转型期城镇贫困群体的成因及对策研究--以新疆地区为例

随着改革开放的逐步深入,中国城镇出现了大量的贫困人口。新疆的城镇贫困群体具有地域性、文化性等特征。呈现这一状况除社会原因外,还包括家庭及文化等个人原因。要减少城镇贫困人口,必须扩大就业,完善社会保障体系,调整分配方式等,以实现共同富裕和社会的和谐发展。     

Career story: Financial Services Statistician

Have you ever been direct mailed by Marks & Spencer Money? If so, the chances are it is because you were interested in the product, Omar Mohamed tells Helen Joyce. A statistician with M&S Money's Marketing Department, he believes that the fast-growing field of financial services is unjustly overlooked by job-seeking statisticians.     

Do you reward and punish in the way you think others expect you to?

This paper addresses three questions: (1) When deciding on whether to reward or punish someone, how does how you think others expect you to behave affect your decision? (2) Does it depend upon whether others expect you to reward them vs. punish them? (3) What is the interpretation of such a causal effect? We investigate these questions using a modification of the lost wallet trust game (a simplified version of the trust game) that permits punishment. Like previous studies, we collect data on what second-movers think that first-movers expect them to do by directly eliciting the second-movers’ expectations. Unlike previous studies, we ensure exogeneity of these expectations by instrumenting for them. The instrument is the expectations of neutral observers which are disclosed to second-movers prior to the elicitation of second-movers’ expectations. We find that what you think others expect you to do has a zero causal effect on both reward and punishment decisions. We also find that it is important to instrument for second-order expectations because they are endogenous. We interpret these findings in terms of models of guilt-aversion and intentional reciprocity.     

Ethnic inequality,cultural distance,and social integration: evidence from a native-settler conflict in the Philippines

A key debate in studies of native-migrant relations relates to the barriers to integration created by ethno-cultural differences and socio-economic disadvantage. How do changes in socio-economic inequality between ethnic groups affect interethnic ties in a divided society? I investigate this question by analysing the effect of ethnic inequality on the evolution of cross-ethnic marriages in a society fractured by conflict between natives and settlers. I find the effect is contingent on the ethnic group. Certain groups intermarry more in response to reductions in socio-economic disadvantage; others, however, remain indifferent. I suggest the difference relates to cultural distance. Specifically, I point to differences between groups in the power of the norms and sanctions regulating members’ social interactions outside of the group. These ‘closure’ norms interpose an ethno-cultural distance. I establish these findings with field interviews and census data on over six million marriages in Mindanao, an ethnically diverse region in the southern Philippines and location of an insurgency waged by rebels, drawn from the native Muslim Moro population, resentful of the influx of Christian settlers. I find Moro intermarriage unresponsive to socio-economic equalisation and suggest the strength of their ethno-cultural norms, derived from their ethno-religious identification, accounts for their distinctive response.     

Comparison of decapod communities across an urban-forest land use gradient in Puerto Rican streams

Urbanization influences a range of factors related to stream health, including the hydrologic regime, water quality, and riparian conditions that lead to negative effects on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. However, impacts on freshwater decapods from urbanization of tropical streams have not been reported. We hypothesized that changes in decapod communities in watersheds with different levels of urbanization are related to changes in physical stream habitats caused by different land uses and their effects on water discharge. The impacts of land use on the physico-chemical characteristics of streams and freshwater decapod communities were evaluated in three watersheds characterized by low, moderate and high-intensities of urbanization in Puerto Rico. For the low and moderately developed urban watersheds, decapod species richness ranged from 10 to 11 species; the highly urbanized watershed only had 4 species. Macrobrachium faustinum and Xiphocaris elongata were the most ubiquitously species and were found in all watersheds. Multivariable analysis of physical characteristics and densities of the decapod families resulted in one axis that explained 80 % of the total variation among the watersheds and was correlated with stream discharge. The effect of discharge is likely a result of frequent high flows that sustain habitats with high concentrations of dissolved oxygen and low concentrations of pollutants. An increase in physico-chemical parameters were observed from the LUW to the HUW. These results indicate that the decapod communities were most likely influenced by land use and environmental conditions that affected erosional aspects related to water discharge and water quality in the highly impacted watersheds.     

Migration information campaigns: How to analyse their impact?

Information campaigns aim at discouraging potential migrants from leaving their countries irregularly. This article discusses how to analyse the impact of such campaigns by identifying different research lines in the literature. The impact of migration information campaigns may be explored by, firstly, focusing on transnational migratory data and inter-state relations (the macro-level); secondly, by investigating their impact on narratives within societies (the meso-level); and, finally, by investigating the micro-level of their influence on migratory decision-making. At each level, scholars face considerable methodological challenges to filter out the impact of campaigns. This article suggests that a promising research avenue is to analyse more widely the narratives and information sources upon which (potential) migrants rely. Opening up the research focus may avoid the risk of over-emphasising the impact of information campaigns by only looking at them. It allows to better understand which sources of information actually influence migratory behaviour.     

A new asylum law for the KRI and Iraq: Reality or wishful thinking?

Despite having its own internal population displacement due to conflict and civil war, Iraq and the Kurdistan Region continue to accommodate large numbers of refugees from Iran, Palestine, Syria and Turkey. However, Iraq has not ratified the internationally recognized legal framework for the protection of refugees. Currently, the protection offered to asylum seekers in Iraq is regulated by secondary legislation, mostly in the form of administrative circulars. The lack of an applicable law regulating the status of asylum seekers has led to local-level ad hoc policy implementation. Similarly, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq has no legal provisions in its domestic legislation to regulate the status of refugees. This study presents: (a) the argument that Iraq must adopt legislation to regulate the entry, exit and stay of migrants, in line with international protection for both asylum seekers and the provision of adequate rights to refugees, and in accordance with international human rights standards; (b) a proposal for provisions for such legislation in Iraq; and (c) a timely impetus to re-energize local strategies aimed at filling these normative legal gaps through domestic agreements rather than regional and/or international ones.     

Kernel Method Starting with Half-Normal Detection Function for Line Transect Density Estimation

In this article, we introduce the nonparametric kernel method starting with half-normal detection function using line transect sampling. The new method improves bias from O(h ²), as the smoothing parameter h → 0, to O(h ³) and in some cases to O(h ⁴). Properties of the proposed estimator are derived and an expression for the asymptotic mean square error (AMSE) of the estimator is given. Minimization of the AMSE leads to an explicit formula for an optimal choice of the smoothing parameter. Small-sample properties of the estimator are investigated and compared with the traditional kernel estimator by using simulation technique. A numerical results show that improvements over the traditional kernel estimator often can be realized even when the true detection function is far from the half-normal detection function.