-length distributions of CUSUM charts under changes in process variances. Motivated by this, this paper develops a fast and accurate algorithm based on piecewise collocation method for computing the run-length distributions of CUSUM scale charts. It is shown that the proposed method can provide more accurate approximation to the run-length distribution than the conventional Gauss-type quadrature-based methods applied to the CUSUM location charts. Some computational aspects for facilitating computation load are discussed, including the alternative formulation based on matrix decomposition and the geometric approximation to the distribution of large run lengths.     

Aggregate consumption functions for India: A cointegration analysis under structural changes, 1919-86

This paper extends cointegration methodology to include the effect of possible structural changes on aggregate consumption behaviour in India during 1919-86. The only cointegrated relation is found to be a dynamic linear regression of lag order two, with 1944 as the year in which structural change began. The estimated short-run marginal propensity to consume (MPC) is greater than the long-run MPC. The estimates of the MPC are different from previous estimates for the Indian economy based on conventional econometrics. The initial year of structural change has been selected by extending the method of Perron and that of Zivot and Andrews.     

Estimating changes in a multi-parameter exponential family

A two-stage procedure is studied for estimating changes in the parameters of the multi-parameter exponential family, given a sample X ₁,…,X _n. The first step is a likelihood ratio test of the hypothesis H_oof no change. Upon rejection of this hypothesis, the change point index and pre- and post-change parameters are estimated by maximum likelihood. The asymptotic (n → ∞) distribution of the log-likelihood ratio statistic is obtained under both H_oand local alternatives. The m.l.e.fs o of the pre- and post-change parameters are shown to be asymptotically jointly normal. The distribution of the change point estimate is obtained under local alternatives. Performance of the procedure for moderate samples is studied by Monte Carlo methods.