Workers’ Remittances to India: An Examination of Transfer Cost and Efficiency

Regarding the time efficiency of remittance transfer channels to India, the evidence suggests that traditional banking instruments are relatively inefficient as compared to the new information technology‐enabled products. Transfer arrangement of the Indian banks with overseas exchange houses has reduced the settlement cycle and the cost. Both the banks and money transfer operators (MTOs) are able to keep the transaction cycle low through the use of information technology‐enabled formats. Given that the average cost curve of the banks is located to the right of the average cost curve of the MTOs, greater potential exists for the improvement in overall efficiency of the two entities, particularly through the sharing of messaging and the access and disbursement networks to reduce the overhead cost. The estimates of error correction model reveal that the transaction fee and payment infrastructure are significant determinants of remittance flows, underscoring the scope of policy measures in influencing remittance inflows. The estimates indicate that over the medium to long‐term horizon, transaction cost emerges as the most dominant variable explaining the variation in remittances. The payments infrastructure also explains about 10 per cent variation in remittances over the medium‐term. The impulse response analysis further reveals that the favourable shocks to transaction fees and the payments infrastructure cause steady improvement in remittance inflows over the medium‐term horizon, thus underlining the importance of cost and efficiency in affecting the workers’ remittances.     

Identification of composite (∑+II) arma models by relatively simpler models

In the real world situations, many time series are aggregates of two or more time series. An aggregation may take place due to an addition or the product or both of two or more time series. We are often interested in the study of the properties of aggregates which are, in turn, dependent on the properties of the constituent series. Motivated by this problem, the authors study in this paper the properties of models generated by the operator (Σ+II) on autoregressive-moving-average (ARMA) processes of orders (p_i,q_i), i = l→n . A few practical examples where such models have been used are given in the introduction and an illustrative numerical example is discussed at the end of the paper.     

The power functions of the likelihood ratio tests for a simply ordered trend in normal means

Likelihood ratio tests for the homogeneity of k normal means with the alternative restricted by an increasing trend are considered as well as the likelihood ratio tests of the null hypothesis that the means satisfy the trend. While the work is primarily a survey of results concerning the power functions of these tests, the extensions of some results to the case of not necessarily equal sample sizes are presented. For the case of known or unknown population variances, exact expressions are given for the power functions for k=3,4, and approximations are discussed for larger k. The topics of consistency, bias and monotonicity of the power functions are included. Also, Bartholomew's conjectures concerning minimal and maximal powers are investigated, with results of a new numerical study given.     

Comparison of estimators of the location parameter using pitman's closeness criterion

Necessary and sufficient conditions for a linear estimator to dominate another linear estimator of a location parameter under the Pitman's criterion of comparison are discussed. Consequently it is demonstrated that a linear biased estimator can not dominate a linear unbiased estimator under Pitman's criterion and that the sample mean is the Closest Linear Unbiased Estimator (CLUE). It is also shown that the ridge regression estimator with a known biasing constant can not dominate the ordinary least squares estimator. If an estimator δdominates an estimator δin the average loss sense then sufficient conditions are obtained under which δis also preferred over δunder Pitman's criterion. Further we obtain sufficient conditions under which preference under the Pitman's criterion will lead to preference under the mean squared error sense.     

A Class of Estimators Using Auxiliary Information for Estimating Finite Population Variance in Presence of Measurement Errors

This article addresses the problem of estimating the population variance using auxiliary information in the presence of measurement errors. When the measurement error variance associated with study variable is known, a class of estimators of the population variance using auxiliary information has been proposed. We obtain the bias and mean squared errors of the suggested class of estimators upto the terms of order n ^?1, and also optimum estimators in asymptotic sense of the class with approximate mean squared error formula.     

Use of several auxiliary variables in estimating the population mean in a two-occasion rotation pattern

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the problem of estimation of the population mean on the current (second) occasion in two-occasion successive sampling. Utilizing the readily available information on several auxiliary variables on both occasions and the information on the study variable from the previous occasion, an estimation procedure of the population mean on the current occasion has been proposed. Theoretical properties of the proposed estimator have been investigated. Optimum replacement policy to the proposed estimator has been discussed. The proposed estimator has been compared empirically with the sample mean estimator, when there is no matching and the optimum estimator which is a linear combination of the means of the matched and unmatched portions of the sample at the current occasion. Appropriate recommendations have been made for practical applications.     

A family of estimators of population variance in two-occasion rotation patterns

Abstract

In this article, we have considered the problem of estimation of population variance on current (second) occasion in two occasion successive (rotation) sampling. A class of estimators of population variance has been proposed and its asymptotic properties have been discussed. The proposed class of estimators is compared with the sample variance estimator when there is no matching from the previous occasion and the Singh et al. (2013) estimator. Optimum replacement policy is discussed. It has been shown that the suggested estimator is more efficient than the Singh et al. (2013) estimator and a usual unbiased estimator when there is no matching. An empirical study is carried out in support of the present study.     

Selective Maintenance in System Reliability with Random Costs of Repairing and Replacing the Components

In this paper we consider the problem of determining the optimum number of repairable and replaceable components to maximize a system's reliability when both, the cost of repairing the components and the cost of replacement of components by new ones, are random. We formulate it as a problem of non-linear stochastic programming. The solution is obtained through Chance Constrained programming. We also consider the problem of finding the optimal maintenance cost for a given reliability requirement of the system. The solution is then obtained by using Modified E-model. A numerical example is solved for both the formulations.     

Robust test for means when population variances are unequal

We consider the problem of testing the equality of two population means when the population variances are not necessarily equal. We propose a Welch-type statistic, say T^* _c, based on Tiku!s ‘1967, 1980’ modified maximum likelihood estimators, and show that this statistic is robust to symmetric and moderately skew distributions. We investigate the power properties of the statistic T^* _c; T^* _c clearly seems to be more powerful than Yuen's ‘1974’ Welch-type robust statistic based on the trimmed sample means and the matching sample variances. We show that the analogous statistics based on the ‘adaptive’ robust estimators give misleading Type I errors. We generalize the results to testing linear contrasts among k population means