Synthetic data method to incorporate external information into a current study

We consider the situation where there is a known regression model that can be used to predict an outcome, Y, from a set of predictor variables X . A new variable B is expected to enhance the prediction of Y. A dataset of size n containing Y, X and B is available, and the challenge is to build an improved model for Y| X ,B that uses both the available individual level data and some summary information obtained from the known model for Y| X . We propose a synthetic data approach, which consists of creating m additional synthetic data observations, and then analyzing the combined dataset of size n + m to estimate the parameters of the Y| X ,B model. This combined dataset of size n + m now has missing values of B for m of the observations, and is analyzed using methods that can handle missing data (e.g., multiple imputation). We present simulation studies and illustrate the method using data from the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial. Though the synthetic data method is applicable to a general regression context, to provide some justification, we show in two special cases that the asymptotic variances of the parameter estimates in the Y| X ,B model are identical to those from an alternative constrained maximum likelihood estimation approach. This correspondence in special cases and the method's broad applicability makes it appealing for use across diverse scenarios. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 47: 580–603; 2019 © 2019 Statistical Society of Canada     

M-estimators of some GARCH-type models; computation and application

In this paper, we consider robust M-estimation of time series models with both symmetric and asymmetric forms of heteroscedasticity related to the GARCH and GJR models. The class of estimators includes least absolute deviation (LAD), Huber’s, Cauchy and B-estimator as well as the well-known quasi maximum likelihood estimator (QMLE). Extensive simulations are used to check the relative performance of these estimators in both models and the weighted resampling methods are used to approximate the sampling distribution of M-estimators. Our study indicates that there are estimators that can perform better than QMLE and even outperform robust estimator such as LAD when the error distribution is heavy-tailed. These estimators are also applied to real data sets.     

The Ethnic Minority Question and Rohingya Crisis in Contemporary Myanmar

The recent humanitarian Rohingya crisis has once again put Myanmar onto the centre stage of global media attention. The aim of this paper is to look into the ethnic minority question in contemporary Myanmar. The paper has a special focus on the Muslim Rohingya community. The paper argues that problematic race relations in Myanmar today should not be viewed in isolation but should be seen as a part of a historical continuum. The British colonial policies of divide and rule, political leaders and their obsession with Buddhism in the post-independence period and xenophobic tendencies during the long years of the military junta have all collectively contributed to the very complex situation in which the country finds itself today when it comes to race relations. Meaningful democracy and economic development have been advocated as the way forward especially for the more peripheral parts of the country where there is a strong ethnic minority presence.     

Role of Parental Education in Schooling and Child Labour Decision: Urban India in the Last Decade

This paper uses household level data from National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) of India, the 55th (1999–2000) and the 61st (2004–05) rounds, to show that even with a significant wage incentive for schooling of urban children, the school drop out rate and child labour incidence are not small over this period. The parents’ level of education plays an important role in reducing this tendency; thus establishing the linkage between social and human capital outcomes in the family. We also look at the incidence of harmful and manual occupations among the child labour. Mother’s education appears as the more important factor in the recent round in curbing the manual work incidences; supporting earlier findings that women’s empowerment (one important indicator of which would be female educational level) is indeed becoming instrumental in increasing parental awareness. Using a pooled data set, we have also analysed the changes in the impact of parental education on these decisions between 1999–2000 and 2004–05.

Poverty measures incorporating variable rate of alleviation due to population growth

If the absolute number of poor people goes up, but the fraction of people in poverty comes down, has poverty gone up or gone down? Issues like lack of scale homogeneity in resource allocation for poverty eradication lead practitioners and economists to have two different views of poverty when population size changes. This paper attempts to put these two conceptions of poverty into a common framework. We present an axiomatic development of a family of poverty measures, which is a generalization of the well known FGT class of measures, without a population replication axiom. This family has an intuitive link to standard measures, but it also allows intermediate positions between one or other of “the absolute numbers” or the “fraction in poverty” conception. We hope that this family will prove useful in empirical and policy work.     

Physical quality of life index: Some international and Indian applications

In this paper, an attempt has been made to construct the physical quality of life index (PQLI) for some countries and for the Indian States as well. Three important indicators, viz. literacy rate, infant mortality rate and life expectancy at birth, reflecting the quality of life have been chosen and combined with equal weights to obtain PQLI. The rationale of equal weights, apart from any subjective judgement, may also be found in a mathematical model presented here. It is observed that PQLI rises sharply with per capita GNP but after a certain stage, an increase of per capita GNP is not accompanied by an increase of PQLI.     

Financial Exploitation of Older Adults in Rural Settings: A Family Perspective

Federal agencies responsible for funding protective services to older adults are increasingly concerned with the growing incidence of financial exploitation in rural areas. The Wall Street Journal recently has reported an increasing trend of unemployed adult children migrating from urban centers to smaller rural towns and countrysides to live with their parents since 2008. This current study explores the attitudes of family caregivers regarding management of financial matters for their elderly care recipients. The major findings of the study include that adult children often (1) overestimate their parents' ability to manage their finances; (2) prefer to manage their parents' finances informally, as opposed to using legal options like power of attorney; and (3) tend to think of their parents' assets as “almost theirs.” The study concludes with recommendations on the critical need for information to help families make important decisions about helping elderly parents with their finances. This information would not only promote the use of safeguards against abuse, but could potentially provide caregivers with greater confidence and protection.     

Distribution-Free Exceedance CUSUM Control Charts for Location

Distribution-free (nonparametric) control charts can be useful to the quality practitioner when the underlying distribution is not known. A Phase II nonparametric cumulative sum (CUSUM) chart based on the exceedance statistics, called the exceedance CUSUM chart, is proposed here for detecting a shift in the unknown location parameter of a continuous distribution. The exceedance statistics can be more efficient than rank-based methods when the underlying distribution is heavy-tailed and/or right-skewed, which may be the case in some applications, particularly with certain lifetime data. Moreover, exceedance statistics can save testing time and resources as they can be applied as soon as a certain order statistic of the reference sample is available. Guidelines and recommendations are provided for the chart's design parameters along with an illustrative example. The in- and out-of-control performances of the chart are studied through extensive simulations on the basis of the average run-length (ARL), the standard deviation of run-length (SDRL), the median run-length (MDRL), and some percentiles of run-length. Further, a comparison with a number of existing control charts, including the parametric CUSUM chart and a recent nonparametric CUSUM chart based on the Wilcoxon rank-sum statistic, called the rank-sum CUSUM chart, is made. It is seen that the exceedance CUSUM chart performs well in many cases and thus can be a useful alternative chart in practice. A summary and some concluding remarks are given.     

On estimation of the PDF and CDF of the Lindley distribution

This article addresses two methods of estimation of the probability density function (PDF) and cumulative distribution function (CDF) for the Lindley distribution. Following estimation methods are considered: uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimator (UMVUE) and maximum likelihood estimator (MLE). Since the Lindley distribution is more flexible than the exponential distribution, the same estimators have been found out for the exponential distribution and compared. Monte Carlo simulations and a real data analysis are performed to compare the performances of the proposed methods of estimation.