Randomized response techniques for complex survey designs

Singh et al. ([13]) pointed out that the Randomized response (RR) technique proposed by Moors ([9]) is not desirable because it fails to protect the confidentiality of the respondents and they provided two alternative strategies free from the above drawback but limited to SRSWOR sampling only. In this paper, generalization of one of the strategies is provided for complex survey designs, wider class of estimators and for quantitative characteristics. Relative efficiency of the modified strategy is tested through empirical investigations. An erratum to this article is available at .     

An application of cartographic area interpolation to German administrative data

In many situations the applied researcher wishes to combine different data sources without knowing the exact link and merging rule. This paper considers different cartographic interpolation methods for interpolating attributes from German employment office districts to German counties and vice versa. In particular, we apply dasymetric weighting as an alternative to simple area weighting, both of which are based on estimated intersection areas. We also present conditions under which the choice of interpolation method does not matter and confirm the theoretical results with a simulation study. Our application to German administrative data suggests robustness of estimation results of interpolated attributes with respect to the choice of interpolation method. We provide weighting matrices for regional data sources of the two largest German data producers.     

Comparison of different estimation techniques for portfolio selection

The main problem in applying the mean-variance portfolio selection consists of the fact that the first two moments of the asset returns are unknown. In practice the optimal portfolio weights have to be estimated. This is usually done by replacing the moments by the classical unbiased sample estimators. We provide a comparison of the exact and the asymptotic distributions of the estimated portfolio weights as well as a sensitivity analysis to shifts in the moments of the asset returns. Furthermore we consider several types of shrinkage estimators for the moments. The corresponding estimators of the portfolio weights are compared with each other and with the portfolio weights based on the sample estimators of the moments. We show how the uncertainty about the portfolio weights can be introduced into the performance measurement of trading strategies. The methodology explains the bad out-of-sample performance of the classical Markowitz procedures.     

Statistical consulting

The paper and the special issue focus on the activity of statistical consulting and its varieties. This includes academic consulting, consulting to and in industry as well as statistics in public media.     

Multi-phase sampling under cost constraints

Multi-phase sampling (M-PhS) scheme is useful when the interest is in the estimation of the population mean of an expensive variable strictly connected with other cheaper (auxiliary) variables. The MSE is an accuracy measure of an estimator. Usually it decreases as the sample size increases. In practice the sample size cannot become arbitrarily large for possible cost constraints. From a practical point of view it would be useful to know the sample sizes which guarantee the best accuracy of the estimates for fixed costs. These “optimum” sample sizes can be, in some cases, computable but not admissible. In other cases, they can be neither admissible nor computable. The main goal of this paper is to propose a solution for both these situations. It will be clear that in both situations the solution is to consider a M-PhS scheme with one or more phases less.     

H-likelihood: problems and solutions

In recent issues of this journal it has been asserted in two papers that the use of h-likelihood is wrong, in the sense of giving unsatisfactory estimates of some parameters for binary data (Kuk and Cheng, 1999; Waddington and Thompson, 2004) or theoretically unsound (Kuk and Cheng, 1999). We wish to refute both these assertions.     

Nonconglomerative coherent conditional probabilities in statistical inference

Noteworthy connections among conglomerability, countable additivity and coherence are discussed in detail, reaching the conclusion that nonconglomerable conditional probabilities must not be doomed and play a significant role in statistical inference. Extended and updated version of a contributed paper presented at the International Conference on “Information Processing and Management of Uncertainty in knowledge-based systems”, IPMU 2004, Perugia, Italy.     

韩国的金融政策与金融危机及对我国的警示

金融危机的爆发对经济发展的危害是巨大的,受这次金融风暴直接冲击的国家,其经济实力普遍倒退７至１０年。其中韩国因货币贬值五成,其经济规模已由世界排名第１２位降至第１７位,人均国民生产总值由１９９６年的１０５４８美元降至目前的６６６４美元,经济实力倒退了...     

煤炭资源开采中的生态环境经济损失及补偿研究

通过对CVM研究结论的比较讨论,认为基于CVM测算出的煤炭资源开采中的生态环境经济损失值偏小.为了全面计算煤炭资源开采中的生态环境经济损失值,提出将CVM与直接市场法和间接市场法联合使用,并计算出2010年榆林市煤炭资源开采的生态环境经济损失为208.4亿～209.11亿元.在此基础上,又对煤炭资源开采中的生态环境损失补偿问题进行研究,提出由煤炭资源开采企业和煤炭资源受益者共同承担煤炭资源开采中生态环境损失补偿的责任,并对各自应该分担的补偿水平进行量化.