Is There a Place for Virtual Poverty Funds in Pro‐Poor Public Spending Reform? Lessons from Uganda's PAF

Various developing countries with weak public expenditure management systems are establishing virtual poverty funds (VPFs), drawing on the experience of Uganda's Poverty Action Fund. As a mechanism for tagging and tracking the performance of specific poverty‐reducing expenditures in the budget, a VPF can be useful. However, this article argues that such devices should be treated from the outset as transitional, and as part of wider processes of strengthening public expenditure management; otherwise, they can seriously distort public expenditure allocations and management systems, potentially undermining growth. Emphasis needs to be placed on identifying the right balance of expenditures in the entire budget; improving the effectiveness and efficiency of existing allocations; and developing better public‐sector policies for promoting pro‐poor private sector growth.     

Child protection: a new approach in South Australia

This paper argues the case for an integrated approach to child protection services, embracing children's safety, risk and needs and incorporating formal assessment instruments. It then provides a brief overview of the new child protection system in South Australia. The steady rise in child abuse/neglect reports raises questions about how best to provide child protection services. Analysis of South Australian data suggests that much of the rise can be attributed to an increase in reports of neglect and emotional abuse and an increase in re‐notifications. This in turn raises questions about the traditional investigative approach. In 1995 Messages from Research advocated that agencies re‐focus on children's needs and concentrate less on investigations into safety and risk. The critical question is how to distinguish families requiring investigation from those needing support. The latest research suggests that such decision‐making in child protection is generally inconsistent and unreliable. This paper argues that statutory agencies should use formal assessment tools to determine the level and nature of their interventions. These arguments have been critical in the development of the new child protection model in SA, which relies on a centralized intake, differential response to reports and the structured decision‐making system. Initial evaluation of the new model indicates improvements in consistency of initial screening and responses to children in danger. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enabling high-dimensional range queries using <Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis>NN indexing techniques: approaches and empirical results

Many modern search applications are high-dimensional and depend on efficient orthogonal range queries. These applications span web-based and scientific needs as well as uses for data mining. Although k-nearest neighbor queries are becoming increasingly common due to mobile and geospatial applications, orthogonal range queries in high-dimensional data remain extremely important and relevant. For efficient querying, data is typically stored in an index optimized for either kNN or range queries. This can be problematic when data is optimized for kNN retrieval and a user needs a range query or vice versa. Here, we address the issue of using a kNN-based index for range queries, as well as outline the general computational geometry problem of adapting these systems to range queries. We refer to these methods as space-based decompositions and provide a straightforward heuristic for this problem. Using iDistance as our applied kNN indexing technique, we also develop an optimal (data-based) algorithm designed specifically for its indexing scheme. We compare this method to the suggested naïve approach using real world datasets. The data-based algorithm consistently performs better.     

基于面板数据CFaR模型的现金流风险研究 ——以中国上市公司为例的考虑风险因子分布特征的实证分析

为度量中国上市公司经营活动面临的现金流风险,放弃风险因子服从正态分布的假设,从内外两方面识别和拟合现金流风险因子,构建一个面板数据现金流风险(CFaR)模型.基于该模型的实证结果表明,上市公司的经营活动现金流不仅受到内部财务因素的影响,同时还受到宏观经济等外部因素的影响,且大部分的现金流影响因子不服从正态分布.上市公司面临的现金流风险总体而言较大,行业之间存在明显差距,其中风险值最大的是建筑业,最小的是交通运输及仓储业:风险程度最大的是房地产业,最小的是采掘业.此外,上市公司现金流风险表现出较为明显的行业聚类特征,处于同一类别的行业的现金流状况具有一定的相关性特征.     

Asymptotic Comparison Between Constant-stress Testing and Step-stress Testing for Type-I Censored Data from Exponential Distribution

By running the life tests at higher stress levels than normal operating conditions, accelerated life testing quickly yields information on the lifetime distribution of a test unit. The lifetime at the design stress is then estimated through extrapolation using a regression model. In constant-stress testing, a unit is tested at a fixed stress level until failure or the termination time point of the test, while step-stress testing allows the experimenter to gradually increase the stress levels at some pre-fixed time points during the test. In this article, the optimal k-level constant-stress and step-stress accelerated life tests are compared for the exponential failure data under Type-I censoring. The objective is to quantify the advantage of using the step-stress testing relative to the constant-stress one. A log-linear relationship between the mean lifetime parameter and stress level is assumed and the cumulative exposure model holds for the effect of changing stress in step-stress testing. The optimal design point is then determined under C-optimality, D-optimality, and A-optimality criteria. The efficiency of step-stress testing compared to constant-stress testing is discussed in terms of the ratio of optimal objective functions based on the information matrix.     

Uniform Tail Asymptotics for the Sum of Two Correlated Classes with Stochastic Returns and Dependent Heavy Tails

Consider a continuous-time risk model with two correlated classes of insurance business and risky investments whose price processes are geometric Lévy processes. By assuming that the correlation comes from a common shock, and the claim sizes are heavy-tailed and pairwise quasi-asymptotically independent, we investigate the tail behavior of the sum of the stochastic present values of the two correlated classes, and a uniform asymptotic formula is obtained.     

宜居城市与世博理念

世界各国对宜居城市的评价标准有所不同,但有一个共同的标准确是公认的,这就是:生活在那里的居民认为这是最适宜于自已居住和生活的城市.宜居城市的条件中既包含优美、整洁、和谐的自然和生态环境,也包含安全、便利、舒适的社会和人文环境,这也是人们的共识.上海世博会的主题"城市,让生活更美好"要求我们必须在建设宜居城市上下工夫.     

The flavours of love: A cross‐cultural lexical analysis

Linguists have often remarked upon the polysemous nature of love, whereby the term encompasses a wide diversity of emotional relationships. Several typologies have been constructed to account for this diversity. However, these tend to be restricted in scope, and fail to fully represent the range of experiences signified by the term ‘love’ in discourse. In the interest of generating an expanded typology of love, encompassing its varied forms, an enquiry was conducted into relevant concepts found across the world's cultures, focusing on so‐called untranslatable words. Through a quasi‐systematic search of published and internet sources, 609 relevant words were identified. These were organised through a version of grounded theory into 14 categories, representing 14 different forms or ‘flavours’ of love. The result is an expanded theoretical treatment of love, allowing us to better appreciate the nuances of this most cherished and yet polysemous of concepts.