Comparative assessment of gridded population data sets for complex topography: a study of Southwest China

Population and Environment - Population estimates for high-resolution spatial grid cells data can reflect detailed spatial distribution of population, which are valuable for epidemiological...     

Work-Related Road Safety: An Analysis Based on U.K. Bus Driver Performance

The effects of age and experience on accident involvement for bus drivers were investigated, with special emphasis upon the first years of being an operator, using two methods. First, direct calculations between these variables were undertaken. Thereafter, a variant of the method of quasi-induced exposure (a ratio of culpable versus nonculpable accidents in the population) was used and referred to as the indirect method. These methods yielded fairly similar results, given that the samples used were drawn from the same population but only partly overlapping. It was found that experience had the strongest effect on accidents in the first year of driving, while age had a u-shaped association with accidents, that is, young and old drivers had more accidents, something that was more apparent when experience was held constant. These results show that, for bus drivers, experience is initially more important than age, but after two or three years, the effect is small. Thereafter, age is the more discernible variable, although it is a very weak factor in predicting crash risk.     

Nowcasting GDP in Real Time: A Density Combination Approach

In this article, we use U.S. real-time data to produce combined density nowcasts of quarterly Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, using a system of three commonly used model classes. We update the density nowcast for every new data release throughout the quarter, and highlight the importance of new information for nowcasting. Our results show that the logarithmic score of the predictive densities for U.S. GDP growth increase almost monotonically, as new information arrives during the quarter. While the ranking of the model classes changes during the quarter, the combined density nowcasts always perform well relative to the model classes in terms of both logarithmic scores and calibration tests. The density combination approach is superior to a simple model selection strategy and also performs better in terms of point forecast evaluation than standard point forecast combinations.     

Information Hazards in Biotechnology

With the advance of biotechnology, biological information, rather than biological materials, is increasingly the object of principal security concern. We argue that both in theory and in practice, existing security approaches in biology are poorly suited to manage hazardous biological information, and use the cases of Mousepox, H5N1 gain of function, and Botulinum toxin H to highlight these ongoing challenges. We suggest that mitigation of these hazards can be improved if one can: (1) anticipate hazard potential before scientific work is performed; (2) consider how much the new information would likely help both good and bad actors; and (3) aim to disclose information in the manner that maximally disadvantages bad actors versus good ones.     

Anthropic Shadow: Observation Selection Effects and Human Extinction Risks

We describe a significant practical consequence of taking anthropic biases into account in deriving predictions for rare stochastic catastrophic events. The risks associated with catastrophes such as asteroidal/cometary impacts, supervolcanic episodes, and explosions of supernovae/gamma‐ray bursts are based on their observed frequencies. As a result, the frequencies of catastrophes that destroy or are otherwise incompatible with the existence of observers are systematically underestimated. We describe the consequences of this anthropic bias for estimation of catastrophic risks, and suggest some directions for future work.     

A Model and Indicator of Aggregate Need Satisfaction for Capped Objectives and Weighting Schemes for Situations of Scarcity

Normative criteria for evaluations of economic and social outcomes are often formulated in terms of social welfare functions which are essentially and importantly non-satiable. However, there are good reasons to consider certain normative criteria and many policy objectives to be capped, i.e. bounded, and thus satiable provided sufficient resources are made available for their satisfaction. Inspired by the Foster–Greer–Thorbecke class of indicators, this paper uses an interdisciplinary approach to develop a model for assessing outcomes in terms of capped objectives based on an understanding of individual shortfalls from the objective, denoted needs. We present an indicator to measure need satisfaction in a population of individuals with heterogeneous needs and highlight an aggregation problem under scarcity. For such situations, we develop three ways in which the indicator can be weighted that reflect respectively concerns over the frequency, depth and severity of the need shortfalls and show that normative evaluations based on these weighting schemes can conflict, yielding mutually inconsistent outcome rankings. The indicator can be adapted to measure a wide variety of phenomena, e.g. health needs, education shortfalls, deprivation, etc., and it is suited for targeting exercises and other policy implementations. In particular, it allows for exogenous weighting schemes, i.e. weights that can incorporate non-shortfall characteristics relevant for the evaluation, e.g. age, gender, ethnicity, etc. The indicator thus enables new ways for researchers to promote and study satiable objectives in a wide variety of contexts relevant to economic and social policy, e.g. human development programs, poverty reduction, healthcare policies, etc.     

Lean production of intensive cities: Using the power of Italo Calvino's imagination to grasp organizational change

This article analyses the introduction of Lean Production to ‘the Procurement Office’ (the Procurement Office is made anonymous due to promises of confidentiality in the research project ‘Lean without stress’), a work place marked by continuous organizational changes, unfavourable image and high turnover. This is analysed in terms of Italo Calvino's Invisible cities. It is argued that Calvino's themes and prose help us understand change as a multiplicity of temporal intensities producing ambivalence and affect. We describe this use of literary abstractions as a ‘hyperbolic social epistemology’. Through the depiction of four intensifications of Lean Production, the metaphors of Calvino's cities show how reality and illusion; hope and poverty; dreams and death and utopia and dystopia are intricately mingled and produce temporary and equally ambivalent affects of alienation, hypocrisy, self-governance, job-satisfaction, antagonisms and empowerment.     

INCOME INEQUALITY: THE CONSEQUENCES OF SKILL‐UPGRADING WHEN FIRMS HAVE HIERARCHICAL ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES

During the last three decades, most developed countries have experienced increasing income inequality. Using Danish register data from 1992 to 2007 for all private‐sector employees, we confirm that income inequality has increased in Denmark. We also observe an increase in the relative employment of highly educated individuals, as well as differential income growth rates across employee subgroups where, in particular, managers experienced significant real income progression. We use an equilibrium search framework with on‐the‐job search to study the interplay between skill‐upgrading, management compensation, and income inequality. In this model we can determine the management and education premia. We can also show that when our model is exposed to skill‐upgrading, it is capable of producing income dynamics similar to those observed in the Danish income distribution. (JEL J3, J6, M5)     

A Cross‐country Comparison of Attitudes Towards Mothers Working and their Actual Labor Market Experience

In this paper, we use data from the International Social Survey Project to present a cross‐country comparison of attitudes about the labor force participation of mothers. We also estimate earnings functions and probits for full‐time work and examine whether there is a link between attitudes and women’s actual labor market experience across countries. We find that while a woman’s own attitude about work does not directly influence her wage, it does influence the probability that she works full time.     

Social Policy in Harsh Times. Social Security Development in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s

For the past two decades, Nordic social policy has been subject to a range of serious challenges, among which economic problems and critiques by neo-classical economists have been most prominent. This article raises the question whether Nordic social policy has significantly changed during this period of challenges. Based on an empirical analysis of social expenditure data and three central social security programs, this article provides evidence that changes in Nordic social policy over this period have, in fact, been relatively minor. Indeed, the four welfare states of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have shown remarkable resilience considering the harsh challenges that they have been exposed to since the early 1980s.