Determinants of Individual Giving Behavior in Urban India

This paper, based on a primary sample survey over 1925 earning individuals in the cities of Kolkata, Cuttack and Bengaluru, examines how the individual and household characteristics influence the acts of giving in urban India. The regression results indicate income, family size and property ownership affecting likelihood and extent of giving. Likelihood to give is more with females, though males tend to donate more. There exists threshold income beyond which likelihood to donate is less. Characteristics like age, education, dependency ratio and marital status influence certain acts of giving. As the opportunity cost of non-cash giving increases with the rise in income, cash donations substitute non-cash giving. There also prevails complementarity in the acts of giving. On behavioral front, in addition to work–life balance and pledging, the notion of rational choice seems to be gaining ground.

     

He Named Me Malala: connecting the historical,the local,and the global

My essay highlights how this (otherwise excellent) documentary film He Named Me Malala suffers from a historical amnesia in failing to connect the historical, local, and global/Western factors that have set the political-social context within which occurred the Malala incident in 2012. This is because the documentary – exposing the voice of a Pakistani female activist as a postcolonial/global agent – does not look into the historical-colonial, Cold War, or the post-Cold War dynamics that have set the ‘context’ within which the theme of the documentary unfolded. My essay addresses these issues of historical amnesia, arguing that to better comprehend the Malala incident (and broadly the issue of gender violence in Pakistan’s socio-cultural context) it remains imperative to connect how factors of power, politics, and vested interests have intersected at historical, local, and global levels to explain the 2012 Malala incident.     

AIDS KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDES AMONG CANBERRA SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

This paper reports findings from a study of 1,014 Canberra secondary school students in 15 government and private schools. Open-ended responses concerning students' understanding of AIDS, and their views regarding prevention, are presented and discussed. Data on source of AIDS information are also investigated. In general, students understand AIDS as sex-linked, that it involves transmission through the blood, and that there is no cure for it. They espouse more research and education as the main preventive measures, although males also propose homophobic solutions. Teachers and television are the primary sources of AIDS information. Differences by sex of respondent and school type are reported and implications for school-based AIDS education policies are suggested.     

Analysis of one-way layout of count data in the presence of over or under dispersion

This article develops test statistics for the homogeneity of the means of several treatment groups of count data in the presence of over-dispersion or under-dispersion when there is no likelihood available. The C(α)$C(\alpha )$ or score type tests based on the models that are specified by only the first two moments of the counts are obtained using quasi-likelihood, extended quasi-likelihood, and double extended quasi-likelihood. Monte Carlo simulations are then used to study the comparative behavior of these C(α)$C(\alpha )$ statistics compared to the C(α)$C(\alpha )$ statistic based on a parametric model, namely, the negative binomial model, in terms of the following: size; power; robustness for departures from the data distribution as well as dispersion homogeneity. These simulations demonstrate that the C(α)$C(\alpha )$ statistic based on the double extended quasi-likelihood holds the nominal size at the 5% level well in all data situations, and it shows some edge in power over the other statistics, and, in particular, it performs much better than the commonly used statistic based on the quasi-likelihood. This C(α)$C(\alpha )$ statistic also shows robustness for moderate heterogeneity due to dispersion. Finally, applications to ecological, toxicological and biological data are given.     

影响内蒙古经济增长的诸因素实证分析

经济增长方式的转变,是落实科学发展观的核心问题和根本途径.改革开放以来,内蒙古自治区抓住机遇,充分利用其在区位、交通、资源、体制创新等方面的比较优势,加快推进产业结构、技术结构和所有制结构的改革与调整,经济实现了规模的快速膨胀和运行质量的有效提升.本文将运用现代经济增长理论和计量方法,对影响内蒙古经济增长的资本、劳动力、制度变迁及产业结构转变等因素进行分析和探讨.     

Gaussian proposal density using moment matching in SMC methods

In this article we introduce a new Gaussian proposal distribution to be used in conjunction with the sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) method for solving non-linear filtering problems. The proposal, in line with the recent trend, incorporates the current observation. The introduced proposal is characterized by the exact moments obtained from the dynamical system. This is in contrast with recent works where the moments are approximated either numerically or by linearizing the observation model. We show further that the newly introduced proposal performs better than other similar proposal functions which also incorporate both state and observations. This work was supported by a research grant from THALES Nederland BV.     

Analysis of proportions for clustered binary data in the presence of unequal dispersions

This paper investigates the test procedures for testing the homogeneity of the proportions in the analysis of clustered binary data in the context of unequal dispersions across the treatment groups. We introduce a simple test procedure based on adjusted proportions using a sandwich estimator of the variance of the proportion estimators obtained by the generalized estimating equations approach of Zeger and Liang (1986) [Biometrics 42, 121-130]. We also extend the exiting test procedures of testing the hypothesis of proportions in this context. These test procedures are then compared, by simulations, in terms of size and power. Moreover, we derive the score test for testing the homogeneity of the dispersion parameters among several groups of clustered binary data. An illustrative application of the recommended test procedures is also presented.     

Infant death clustering in families: magnitude, causes, and the influence of better health services, Bangladesh 1982-2005

This analysis of infant mortality in Bangladesh focuses on explaining death clustering within families, using prospective data from a rural region in Bangladesh, split into areas with and without extensive health services (the area covered by the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research and the comparison area, respectively). The modelling framework distinguishes between two explanations of death clustering: (observed and unobserved) heterogeneity across families and a causal 'scarring' effect of the death of one infant on the survival chances of the next to be born. Keeping observed and unobserved characteristics constant, we find scarring in the comparison area only. There the likelihood of infant death is about 29 per cent greater if the previous sibling died in infancy than otherwise. This effect mainly works through birth intervals: infant deaths are followed by shorter birth intervals, which increases the risk of infant death for the next child.     

Encountering Hindutva,interrogating religious nationalism and (En)gendering a Hindu patriarchy in India's nuclear policies

This article explores the consequences of a gendered nationalism under India's recent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government that has relied on the discourses of Hindu women's violence and protection as elements of its discursive arsenal to pursue nuclearization as an aggressive policy of the Indian state. To this extent, the article interrogates a discursive relationship between a cultural patriarchy, its quest for Hindu nationalism and gender and the ways in which this patriarchy has both used and (ab)used the images of Hindu women to establish Islam/Pakistan as a threat to the supposedly Hindu India, and justify a nuclear policy for India. The article's contribution to international feminist politics lies in its attempts to stitch the localized politics of Hindu nationalism with its broader geo-political aspirations and implications, namely the role of the Indian state, under the BJP, in maintaining a communalized, militarized and a Hindu patriarchal violence at three inter-connected levels – between gender, communities and nations.     

A GENERALIZED TWO-STAGE RANDOMIZED RESPONSE PROCEDURE IN COMPLEX SAMPLE SURVEYS

The randomized response (RR) technique pioneered by Warner, S.L. (1965) [Randomised response: a survey technique for eliminating evasive answer bias. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 60 , 63–69] is a useful tool in estimating the proportion of persons in a community bearing sensitive or socially disapproved characteristics. Mangat, N.S. & Singh, R. (1990) [An alternative rendomized response procedure. Biometrika 77 , 439–442] proposed a modification of Warner's procedure by using two RR techniques. Presented here is a generalized two‐stage RR procedure and derivation of the condition under which the proposed procedure produces a more precise estimator of the population parameter. A comparative study on the performance of this two‐stage procedure and conventional RR techniques, assuming that the respondents' jeopardy level in this proposed method remains the same as that offered by the traditional RR procedures, is also reported. In addition, a numerical example compares the efficiency of the proposed method with the traditional RR procedures.