Partial Identification of Economic Mobility: With an Application to the United States

Abstract

The economic mobility of individuals and households is of fundamental interest. While many measures of economic mobility exist, reliance on transition matrices remains pervasive due to simplicity and ease of interpretation. However, estimation of transition matrices is complicated by the well-acknowledged problem of measurement error in self-reported and even administrative data. Existing methods of addressing measurement error are complex, rely on numerous strong assumptions, and often require data from more than two periods. In this article, we investigate what can be learned about economic mobility as measured via transition matrices while formally accounting for measurement error in a reasonably transparent manner. To do so, we develop a nonparametric partial identification approach to bound transition probabilities under various assumptions on the measurement error and mobility processes. This approach is applied to panel data from the United States to explore short-run mobility before and after the Great Recession.     

ASSESSING CONGRUENCEAMONG DISTANCE MATRICES: SINGLE-MALT SCOTCH WHISKIES REVISITED

A test of congruence among distance matrices is described. It tests the hypothesis that several matrices, containing different types of variables about the same objects, are congruent with one another, so they can be used jointly in statistical analysis. Raw data tables are turned into similarity or distance matrices prior to testing; they can then be compared to data that naturally come in the form of distance matrices. The proposed test can be seen as a generalization of the Mantel test of matrix correspondence to any number of distance matrices. This paper shows that the new test has the correct rate of Type I error and good power. Power increases as the number of objects and the number of congruent data matrices increase; power is higher when the total number of matrices in the study is smaller. To illustrate the method, the proposed test is used to test the hypothesis that matrices representing different types of organoleptic variables (colour, nose, body, palate and finish) in single‐malt Scotch whiskies are congruent.     

Robustness of a Class of Partial Diallel Cross Designs to the Unavailability of a Complete Block of Observations

Complete and partial diallel cross designs are examined as to their construction and robustness against the loss of a block of observations. A simple generalized inverse is found for the information matrix of the line effects, which allows evaluation of expressions for the variances of the line-effect differences with and without the missing block. A-efficiencies, based on average variances of the elementary contrasts of the line-effects, suggest that these designs are fairly robust. The loss of efficiency is generally less than 10%, but it is shown that specific comparisons might suffer a loss of efficiency of as much as 40%.     

广义对角占优矩阵判定条件的改进

给出广义对角占优矩阵的判定条件,改进和包含了文献[1～3]的主要结果,从而也推广了Shivakumar的结果。作为应用,得到了判定非奇M矩阵和几种迭代法新的收敛准则。     

线性矩阵不等式问题的进化计算解决方法

针对决定模糊控制中稳定性的线性矩阵不等式问题,提出了用进化计算来解决模糊控制中线性矩阵不等式的新算法。实验证明,该算法解“用于实现模糊控制的增益调度和稳定性的线性矩阵不等式”是有效的。     

几类矩阵的研究及其应用

对几类矩阵进行了刻划；对于非负阵谱半径的一个重要性质￣［１］，给出了新的简单证明；作为应用，得到有重要实际意义的某些类矩阵之逆的谱半径的界的估计。     

“方块布依字”及其在布依族宗教典籍传承过程中的作用

“方块布依字”是布依族民间流传的一种仿汉字的记音符号 ,主要通行于宗教职业者群体。布依族宗教经文手抄本中的用字和造字方法主要有四种 ,或用与布依语相同或相近的音来记录该语音 ,或根据布依语词义、用汉语方块字的字符重新造字 ,或用与布依语同义的词来记录 ,或直接用汉字本身来记录。“方块布依字”在布依族宗教典籍及传统文化的传承过程中具有重要的作用。     

On Block Updating in Markov Random Field Models for Disease Mapping

Gaussian Markov random field (GMRF) models are commonly used to model spatial correlation in disease mapping applications. For Bayesian inference by MCMC, so far mainly single-site updating algorithms have been considered. However, convergence and mixing properties of such algorithms can be extremely poor due to strong dependencies of parameters in the posterior distribution. In this paper, we propose various block sampling algorithms in order to improve the MCMC performance. The methodology is rather general, allows for non-standard full conditionals, and can be applied in a modular fashion in a large number of different scenarios. For illustration we consider three different applications: two formulations for spatial modelling of a single disease (with and without additional unstructured parameters respectively), and one formulation for the joint analysis of two diseases. The results indicate that the largest benefits are obtained if parameters and the corresponding hyperparameter are updated jointly in one large block. Implementation of such block algorithms is relatively easy using methods for fast sampling of Gaussian Markov random fields ( Rue, 2001 ). By comparison, Monte Carlo estimates based on single-site updating can be rather misleading, even for very long runs. Our results may have wider relevance for efficient MCMC simulation in hierarchical models with Markov random field components.     

中西典型思维方式与汉英文字音形意关联

文章指出文字与民族思维方式跨文化研究中的不足 ,扼要分析了潜在的成因 ,着重探讨比较了中西民族典型思维 (西方二元分析思维与汉民族整体思维 )在西方字母文字 (以英文为例 )与汉字音、形两大物质特性与意义概念结合上的反映 ,认为正确对待文字与思维之间的客观关联 ,不仅能从新的角度审视文字功能 ,而且有利于我们从中认识和挖掘各民族历史文化的深厚积淀 ,促进跨文化交流的全面开展     

矩阵非奇异性判定

本文利用矩阵块对角占优的性质,给出矩阵非奇异的一个判定条件