Tests for time series of counts based on the probability-generating function

We propose testing procedures for the hypothesis that a given set of discrete observations may be formulated as a particular time series of counts with a specific conditional law. The new test statistics incorporate the empirical probability-generating function computed from the observations. Special emphasis is given to the popular models of integer autoregression and Poisson autoregression. The asymptotic properties of the proposed test statistics are studied under the null hypothesis as well as under alternatives. A Monte Carlo power study on bootstrap versions of the new methods is included as well as real-data examples.     

Gender and the Politics of Death: Female Representation,Political and Developmental Context,and Population Health in a Cross-National Panel

There is considerable speculation that female political empowerment could improve population health. Yet, evidence to date is limited, and explanations for why political empowerment would matter and the conditions under which this might be enhanced or muted are not well understood. In this article, we draw on theoretical work on the politics of representation to frame an investigation of whether increases in the percentage of females in a country’s parliament influence mortality rates. We further examine whether the relationship is conditioned by extent of democracy and economic and social development. Through multivariate longitudinal regression, we analyze four indicators of mortality in 155 countries spanning 1990 to 2014 with controls for initial country conditions, time-stable structural predispositions to higher mortality, and a number of time-varying potential confounders. Results indicate that a high level of female representation—30 % or greater in our models—has large negative associations with mortality, that these are particularly strong in lesser developed and weak democratic contexts, that high female political representation effectively offsets liabilities associated with low development, and that the relationships are robust to various operationalizations of social development. In the end, our research provides a particularly thorough accounting of the relationship between female political representation and population health, particularly by specifying the conditions under which female representation is most salient. In doing so, the research suggests important links between issues of female empowerment, political context, and developmental trajectories of countries more generally.     

Inequality Assessment by Probabilistic Development Indices

Social Indicators Research - This paper analyses the Human Development Index (HDI) time series from 2010 to 2017. An alternative index is studied, which combines the same components of the HDI by...     

Constrained vs unconstrained labor supply: the economics of dual job holding

This paper develops a unified model of dual and unitary job holding based on a Stone-Geary utility function. The model incorporates both constrained and unconstrained labor supply. Panel data methods are adapted to accommodate unobserved heterogeneity and multinomial selection into six mutually exclusive labor supply regimes. We estimate the wage and income elasticities arising from selection and unobserved heterogeneity as well as from the Stone-Geary Slutsky equations. The labor supply model is estimated with data from the British Household Panel Survey 1991–2008. Among dual job holders, our study finds that the Stone-Geary income and wage elasticities are much larger for labor supply to the second job compared with the main job. When the effects of selection and unobserved heterogeneity are taken account of, the magnitudes of these elasticities on the second job tend to be significantly reduced.     

《新列国志》中的“借言作断”之法

冯梦龙在《新列国志》的创制过程中，发挥《左传》“借言作断”之法：一方面，将春秋义理融入人物话语，明白显豁地反映历史真相，寄寓是非论断；一方面，借鉴《左传》中“君子曰”的模式，以髯翁、髯仙、史官、史臣等身份进行讽咏，或出以己意，或引经据典，以有诗或无诗的评论，增加内涵与意趣。他力图经史融合，藉由小说实现儒家道德伦理的大众教化，提升了列国小说的品格，确立了《新列国志》在列国小说演进过程中的典范意义。     

The intergenerational education spillovers of pension reform in China

Economic theory establishes that pension privatization weakens the link between old and young and so reduces the incentive to invest in public education in an economy with lower return rate of capital than growth rate of wage. However, empirical studies of the link change are few. In this paper, we investigate the effects of pension privatization and the central government’s subsidy to individual accounts on public education spending in a three-period overlapping generation model. And then, we take contemporary pension reforms in a number of Chinese provinces as offering natural experiment conditions. Using a difference-in-difference framework and 282 municipal districts panel data over years 1998–2009, we test the pension-education theoretical link change. Both our theoretical and empirical results confirm that pension privatization is adversely associated with local public spending on education in China. Private pension subsidies, moreover, magnify this effect. Our study supports the theoretical assertion and selective empirical findings of a negative intergenerational effect of pension privatization.     

自杀和生命的意义——来自脑科学研究的解读

生命本身是一个随机事件，并不具有高尚的意义。进化的结果使人类可通过工作、家庭和人际关系等给予自己的生命以意义感。当我们的生活方式使脑内奖赏系统获得刺激，就会带来生命具有意义的感受，这种感受给人带来更好的生存机会。生存的欲望是一切生物体最具特征的属性，一些精神疾病患者缺乏这种欲望。自杀主要发生于精神疾病患者，它并非是基于自由意志的行为。抗精神病治疗和适当的社会交往可以预防自杀。由于不同个体有着不同的大脑，人们的生活方式就应该去适应各自大脑的特征。只要人们的生活方式不对他人造成过多的伤害，政府就应该允许和保护人们自由地按照各自的方式生活。     

Book Review: Restless Nation: Starting Over in America. By James M. Jasper. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. 296 pages,hardcover, ISBN: 0-226-39478-6

Qualitative Sociology -     

A majorization comparison of apportionment methods in proportional representation

From the inception of the proportional representation movement it has been an issue whether larger parties are favored at the expense of smaller parties in one apportionment of seats as compared to another apportionment. A number of methods have been proposed and are used in countries with a proportional representation system. These apportionment methods exhibit a regularity of order, as discussed in the present paper, that captures the preferential treatment of larger versus smaller parties. This order, namely majorization, permits the comparison of seat allocations in two apportionments. For divisor methods, we show that one method is majorized by another method if and only if their signpost ratios are increasing. This criterion is satisfied for the divisor methods with power-mean rounding, and for the divisor methods with stationary rounding. Majorization places the five traditional apportionment methods in the order as they are known to favor larger parties over smaller parties: Adams, Dean, Hill, Webster, and Jefferson. Received: 5 August 2000/Accepted: 24 October 2001     

Measures of Multigroup Segregation

In this paper we derive and evaluate measures of multigroup segregation. After describing four ways to conceptualize the measurement of multigroup segregation—as the disproportionality in group (e.g., race) proportions across organizational units (e.g., schools or census tracts), as the strength of association between nominal variables indexing group and organizational unit membership, as the ratio of between–unit diversity to total diversity, and as the weighted average of two–group segregation indices—we derive six multigroup segregation indices: a dissimilarity index (D), a Gini index (G), an information theory index (H), a squared coefficient of variation index (C), a relative diversity index (R), and a normalized exposure index (P). We evaluate these six indices against a set of seven desirable properties of segregation indices. We conclude that the information theory index H is the most conceptually and mathematically satisfactory index, since it alone obeys the principle of transfers in the multigroup case. Moreover, H is the only multigroup index that can be decomposed into a sum of between– and within–group components.