Measurement of social development: an international comparison

PQLI and HDI are the two most popular measures of development, besides per capita income. Over the years, PQLI appears to be not much in use for regional comparisons, especially after the introduction of HDI. While PQLI considers only the physical variables—adult literacy, life expectancy at birth and infant survival rate, HDI has life expectancy at birth, educational attainment and real GDP per capita (PPP$). PQLI and HDI are similar, the main difference between the two being the inclusion of income in HDI and exclusion of the same from PQLI. In a sense, HDI represents both physical and financial attributes of development and PQLI has only the physical aspects of life. The present author took the lines of PQLI to express development in terms of physical variables and considering development as a multidimensional phenomenon, Ray (1989) [Ray, A. K. (1989). On the measurement of certain aspects of social development, Social Indicators Research (Vol. 21, pp. 35–92). The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.] included as many as 13 physical variables to represent social development across 40 countries; no financial variable was included in the construction of composite index, termed as the Social Development Index, SDI. Incidentally, like PQLI, SDI was introduced before HDI. Unlike PQLI and HDI, SDI considers (i) a large number of indicators representing various concern areas and (ii) a set of objective methods for combining the development indicators as a composite index. Ray (1989) has been restated and updated in this article with newer cross-country information. In the present study, SDI has been constructed for over 102 countries, including 21 OECD countries, using 10 development indicators, instead of 13 indicators in the past. Apart from presenting objective methods for combining indicators into SDI, the present study asserts that SDI works better than HDI as a measure of development for an international comparison. The views expressed in the article are those of the author and not of the institution he serves.     

Cross-sectoral assessment of public policies in health and the environment: Scenario of the municipalities in the state of Sao Paulo

From the identification of the current and rising demand for integrated solutions by government players, especially at the stage of evaluation of public policies, this paper carried out an cross-sectoral outcome assessment of local government cost-effectiveness in the fields of health and environment. The analysis is based on the amount of resources allocated by each of the 645 municipalities in the state of São Paulo, to each field, involving consolidated evaluation indicators (IDSUS and IAA, respectively). This study required the prior distribution of municipalities in clusters within homogeneous groups previously proposed in IDSUS calculation methodology. The results suggest that the addressed areas are intimately connected, indicating that larger (and better) environmental investments can produce promising outcomes toward health performance. Therefore, there is a demand for integrated public policies in the context of environmental health. Also, there is the indication that the resource management and the proper allocation thereof may be more relevant than the total amount spent; and that lower cost-effectiveness values do not necessarily demonstrate high scores in the assessed performance indicators.     

Predicting Early Data Revisions to U.S. GDP and the Effects of Releases on Equity Markets

The effects of data uncertainty on real-time decision-making can be reduced by predicting data revisions to U.S. GDP growth. We show that survey forecasts efficiently predict the revision implicit in the second estimate of GDP growth, but that forecasting models incorporating monthly economic indicators and daily equity returns provide superior forecasts of the data revision implied by the release of the third estimate. We use forecasting models to measure the impact of surprises in GDP announcements on equity markets, and to analyze the effects of anticipated future revisions on announcement-day returns. We show that the publication of better than expected third-release GDP figures provides a boost to equity markets, and if future upward revisions are expected, the effects are enhanced during recessions.     

Transforming the Evaluation of the Rule of Law in China*

Over the past ten years, China has seen a number of practices exploring the evaluation of the rule of law. It is important that we sum up the practical experience of these evaluations, analyze the problems they encounter, determine their direction nationwide, and put forward constructive ideas. With the issuing of the Decision of the Central Committee of the CPC on Some Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening the Reform and the Decision of the Central Committee of the CPC on Promoting a Number of Major Issues of the Rule of Law, evaluation of the rule of law faces a transformation both in theory and in practice. The key points in this transformation are having the right orientation, innovative mechanisms and solutions to tricky issues of quantitative evaluation; summing up evaluation of experience; and elevating evaluation to the level of theory. A precondition for its effective evaluation is a scientific mechanism for evaluating the rule of law; in turn, the key to a scientific evaluation is solving the problems in quantitative evaluation of the rule of law; and the necessary requirements for evaluation practice are summing up evaluation experience and elevating it to the level of theory. The key to innovative mechanisms for evaluating the rule of law lies in implementation of the third party evaluation model and in quantitative evaluation that starts with particular programs.     

