The Forgotten Million Unemployed

In July 1985 the National Council for Voluntary Organisations launched a campaign for "action for the forgotten million"— the four out of every five long-term unemployed people who receive no practical support from the public services, apart from their benefits. The author of the National Council discussion document outlines some of the major issues which will need to be faced. In particular, he argues that public debate tends to concentrate too narrowly on specific initiatives and individual programmes. Instead, there is a need to consider the rights of all long-term unemployed people, and the needs of the group as a whole.     

小额信贷之违约概率模型:特别考虑异质性

在新巴塞尔资本协议(New Basel Capital Accord)对金融全球化的冲击及金融机构改善资产质量及合并政策的影响下,我国台湾地区金融业进入激烈合并竞争的时代.许多银行颇受降低逾放比率及增加净值报酬率与资产报酬率两难之困扰.消费性信用贷款产品利差大、风险分散,是金融机构授信经营极重要的产品.实证结果显示,采用世代研究(cohort study)建立之模型对样本数据之拟合程度较个案对照研究法(case-control study)的解释变异量为佳,且较符合新巴塞尔资本协议规定及科学程序.虽然Logistic 回归模型在建立逾期概率模型上广泛地被使用,但要求存在于同构型的变异数Var=np(1-p)假设上,且在数据分析上常因为出现变异数之异质性问题,故可采用调整变异数异质性之方法.     

Form Perception of Partly Occluded Shapes in 4‐Month‐Old Infants

Two habituation experiments were conducted to investigate how 4‐month‐old infants perceive partly occluded shapes. In the first experiment, we presented a simple, partly occluded shape to the infants until habituation was reached. Then we showed either a probable completion (one that would be predicted on the basis of both local and global cues) or an improbable completion. Longer looking times were found for the improbably completed shape (compared to probable and control conditions), suggesting that the probable shape was perceived during partial occlusion. In the second experiment, infants were habituated to more ambiguous partly occluded shapes, where local and global cues would result in different completions. For adults, the percept of these shapes is usually dominated by global influences. However, after habituation the infants looked longer at the globally completed shapes. These results suggest that by the age of 4 months, infants are able to infer the perceptual completion of partly occluded shapes, but for more ambiguous shapes, this completion seems to be dominated by local influences.     

Refined Inference on Long Memory in Realized Volatility

There is an emerging consensus in empirical finance that realized volatility series typically display long range dependence with a memory parameter (d) around 0.4 (Andersen et al., 2001; Martens et al., 2004). The present article provides some illustrative analysis of how long memory may arise from the accumulative process underlying realized volatility. The article also uses results in Lieberman and Phillips (2004, 2005) to refine statistical inference about d by higher order theory. Standard asymptotic theory has an O(n^-1/2) error rate for error rejection probabilities, and the theory used here refines the approximation to an error rate of o(n^-1/2). The new formula is independent of unknown parameters, is simple to calculate and user-friendly. The method is applied to test whether the reported long memory parameter estimates of Andersen et al. (2001) and Martens et al. (2004) differ significantly from the lower boundary (d = 0.5) of nonstationary long memory, and generally confirms earlier findings.     

Data tilting for time series

Summary. We develop a general methodology for tilting time series data. Attention is focused on a large class of regression problems, where errors are expressed through autoregressive processes. The class has a range of important applications and in the context of our work may be used to illustrate the application of tilting methods to interval estimation in regression, robust statistical inference and estimation subject to constraints. The method can be viewed as 'empirical likelihood with nuisance parameters'.     

Expectations, Capital Gains, and Income

A theoretical framework for the measurement of income under uncertainty is developed that addresses some long-standing controversies about the treatment of capital gains. The consequences for economic analysis and policy making are potentially serious, because the treatment of capital gains can significantly affect some major macroeconomic aggregates, including national income and savings, balance of payments deficits, government deficits, and depreciation. (JEL O47 , P44 , Q32 )     

Interactionism,Social Organization,and Social Processes: Looking Back and Moving Ahead

With its roots in American pragmatism, symbolic interactionism has created a distinctive perspective and produced numerous important contributions and now offers significant prospects for the future. In this article, I review my intellectual journey with this perspective over forty years. This journey was initiated within the American society, sociology, and symbolic interaction of circa 1960. I note many of the contributions made by interactionists since that time, with particular focus on those who have contributed to the study of social organization and social process. I offer an agenda for the future based on currently underdeveloped areas that have potential. These are inequality orders, institutional analysis, collective action across space and time, and the integration of temporal and spatial orders. The article concludes with calls for further efforts at cross‐perspective dialogues, more attention to feminist scholars, and an elaborated critical pragmatism.     

Immigrants and alien workers

VII. Conclusion The number of immigrants now coming to the United States is proportionally only a fraction of the number that came in earlier years, and there is nothing in those numbers to suggest a difficult absorption burden. Immigrants, both legal and illegal, more than pay for the services they use with the taxes they pay, leaving a considerable net surplus that benefits American citizens. Immigrants raise productivity and do not cause an observable amount of unemployment of citizens. Admitting far more immigrants into the country than the law now allows would have positive effects on the incomes of citizens, and would enhance the continuing vitality of the United States.