Knowledge and beliefs about national development and developmental hierarchies: The viewpoints of ordinary people in thirteen countries

Scholars and policy makers have for centuries constructed and used developmental hierarchies to characterize different countries. The hypotheses motivating this paper are that such social constructions have been circulated internationally, are constructed similarly in various countries, and follow the social constructions of elite international organizations, such as the United Nations. This paper uses data from 15 surveys in 13 diverse countries to study how developmental hierarchies are understood in everyday life. Our research shows that most people have constructions of developmental hierarchies that are similar across countries and are similar to the developmental hierarchies constructed by the United Nations. These findings suggest that developmental hierarchies are widely understood around the world and are widely available to ordinary people as they make decisions about many aspects of life.     

垄断、寻租、不平等与经济增长：基于中国房地业的分析

针对我国房地产行业频频爆发的征地拆迁冲突、屡禁不止的官员腐败及存在已久的房价过高问题,本文运用产业组织理论和寻租理论进行了系统的分析。在此基础上,本文认为,地方政府及相关官员强势介入房     

Racial opportunity structures and black fertility

This paper develops and tests hypotheses about the impact of opportunity structures on black fertility across local labor markets. US Vital Statistics and Census of Population data are combined and then examined with regression techniques to estimate the effect of both race-specific and relative measures of opportunity structure on black fertility in the United States. The results show that relative female opportunity structure has a negative relationship with black total fertility rates as well as with birth rates for specific points along the reproductive age structure. However, the hypothesized relationship between relative male opportunity structures and black fertility is not supported. We discuss these results as they relate to minority fertility theory and as they relate to public policy concerns.     

Period effects,cohort effects,and the narrowing gender wage gap

Despite the abundance of sociological research on the gender wage gap, questions remain. In particular, the role of cohorts is under investigated. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we use age–period–cohort analysis to uniquely estimate age, period, and cohort effects on the gender wage gap. The narrowing of the gender wage gap that occurred between 1975 and 2009 is largely due to cohort effects. Since the mid-1990s, the gender wage gap has continued to close absent of period effects. While gains in female wages contributed to declines in the gender wage gap for cohorts born before 1950, for later cohorts the narrowing of the gender wage gap is primarily a result of declines in male wages.     

Inference for Income Distributions Using Grouped Data

We develop a general approach to estimation and inference for income distributions using grouped or aggregate data that are typically available in the form of population shares and class mean incomes, with unknown group bounds. We derive generic moment conditions and an optimal weight matrix that can be used for generalized method-of-moments (GMM) estimation of any parametric income distribution. Our derivation of the weight matrix and its inverse allows us to express the seemingly complex GMM objective function in a relatively simple form that facilitates estimation. We show that our proposed approach, which incorporates information on class means as well as population proportions, is more efficient than maximum likelihood estimation of the multinomial distribution, which uses only population proportions. In contrast to the earlier work of Chotikapanich, Griffiths, and Rao, and Chotikapanich, Griffiths, Rao, and Valencia, which did not specify a formal GMM framework, did not provide methodology for obtaining standard errors, and restricted the analysis to the beta-2 distribution, we provide standard errors for estimated parameters and relevant functions of them, such as inequality and poverty measures, and we provide methodology for all distributions. A test statistic for testing the adequacy of a distribution is proposed. Using eight countries/regions for the year 2005, we show how the methodology can be applied to estimate the parameters of the generalized beta distribution of the second kind (GB2), and its special-case distributions, the beta-2, Singh–Maddala, Dagum, generalized gamma, and lognormal distributions. We test the adequacy of each distribution and compare predicted and actual income shares, where the number of groups used for prediction can differ from the number used in estimation. Estimates and standard errors for inequality and poverty measures are provided. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

社会保障对城乡家庭消费的影响研究

 本文基于CGSS《中国城乡居民生活综合调查》2006年的家庭微观调查数据分析了我国城乡家庭消费支出的分布特征,按有无社会保障把城乡家庭分别分为两组,利用分位数回归方法分别研究了不同消费层次上,社会保障对城乡家庭消费的影响,并利用反事实分析与分位数分解方法对这两组家庭消费差异进行研究。主要结论有：有社会保障家庭人均消费要高于无社会保障家庭人均消费,消费收入弹性呈“几”字型,有社会保障和无社会保障家庭的消费差异主要是由于收入、地产财富等差异造成的。最后,提出了具有针对性的政策建议。     

随机效应半参数logit模型的惩罚似然估计研究

 在颇具争议的收入差距和健康关系研究中,为了降低可能存在的模型设定和遗漏变量偏误,本文提出了随机效应半参数logit模型,其中非参数的设定还可用于数据的初探性分析。随后本文提出了模型非参数和参数部分的估计方法。这里涉及的难点是随机效应的存在导致似然函数中的积分没有解析式,而非参数的存在更加大了估计难度。本文基于惩罚样条非参数估计方法和四阶Laplace近似方法建立了惩罚对数似然函数,其最大化采用了Newton_Raphson近似方法。文章还建立了惩罚样条中重要光滑参数的选取准则。模型在收入差距和健康实例中的估计结果表明数据支持收入差距弱假说,且非参数估计结果表明其具有U型形式,与实例估计结果的比较指出本文提出的估计方法是较准确的。     

A Note on Sample Size Determination for the Estimation of the Mean Vector of a Multivariate Population

In this article, we present a straightforward Bonferroni approach for determining sample size for estimating the mean vector of a multivariate population under two scenarios: (1) a pre-specified overall confidence level is desired; and (2) a pre-specified confidence level needs to be guaranteed for each individual variable. It is demonstrated that correlation between variables helps reduce the sample size. The formula to calculate the reduced sample size is derived. A binormal example is presented to illustrate the effect of correlation on sample size reduction for various values of the correlation coefficient.     

Gini Index Decomposition for the Case of Two Subgroups

In the framework of inequality measures decompositions, this article introduces an immediate and straightforward simplification for the Gini index when a population is divided in two subgroups. Since one of the key points in inequality analysis is represented by the role of overlapping units, a simulation study is developed in order to analyze the effects of the overlapping component on inequality decomposition. Simple expressions for the measurement of either overlapping component and inequality between are derived, which allow to correctly evaluate and compare the effects of different factors on total inequality.