Causal Flow between Human Well-being and per Capita Real Gross Domestic Product

Whether a country should try to improve human well-being of the masses or should concentrate solely on economic upliftment of the country is an alarming question in development economics. Survey of literature evidences a number of views in this respect. Present study uses the lagged dependent variable model to address the question. It attempts to find causal priority between human well-being and per capita gross real product (an indicator of economic achievement of a country). In this context it uses three core indicators of human well-being life expectancy at birth, infant survival rate and adult as well as three broad income groups: high, middle and low.     

Improvements in Life Expectancy: 1960–1995 an Exploratory Analysis

Human history observed significant changes in life expectancy over the last three and half decades (1960–1995). This study attempts to explore the determinant factors behind improvements in life expectancy in most of the countries in the Post World War II period. In this context the study estimates a double logarithmic convergence type model where the dependent variable is relative change of life over the period and the explanatory variables are initial per capita real gross domestic product, initial per capita calorie intake as percentage of requirement, adult literacy rate at the initial point of time, and initial physician per thousand of population. The study estimates different variants of the basic model. Female population has been treated separately. All estimates have been offered for three broad income groups low, middle and high. An attempt is also made to take into account the effects of some public health measures such as access to safe drinking water and access to sanitation.     

Global Software Development: Commitment,Trust and Cultural Sensitivity in Strategic Partnerships

Much research has studied off-shore outsourcing from a Western client perspective. This article tries to shed light on what an Indian vendor perceives as important to manage large and complex strategic partnerships in IT outsourcing, and in particular how mutually profitable, long-term relationships with European clients are created and maintained, both at company and project levels. We investigate this issue through qualitative interviews with various vendor representatives in offshore and on-site teams in a top tier multinational company of Indian origin.In the analysis of interview accounts of close collaboration processes in two large and complex projects, where off-shoring of software development is moved to a strategic level, we found that the vendor was able to establish a strategic partnership through long-term engagement with the field of banking and insurance as well as through conscious relationship management with the clients. Three major themes describe important aspects of the strategic partnerships: 1) senior management commitment and employee identification with the projects, 2) mutual trust and transparency, and 3) cross-cultural understanding and sensitivity. The article draws attention to the important collaborative work done by people who are able to span boundaries in the complex organizational set-up of global IT development projects.     

A birth and death process with logistic mean population

An example of density dependent-birth and death process whose mean satisfies the logistic equation as proposed by Gompertz is given. Explicit expressions for the probability generating function and non-trivialstationarydistribution are obtained.     

Semiparametric estimation for the dispersion parameter in the analysis of over- or underdispersed count data

This paper investigates several semiparametric estimators of the dispersion parameter in the analysis of over- or underdispersed count data when there is no likelihood available. In the context of estimating the dispersion parameter, we consider the double-extended quasi-likelihood (DEQL), the pseudo-likelihood and the optimal quadratic estimating (OQE) equations method and compare them with the maximum likelihood method, the method of moments and the extended quasi-likelihood through simulation study. The simulation study shows that the estimator based on the DEQL has superior bias and efficiency property for moderate and large sample size, and for small sample size the estimator based on the OQE equations outperforms the other estimators. Three real-life data sets arising in biostatistical practices are analyzed, and the findings from these analyses are quite similar to what are found from the simulation study.     

The Effects of Modern Treaties and Opt-In Legislation on Household Incomes in Aboriginal Communities

This paper investigates the influence of country risks, including economic, financial, and political risks, on income inequality for a broad sample of 110 countries. Our empirical results reveal that higher economic and political risks generally lead to higher inequality. Lower income country appears to have higher income inequality. Furthermore, with the consideration of the non-monotonic effect of country risk, the improvement of income distribution is only sustainable dynamically after a certain threshold level of country risk has been brought down. Policymakers should improve the level of country stability by exploring the benefits of country risk reduction in order to improve income distribution.     

Bayesian variable selection using an adaptive powered correlation prior

The problem of selecting the correct subset of predictors within a linear model has received much attention in recent literature. Within the Bayesian framework, a popular choice of prior has been Zellner's g$g$-prior which is based on the inverse of empirical covariance matrix of the predictors. An extension of the Zellner's prior is proposed in this article which allow for a power parameter on the empirical covariance of the predictors. The power parameter helps control the degree to which correlated predictors are smoothed towards or away from one another. In addition, the empirical covariance of the predictors is used to obtain suitable priors over model space. In this manner, the power parameter also helps to determine whether models containing highly collinear predictors are preferred or avoided. The proposed power parameter can be chosen via an empirical Bayes method which leads to a data adaptive choice of prior. Simulation studies and a real data example are presented to show how the power parameter is well determined from the degree of cross-correlation within predictors. The proposed modification compares favorably to the standard use of Zellner's prior and an intrinsic prior in these examples.     

Index-number tests and the common-scaling social cost-of-living index

For a change in prices, the common-scaling social cost-of-living index is the equal scaling of each individual’s expenditure level needed to restore the level of social welfare to its pre-change value. This index does not, in general, satisfy two standard index-number tests. The reversal test requires the index value for the reverse change to be the reciprocal of the original index. And the circular test requires the product of index values for successive price changes to be equal to the index value for the whole change. We show that both tests are satisfied if and only if the Bergson–Samuelson indirect social-welfare function is homothetic in prices, a condition which does not require individual preferences to be homothetic. If individual preferences are homothetic, however, stronger conditions on the Bergson–Samuelson indirect must be satisfied. Given these results, we ask whether the restrictions are empirically reasonable and find, in the case that individual preferences are not homothetic, that they make little difference to estimates of the index.