以系统化思维高质量推进江苏全面深化改革

以系统化思维高质量推进江苏全面深化改革,有利于江苏在全面深化改革中一体贯彻新发展理念、聚力培育发展新动能、统筹推进高质量发展。改革开放40年来,江苏锐意改革、大胆创新、勇立潮头。具体表现为：经济发展体制障碍不断突破,经济综合实力稳步提升;区域协调发展机制逐步构建,区域空间布局日渐优化;社会治理体制创新积极推进,社会治理水平明显提高;生态文明体制改革日益深化,“美丽江苏”建设成效初显。同时,江苏目前在发展方式转变、经济结构优化、增长动力转换等方面仍然存在不少问题和障碍。今后一段时间,江苏应站在更高起点系统谋划和推进各项改革。要着眼走在高质量发展前列,深化经济体制改革;要着眼提高保障和改善民生水平,创新社会治理格局;要着眼经济和社会事业发展全局,完善人才发展制度;要着眼人与大自然是生命共同体,推进生态文明建设。     

Pre-decisional information acquisition: Why do we pay too much for information? Brief report

People tend to acquire more information while making their decisions than a rational and risk-neutral benchmark would predict. We conduct a carefully designed experiment to derive five plausible reasons for pre-decision information overpurchasing. The results show that overpurchasing of information can be almost entirely explained by systematic information processing errors (misestimation or incorrect Bayesian updating), possibly caused by biased intuitive decision processes. Other factors, such as overoptimism about the validity of the new information, risk aversion, ambiguity aversion, and curiosity about (irrelevant) information, play at most a minor role. Our results imply that information overacquisitions are mainly driven by the overestimation of the usefulness of additional information.     

Nonparametric modelling of biodiversity: Determinants of threatened species

This study uses a sample of 71 countries and nonparametric quantile and partial regressions to model a number of threatened species (reptiles, mammals, fish, birds, trees, plants) in relation to various economic and environmental variables (GDPc, CO₂ emissions, agricultural production, energy intensity, protected areas, population and income inequality). From the analysis and due to high asymmetric distribution of the dependent variables it seems that a linear regression is not adequate and cannot capture properly the dimension of the threatened species. We find that using OLS instead of non-parametric techniques over- or under-estimates the parameters which may have serious policy implications.     

PROXYING FOR UNOBSERVABLE VARIABLES WITH INTERNET DOCUMENT‐FREQUENCY

The internet contains billions of documents. We show that document frequencies in large decentralized textual databases can capture the cross‐sectional variation in the occurrence frequencies of social phenomena. We characterize the econometric conditions under which such proxying is likely. We also propose using recently‐introduced internet search volume indexes as proxies for fundamental locational traits, and discuss their advantages and limitations. We then successfully proxy for a number of economic and demographic variables in US cities and states. We further obtain document‐frequency measures of corruption by country and US state and replicate the econometric results of previous research studying its covariates. Finally, we provide the first measure of corruption in American cities. Poverty, population size, service‐sector orientation, and ethnic fragmentation are shown to predict higher levels of corruption in urban America.     

Approximate jackknife empirical likelihood method for estimating equations

It is known that the profile empirical likelihood method based on estimating equations is computationally intensive when the number of nuisance parameters is large. Recently, Li, Peng, & Qi (2011) proposed a jackknife empirical likelihood method for constructing confidence regions for the parameters of interest by estimating the nuisance parameters separately. However, when the estimators for the nuisance parameters have no explicit formula, the computation of the jackknife empirical likelihood method is still intensive. In this paper, an approximate jackknife empirical likelihood method is proposed to reduce the computation in the jackknife empirical likelihood method when the nuisance parameters cannot be estimated explicitly. A simulation study confirms the advantage of the new method. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 40: 110–123; 2012 © 2012 Statistical Society of Canada     

Rendite und Kapitalkosten

Zusammenfassung  Zur Bewertung von Investitionsprojekten mit mehrperiodigen Zahlungen werden die erwarteten Zahlungen mit geeigneten Kapitalkosten diskontiert. In dieser Arbeit wird gezeigt, dass die erwarteten einperiodigen Renditen nur unter bestimmten Annahmen die geeigneten Kapitalkosten darstellen. Wenn zwischen den einperiodigen Renditen Autokorrelation auftritt, ist ein zus?tzlicher Korrekturterm bei der Ermittlung der Kapitalkosten zu berücksichtigen. Im Falle unkorrelierter Renditen entspricht der stochastische Prozess der Renditen dem Prozess der Risikoaufl?sung.

