The Social Work Assessment Tool (SWAT)

This paper reports on the last of three National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization initiatives to move hospice and palliative care social workers into the patient/family outcomes arena: the development of the Social Work Assessment Tool. The experience of a team of practitioners and researchers is described, including results of two pilot studies and subsequent SWAT revisions. The major focus is on the current model performance improvement project, in which 19 social workers from 14 hospice and palliative care programs used the SWAT with 101 patients and 81 primary caregivers for a median of 44 days. Quantitative analysis indicated significant improvement in SWAT scores for patients from the first to the second social work visit (t = -2.60, df = 47, p .01). Qualitative interviewing of the social workers indicated some lack of readiness in the field to conduct quantitative outcomes measurement. Additional measures are needed in addition to the SWAT, including qualitative measures, and measures of mezzo and macro practice. Participants indicated that the SWAT was appropriate for use with economically and culturally diverse clients.     

Efficiency in Games With Markovian Private Information

We study repeated Bayesian games with communication and observable actions in which the players' privately known payoffs evolve according to an irreducible Markov chain whose transitions are independent across players. Our main result implies that, generically, any Pareto‐efficient payoff vector above a stationary minmax value can be approximated arbitrarily closely in a perfect Bayesian equilibrium as the discount factor goes to 1. As an intermediate step, we construct an approximately efficient dynamic mechanism for long finite horizons without assuming transferable utility.     

论全球化的合理利用

20世纪70年代以来,多国公司寻求在世界范围内安排其生产经营活动,于是多国公司成为全球化的支持者和主体;而全球化的反对者认为在世界一体化迅速发展的同时,许多国家不再能够采取主权国家政策,尤其是在社会保障方面。不同国家对于全球化的态度不尽相同,但是某些国家却把其面临的经济困境归咎于全球化。相反,本文表明,国家对国际贸易的开放为国家经济的发展提供了更多选择,并且是解决许多国家在2 0世纪70～80年代遭遇的经济困难的良方。因此,许多发达国家和发展中国家不同程度地扩大了开放。文章指出了国家的公共政策是促进全球化的积极影响…     

On Blest’s Measure of Kurtosis Adjusted for Skewness

We reconsider the derivation of Blest’s (2003) skewness adjusted version of the classical moment-based coefficient of kurtosis and propose an adaptation of it which generally eliminates the effects of asymmetry a little more successfully. Lower bounds are provided for the two skewness adjusted kurtosis moment measures as functions of the classical coefficient of skewness. The results from a Monte Carlo experiment designed to investigate the sampling properties of numerous moment-based estimators of the two skewness adjusted kurtosis measures are used to identify those estimators with lowest mean squared error for small to medium sized samples drawn from distributions with varying levels of asymmetry and tailweight.     

On the use of several auxiliary variables in estimation of current population mean in successive sampling

ABSTRACT

The present work intends to put emphasis on the role of several auxiliary variables on both the occasions to improve the precision of estimates at current occasion in two-occasion successive sampling. Utilizing the readily available information on several auxiliary variables on both occasions and the information on study variable from the previous occasion, an efficient estimation procedure of population mean on current occasion has been suggested. Optimum replacement strategy and the efficiencies of the proposed estimator have been discussed. Empirical studies are carried out, and appropriate recommendations have been put forward for practical applications.     

Weighted combinations of rank tests for location-scale alternatives

All existing location-scale rank tests use equal weights for the components. We advocate the use of weighted combinations of statistics. This approach can partly be substantiated by the theory of locally most powerful tests. We specifically investi= gate a Wilcoxon-Mood combination. We give exact critical values for a range of weights. The asymptotic normality of the test statistic is proved under a general hypothesis and Chernoff-Savage conditions. The asymptotic relative efficiency of this test with respect to unweighted combinations shows that a careful choice of weights results in a gain in efficiency.     

A note on information loss in analyzing a mixture model of count data

In this note we consider estimation of a mixture model of count data which is composed of two discrete random variables. Conditional and unconditional estimation procedures are given for estimating the unknown parameter(s) of interest using the likelihood function. Asymptotic relative efficiencies are given to examine the amount of information loss in using the two estimation procedures. Specifically, we study the change in asymptotic relative efficiency, if any, in different parameter settings.     

Maximum likelihood estimation of parameter structures for the Wishart distribution using constraints

Maximum likelihood estimation under constraints for estimation in the Wishart class of distributions, is considered. It provides a unified approach to estimation in a variety of problems concerning covariance matrices. Virtually all covariance structures can be translated to constraints on the covariances. This includes covariance matrices with given structure such as linearly patterned covariance matrices, covariance matrices with zeros, independent covariance matrices and structurally dependent covariance matrices. The methodology followed in this paper provides a useful and simple approach to directly obtain the exact maximum likelihood estimates. These maximum likelihood estimates are obtained via an estimation procedure for the exponential class using constraints.     

Relating Elasticities to Changes in Demand

This article specifies a class of equations relating the demand for a good to prices. It is shown that given this class of equations, one can relate the ratio of cross-elasticities to relative changes in demand, given arbitrary price changes.