Asa Advisory Committees to Federal Statistical Agencies: A Report of the Committee on Committees of the American Statistical Association

(Editor's Note: The following report on ASA advisory committees was prepared by Edwin D. Goldfield as part of a continuing study of the Association's committees and Sections being conducted by the Committee on Committees. Because of the importance of advisory committees to Federal agencies, the report is included here for the information of the members of the Association.)     

Migration from 1918 to 1987 in the Central Statistical Office surveys

Migration patterns in Poland over the past 70 years are discussed as part of a review of migration research conducted by the Central Statistical Office on its seventieth anniversary.     

大力推进统计系统办公自动化建设

办公自动化（Office Automation,缩写为OA）是20世纪50年代随着新技术革命而兴起,进入到80年代伴随信息处理技术和通信技术的进步得到普及和发展。办公自动化作为一门新兴科学,它的内涵和外延也在不断发展变化。从当前发展趋势看,OA是以系统科学为理论基础,行为科学为主导,综合运用计算机、微电子和通信等信息技术来完成各种办公业务,其目的是充分有效地利用信息资源,提高管理效率和工作质量,辅助决策,促进办公活动的规范化和制度化。一、大力推进办公自动化建设,是适应信息化大趋势,促进我国“电子政府”建设的需要近年来…     

市场与政府之间的国民经济核算体系（SNA）

 市场机制和国家干预两大经济思想及其经济政策,贯穿经济学产生、发展和演变的全过程,也是现代经济社会中相辅相成的两大基本思潮,前者即所谓“看不见的手”,后者即所谓“看得见的手”。考察国民经济核算体系的制度内容,我们发现,其无论是作为一种产品,还是作为一种制度安排,它都是市场与政府两种机制或两种思潮的结晶。在国民经济核算体系这一制度安排上,虽然政府干预思想的烙印较深,但市场机制思想作用的痕迹更值得人们去关注,因为,从国民经济核算体系内部来看,其体系的建立所遵循的理论背景正是市场机制的思想。而关于这一命题及其重要性,人们并没有认识到。本文研究的目的,在于对国民经济核算体系这一性质做一探讨,特别突出指导国民经济核算体系构建的理论问题。     

世纪之交：国民经济核算的回顾与前瞻

一、国民经济核算——— 2 0世纪经济理论最大成就之一　　2 0世纪经济科学领域里 ,最为显著的进展是数量分析的兴趣和实证研究倾向的日益增强。尤其在国民经济领域内 ,这种转变更为突出 ,成就十分辉煌。对于国民经济而言 ,科学有效的定量、实证研究和调控、管理操作依据两个基本条件 ;一是建立适当的理论分析结构体系 ;二是具备系统完整的核算资料。因此 ,正如著名经济学家里查德·斯通 (Ｒ .Ｓｔｏｎｅ)所指出的 ,现代经济科学是通过与核算科学的有机结合 ,在不断缩小先验理论与经验研究之间鸿沟的过程中来谋求新发展的。这一发展的一个重…     

Activities of the Demographic and Social Statistics Branch of the Statistical Office of the United Nations

Kurtosis is best described not as a measure of peakedness versus flatness, as in most texts, but as a measure of unimodality versus bimodality.     

探寻统计学发展的历史轨迹——“全国社科规划办”统计学科调研专家座谈会综述

"十一五"国家哲学社会科学研究规划,统计学科专家评审组于2004年9月11～12日在贵阳市召开了"统计学调研暨现代统计学研究"专家座谈会.会议总结了我国统计学科的发展现状,分析了统计学科的发展趋势,基本明确了我国统计学科需要着重研究的领域和方向.     

Statistical concepts of a priori and a posteriori risk classification in insurance

Everyday we face all kinds of risks, and insurance is in the business of providing us a means to transfer or share these risks, usually to eliminate or reduce the resulting financial burden, in exchange for a predetermined price or tariff. Actuaries are considered professional experts in the economic assessment of uncertain events, and equipped with many statistical tools for analytics, they help formulate a fair and reasonable tariff associated with these risks. An important part of the process of establishing fair insurance tariffs is risk classification, which involves the grouping of risks into various classes that share a homogeneous set of characteristics allowing the actuary to reasonably price discriminate. This article is a survey paper on the statistical tools for risk classification used in insurance. Because of recent availability of more complex data in the industry together with the technology to analyze these data, we additionally discuss modern techniques that have recently emerged in the statistics discipline and can be used for risk classification. While several of the illustrations discussed in the paper focus on general, or non-life, insurance, several of the principles we examine can be similarly applied to life insurance. Furthermore, we also distinguish between a priori and a posteriori ratemaking. The former is a process which forms the basis for ratemaking when a policyholder is new and insufficient information may be available. The latter process uses additional historical information about policyholder claims when this becomes available. In effect, the resulting a posteriori premium allows one to correct and adjust the previous a priori premium making the price discrimination even more fair and reasonable.     

Fairness of the national health service in Italy: a bivariate correlated random effects model

The primary purpose of this paper is to comprehensively assess households’ burden due to health payments. Starting from the fairness approach developed by the World Health Organization, we analyse the burden of healthcare payments on Italian households by modeling catastrophic payments and impoverishment due to healthcare expenditures. For this purpose, we propose to extend the analysis of fairness in financing contribution through a generalized linear mixed models by introducing a bivariate correlated random effects model, where association between the outcomes is modeled through individual- and outcome-specific latent effects which are assumed to be correlated. We discuss model parameter estimation in a finite mixture context. By using such model specification, the fairness of the Italian national health service is investigated.     

Data analysis of sales of natural gas to households in the United States

Regression diagnostics and a time series analysis of residuals are used to help define regression equations and to identify, the weaknesses of these equations for explaining monthly deliveries of natural gas to residential customers in the United States for the time period April 1979 through March 1983. More than 99% of the monthly variation in deliveries is explained by a linear regression equation which includes heating degree days, cooling degree days, and the price of natural gas as independent variables. Final estimated relationships yield useful monthly and annual estimates of natural gas deliveries to residential customers in the United States for the time period April 1983 through March 1984. Most importantly, the estimated results when used in conjunction with the diagnostics and the time series analysis of the residuals indicate the possible strengths, weaknesses, and applicability of the estimated relationships.