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Summary  In this paper it is argued that the discount rates used for the computation of the present values of an investment project with cash-flows to be realized over several years have to be adjusted when the one-period returns of the investment project are autocorrelated. The formula of the correct discount rate is deduced. In the case of uncorrelated returns of the investment, the stochastic process of the returns and of the cost of capital are closely related to the process of the arrival of information over time.

Ich danke zwei anonymen Gutachtern für wertvolle Verbesserungsvorschl?ge an einer früheren Version des Aufsatzes sowie dem Verein zur F?rderung der Zusammenarbeit zwischen Lehre und Praxis am Finanzplatz Hannover e.V. für seine Unterstützung.     

Gender Unemployment Dynamics: Evidence from Ten Advanced Economies

The paper investigates gender unemployment dynamics in 10 advances economies applying a recent methodology on widely available Labour Force Surveys data. We calculate the job finding and separation rates for each gender and use them to construct the steady‐state unemployment gap as well as two counterfactual gender unemployment gaps: one generated by differences only in job finding rates and the other by differences only in separation rates. We find that in all countries the gender unemployment gap attributed to differences in the job finding rate is lower than the gap attributed to differences in the separation rate, suggesting that gender differences in the separation rate are the major factor behind the gender unemployment gap.     

Provincial Conditional Income Convergence in China, 1953-1997: A Panel Data Approach

This paper examines the tendency towards income convergence among China's main provinces during the two periods: the pre-reform period 1953-1977 and the reform period 1978-1997 using the framework of the Solow growth model. The panel data method accounts for not only province-specific initial technology level but also the heterogeneity of the technological progress rate between the fast-growing coastal and interior provinces. Estimation problems of weak instruments and endogeneity are addressed by the use of a system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator. The main empirical finding is that there is a system-wide income divergence during the reform period because the coastal provinces do not share a common technology progress rate with the interior provinces.     

A probablistic analysis for an optimal screening problem

Summary We consider a lotL formed byN apparently similar unitsW ₁,…,W _N, where each of theW _i may come from one of two different populationsP ₁ andP ₂;T ₁,…,T _N denote the corresponding lifetimes. The units fromP _i undergo a failure of kindi and their survival function isS _i (t). We assume that the failure rate function are known and that the units fromP ₁ are ?substandard?: λ ₁ (t)≥λ ₂ (t), ∀t≥0. We want to putW ₁,…,W _N under a pre-operational test (burn-in test) in order to eliminate at least a great part of the substandard units and we face the problem of obtaining a rule for stopping the test under the assumption that, with the failure of a unit, it is possible to recognize the population from which the unit comes. Such a problem will be formalized as an optimal stopping problem for a suitably defined Markov process. Our study shall evidentiate some fundamental aspects of the problem and the role of the prior distribution of the (random) numberM ₀ of those units inL coming fromP ₁ (substandard). The latter distribution has a great influence on the form of the solution. This research was supported by the C.N.R. Project ?Statistica Bayesiana e Simulazione in Affidalità e Modellistica Biologica?.     

Forward irrelevance

We investigate how to combine marginal assessments about the values that random variables assume separately into a model for the values that they assume jointly, when (i) these marginal assessments are modelled by means of coherent lower previsions and (ii) we have the additional assumption that the random variables are forward epistemically irrelevant to each other. We consider and provide arguments for two possible combinations, namely the forward irrelevant natural extension and the forward irrelevant product, and we study the relationships between them. Our treatment also uncovers an interesting connection between the behavioural theory of coherent lower previsions, and Shafer and Vovk's game-theoretic approach to probability theory.