交通基础设施、空间溢出与经济增长关系的实证分析

文章构建中国2000-2015年间30个省份多样化的空间面板数据,采用极大似然估计、空间杜宾模型及偏微分方法,实证测度了中国交通基础设施对经济增长的空间溢出效应.研究发现,铁路在地理距离作用下对经济增长正向显著,在其他作用下不显著;公路在经济、产业和技术距离作用下高度显著,而在地理距离作用下不显著.综合距离作用分析表明,公路对经济增长存在积极的溢出效应,在统计上正向显著;而铁路则存在较弱的影响,且未通过显著性检验.     

固定设计异方差非参数回归模型的预测方法

文章针对固定设计下异方差非参数回归模型,考虑了基于多项式样条的三种预测方法,即非外推法、线性外推法和非线性外推法.模拟结果表明非外推预测法的均方根误差(RMSE)和平均绝对误差(MAE)的均值最大,而线性外推法的RMSE和MAE的均值略小于非线性外推法的RMSE和MAE的均值.实证分析结果显示:非外推预测法的平均绝对百分比误差(MAPE)、RMSE和MAE最大,线性外推法的MAPE、RMSE和MAE最小.这表明整体上外推法优于非外推法,而线性外推法是简单可行的.     

Public Attitudes towards Income Redistribution: Evidence from Hong Kong

The drivers of public support for redistributive policy have stimulated academic debate around the world. The majority of studies use cross‐country surveys conducted in the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development countries to contribute to the debate on whether self‐interest or social values have more influence on public attitudes towards redistribution. Drawing on a phone survey conducted in 2013, this study advances the discussion by investigating public attitudes towards redistribution and social policy changes against the backdrop of buoyant government revenues in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong welfare model, best seen as a parallel to the liberal welfare state, is selective and residual. Contrary to the usual assumption, the social values hypothesis, viewing poverty as societal problems instead of individual reasons, has been supported in the Hong Kong context. It lends support to greater redistribution in a residual welfare state. The policy implications of the findings are also discussed.     

Disequilibrium multi-dividing ontology learning algorithm

As an effective tool for data storage, processing, and computing, ontology has been used in many fields of computer science and information technology. By means of its powerful performance on semantic query and knowledge extraction, domain ontology has been built on various disciplines such as biology, pharmaceutics, geography, chemistry, etc. and been smoothly employed for their engineering applications. In these ontology applications, we aim to get an optimal ontology function which maps each ontology to a real number and then determine the similarity between concepts by the distance of their corresponding real numbers. In former ontology learning approaches, all the instances in the training sample have equal status in the learning process. In this article, we present the disequilibrium multi-dividing ontology algorithm in which the important ontology data will be highlighted during the learning, and the relevant ontology data tend to be eliminated. Four experiments are designed to test the serviceability of our disequilibrium multi-dividing algorithm from angles of ontology similarity measuring and ontology mapping construction.     

中国城乡发展差距水平及其波动效应的实证

城乡发展差距是中国社会转型下最突出的矛盾之一.文章从经济、社会、文化、政治、生态五大维度构建中国城乡发展差距综合评价指标体系,以中国31个省份为研究区域,运用主成分分析法实证评价了中国城乡发展差距的现实水平及其波动效应.研究表明,中国城乡差距水平由东向西呈递增趋势,1985年至今城乡差距水平表现为一种波动性扩大的效应,城乡差距水平与城镇化发展水平表现为一种相互影响的逆向关系.     

Can Likert Scales be Treated as Interval Scales?—A Simulation Study

The Likert scale is widely used in social work research, and is commonly constructed with four to seven points. It is usually treated as an interval scale, but strictly speaking it is an ordinal scale, where arithmetic operations cannot be conducted. There are pros and cons in using the Likert scale as an interval scale, but the controversy can be handled by increasing the number of points. Several researchers have suggested bringing the number up to eleven, on the basis of empirical data. In this article the authors explore this rational and share the same view, but simulate artificial data from both symmetrical normal and skewed distributions where the underlying metric is known in advance. Results show that more Likert scale points will result in a closer approach to the underlying distribution, and hence normality and interval scales. To increase generalizability social work practitioners are encouraged to use 11-point Likert scales from 0 to 10, a natural and easily comprehensible range.     

The Role of Parents in Introducing Children to Financial Services: Evidence from Ghana-YouthSave

Financial capability—financial knowledge, skills, and access to financial services—may help smooth transitions to adulthood for youth and is affected by socialization experiences with parents and other family members. Among a sample of youth and their parents enrolled in the YouthSave experiment in Ghana (n?=?4,065), this study examined whether physical access to financial services and/or visiting banks with parents or other family members was associated with youth’s perceptions and understanding of financial institutions. We found a statistically significant association between visiting the bank with a parent or other family member and youth’s attitudes (β?=?1.45, p?<?0.001) and understanding of financial services (β?=?2.96, p?<?0.001), controlling for other factors like household income and assets. Conversely, physical access (distance, travel time) was not associated with financial services attitudes or understanding. Parents may play an important role in introducing their children to financial services. Practitioners and policy makers should consider ways to include parents in efforts to promote financial capability among youth.     

Who is a volunteer? A cultural and temporal exploration of volunteerism

This study’s purpose was to develop a temporal and cultural definition of volunteering in China. Using a comparative mixed-methods approach, N₁ = 218 Chinese students in Hong Kong were surveyed about their perceptions of volunteering. These quantitative data were compared cross-culturally with a sample of adults in the United States who used the same instrument called Who is a Volunteer? Subsequently, N₂ = 40 of these same students voluntarily participated in a series of focus groups, to further explore more in-depth their opinions about volunteering. The main quantitative results revealed that at the extreme ends of the volunteer scale, both the U.S. and Chinese samples could readily distinguish what volunteering was or was not. The more nuanced empirical differences on the scale (24% of the 21 items) were explained either by unique cultural differences, or the longer and more prominent history that volunteering has had in North America versus China. Main qualitative findings revealed additional between-group cultural differences exemplified by (1) a more family-centric and collectivist Chinese culture versus a more individualistic American culture, (2) a role blurring about volunteer activities versus paid work activities, and (3) that both organizational and cultural context must be seriously considered when defining volunteerism. This study adds to the growing definitional literature on this transformational concept and represents the largest comparative empirical investigation on this subject from East Asia.     

基于多源遥感的城市生态用地识别及生态风险评价

随着城市化进程的不断推进、建设用地不断扩张,城市生态空间正处于剧烈变化中。大量具有生态价值和服务功能的土地不断被侵占,以满足暂时的城市建设需求。但从长远来看,这些生态用地的"消失",将不可避免的影响区域生态平衡,给区域经济的健康发展埋下隐患。广州作为华南的中心城市,改革开放以来,大量外来人口涌入,土地利用变化频繁,生态环境的保护面临着巨大压力。因此,本文基于多源遥感数据,利用监督分类法与综合指数法相综合的复合提取方案对2016年广州生态用地进行空间识别,掌握广州市生态用地存量现状。同时,借助生态风险小区和生态风险等景观指数对广州进行了生态风险评估,结果显示,广州市生态风险呈现明显的多核圈层结构,由多核心的中心向外部逐渐降低。