Re‐framing the Analysis: A 3‐dimensional Perspective of Prisoners’ Children's Well‐being

This article highlights three dimensions to understanding children's well‐being during and after parental imprisonment which have not been fully explored in current research. A consideration of ‘time’ reveals the importance of children's past experiences and their anticipated futures. A focus on ‘space’ highlights the impact of new or altered environmental dynamics. A study of ‘agency’ illuminates how children cope within structural, material and social confines which intensify vulnerability and dependency. This integrated perspective reveals important differences in individual children's experiences and commonalities in broader systemic and social constraints on prisoners’ children. The paper analyses data from a prospective longitudinal study of 35 prisoners’ children during and after their (step) father's imprisonment to illustrate the arguments.     

Risk Analysis: Celebrating the Accomplishments and Embracing Ongoing Challenges

As part of the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Society for Risk Analysis and Risk Analysis: An International Journal, this essay reviews the 10 most important accomplishments of risk analysis from 1980 to 2010, outlines major accomplishments in three major categories from 2011 to 2019, discusses how editors circulate authors’ accomplishments, and proposes 10 major risk-related challenges for 2020–2030. Authors conclude that the next decade will severely test the field of risk analysis.     

行业系统性风险的动态特征及其影响因素

现代经济主体间网络关联性越来越强,风险很容易在不同行业间扩散,因此有效识别并分析系统性风险是防范金融危机的关键步骤。基于条件风险价值(CoVaR)和边际期望损失(MES)两个指标,对巨潮行业指数系统性风险的静态和动态特征进行了研究。结果发现,各行业间系统性风险的相关性较强,动态特征显示2009年年初和2016年3月为系统性风险的两个峰值;从分行业来看,材料行业的系统性风险最高,而消费和医药行业的系统性风险最低。采用动态面板模型分析影响行业系统性风险的市场面因素发现,短期涨幅较高、长期涨幅较低及流动性较充分的行业,其系统性风险往往更低。因此,应加强对系统性风险较高行业的监管力度,建立好金融防火墙,防止外部金融风险的过度传染;同时应加强对各行业的实时监控,尤其是关注短期暴涨暴跌及流动性充分与否的监控。     

Towards Uniformly Efficient Trend Estimation Under Weak/Strong Correlation and Non‐stationary Volatility

In this paper, we consider the deterministic trend model where the error process is allowed to be weakly or strongly correlated and subject to non‐stationary volatility. Extant estimators of the trend coefficient are analysed. We find that under heteroskedasticity, the Cochrane–Orcutt‐type estimator (with some initial condition) could be less efficient than Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) when the process is highly persistent, whereas it is asymptotically equivalent to OLS when the process is less persistent. An efficient non‐parametrically weighted Cochrane–Orcutt‐type estimator is then proposed. The efficiency is uniform over weak or strong serial correlation and non‐stationary volatility of unknown form. The feasible estimator relies on non‐parametric estimation of the volatility function, and the asymptotic theory is provided. We use the data‐dependent smoothing bandwidth that can automatically adjust for the strength of non‐stationarity in volatilities. The implementation does not require pretesting persistence of the process or specification of non‐stationary volatility. Finite‐sample evaluation via simulations and an empirical application demonstrates the good performance of proposed estimators.     

Design selection for strong orthogonal arrays

Strong orthogonal arrays (SOAs) were recently introduced and studied as a class of space‐filling designs for computer experiments. An important problem that has not been addressed in the literature is that of design selection for such arrays. In this article, we conduct a systematic investigation into this problem, and we focus on the most useful SOA(n,m,4,2 + )s and SOA(n,m,4,2)s. This article first addresses the problem of design selection for SOAs of strength 2+ by examining their three‐dimensional projections. Both theoretical and computational results are presented. When SOAs of strength 2+ do not exist, we formulate a general framework for the selection of SOAs of strength 2 by looking at their two‐dimensional projections. The approach is fruitful, as it is applicable when SOAs of strength 2+ do not exist and it gives rise to them when they do. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 47: 302–314; 2019 © 2019 Statistical Society of Canada     

Properties of the weighted log‐rank test in the design of confirmatory studies with delayed effects

