Poverty statics and dynamics: does the accounting period matter?

Any public policy aimed at reducing the effects of deprivation should be aware of the consequences of the use of different income accounting periods on eligibility and subsequent policy evaluation. This study aims to throw some light on the relev-ance of choosing a specific accounting period for public policy evaluation in a European country, in contrast to the existing evidence for the United States. Our analysis indicates that there are some significant differences in the results on poverty when using different income accounting periods. Researchers and decision-makers using an annual income measure, whatever the economic and social welfare context, should be aware that the use of quarterly data instead of yearly data will lead to a significantly larger number of poor households and a lower level of inequality and mobility in the distribution.     

Anabolic responses to resistance training in older men and women: a brief review

Resistance training has been shown to be the most effective exercise mode to induce anabolic adaptations in older men and women. Advances in imaging techniques and histochemistry have increased the ability to detect such changes, confirming the high level of adaptability that remains in aging skeletal muscle. This brief review presents a summary of the resistance-training studies that directly compare chronic anabolic responses to training in older (>60 years) men and women. Sixteen studies are summarized, most of which indicate similar relative anabolic responses between older men and women after resistance training. Relatively small sample sizes in most of the interventions limited their ability to detect significant sex differences and should be considered when interpreting these studies. Future research should incorporate larger sample sizes with multiple measurement time points for anabolic responses.     

开发区过度竞争的制度根源与影响机制

开发区过度竞争有其深刻的制度原因,并由非制度性关键因素所决定。行政制度、财税制度和开发区准入及退出制度是引发过度竞争的根源,开发区发展阶段差异、移动壁垒、区位相似性、投资者的实力、本地产业基础和企业集团实力、就业压力、传统地域文化观念等是影响开发区过度竞争强度和范围的关键因素。开发区过度竞争的抑制和消除必须从根源入手进行制度创新,依靠经济手段为主、行政手段为辅助来实现。     

预约合同的违约责任研究

我国现行法缺乏预约合同的系统规定,有关预约合同的违约责任认定也未在学界与实务界达成一致认同。从适应我国现有法治环境并提出合理法制构建的角度出发,选取“主客观相结合说”为预约合同的理论基础,对预约合同的内涵与预约合同的违约责任进行讨论。在预约合同已约定违约责任的情况下,违约责任的承担方式应当依照合同规定;在没有明确违约责任承担的情况下,法官应当从主观层面和客观层面两个层次进行分析从而明确预约合同的效力进而判定违约责任的承担。     

Delta Method,Moment Convergence,and Inference

Statistics, as functions of the observations, are usually given by well-behaved functions. This fact is used to obtain limit distributions for statistics whose components are given by asymptotically linear functions. These results are then extended to the moments of distributions, covariance matrices and confidence regions for parameters of interest. These regions may be used to test, through duality, hypothesis on these parameters. A theoretical application is presented.     

Generalized Jackknife-Based Estimators for Univariate Extreme-Value Modeling

In this article, we revisit the importance of the generalized jackknife in the construction of reliable semi-parametric estimates of some parameters of extreme or even rare events. The generalized jackknife statistic is applied to a minimum-variance reduced-bias estimator of a positive extreme value index—a primary parameter in statistics of extremes. A couple of refinements are proposed and a simulation study shows that these are able to achieve a lower mean square error. A real data illustration is also provided.     

Waiting time to exhaust lottery numbers

Questions related to lotteries are usually of interest to the public since people think there is a magic formula which will help them to win lottery draws. This note shows how to compute the expected waiting time to observe specific numbers in a sequence of lottery draws and show that surprising facts are expected to occur.     

A plug-in technique in nonparametric regression with dependence

The problem addressed is that of smoothing parameter selection in kernel nonparametric regression in the fixed design regression model with dependent noise. An asymptotic expression of the optimum bandwidth parameter has been obtained in recent studies, where this takes the form h = C ₀ n ^?1/5. This paper proposes to use a plug-in methodology, in order to obtain an optimum estimation of the bandwidth parameter, through preliminary estimation of the unknown value of C ₀.     

Statistical analysis for Kumaraswamy’s distribution based on record data

In this paper we review some results that have been derived on record values for some well known probability density functions and based on m records from Kumaraswamy’s distribution we obtain estimators for the two parameters and the future sth record value. These estimates are derived using the maximum likelihood and Bayesian approaches. In the Bayesian approach, the two parameters are assumed to be random variables and estimators for the parameters and for the future sth record value are obtained, when we have observed m past record values, using the well known squared error loss (SEL) function and a linear exponential (LINEX) loss function. The findings are illustrated with actual and computer generated data.