基于组合预测的邮政业务主要指标预测研究——以重庆邮政业为例

对邮政业主要指标的准确预测是制定邮政业十三五发展规划的重要依据,需要使用科学?有效?合理的方法进行支撑? 以重庆市邮政业为例,统计分析邮政业务总量?邮政业务收入?快递业务总量和快递业务收入四项主要指标在2012年12月至2016年2月期间的月度时间序列数据,分别运用灰色模型?Holt-Winters 模型?趋势外推法等三种方法对四项主要指标进行拟合,用方差倒数法进行三种模型的组合预测,并对四种模型的预测精度进分析比较? 结果显示,组合预测模型的预测精度要优于任意一种单一预测模型?     

国家间经济比较中的不同货币比价

以汇率为基础的经济信息用于国际比较谬误巨大。比较生产力水平应使用国内购买力货币比价和国内购买力增加值,比较实际国民收入应使用国内外购买力货币比价和国内外购买力增加值,比较居民生活水平应使用消费品购买力货币比价和消费品购买力增加值,比较具体经济指标不能混淆名义外汇价值与实物总量和结构的差异。这样才能正确计量中国与发达国家的差距,科学分析与制定经济发展战略与政策。     

Measuring Youth Development: A Nonparametric Cross-Country ‘Youth Welfare Index’

This paper develops an empirical methodology for the construction of a synthetic multi-dimensional cross-country comparison of the performance of governments around the world in improving the livelihood of their younger population. The devised ‘Youth Welfare Index’ is based on the nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology and allows for cross-country benchmarking and comparison over time. The value added of the youth index is to produce country-specific rankings and trace performance evolution with respect to indicators solely centered on youth, unlike other development indicators like the Human Development Index (HDI) which bundles many social and development indicators.

Moving towards local-level indicators of sustainability in forest-based communities: A mixed-method approach

Forest-dependent communities can beexemplified in terms of subsistencedependence, park-based tourism dependence, ortraditional logging dependence. In monitoringthe sustainability of these places,researchers have struggled to develop relevantindicators responsive to their unique social,economic, and environmental conditions. Inthis study, we attempt to deal with theseconditions by employing a quality-of-lifeframework in the selection of local-levelindicators, and by scrutinizing theseindicators in term of their relevance tospecific sustainability concerns. We usedworkshops, an indicator evaluation framework,and survey research to identify relevantlocal-level indicators of sustainability intwo Saskatchewan communities. Findingsemphasize the need for caution in assertingthe utility of ``one-size-fits-all' approachesto community sustainability. These communitiesdefine progress toward sustainability quitedifferently and therefore require a unique setof progress measures.     

EU countries’ progress towards ‘Europe 2020 strategy targets’

This paper describes and analyzes EU Member States’ progress towards the national EU2020 targets. To do so, this paper constructs a geometric composite index with Benefit-of-the-Doubt weights as a measure of a Member State’s overall performance on the EU2020 headline indicators. A tripartite decomposition of Member State performance change is presented to explain and analyze performance change of the EU-region and the individual EU Member States during the period 2008–2014. The results reveal that all Member States are in general making progress towards their national targets. Member States generally moved forward in the areas of R&D, environmental and educational policy and moved backwards in terms of employment and poverty and social inclusion. As to the realization of the national targets, the majority of the Member States are still mostly lagging on R&D and social inclusion and poverty reduction.     

国家精品课程复核的制度设计

国家精品课程复核的目的是对公共资金使用的问责,其制度设计遵循系统性、科学性、导向性与可行性原则。依据行政合同的法律要求及问责理论,可以将国家精品课程复核的基本要素界定为：复核主体、复核对象、复内容、复核方法、后果处理等五个方面;参考国家精品课程的评审指标,可以从输入、过程、输出、支撑和特色五大方面具体设置复核指标：并设置院校自评与外部复核相结合的复核基本程序。