Proportional hazards are a common assumption when designing confirmatory clinical trials in oncology. This assumption not only affects the analysis part but also the sample size calculation. The presence of delayed effects causes a change in the hazard ratio while the trial is ongoing since at the beginning we do not observe any difference between treatment arms, and after some unknown time point, the differences between treatment arms will start to appear. Hence, the proportional hazards assumption no longer holds, and both sample size calculation and analysis methods to be used should be reconsidered. The weighted log‐rank test allows a weighting for early, middle, and late differences through the Fleming and Harrington class of weights and is proven to be more efficient when the proportional hazards assumption does not hold. The Fleming and Harrington class of weights, along with the estimated delay, can be incorporated into the sample size calculation in order to maintain the desired power once the treatment arm differences start to appear. In this article, we explore the impact of delayed effects in group sequential and adaptive group sequential designs and make an empirical evaluation in terms of power and type‐I error rate of the of the weighted log‐rank test in a simulated scenario with fixed values of the Fleming and Harrington class of weights. We also give some practical recommendations regarding which methodology should be used in the presence of delayed effects depending on certain characteristics of the trial.     

影子银行、地方政府债务及金融发展动态关系研究——基于省级面板VAR模型

基于2004—2017年中国省级面板数据,运用面板向量自回归(PVAR)模型,使用系统GMM估计、脉冲响应函数、方差分解以及格兰杰因果关系检验等方法分析了影子银行、地方政府债务及金融发展之间的动态关系.结果表明:影子银行、地方政府债务与金融发展水平三者之间存在动态耦合关系.在地方政府融资能力受到约束的情况下,影子银行为地方政府提供了多元的融资方式,在增加政府融资能力的同时提升了政府债务水平;而地方政府债务需求显著推动了影子银行规模的快速发展.同时,影子银行过度扩张危害了金融市场的健康发展,降低金融发展水平,继而使地方政府的融资渠道受到约束.但金融发展并不能有效约束影子银行规模,原因在于,政府融资需求是影子银行的主要动力,若不能控制地方政府的借贷行为则无法从源头解决问题.监管机构在去杠杆的过程中,应该综合考虑影子银行与地方政府债务、金融发展之间的动态关系,如此才能够实现预期的政策效果.     

Decision‐making under uncertainty in child protection: Creating a just and learning culture

The argument is made for having a positive error culture in child protection to improve decision‐making and risk management. This requires organizations to accept that mistakes are likely and to treat them as opportunities for learning and improving. In contrast, in many organizations, a punitive reaction to errors leads to workers hiding them and developing a defensive approach to their practice with children and families. The safety management literature has shown how human error is generally not simply due to a “bad apple” but made more or less likely by the work context that helps or hinders good performance. Improving safety requires learning about the weaknesses in the organization that contribute to poor performance. To create a learning culture, people need to feel that when they talk about mistakes or weak practice, there will be a constructive response from their organization. One aspect of reducing the blame culture is to develop a shared understanding of how practice will be judged and how those appraising practice will avoid the hindsight bias. To facilitate a positive error culture, a set of risk principles are presented that offer a set of criteria by which practice should be appraised.     

页岩气开发环境风险的法律规制思考

目前，我国在页岩气开发的环境保护方面存在着大量的法律空白，往往只能参照环境保护法和矿产资源法中的相关规定进行规制，无法有效解决页岩气开发暴露出来的环境问题。页岩气开发环境风险的法律规制，核心目的就是解决当前页岩气开发中的环境风险，促进页岩气开发与环境保护相协调，实现能源开发的可持续发展。在页岩气开发环境风险的法律规制方面，英美两国已经探索出一些经验和制度。积极借鉴国外有益经验，努力改进和完善我国应对页岩气开发环境风险的法律规制，对实现我国页岩气开采的经济效益、社会效益和环境效益三者的统一具有重要的现实意义。     

Who Should Pay for Interdependent Risk? Policy Implications for Security Interdependence Among Airports

We study interdependent risks in security, and shed light on the economic and policy implications of increasing security interdependence in presence of reactive attackers. We investigate the impact of potential public policy arrangements on the security of a group of interdependent organizations, namely, airports. Focusing on security expenditures and costs to society, as assessed by a social planner, to individual airports and to attackers, we first develop a game-theoretic framework, and derive explicit Nash equilibrium and socially optimal solutions in the airports network. We then conduct numerical experiments mirroring real-world cyber scenarios, to assess how a change in interdependence impact the airports' security expenditures, the overall expected costs to society, and the fairness of security financing. Our study provides insights on the economic and policy implications for the United States, Europe, and Asia.