Inequality and welfare evaluation of heterogeneous income distributions

This paper establishes the principles that should govern the welfare and inequality analysis of heterogeneous income distributions. Two basic criteria – the equity preference condition and the compensation principle – are shown to be fundamentally incompatible. The paper favours the latter, thereby vindicating the traditional method of dealing with heterogeneous samples. However, inequality and welfare comparisons will usually be well defined only if equivalent incomes are obtained using constant scale factors; and researchers will need to distinguish clearly between inequality of nominal incomes and inequality of living standards. Furthermore, household observations must always be weighted according to family size.     

An efficient polynomial space and polynomial delay algorithm for enumeration of maximal motifs in a sequence

In this paper, we consider the problem of enumerating all maximal motifs in an input string for the class of repeated motifs with wild cards. A maximal motif is such a representative motif that is not properly contained in any larger motifs with the same location lists. Although the enumeration problem for maximal motifs with wild cards has been studied in Parida et al. (2001), Pisanti et al. (2003) and Pelfrêne et al. (2003), its output-polynomial time computability has been still open. The main result of this paper is a polynomial space polynomial delay algorithm for the maximal motif enumeration problem for the repeated motifs with wild cards. This algorithm enumerates all maximal motifs in an input string of length n in O(n ³) time per motif with O(n) space, in particular O(n ³) delay. The key of the algorithm is depth-first search on a tree-shaped search route over all maximal motifs based on a technique called prefix-preserving closure extension. We also show an exponential lower bound and a succinctness result on the number of maximal motifs, which indicate the limit of a straightforward approach. The results of the computational experiments show that our algorithm can be applicable to huge string data such as genome data in practice, and does not take large additional computational cost compared to usual frequent motif mining algorithms. This work is done during the Hiroki Arimura’s visit in LIRIS, University Claude-Bernard Lyon 1, France.     

The heterogeneous impact of pension income on elderly living arrangements: evidence from China’s new rural pension scheme

This paper investigates the impact of pension income on living arrangements of the elderly. Taking advantage of a unique opportunity due to the recent establishment and expansion of the New Rural Pension Scheme in China, we explicitly address the endogeneity of pension status and pension income through a fixed-effect model with instrumental variable approach by exploiting exogenous time variation in the program implementation at county level. We find an overall positive effect of pension income on independent living as well as considerable heterogeneity. The positive income effects of the NRPS are concentrated among the elderly with adult children living nearby, of higher socio-economic status, and with better health at baseline; for other groups, the effects are insignificant. We also find that more generous programs exhibit larger effects. Our results highlight that living arrangement is multidimensional in rural China.     

Does It Matter How We Assess Standard of Living? Evidence from Indian Slums Comparing Monetary and Multidimensional Approaches

As part of Sustainable Development Goals, the United Nations have set targets of upgrading slums and reducing poverty in all its dimensions by 2030. Policies towards improving the living conditions of slum-dwellers require proper assessment of their standard of living as well as understanding the associated characteristics. In this paper, using slum-level primary household survey data from three largest Indian cities, we, first, assess the standard of living of slum dwellers using both monetary and non-monetary approaches and then explore how various household and spatial characteristics are consistently or differently associated with both forms of assessments. We use standard monetary indicators, but to assess non-monetary standard of living, use a counting approach framework and justify the selection of specific indicators in the context of slums. Our analysis yields some interesting observations as some characteristics are differently associated with monetary and non-monetary living standards, which should affect policy designs in slums.     

College Students' Money Beliefs and Behaviors: An Asian Perspective

The multidimensionality of money was investigated, using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The respondents, 290 college students from Korea, Japan, and the United States, were administered a survey, which included socio-demographic questions, and Furnham's (1984) Money Beliefs and Behaviors (MBBS) Scale. Through a series of principal components analyses, a three-factor model with 10 MBBS items was identified. The three factors, Power, Security, and Financial Modesty accounted for 53.6% of the variance. The findings have implications for college students and financial management practitioners.     

Citizens’ Perception of Past Environmental Damage and Liability in Countries with Transition: Evidence from Kemerovo,Russia

This paper analyzes citizens’ perception of past environmental damage and liability through the estimation of willingness to pay for the implementation of decontamination and land rehabilitation of the damaged site. The paper takes the Russian Federation as a case of country in transition and focuses on Kemerovo region as one of the most affected regions in the country. The major analytical tool employed in the study is choice experiment, data for which was collected through a household survey. Primary conclusion of the analysis is that citizens' willingness to financially support the implementation of environmental quality improvement projects is not high though individuals in the studied area express high level of concern over the issue in focus.     

Calibration estimation in dual-frame surveys

Survey statisticians make use of auxiliary information to improve estimates. One important example is calibration estimation, which constructs new weights that match benchmark constraints on auxiliary variables while remaining “close” to the design weights. Multiple-frame surveys are increasingly used by statistical agencies and private organizations to reduce sampling costs and/or avoid frame undercoverage errors. Several ways of combining estimates derived from such frames have been proposed elsewhere; in this paper, we extend the calibration paradigm, previously used for single-frame surveys, to calculate the total value of a variable of interest in a dual-frame survey. Calibration is a general tool that allows to include auxiliary information from two frames. It also incorporates, as a special case, certain dual-frame estimators that have been proposed previously. The theoretical properties of our class of estimators are derived and discussed, and simulation studies conducted to compare the efficiency of the procedure, using different sets of auxiliary variables. Finally, the proposed methodology is applied to real data obtained from the Barometer of Culture of Andalusia survey.     

Global and multiple test procedures using ordered p-values—a review

This paper reviews global and multiple tests for the combination ofn hypotheses using the orderedp-values of then individual tests. In 1987, Röhmel and Streitberg presented a general method to construct global level α tests based on orderedp-values when there exists no prior knowledge regarding the joint distribution of the corresponding test statistics. In the case of independent test statistics, construction of global tests is available by means of recursive formulae presented by Bicher (1989), Kornatz (1994) and Finner and Roters (1994). Multiple test procedures can be developed by applying the closed test principle using these global tests as building blocks. Liu (1996) proposed representing closed tests by means of “critical matrices” which contain the critical values of the global tests. Within the framework of these theoretical concepts, well-known global tests and multiple test procedures are classified and the relationships between the different tests are characterised.